The Atlantic blog team gets a new member today, Megan McArdle, formerly of The Economist and the Jane Galt blog. With her on board, Atlantic Voices now encompasses two different genders and graduates of two different Ivy League schools. Today she offers the view that the current problems in the market won't be as bad as the Great Depression, which we should all find very reassuring.
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Nobody Summons Megatron
20 Aug 2007 02:29 pm
Comments (96)
Please kill me.
It's shocking that Atrios, the God of the Lefty Blogosphere, (Peace be Upon Him) has credential envy.
Perhaps Matt forgot pay Him the daily tribute that He deserves.
Given the higher profile provided by her new gig, McArdle is in now the running for the dumbest person in the world competition.
Every time I read her I swear I become less informed about something or other.
I guess Sullivan was no longer holding up the Atlantic tradition of giving purportedly moderate right-wing hacks a voice?
Once on bloggingheads she said she thought that living in poverty wasn't so hard because she had been a "Ramen-eating college student" and it wasn't that bad. No, really. She said that.
Penn isn't a real Ivy League School. It's a safety school, fercrissakes.
It's shocking that Atrios, the God of the Lefty Blogosphere, (Peace be Upon Him) has credential envy.
Atrios has a PhD in economics, making him more heavily credentialed than anyone from the "Atlantic Voices" blogs. I'd guess his "please kill me" is an instinctive reaction to finding yet another right-wing hack promoted to a respectable mainstream platform despite a history of being wrong about pretty much everything.
Now here's a question: I tend to suspect that, despite Matt Yglesias's generally daft views (or lack thereof) on labor and environmental policy, he doesn't have all that much respect for Megan McArdle's work (my evidence is based mostly on the fact that 1. he hasn't linked to her all that much in the past and 2. she's part of his extended social circle, and Yglesias actively promotes the work of nearly everyone he knows who also has a blog). However, it's also pretty clear that there's some kind of active cross-promotional thing going on between the Atlantic blogs, hence Yglesias's sudden links to old Atlantic pieces and the fairly horrible Marc Ambinder blog. Can we expect some good, nasty intra-Atlantic fighting here, or will Yglesias find some middling excuse to promote some of McArdle's less offensive and idiotic pieces once or twice a week?
I'm surprised you don't like Penn, Al. It's an asshole factory. You'd fit right in.
(Disclaimer: I'm a current student, sitting on campus as I write this. I also only endorse Penn-based criticism of Penn.)
"graduates of two different Ivy League schools."
Meaning what? That you're both intimately familiar with out of control grade inflation? Certainly you don't mean that your school automatically means (or even at all) that you know what you're talking about?
Shorter McArdle:
The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There'll be sun!
Just thinkin' about
Tomorrow
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
'Til there's none!
When I'm stuck a day
That's gray,
And lonely,
I just stick out my chin
And Grin,
And Say,
Oh!
The sun'll come out
Tomorrow
So ya gotta hang on
'Til tomorrow
Come what may
Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I love ya Tomorrow!
You're always
A day
A way!
Atrios has a PhD in economics, making him more heavily credentialed than anyone from the "Atlantic Voices" blogs.
Exactly, because Andrew Sullivan doesn't have a PhD from the Harvard Government Department or anything.
The Atlantic is employing the graduates of Ivy League schools? My, what a notable departure from usual practices. I was under the impression that it was all UMass-Boston and Michigan State in the magazine industry. Also, didn't Atrios get his Ph.D. at an Ivy League school? I suspect Christmas has this all correct.
Oh man. I'm not sure if I agree with The Atlantic's decision to employ a woman who writes about economics without actually having any kind of a degree in the field.
I sincerely hope, and will believe until conflicting reports surface, that she was fired from The Economist for sucking.
Sign me up for shooting as well. It's just so timely, too, what with the nation's recent rightward trend, that The Atlantic should invest further in rightwing hackery. Note that that link is to McArdle's former employer, from which I look forward to considerably better reporting and editorializing now that she's gone.
Hopefully people realize I"m not exactly credential-obsessed, but no Andrew Sullivan does not have a Ph. D from Harvard or anywhere else.
actually, I guess I'm wrong. apparently he does.
learn new things every day.
