I will Trust the Shorter, thank you very much.

There’s one thing worth reading, though;

The region you live in also makes a gigantic difference in how you will live. There are certain high-trust regions where highly educated people congregate, producing positive feedback loops of good culture and good human capital programs. This mostly happens in the northeastern states like New Jersey and Connecticut. There are other regions with low social trust, low education levels and negative feedback loops. This mostly happens in southern states like Arkansas and West Virginia.

Huh.

Brad DeLong summed it up pretty well:
“If you wanted to find a stupider example to try to support the claim that “differences in policy really do not matter very much” than comparing American Indians in South Dakota and Asian-Americans in New Jersey, I suppose you probably could.

But it would take a really long time to find one, and you would have to work really hard to do so.”

Also this dovetails pretty well with his Haiti is poor because of Voodoo column but I don’t remember if there was a shorter for that one to reference.

You leftist rabble rousers missed the entire point. Negroes aren’t even mentioned in the column, which is clearly intended to expose the inherent genetic limitations of drunken Indians, not black people, especially when contrasted with clever, thrifty, hard-working Asians.

I got out of the boat. Lots of mango-colored POOP to trick the unwary.

As you’d expect, ethnicity correlates to huge differences in how people live.

As you’d expect? Anyone ever get the feeling that conservatives strike up conversations on race assuming everyone is racist, and liberals are too polite to admit it except secretly and in code?

I think the idea that some things go beyond legislation is an O.K. theory to have. Bobo, in his Bobotastic way, takes this to say “We should be totally O.K. with corporations raping us up the asshole, because the white people, the ones who really matter, will be naturally inclined to survive.” Welcome to the rational center, folks.

More on “What’s The Matter With Black People?”

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/its-time-gop-needs-to-radically-change-tactics-with-minorities/

PJTV weighs in wistfully on an America where black people and Hispanics vote Republican. Heavy doses of projection and denial, summed up in the following golden quote; “Republicans believe it should be all about the issues, while Democrats push culture.” Goes on to say Republicans should cunningly undermine Democratic dominance among minorities by creating their own conservative equivalents to CAIR and the NAACP.

Aaaargh! Why did I get out of the boat? I’d already resolved not to reward Bobo with hits on his articles anymore, no matter how much twisted satisfaction I get from reading his idiotic drivel, in the hope that someday he will get fired. Seriously, the only reason I can think of that he continues to have a job at the NYT is that everyone clicks to see the train wreck. Can we all pull together and ignore him, please?

Republicans believe it should be all about the issues

They certainly do. Especially issues of the “wedge” variety.

Okay, I’m getting out of the boat just this once — NOT!

You are completely dismissing Brooks’ cutting edge sociological research simply because it’s cutting edge for sociologists working in 1902.

Who is going to assure us that these swarthy Southern Europeans, such as the Sicilian peasants with their olive cast and peasant origins without the capacity to speak the world’s standard language, English, will be able to integrate into U.S. society without dragging us down to their peasant ways?

Also, it’s pretty cutting edge to choose to label effects as causes.

Notice that he’s right — “high education” people tend to cluster in particular regions. This is completely opposite normal assumptions that education is a result of, and less a cause of, developmental policies.

Ordinary social scientists from your fancy modern world of post-WW1 and whatnot would look at such hoity-toity questions of which resources were devoted to educational infrastructure.

For example, a little over a century ago, very few American children received much formal education, even the most valuable and best people — white males.

Almost none had any high school education. I see this as reflecting the low achievements of their parents and religious groups.

Some of your radical 20th and 21st century sociologists might point out that high schools didn’t really exist in public education, which itself had only been made compulsory a bit before that.

But it would be too easy to conclude that the lack of high schools explained a failure to complete high school education. Maybe it’s the shape of the kids’ heads; or the climate and seasons of the regions; or the types of childhood games the parents let them play.

I’m also going to theorize that Southern whites’ tendencies to choose to get hookworms made them less likely to build modern latrines and outhouses.

I can’t wait for Bobo’s theories suggesting that capitalism caused a Protestant work ethic to precede it.

