The Growth of Fairy Tales and Hokum over the Growth Imperative: The NYT Wanders About in the Cognitive Swamps again

The Growth of Fairy Tales and Hokum over the Growth Imperative: The NYT Wanders About in the Cognitive Swamps again.

Abstract: David Brooks of the New York Times surveys the needs and mechanisms to advance our economy from the radical liberal view while tossing a few tidbits to the hated capitalists. They need money from this group to succeed. Brooks discusses the “psychological war between business and the Obama administration” and the fact that “business types think the administration is stuffed with clueless professors.” That assessment leaves out some lesser attributes concerning marijuana addiction, Marxism and worse thing. Brooks pushes infrastructure building again as if this were some new flavor of fat-free gelato to taste. Brooks attempts to muddle the facts by advising us that the American entrepreneurism [Exceptionalism!] is gone and we need to be more mundane. He offers a simultaneous pathway for both command economies and the concomitant spending buy seems to abandon the business class at the last moment. David Brooks fails in his attempts to show us that a dominant command-style government of the USSR dustbin grade can solve our problems if we just believe in the potential glory. This is a farce. Entrepreneurs must stay on the sidelines with their risk capital until Obama fades away.

Politics is the art of persuasion but the most desired outcomes are burdened by the intrinsic decision making processes in groups. Some in the group just refuse to accept the decisions. Thus, we enter a pit of noisy cajolery and soap box whooping when appealing to the masses for support for some political scheme. To make an effective and convincing argument, the facts are frequently skewed and some Master of Mystagoguery is habitually summoned from the high mountain to settle the quarrelling. The Master needs willing acolytes to assist in his mystical dance so the near-bankrupt New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers provides a platform and crude stage for a public display of the Wisdom that resides there. Brooks echoes the ramblings of Paul Krugman here. Here, the dilettante reader who cannot cope with the business world will find hope if not the truth. Today, we can enjoy an op-ed that provides echo chambers and other sonic devices to amplify and hacknefy the old, stale leftist radical clarion call for more money to spend in the economy. They cannot raise taxes yet, cannot spend enough so they need suckers to chuck their wealth into the rot pot so they can waste that too.

Hearing his Master’s voice and responding to the call, we are now exposed to a fine piece of tony propaganda from David Brooks.

“We could be in for a long, slow decade. There’s a confluence of forces that are probably going to retard economic vitality.” -- The Growth Imperative By Op-Ed Columnist David Brooks Published: July 29, 2010 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Now, we can set up a list and tabulate how many of these forces can be attributed to the Obama administration and how many barbs are tossed at Americans of the standard tradition.

First the facts:

“Consumers are still over indebted, and it will take years of curtailed spending before households are back on a sustainable path. Federal and state governments also will have to pull back. Labor markets were ill before the recession and are worse now.

Our trading partners in Europe and Japan are stagnant or in peril. Banks in this country are not lending to small businesses and banks elsewhere have huge write-downs to endure. The psychological war between business and the Obama administration also is taking a toll. Business types think the administration is stuffed with clueless professors. Some administration officials think corporate honchos are free-market hypocrites prowling for corporate welfare.” -- The Growth Imperative By David Brooks

This essay covers more political and economic territory than is customary for this mechanical tome architect. Such a large list implies that some response to most is in order. We already know that there is massive debt , the economy is collapsing , taxes need to be cut , banks are failing , inflation looms , spending is too high and the debt will crush any recovery. These factors are all known but not wholly accepted by the left.

Revisionism:

“In my previous column, I tried to imagine what a moderate Democratic growth agenda would look like. You could call it the Moon Shot Approach. In this approach, government tries to spur economic development first by creating the context for growth with a big infrastructure program and then by focusing subsidies and tax credits on key sectors, like energy research.” -- The Growth Imperative By David Brooks

Thus the approach that guarantees that business will not accept this rubbish is offered for a restroke and fresh gilding. This is a command economy dictum whereby government decides what, where, when and why widgets are to be made and also only by union labor. This is a recycled vision of the first Obama stimulus that failed. The GDP sinks to 2.4% we learned today even in spite of wonderful spending and predictions to the contrary. Such a paltry growth rate argues against the ability to handle large deficits and massive debt in the long term. Canada is paying 3.5% on short term bonds so why park your money here?

Now, a straw target is superimposed upon the economic vision that our hero belittles and can be used as an example [in reverse] of how not to advance into socialism.

“Brooks (no relation) argues that Americans are a uniquely entrepreneurial people. A nation of immigrants, “America’s vast success might be explained in part by our genetic predisposition to embrace risks with potentially explosive rewards.”
Citing an array of polling data, Brooks argues that 70 percent of Americans embraces this free-market and entrepreneurial vision of their country. But 30 percent prefers a more government-centric, European-style vision. The battle, Brooks concludes, is between the 70 percent, trying to reclaim the country, and the 30 percent, which is now expanding the federal role on an array of fronts.” -- The Growth Imperative By David Brooks
And we suffer further:

“Both the Democratic and Republican approaches have problems. The Moon Shot Approach relies on omniscient experts to pick out the engines of future growth and on public-spirited legislators to pass bills that maximize productivity instead of special-interest favors. The weakness of the Brooks and Ryan approach is that their sociology is off a bit. America is not a nation of risk — embracing pioneers. It is a nation of heroic bourgeois families who want to thrive within a secure social order. The economic debate is not as Manichaean as the culture war since most people are split down the middle and because it’s easier to compromise on money than on life.” -- The Growth Imperative By David Brooks

There is much truth and wisdom in this comment. Brooks admits that Shooting the Moon requires pointing the missiles in the correct direction and that it takes a team of bureaucrats to wind up all the springs in concert for the launch and trajectory for success. The Marxists made this process a howling success. But, here an ideological gloss in inserted as casual fact and that is that: America is not a nation of risk—embracing pioneers. This erroneous comment portends to mask the elementary fact that we have million of entrepreneurs working these levers as we speak and that we have had them on the spot for some 300 years now. What they need is risk capital, lower taxes and the Moonies off their backs.

Brooks devises the implausible number of 30% of the population that longs for something like European socialism. He probably gets that number from illegal aliens, felons, some wandering Canadians and city dwellers who vote several times to increase their welfare.

“The two projects are in tension, but in a sane political culture they are not mutually exclusive. It should be possible to simplify the tax code, target welfare spending and also build strong infrastructure at the same time.” --The Growth Imperative By David Brooks

This conclusion appears to accept, if not enthusiastically, the fact that the capitalism that built this place and that other spending of the socialist ideals can produce viable goods and services at the same time. His conclusion contradicts the premise surpa of two coexisting projects in that it lists only what leftist government wants to see. There are no business opportunities in this ‘strong infrastructure’ for entrepreneurs given that Obama and Moonies are standing on their backs and threatening them with more taxes and regulations. They sit on the sidelines, along with their 1.8 trillion in cash, ready to jump in when this preposterous amateur crashes in a puddle of his own radical academic brewing.

That 30% or their ilk always had a place to go such as poor houses, drug rehab facilities, cane fields in Cuba, rice paddies in Viet Nam, prison and mental institutions. They were well cared for then and now and are doing about the best they can given their negative attributes they inherited from the left.

I often wonder if David Brooks believes in what he scribbles or if he is a contract chucker for the House of Chum.

rycK [a 5th generation Californian in exile]

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com