"Oh man. I'm not sure if I agree with The Atlantic's decision to employ a woman who writes about economics without actually having any kind of a degree in the field."
Matt Yglesias writes about foreign policy. Where's his degree in the field?
Since Chris Matthews has like 142 PhDs (all honorary), does he get 142 Atlantic blogs?
And if you are obsessing about credentials, Megan's MBA from the GSB is far more impressive than her undergrad diploma.
(So says the guy with the JD from the U of C.)
There's no such thing as an impressive MBA.
People, people, you're missing the key points here!
1. Megan McArdle is weapons-grade stupid.
2. Her presence in the Atlantic stable will guarantee a steady stream of sweet, sweet snark from MY.
The rest is commentary.
To be honest, if you have a Ph.D from an Ivy League university and you are a blogger rather than a university professor, it suggests that you really were not a very good graduate student. Which explains why Sullivan is so mediocre. Also, why do you have be approved to comment on McArdale's blog, whereas here at MY you can just post? Must be that right-wingers hate freedom of speech.
Which explains why Sullivan is so mediocre.
Did Sullivan even publish his dissertation?
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Ridiculous. Why is there no consistent comment policy on Atlantic blogs? You can post freely here but not elsewhere? Makes no sense. It's all the same magazine.
Well, he did teach at Harvard before completing his thesis. Do all Ph.Ds have be professors to retain their seriousness card?
The Atlantic blog team gets a new member today, Megan McArdle, formerly of The Economist and the Jane Galt blog.
Oooooh, goody! Will she advocate attacking peace protestors with 2x4s, and then claim NYC-centric ignorance about what a 2x4 actually is, here as well?
Megan McArdle is weapons-grade stupid.
That's not very nice, Lemuel. I'd offer an alternative take... she strikes me as one of those gifted and talented types who read the Atlas Shrugged at age 16 and decided that she was a superior life form, and therefore qualified to dispense sage wisdom on any subject under the sun without bothering to learn anything beyond the Penn freshman reading list and a few bromides from alt.libertarian.
I'm sure she has an IQ score high enough to drive Steve Sailer mad with passion. And yet she also produces enough weapons-grade nonsense to blast a hole through the fabric of the universe. Such are the mysteries of life.
"To be honest, if you have a Ph.D from an Ivy League university and you are a blogger rather than a university professor, it suggests that you really were not a very good graduate student. Which explains why Sullivan is so mediocre."
The guy was the editor of The New Republic. Maybe he considers that a better job than "university professor." I certainly would.
LaFollette: I'll accept that as a friendly amendment.
What makes McArdle special is her ability to pull out of thin air a "fact" to support whatever position she's arguing at the moment, and to back it up with some transparently flimsy claim of personal expertise. I agree, that's not quite the same as stupid ... but the net effect is the same, only more so. Total imperviousness to reality.
I have no doubt she's a lovely person. But she says some incredibly dumb things. (Freddie gives a perfectly illustrative example above.)
The world is ripe for the arrival of a geeky female blogger named Megan who calls herself 'Megatron'.
A heck of a lot better than 'Jane Galt', anyway.
P '06: Besides Atrios, who actually was a professor at one point, at least two-well known lefty bloggers have Ph.Ds: Eric Alterman and Josh Marshall. Both are in history. I suspect Alterman, Marshall, and Sullivan could all have become professors, and good ones, had they so desired.
Jesus Christ, Matt, the word you want is "sexes" not "genders."
Go to college within the last ten years much?
Advanced degrees are best thought of as a measure of how much time you spent in school.
(Dr.) Kelly Coyle, former college professor
Why is everyone saying McArdle is stupid? I think she's pretty smart.
I don't get Freddie's example about her living on Ramen. Her point is that whatever it is that is so bad about poverty, it is not well described by a low income, low consumption lifestyle, since she herself lived such a lifestyle, and she's obviously not someone to feel sorry for, and anyway it wasn't all that bad.
Can anyone produce an example of some things she's written that are genuinely stupid?