Also, this

All we can say for sure is that different psychological, cultural and social factors combine in myriad ways to produce different viewpoints…

should lead to an entire new academic discipline which attempts to study how psychological, cultural, and social factors combine in myriad ways to produce viewpoints.

And we shall either call it “anthropology” or “Brooksology”, or something.

If anyone remembers, Brooks & co pulled out this same shit in the 2008 elections:

In her book, “What Money Can’t Buy,” Susan E. Mayer of the University of Chicago calculated what would happen if you could double the income of the poorest Americans. The results would be disappointingly small. Doubling parental income would barely reduce dropout rates of the children. It would have a small effect on reducing teen pregnancy. It would barely improve child outcomes overall.

First, doubling the incomes of the poorest Americans isn’t a very large increase.

Get someone making $10,000 for their family, and get them up to $40K or $50K and see if that makes a difference. I bet an income of $200K would make a difference by the next generation’s attitudes.

Second, do this for their entire community.

Now if you really want to experiment, take money away from the richest Americans until they earn as much as the poorest Americans, remove their advantageous contacts, and avail them of exactly the same community resources as communities with those earnings have.

If you imagine Chuck Norris trying to be Yoda, that’s Bobo. From the annals of deep thinking:

“If you take tribes of people, exile them from their homelands and ship them to strange, arid lands, you’re going to produce bad outcomes for generations.”

Yet the kicker is:

“The influence of politics and policy is usually swamped by the influence of culture, ethnicity, psychology and a dozen other factors.”

What really, really matters is politics and policy. But it really, really doesn’t matter also. He’s like the anti-Yoda, holding a collection of seemingly profound insights that totally contradict each other and not realizing this at all.

Yo, don’t be hating on Brooksy. He’s a good egg, just a little old-fashioned.

If you want to go after a stone cold racist, what about that stuck-up little coquette Stephanie Grace from Harvard Law? After E$ heard about what she said, I totally looked her up on Facebook to check out her credentials (WINK WINK) and so far she’s ignored 5 emails, 7 postings on her wall, 3 text messages (our folks have some of the same friends, hooxored me up with her digits, yo) and a bouquet of flowers I sent over with a card attached in which E$ offers to hook up with her and do the dialectic until she can really clarify her views. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. So I ask you, who is the real enemy here, yo?

Who cares though. E$ got 99 problems but he ain’t never wrote 88 lines about 44 women especially not when things are going hot and heavy with Meggerz (love ya boo!). Anyway, Harvard is teh suck. Just kidding, Yglesias, stop crying man, it’s embarrassing.

E$ OUT!@

PS BROOKSY YOU GOT THAT REFERENCE LETTER DONE YET? LOVE YA MAN PEACE.

The proof of Brooks’s assertions is given in a comparison of Sweden and the U.S. over one 60-year span. That’s right, out of the hundreds of countries in the world, Brooks compares two of them, over one interval. To everyone’s amazement, he finds the precise result he was looking for, and presto! there’s all the evidence anybody should need.

In 1950, Americans lived 25 to 30 years longer than Iranians. Over the next twenty-five years Iran and the U.S. diverged politically, to say the least. The result? There was “basically no change” in the longevity gap, by which I mean that the life expectancy of Iranians went from 40 years to 70 years, which closed the longevity gap between Iran and the U.S.A. to less than 10 years.

(Those of you who are skeptical can research this yourself: type “Life expectancy in Iran” into the internet search engine of your choice.)

Why Doghouse Riley’s regular skewerings of the Bobosity haven’t made him (Brooks) a national laughing stock and him (Riley) a big time opinionator is a mystery to me.

Hmmm. Opinionator would be a good name for a doppelbock. For extra credit, how many of Strunk & White’s rules did I break in that first sentence?

Alternate shorter # 27:

See? This woman at UChicago calculated something or other which totally backs up my generic pap. Or not. Ain’t politics dreadful? I recommend apathy.