No, her point was that she knew what it was like to be in poverty, because she had been a poor college student. My point is that is an egregiously stupid thing to say; being a poor college student is nothing at all like being in genuine poverty. Not in degree or kind.
I stopped reading "Jane Galt" on the eve of the 2004 election, when she announced that George Bush's lies (which she acknowledged to exist) in the lead-up the the Iraq War were irrelevant, since all politicians lie. Sorry, but if you are willing to support politicians based upon different standards of conduct than you apply to the remaining 99+% of the human race, I see no reason to believe you are a person capable of rational thought.
The people here who say "McArdle is stupid" seem to mean "McArdle has a different ideology than I do."
The people here who say "McArdle is stupid" seem to mean "McArdle has a different ideology than I do."
Read her bio. Looks surprisingly like GWB's, with a lot of apparently failed ventures.
English majors do not make good economists, even with an MBA.
Her choice of idealogy is an example of stupid.
One is not born a libertarian: one has to chose to dismiss pretty much all the hard lessens learned through generations of struggle by people striving for freedom in order to embrace libertarianism. It is like the past never happened.
The people here who say "McArdle is stupid" seem to mean "McArdle has a different ideology than I do."
It's not the ideology that's the problem; it's her near-complete inability to provide convincing support for her ideas that inspires hostile reactions in readers. She doesn't know how to argue.
She does seem to have mastered that the moronic econ 101 view of markets being magical optimizing machines that make the world a perfect utopia.
That is easily cured by, oh, taking three or four more econ classes. Or not being a moron.
Ken, I'm not a libertarian but your post is why I hate American politics. Your interpretation of history may be just as ideological or biased as your presumption of McArdle's 'ignorance'. You have made sweeping judgments about both an entire ideology and the entirety of history for the purpose of an equally simplistic attack. Really, have you taken the time to study every single libertarian and their thought processes and to discern the One True Meaning of history to make this conclusion?
To say that McCardle's stupid is to misunderstand her. For her it is not brain which does the thinking but the gut. See, for example, her stomach's refutation of the John Hopkins/Lancet death toll survey, or more recently, it's denial of the Scott Beuchamp diary.
Also, Penn is not an Ivy League school--much too down at heel.
SHUT UP BIASED LIBERALS, YOU HATE MEGAN YOU HATE AMERICA AND PROGRESS AND FREEDOM, GO TO CUBA
Look, if you've read a lot of Mcardle, I think you'll find that she has a habit of making arguments by assertion, or through evidence that doesn't begin to measure up to scrutiny. She compounds that by writing with a really smug authorial voice, which makes it that much harder not to blanch at her obvious logical gaps. I mean, as MY pointed out before, the argument that "the Beauchamp story can't be true, because Americans love dogs" is a pretty vapid one. But that's not a rare exception; it seems to be pretty standard practice for her. She tends to make "any port in a storm" arguments-- grasping for any argument that can justify her preconceived ideological agenda.
For me personally, she has a really grating habit of belittling the problems of the poor. I think you can have a conservative capitalist world view and not degenerate into "poverty isn't that bad" arguments, which add personal insult to the discussion. And she seems to think that, because she doesn't consider morality an acceptable subject for economics debate, no one else can, either. See, for example, her contention that there isn't a health care crisis in this country because 47 million people uninsured isn't that many in a country of 300 million.
Let's see, is this the same Megan McCardle who spent all of 2002 explaining what a brilliant and necessary idea invading Iraq was? Great. Glad to see merticracy at work in the blogosphere.
Let's see, is this the same Megan McCardle who spent all of 2002 explaining what a brilliant and necessary idea invading Iraq was? Great. Glad to see meritocracy at work in the blogosphere.
Megatron=FDR?
Penn is not an Ivy League school--much too down at heel.
Whether a school is or isn't in the Ivy League isn't a subjective criteria. A school is either in the athletic league (which is what the Ivy League is) or isn't. This is also true when, for example, people try to argue that Stanford or NYU or where ever is an Ivy. It's just a function of being in a certain athletic league, it's not a subjective evaluation of academic merit.
"being a poor college student is nothing at all like being in genuine poverty."
Well, for many purposes, "poverty" is defined by income, so if you live on a poverty level income you are in "genuine" poverty by that definition. But there are lots of ideas and associations about "poverty" that go way beyond just your income or consumption level, and those are the things that should really concern us. That was her point...what's so hard to understand?
It's a simple question: do you think that your average broke college student goes through even close to the kind of pain and hardship that the average person living in endemic poverty goes through? McCardle was either deliberately misunderstanding what we mean when we talk about life in poverty, or she's too dull to know the difference. I don't know which is worse.
"Whether a school is or isn't in the Ivy League isn't a subjective criteria."
Twas a joke. A stupid one, I admit. But Penn really does have one the ghastliest campuses in the country.
Freddie,
When she was in college, Megan probably did experience a number of things common to the poor: living with roommates, having casual sex, drinking excessively, etc. Unlike the non-college poor though, she didn't get paid to do all this, and she also had to do homework.
You must not have had contact with a lot of poor people. The heart-tugging myth of the striving, working poor is largely just that -- a myth. Most people in America who work hard, don't break the law, and don't have multiple children before they can support themselves financially don't stay poor very long; they climb into at least the lower-tier of the middle class. Those who stay poor for long periods of time -- despite the myriad resources available to them, from churches, to welfare, to public libraries, to charities -- tend to be irresponsible, stupid, lazy, or some combination of the above.
"being a poor college student is nothing at all like being in genuine poverty."
Seconded. Think in terms of connections. Hell, I lived in a $60/mo basement closet and worked minimum wage, when I was working at all, during the mid-90s, after the BA. I think I did call myself poor, but that's because I was stupid. Why stupid? Because I could ask my parents for cash. Not much: we were very working class, but I could get something. I'm sure IvyMeg had better connections that I ever did. Truly poor people don't have those connections. They don't have a safety net. I doubt there was ever a chance that Robot Meg could ever have ended up on the streets.
As for Ivy students. Whatevers. I'm just about to defend my Columbia diss, and my experience teaching at Columbia and Barnard is the students differ from those at WWashingtonU (where I got my first MA) tells me that the brilliant students are just as brilliant; it's just that the stupid students have gone to better schools, so their grammar is better.
I suspect Alterman, Marshall, and Sullivan could all have become professors, and good ones, had they so desired.
Uh. Alterman is a professor. Teaches in the same department I do (or will, as I'll be a BC prof in about 10 days). His office is down the hall from mine.
--
The point on this McCardle or wtf her name is character: she was wrong on Iraq, and promoted beating protesters with 2X4. Maybe it was funny when Woody Allen made the joke (about neonazis) in one of his dumb movies, but it's not funny when some dipshit who says this gets hired by the Atlantic. All decent people should shun her.
Dan, if what I've written gives you cause to hate American politics then I suggest you need more experience with American politics before you form any more opinions concerning such politics.
We need a real rain to come and wash the Sailer fanboys off this blog.
You must not have had contact with a lot of poor people. The heart-tugging myth of the striving, working poor is largely just that -- a myth
Such wisdom! That's why class mobility stats never really fluctuate. It's surely only a superstructural feature over the base of elbow-greasitude, which differs from nation to nation independently of economic and infrastructure policy. Too bad Americans are by and large so lazy and stupid and have such a difficult time taking advantage of the generosity of churches! Otherwise we'd all be rich! Like the hardworking Romanians!
(as for the wiseasses who want to comment on my sloppy tying, bad grammar, or solecisms, and wonder about the quality of professors and a Columbia PhD: get your shots in now)
"Besides Atrios, who actually was a professor at one point, at least two-well known lefty bloggers have Ph.Ds: Eric Alterman and Josh Marshall. Both are in history. I suspect Alterman, Marshall, and Sullivan could all have become professors, and good ones, had they so desired."
I believe Eric Alterman is a practicing professor.