Policy hasn’t significantly improved the lives of women,Blacks and Latinos? That’s weird, cuz I’m pretty sure we’re doing much better now that we can vote and stuff.

Now if you really want to experiment, take money away from the richest Americans until they earn as much as the poorest Americans, remove their advantageous contacts, and avail them of exactly the same community resources as communities with those earnings have.

They made a movie about that, didn’t they? Starring Eddie Murphy.

I am a povertus Swede and I don’t care for Brooks’ cherry-picking of data. First, maybe Swedish immigrants, as a group, moving to the U.S. have greater material resources that immigrants, as a group, from, for instance, Gabon. For instance, Swedish immigrants have a comma subsidy, which we use frequently, and is a result of policy. Second, Brooks exhibits, without comment, that Sweden has only a 6.7% poverty level. That’s excellent for Sweden! Is it our blonde pubic hair or our cradle-to-grave health care and higher education?

Many problems could be solved with Brooks’ method of reversing cause & effect.

“Is it our blonde pubic hair or our cradle-to-grave health care and higher education?”

it’s the pubic hair. Blonde (genitals) have more fun.

From the annals of deep thinking

Fixzd.

Oh Brooks, you never cease to annoy the crap out of me. It’s come to the point where, if I meet you, I will hit you with the closest, densest object I can find.

Exhibit 4,080 that David Brooks is shady:

Bad policy can decimate the social fabric, but good policy can only modestly improve it.

Now, there are a slew of things wrong with this short sentence. While is is true that “bad policy can decimate the social fabric” I find it hard to swallow* good policy can only modestly improve the fabric?! Uh..OH! I got it. He’s talking about conservative policy! DOI! I’m a retarded (notsatire). Off the top of my internet, some liberal policies Bobo willfully ignores to garner a undeserved paycheck: the Federal Reserve System; the federal income tax; women’s suffrage; federal deposit insurance; Social Security; the investor protections of the Securities Acts of 1933 and `34; public power; unemployment compensation; the minimum wage; child labor laws; the 40-hour work week; the Wagner Act, which gave private-sector workers collective bargaining rights; the Civil Rights Act; the Voting Rights Act; federal fair housing laws; Medicare; federally sponsored guaranteed student loan programs; Head Start; food stamps.

*Veiled Bobo/E$ ref

FYWP and your lying preview.

FYWP and your lying preview.

Never. Trust. The. Preview.™

And here I was all this time thinking we should try to progress as a society. Silly me.

Finally, we should all probably calm down about politics. Most of the proposals we argue about so ferociously will have only marginal effects on how we live, especially compared with the ethnic, regional and social differences that we so studiously ignore.

Well okay then, raise taxes and redistribute the wealth. Big whoop, right?

Always. Trust. The. Shorter.™

The basic problem with social reform is that African-Americans will always be sick, poor, and stupid no matter what the government does.

Hey, um, Bobo? Cuz I know you lurk these threads…tell me. WWJD?

Mark 14:7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

We honor Our Lord by helping the poor, you git. If they happen to be a different race, well, we are all God’s children in the eyes of the Lord.

Amirite?

PJTV weighs in wistfully on an America where black people and Hispanics vote Republican.

Shorter GOP Strategery:

1) Invite minorities

2) ???

3) Get elected!

And here I was all this time thinking we should try to progress as a society.

We already have. But we haven’t so we should try to. Again.

I will hit you with the closest, densest object I can find.

So you’ll tear off his head?

For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

Sure, that sounds good but, it’s not like there is any public policy we could implement to do that. The naiveté of the masses to think that government is anything more than a club for mainly white males to have a cushy job and free health care. If you want to help the poor, help yourself. Just leave the government out of it because the only thing gov’t is good at is war. And even then it’s the poor doin..nevermind.

So you’ll tear off his head?

Nahh. I want him to feel physical pain equal to the mental pain he has put me through.

I got out of the boat and waded through the cunt nettles and pecker-devouring razor fish, only to discover what I thought at first must be mangoes were in fact enormous, glistening hemorrhoids.