Harry, you must not have had contact with a lot of black, oops, we mean, poor people. The Horatio Alger myth of the striving industrious riser is precisely that--a myth. Many people who work hard, don't break the law, and don't have multiple children before they can support themselves financially do stay poor--forever; they toil in their dead-end jobs until they can toil no longer. And those who stay poor for long periods of time--because of the lack of resources, opportunities, mistakes and the inertia of poverty--tend to be disadvantaged from birth.
Facts? What facts?
"Can anyone produce an example of some things she's written that are genuinely stupid?"
I remember something about health care. She was arguing that Single payer would never spare money over the free market of insurers that the US have today, because, you know, Medicare for a fifth of the population is already a single payer and it costs so much, and if we extend it, it will cost 5 times so much. More than the present system and more than France, Canda, England or any of those communist systems..
Forgetting that the under 60 do not need by far as much health care as the over 60.
My apologies; Eric Alterman is indeed a professor at Brooklyn College. However, he is a professor of English and journalism, rather than the history in which he got his doctorate, and he did not become a full-time professor until three years ago. (Previously he was an adjunct at Columbia; I don't know for how long.) For better or worse, he is a not a career academic.
When does The Atlantic give a blog to that nasal woman whose ex-husband's auto dealership is under investigation by the cops?
Howardette Roarke is the name, I think.
"Dan, if what I've written gives you cause to hate American politics then I suggest you need more experience with American politics before you form any more opinions concerning such politics."
I'm talking about how people deal with politics in America, not of your or anyone else's actual political opinions, just to clarify.
I was simply hoping that people would counter McArdle's simplistic and ideological arguments with statements that weren't over-simplifications or ideological attacks. THAT is what I dislike about many discussions of politics in the US. Perhaps I was a bit rash to imply your post specifically provoked such an attitude, but it was exemplary of that trend.
I agree McArdle is wrong on a great many things, but if her points are 'stupid' for being ideological and simplistic, then rebuttals with those same characteristics are no better.
I was simply hoping that people would counter McArdle's simplistic and ideological arguments with statements that weren't over-simplifications or ideological attacks.
There's a point past which you don't take UFO or sasquatch people seriously enough to make the effort to refute whatever blather they've just come up with. Heck, maybe they're right about something, but so what?
One is not born a libertarian: one has to chose to dismiss pretty much all the hard lessens learned through generations of struggle by people striving for freedom in order to embrace libertarianism.
Er, pardon my French, but the above is just bullshit.
Thing is, I'm no libertarian. I likes me some big government, Nordic-style safety nettage, or at least the smaller scale Canadian/Brit variety. I’ve got a list of things I’d like the government to spend more money on that tallies out to about $500 billion (or 4 points of GDP). I’m utterly confident embracing my vision would increase national utility.
But I’m not arrogant enough to cling to such patronizing notions about people whose values are different from mine. There is a real moral core at the heart of the libertarian argument, and it’s about freedom. At the end of the day, us bigger government fans must acknowledge our proposals rely on taking other people’s property.
Now, everybody except the anarchist agrees that sometimes it is indeed necessary to take other people’s property. It’s pretty hard to imagine even the most minimalist government surviving sans mandatory taxation. But libertarians — quixotic though their project might be — at least have the decency to only want to take as little of the other guy’s money as is possible. They value freedom and property rights more than you or I do — let’s be honest with ourselves.
Property rights shouldn’t be absolute of course, but they also shouldn’t count for nothing. The Robust Safety Net Nirvana I would like to see enacted most assuredly does reduce some people’s freedom. I disagree with the libertarians on this issue because I deem the utilitarian calculus is in my favor. But I don’t kid myself I possess sufficient moral insight to know with absolute assurance that the right and wrong part favors me. For all I know it is the libertarians who are right, and that all the filled stomachs and free healthcare in the world doesn’t justify taking somebody else’s nth marginal buck.
Anyway, I welcome Ms. McArdle’s addition to The Atlantic’s Voices. It’s best not to get too comfortable and smug in one’s ideas.
Does McArdle have to blog under her own name? 'Atlantic Voices: Argument By Anecdote' has a much nicer ring to it.
She does have a knack for shinning increasingly far the greasy pole, though. And perhaps Th'Atlantic is just trolling for inbound links from Crooked Timber, a refuge for people who philosophise about a better world in which she'd be cleaning drains for a living.
It’s best not to get too comfortable and smug in one’s ideas.
Well, it obviously hasn't harmed Megan McArdle's career.
To be honest, if you have a Ph.D from an Ivy League university and you are a blogger rather than a university professor, it suggests that you really were not a very good graduate student. Which explains why Sullivan is so mediocre.
Doesn't this comment apply to Atrios as well?
It was more fun to watch knowledgable economists thrash Ms. McArdle while she was at The Economist. I'd argue her current writing assignment at The Atlantic better aligns with her, um, talents. She's still over her head, however, but she's moving in the right direction. Next stop, the Editorial page of the WSJ? She'd fit in nicely there.
Dan, as you say McArdles arguments are "simplistic and idealogical". If you know that much what else can anyone tell you? Anything of value would just confirm what you already know about her.
But if you really want some argument against libertarianism just look at how their idealogy has been rejected throughout American history. They lost starting back with the 'internal improvement' debates and have been losing ever since. There really, honestly, is no good reason to give them any respect.
Jasper, if libertarians had their way and the government concerned itself strictly with enforcing individual property rights we'd be living in a feudalistic society. No thanks.
To many people have struggled too long and sacrificed too much to give self centered libertarians any respect in the important policy debates going on today.
If they want to play as Jane Galt heroines or Roarkian stud muffins amongts themselves, then no harm done. But when it comes to any real world issue they are a distraction and have nothing of substance to contribute.
"To be honest, if you have a Ph.D from an Ivy League university and you are a blogger rather than a university professor, it suggests that you really were not a very good graduate student. Which explains why Sullivan is so mediocre."
The guy was the editor of The New Republic. Maybe he considers that a better job than "university professor." I certainly would.
If you consider fellating Marty Peretz a better job than being a University professor, then you are crazy.
In generally [sic] takes me a couple of weeks in a new office before I can reliably make it to the bathroom without getting lost.
This is what we can expect? Does this person of a second gender even scan her own items? Can't find the preview function on her new Mac? Maybe an editor keeping an eye on her for her first few months would be a good idea. At least someone to escort her to the loo, or the carpet replacement costs will outweigh any benefits possibly accrued from hiring "Megatron."
P. S.: Is she too chicken to have comments on her "Voice," like the chickenhawk that she is?
This thread is a revelation.
"do you think that your average broke college student goes through even close to the kind of pain and hardship that the average person living in endemic poverty goes through?"
I don't know about the "average" student, but I and other students I've known have lived with poverty-level income and consumption levels. So whatever hardships you are talking about must be something other than low income or consumption levels. Which is precisely the point you keep misunderstanding.
Jane_Galt_casual reader:
I remember the post you refer to, and I think you're misrepresenting it badly.
If you are going to guess how much single payer health care would cost in the US, one way to do it would be to find out how much France spends per capita and assume it would be the same. But a more sensible way would by to extrapolate from medicare---compare how much the US spends vs France on people over 65 years old. I expect you'd find that the US spends much much more, despite having "single payer" for that age group.
I'd love to hear responses to this point.
ed, if this from Business Week is any indication the French are far more generous to their elderly when it comes to health care:
But the french system is much more generous to its entire population than the U.S. is to its seniors. Unlike with Medicare, there are no deductibles, just modest co- payments that are dismissed for the chronically ill. Additionally, almost all French buy supplemental insurance, similar to Medigap, which reduces their out-of-pocket costs and covers extra expenses such as private hospital rooms, eyeglasses, and dental care.
In France, the sicker you get, the less you pay. Chronic diseases, such as diabetes, and critical surgeries, such as a coronary bypass, are reimbursed at 100%. Cancer patients are treated free of charge. Patients suffering from colon cancer, for instance, can receive Genentech Inc.'s (DNA ) Avastin without charge. In the U.S., a patient may pay $48,000 a year.
Congratulations, the Atlantic--you've hired the world's most annoying blogger! It sure will be exciting to read her trademark blend of sophistry, ignorance, and pedantry with a spiffy Atlantic banner at the top.