He actually is suggesting that negroes are doomed, so don’t bother trying to improve things for them, but lucky for you if you’re a Swede or a Chink.

That’s excellent for Sweden! Is it our blonde pubic hair or our cradle-to-grave health care and higher education?

interest, etc.

interest, etc.

Wait…in the blonde pubic hairs (do I really have to warn?) or the healthcare and education?

Policy hasn’t significantly improved the lives of women,Blacks and Latinos? That’s weird, cuz I’m pretty sure we’re doing much better now that we can vote and stuff.

And, you know, the ability to own property but not be property. Also, the people not starving to death in miserable hovels thanks to the Great Society might feel they have significantly better outcomes than otherwise. It’s like history doesn’t exist for these assholes.

Bad policy can decimate the social fabric, but good policy can only modestly improve it.

How convenient that you can not only assure us of that, but you are also the ultimate arbiter! Raising taxes for anything? Bad policy, will reduce the social fabric ninety-fold(yeah Booboo, you don’t know what that word means)! Cutting taxes? NO WAIT, that totally makes everything Jesusy, dammit. REWRITE!

That’s excellent for Sweden! Is it our blonde pubic hair or our cradle-to-grave health care and higher education?

I am personally willing to test both hypotheses.

[Tintin adds: THIS LINK IS NSFW!! Please, folks, provide warnings when you post links like this. Thanks.]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_w4hsKemKnHg/SmonDqZPWsI/AAAAAAAACEM/0ncxeXQBEEc/s400/stefan.jpg

Hi, I’m Erik, and I’m healthy as a horse!

Spengler, I will never click on another link from you again. No warning. No Nothing. GFY.

Can we all pull together and ignore him, please?

This is the wrong crowd. We can’t even ignore the stupid trolls.

Shorter Bobo: The Middle Passage was a trying time for the Swedes, but they are a resilient people.

Now if you really want to experiment, take money away from the richest Americans until they earn as much as the poorest Americans, remove their advantageous contacts, and avail them of exactly the same community resources as communities with those earnings have.

Eddie Murphy, is that you?

Hi, I’m Erik, and I’m healthy as a horse!

Somebody grab his PENIS, it’s trying to get away!

Cuz I know you lurk these threads

How do you know that?

Should have known that low hanging fruit like that would have popped up in the thread already. Props, stogoe.

I don’t even need to get out of the boat this time.

Opening paragraph: Probably an anecdote that barely relates to an ostensibly sensible idea.

Following paragraphs: Reporting data and/or anecdotes that are expressed in a way deliberately loaded with implied assumptions and the deceptive omission of key data; this loading increasing with each paragraph, like a bunch of corpse-eating ants vaulting a river by climbing on their own ever-higher pile of filth.

Concluding paragraph: Conclusion so nutso that it feels like a fist has risen right out of the column and punched you in the brain.

Oh, and I left out – hidden secondary conclusion that’s implied, behind the surface conclusion, that indicates in some way that conservatives are right and liberals are wrong, lying, stupid, weak, or all 4.

How do you know that?

He’s alluded to us from time to time.

Mark 14:7 For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

Amirite?

Oh, the things that could happen if the Christian Right was actually Christian.

Hi, I’m Erik, and I’m healthy as a horse!

Man, he must have been hung, cuz Websense blocked that and the next three pages!

I thought I could stop myself. But I had to get out of the boat.

Sweden built a large welfare state with a national health service, while the U.S. did not. The result? There was basically no change in the life expectancy gap. Swedes now live 2.7 years longer.

US infant mortality rate: 6.7/1000. Sweden: 2.3/1000. But what’s the difference of more than twice as many dead babies?

Shorter GOP Strategery:

1) Invite minorities

2) ???

3) Get elected!

2) Pander, insult, blame, guilt, shame, display open hostility, demand assimilation of 2nd and 3rd generation Americans, and promise that without any social safety net, somehow things will suddenly become all magical, with ponies and stuff.

It’s important for these uppity non-whitez n bitchez to figure out that things were much better back in teh good-ol days. If we could just get back there…

US infant mortality rate: 6.7/1000. Sweden: 2.3/1000. But what’s the difference of more than twice as many dead babies?