Blech.
David W., I didn't say medicare was "more generous" by these kind of measures, I said that medicare probably costs more per capita than French elderly care.
Anyone have any facts about this?
Having to explain the idiocy of the "college ramen poverty" comment is like having to explain a joke. If person X doesn't get it, give up and move on. It's his problem.
ed, keep in mind that "costs" in the French system are lower in part because they deliberately limit how much doctors can charge. In exchange though, France pretty much pays for med school and takes care of malpractice insurance. So it's not a straightforward comparison that you're proposing.
My guess is that the French system spends less on elderly care also when compared to Medicare, but that you can't read too much into that alone.
So you agree medicare probably spends more than the French system?
Doesn't this suggest that if we in the US were to expand single payer to everybody, we'd probably still spend more than France? Because that was Megan's entire point, that we shouldn't expect to get French style cost savings from moving to single payer, and claims to that effect should be met with skepticism.
Here's the orginal post:
http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009873.html
OK, I went back and actually listened to what McArdle said about Ramen. Once again, her argument has been misrepresented.
Her point was that Ramen eating college students are not really in poverty and do not deserve special help help just because they have to eat Ramen, that is no reason to feel sorry for them, and in fact she herself had to eat Ramen. This was in the context of making the point that most of the "benefits" of the minimum wage go to middle-class young people who are not really poor and don't deserve our sympathy.
So her point was almost the opposite of what Freddie and others portrayed.
Find it here, in the section on minimum wage:
http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=200&cid=1001
Here's the exact quote:
"Do I care that middle class college students have to eat Ramen rather than going down to the take out place? No, I ate Ramen, I lived through the experience."
How unspeakable!
Are you still talking?
Go back and look again, only this time, instead of cherry picking a quote and transcribing it out of context, look at the actual content of what she's saying. In the context of arguing against a minimum wage hike, she again and again underestimates the difficulty of living in poverty. And it's not just there; she has done it again and again in print as well. She is someone who takes as a linchpin of her politics the notion that poverty just isn't that bad. And whatever your politics, that's a pernicious and obtuse thing to think.
ed, if a move to single payer entailed the federal government using its bargaining power to lower the cost of care by negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs, versus the current strategy of throwing money at them via Bush's part "D" giveaway to Big Pharma, it would be less. McArdle, as usual, misses the forest for the trees when it comes to such things.
David W.,
If the federal government were the sole buyer of prescription drugs in a "single-payer" system, it wouldn't be "negotiating" prices but setting them. The political pressure to set them artificially low would lower the incentives for innovation in the drug industry. We would be choking one of the golden geese of the American economy, and we'd all be the worse for it.
In any case, price controls on drugs aren't the only way single-payer systems save money; the other is by rationing expensive medical care, particularly to the elderly. A point I've made here before is that, aside from moral issues, this isn't politically feasible in America: senior citizens here are the most politically powerful demographic and they are not going to settle for European- or Canadian-style rationing of care.
Dems would be smarter to focus on solutions geared toward the 15% of Americans without health insurance, instead of trying to throw out the whole system.
I am baffled that Matt treats Megan McArdle like she is a respectable and worthwhile human being. Everything I have read by her just screams out self-centered, self-impressed, immature randroid with no compassion, wisdom or real world knowledge. The Atlantic should be ashamed.
The Atlantic is quintessentially American (incomparably silly and supercilious); any media agency that believes this (from Ms. McArdle):
Moreover, as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health. They didn't eat right or excercise; they smoked; they didn't go to the doctor as often as they ought; they drank to much, or took drugs, or sped, or engaged in dangerous sports. Again, in individual cases this will not be true; but as a class, the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health, while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others.
Perhaps they deserve it by virtue of suffering? But again, most of them are suffering because they have gotten old, often in high style...
...is thoughtful or useful is so obviously out-of-touch as to be almost autistic.
Isn't there another workfare programme that would be more suitable to Ms. McArdle?
"In the context of arguing against a minimum wage hike, she again and again underestimates the difficulty of living in poverty"
Well, this just isn't true. She is arguing that the minimum wage isn't very helpful to poor people, not that they shouldn't be helped. Listen for yourself.
Freddie, you're an idiot. Goodbye.
We were asked for an example of Ms. McArdle being genuinely stupid. I don't think superheated rhetoric counts.
Perhaps this is not a good example of stupidity, but it is a good example of not learning from a mistake (an honest mistake, but a mistake). Mark Kleiman made the same mistake, but fixed his post.
Given, like me, Ms. McArdle has an MBA (and from a quant school), I am disappointed (although not entirely surprised, having a certain cynicism about business school, even a 'top 10' one).
When ever she comes round to California's famous 'white roofs initiative', (twice to my count), to reduce energy consumption and global warming, she raises the argument that it can go no good, because reflecting that little light out into space can't possibly affect the planet's temperature.
The obvious point being it's nothing about that (2 seconds with the size of all the roofs on the planet v. the planetary surface, would tell you that). That's a classic MBA exercise (get the data, think about the reasonableness of the conclusion).
White roofs work because they lower the air conditioning requirement of your house. As a secondary, but highly important effect, they reduce the urban heat island effect, and because your air con is not dumping so much heat into the neighbourhood, reduce your *neighbour's* air conditioning load.
It's not so much that I mind a mistake, it's that I mind that she won't fix it, or doesn't seem to have clicked that it is a mistake. And it makes me suspicious of all her commentary on technical matters.
Megan's second misapprehension (which took about 3 minutes on google to sort) is that it won't work in New York City (too far north). However Berkeley's National Renewable Energy Labs has shown that the loss of heating in winter is about 1/12th the gain on air conditioning savings in summer: 1. the sun is lower down in winter 2. there are fewer sunny days in winter 3. air conditioning is a much less efficient exercise than apartment heating. That is a much less obvious result.
This stuff matters. Since 1980, electricity use per capita in America has risen by 40%. It has not risen at all in California. Yet California is hardly the poorest state in the Union, nor a laggard in, eg, use of electronic devices, air conditioning or other power-consuming activities. The reason is what is known in the industry as 'the Art Rosenfeld effect': California's dedication to finding new ways to conserve electric power.
As I said, this has made me suspicious of her commentary where I don't find it so easy to think through the logic and do a bit of quick googling.
PS I am almost certain the 'Atrios' on this thread is not Duncan Black, Atrios.
FWIW, JMM only got his PhD a couple of years ago-- after he was a successful, money-making blogger. I'm sure at some point he may become a prof, but didn't have that opportunity until he was already a top-tier liberal blogger.
Not sure where everyone got this idea that being a prof is the sine qua non of a PHD.
Being an academic (successful) is about knowing an enormous amount about a very narrow area and publishing a lot in that area. Influence of Shia mystics on political ideology in 1920s Iraq, etc.
Sullivan's philosophy was well reviewed in the New York Review of Books a couple of issues back (google it). He's a devotee of Michael Oakshott.
JMM or whoever, as a blogger, has far more influence on the world than 90% of academics.
For a distinguished academic who *can* bring insight into modern affairs (besides Juan Cole) let me suggest David Kaiser (History Unfolding)
http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/
his recent posts on Vietnam v. Iraq are priceless.
but Kaiser is a historian of contemporary American diplomatic history-- a vanishing breed. History departments are much more prone these days to hire gender historians, social historians, cultural historians, historians of non-European contexts, etc. And certainly not white men with Phds from Harvard to replace the white men from Harvard they already have dominating their professoriate.
If McCardle's 'gut' feeling about the Beauchamp diaries was to doubt them, then regardless of its source, her opinion is superior to those here who championed the poor faker and his TNR enablers.
Where is the crow being served? Or is everyone taking the 'it doesnt matter that he lied' line I now see being adopted. Quite a change from the chest-thumping over the incredible feat of TNR quoting a real person.
Comments closed September 03, 2007.
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graduates of two different Ivy League schools
That will certainly kick start the intra-office Lacrosse rivalry.
Posted by AJ | August 20, 2007 2:40 PM