Infant mortality–meh, whatever.

Abortion–OH NOEZ!

The average Asian-American in New Jersey lives an amazing 26 years longer and is 11 times more likely to have a graduate degree than the average American Indian in South Dakota.

Yea, and gooseberries make better raspberry strudel when you’ve run out of blackberries and your other choice is black currants.

Seriously, Bobo, could you be a bigger dick?

Sure, the life expectancy of some groups is going to be longer than of others.

And sure, people who tend to do well economically WILL HAVE LONGER LIFE SPANS THAN THOSE WHO DO NOT, and it has NOTHING to do with the tax policies or healthcare policies of the individuals OR THE NATIONS THEY LIVE IN, you amazingly vapid ignorant limp-pricked moron!

Swedes could afford, usually, healthcare. If not private healthcare in America, then they moved the fuck back home and got government healthcare, thus increasing the life expectancies of BOTH populations, but you’d actually have to do a little thinking and analysis to see that.

About the same amount of thinking and analysis one might do to check to see if there is blood in your urine.

Me? I’m just grateful that Bobo moved West Virginia down south. I’m hoping he wedged it in just north of us to act as a barrier against the industrial strength stoopid that seeps out of South Carolina.

Quoth the BoBo:

Finally, we should all probably calm down about politics. Most of the proposals we argue about so ferociously will have only marginal effects on how we live, especially compared with the ethnic, regional and social differences that we so studiously ignore.

If policies are “swamped” by other factors, let’s go ahead and institute scandanavian-style socialism here in the U.S. Let’s crack down on the banksters and the petro companies, while we’re at it.

Predicted reaction:

Liberal fascism! Tree of Liberty! WHARRGARBL!!!

“Bad policy can decimate the social fabric, but good policy can only modestly improve it…”

Which is still an excellent reason to vote Liberal.

So the Triforce is a KKK symbol then?

Huh. The More You Know™.

“Bobotarianism”

74 trillion years ago, Xenu erased all Applebees’ salad-bars, knowing that far off in the distant future, the results of his diabolical plot would one day diminish the reputation of America’s Greatest Evar Thingker … & then … he dropped a nuclear bomb into his planet’s biggest volcano, which UNLEASHED TEH LIBERALS.

The average Asian-American in New Jersey lives an amazing 26 years longer and is 11 times more likely to have a graduate degree than the average American Indian in South Dakota.

Surely this has nothing to do with the predilection of corporations to locate good wholesome things like strip-mines & toxic-waste dumps on reservations, nor that of local & state authorities to ignore things like rampant alcohol- & solvent-abuse or narcotic epidemics … or the massive disparity in post-secondary institutions between the two locations … or the many years of ferocious racism (up to & including the de facto mass-murder of AIM members in the 60s & early 70s) that the Dakota tribe has had to endure from Teh Great White Fathers.

As contrasts go, Bobo might as well be comparing blacks & whites in Rhodesia in the 1950s … hell, for all I know maybe he DID in the first draft, until even the semi-literate shaved chimps at the NYFT facepalmed & told him to take another whole 7 minutes out of his busy day to come up with a slightly less laughable example.

Interestingly, and pertinent (one might almost say “central”) to the point, I just found out about this study that indicates that implementing universal healthcare and helping the poorest in society has significantly helped Canada’s population.

I can’t be arsed getting out of the boat to read the context around this quote:

The average Asian-American in New Jersey lives an amazing 26 years longer and is 11 times more likely to have a graduate degree than the average American Indian in South Dakota.

Is he seriously suggesting that it would have made (nearly) no difference if we had invested in the Sioux reservations (for just one example) to the same degree we invested in New Jersey over the last 100 years? Really?? Has he ever been west of Pittsburgh?

I mean…it’s easy to call Bobo stupid and disingenuous but fuck, that guy sure is stupid and disingenuous.

Is he seriously suggesting that it would have made (nearly) no difference if we had invested in the Sioux reservations (for just one example) to the same degree we invested in New Jersey over the last 100 years? Really?? Has he ever been west of Pittsburgh?

His column (and what one might loosely call “argument”) starts from the fact that Swedes in America have a 6.7% poverty rate, while Sweden itself has a…6.7% poverty rate (nevermind that Sweden’s national rate would also include unemployed immigrants and the such, and not just the blonde pubic haired blue eyed Swede, but I disgress).

So the Triforce is a KKK symbol then?

Well, the first game did have a swastika-shaped dungeon in it.

(nevermind that Sweden’s national rate would also include unemployed immigrants and the such, and not just the blonde pubic haired blue eyed Swede, but I disgress).

And also that being poor in Sweden means you still get health care and free education through college.

Why would we want to consider things like that?

I mean…it’s easy to call Bobo stupid and disingenuous but fuck, that guy sure is stupid and disingenuous.

Yes. And the thing is, he is BOTH stupid and disingenuous at the same time. So stupid that he doesn’t understand why what he’s saying is disingenuous – and so disingenuous that he doesn’t care what he’s saying is that stupid.

Mmmm… mangoes are better when they’re soft.

It is very hard for policy makers to use money to directly alter these viewpoints. In her book, “What Money Can’t Buy,” Susan E. Mayer of the University of Chicago calculated what would happen if you could double the income of the poorest Americans. The results would be disappointingly small. Doubling parental income would barely reduce dropout rates of the children. It would have a small effect on reducing teen pregnancy. It would barely improve child outcomes overall.

It’s true because someone said it would happen. In a book.Any predictions anywhere are, of course, necessarily accurate.

Susan E. Mayer of the University of Chicago calculated what would happen if you could double the income of the poorest Americans. The results would be disappointingly small.

Hey, why not give it a try. It would probably cost less than EITHER of George Bush’s Wars and have a greater positive impact.

[Tintin adds: THIS LINK IS NSFW!! Please, folks, provide warnings when you post links like this. Thanks.]

I’m sorry, I posted the wrong link. That’s a picture of the guy I hired to carry my luggage. I meant to post this one, which is totes SFW:

http://www.watermelonstudios.co.uk/theramenblues/wp-content/images/banana-bunker.jpg

Susan E. Mayer of the University of Chicago calculated what would happen if you could double the income of the poorest Americans. The results would be disappointingly small.

Because the poor are just that poor, Susan. They’d gain income but lose foodstamps and rent subsidies and other forms of social safety net stuff.

You shithead.

So, Susan E. Mayer doesn’t seem to understand just how fucking poor poor people are, and cites this as a reason why we shouldn’t even bother helping them; and Bobo is talking about fucking eugenics.

At least Schussel’s terror at fat people is somewhat current reactionary gibberish. This is fucking early 20th century reactionary gibberish.

Does the University of Chicago’s econ./business department regularly turn out inhuman scumbags or something? Brooks seems to draw a fair amount of his “studies” from there…

(nevermind that Sweden’s national rate would also include unemployed immigrants and the such, and not just the blonde pubic haired blue eyed Swede, but I disgress).

Which is even more central to his point about Swedish essences and mixing of blood and declension and all of that.

I’m looking for blond eyes and blue hair–could anyone help me with that?

Does the University of Chicago’s econ./business department regularly turn out inhuman scumbags or something?

They manufacture them. That’s the nexus of the “Chicago School” and is headed by the biggest prick in American history, Milton Friedman.

Milton Friedman is dead and I don’t believe he was ever the head of the economics department at Chicago except in the sense of influence.

Oh well, might as well send them back into the fields.

“If you take tribes of people, exile them from their homelands and ship them to strange, arid lands, you’re going to produce bad outcomes for generations.”

Well, I’m glad Mr. Brooks has finally called for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

One big blind spot whenever the Eugenics Wurlitzer gets cranked up: they never come out and apply it to their white asses. Given just the stats he gave us re. college degrees? Time to put the Asians in charge! Why do they never announce this? “They’re better on IQ tests by a few points! We must cede power to our new yellow masters!”

Nope, they just throw rocks at darker folks. It’s all in their culture, tut tut.

And remember, spending money on schools for them is just a waste of money. Money doesn’t affect educational outcomes. That’s why public schools in places like Grosse Pointe, MI, are always run on such a shoestring budget with low teachers’ salaries, just staffed with any fucking dope they can find from some state teacher’s college with a Bachelor’s degree. (How the teacher’s college got into my Bachelor’s degree, I’ll never know.)

Say, I wonder who in the South prevents us from building good schools and doing something about this shit? Oh, wait Culture. It’s all your fault, Culture! And none of you people who comprise this “culture” are ever involved in politics, oh no. Nor are they found in the GOP jacking off to arguments like, “those people, it’s their culture, they were just destined to wash dishes in the back of your restaurant for peanuts, waddayagonnado?”

Oh, and over half of those 60 years, WE built a bit of a welfare state, too. But let’s pretend that didn’t happen, because Democrats did it, and Repugs hate them for it, and want it gone, gone, gone. Nothing it did could be good! Because …gubmint BAD!

Speaking of Milton Friedman and the Chicago gang, I saw the documentary, “Shock Doctrine”, a few weeks ago, and it detailed how the Chicago boys went down to Chile in the 60’s and 70’s to teach them to jack off with the magic hand of the marketplace. At one point, his disciples down there wanted to give him an honorary degree or somesuch, from one of the Catholic Universities, but he refused, because… it was a STATE SCHOOL.

Now, let’s get back to Brooks. I’ve bumped into this kind of conservative before. He’s Jewish. He’s just using the Swedes as a stalking horse. This is really the argument, “My people are the most persecuted EVAR, and still we thrive, so our culture is superior to yours, we’re smarter, too, neener neener! Suck it, you lazy losers!”

Which reminds me, you sure didn’t hear one fucking peep during the all the mudwrestling about HCR, about health insurance in Israel being universal and compulsory, didjas? Funny how the Christian evangelicals who luuuvs Israel and HAAAATE Obamacare…

He may not be completely off about Sweden. Had they never had a welfare state of the scale that they created, things still might have turned out fairly well. Because they didn’t have a fucking overclass and racial caste system and brutal ass kickings and takings of land… we have a long history of not just meanness, but people espousing the philosophy that Mean is Good, and whenever we try to do something about that, we get fops like Brooks waving their hankies about and fainting with the vapors. “Oh, my heavens! The unintended consequences!” And then they’re peeled off the floor by their muscular luggage-carrying call boy for the week and taken back to their rooms for a gentle ass pou… massage.

“There are other regions with low social trust, low education levels and negative feedback loops. This mostly happens in southern states like Arkansas and West Virginia.”

Brooks probably thinks it makes him sound all sociobiologically scientifical to use terms like “negative feedback loop”. Too bad it’s an engineering concept that has nothing to do with hostile social interactions. His clueless misuse of the term only serves to mark him as a superficially educated dilettante.

Milton Friedman is dead and I don’t believe he was ever the head of the economics department at Chicago except in the sense of influence.

When you think “Chicago School” you think “Friedman”. That’s what I meant by “lead” especially since most of the people who have come out of there since the 1980s all nod in his general direction (*koffkoffHAYEK*koffkoff*)

There is the somewhat inconvenient fact that China is mired in poverty, yet people of Chinese ethnicity do all right nearly everywhere else they go.

I know it’s maybe only 20% of the planet, but maybe Brooks wants to rethink this theory a little.

Oh, and India, too.

OK, so this theory of his accounts for a few million people out of several billion, but surely it can’t be wrong.

“There are other regions with low social trust, low education levels and negative feedback loops. This mostly happens in southern states like Arkansas and West Virginia.”

Brooks probably thinks it makes him sound all sociobiologically scientifical to use terms like “negative feedback loop”. Too bad it’s an engineering concept that has nothing to do with hostile social interactions. His clueless misuse of the term only serves to mark him as a superficially educated dilettante.