It seems to me that I read Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia several years ago. But regardless, someone has gone and put the audio book of it on YouTube. I’m sure it won’t stay there long — it’s clear copyright infringement, even though 99% of the money that will ever be made on the book has been made (but you know how corporations think: 1% is 1%). But I started listening to it while cooking. It’s kind of funny hearing Taibbi’s rather foul mouthed prose being delivered by the highly respectable Patrick Egan. But it works surprisingly well. And it is a good reminder of just how engaging a writer Taibbi is. Really, in his way, he’s as good as Thomas Frank.

The book is five years old. Yet it could have been released this month. The only thing is that he focuses on the term “Tea Party” more than is normal anymore. But the same people and groups are out there. And certainly I still use the term. If I had been writing in the 1960s, I would have talked about the “Birchers.” Today, it is the “Tea Party” — just ask Claire Conner. But that style of writing has fallen a bit out of fashion. But everything Taibbi talks about in the book is still going on — even down to the details. The conservatives are still fighting the same lost battles.

One thing that Taibbi notes (as have I) is that the Tea Party isn’t exactly wrong in its anger. But just as Thomas Frank has documented so well, they express their anger in a way that helps the very people they are supposedly angry at. And he mentioned something that I know from my own personal experience. Supposedly liberal regulations that harm small business people come at us almost exclusively from the state and local government. It is not the federal government that is keeping the small business person down.

Yet the Tea Party types are laser focused on the federal government. And they are the ones who are forever telling us that local control is better than federal control. Obviously, like everything else about the Tea Party and the Republican base, they think this because they have been taught to believe it. The vast majority of these people have no actual experience being in business. They just “know” this stuff because people who have spent their whole lives either in politics or in big business have told them so. But it is interesting to consider why this is the Republican dogma, especially when you consider that “local control” and “states’ rights” have always been dog-whistles for the racism that the Republican Party was founded to oppose.

I think I know the real reason. Clearly, the base is highly bigoted and the modern Republican Party would not be against slavery if it were still a political issue. But for the elites using the issue, it is all about taxes. As I’ve discussed before, state and local taxes combined are actually regressive. At the federal level, there are two kinds of taxes: the payroll and income taxes. The payroll tax is unbelievably regressive. Because it is seen as an insurance policy rather than a tax, the super rich pay virtually nothing at all, while I (grossing less than $30,000 per year) pay 15.3% of my money. And to add insult to injury, the Republicans constantly remind me that they won’t be able to afford to pay me my insurance when I am due to receive it.

So all the taxes other than the federal income tax are regressive. The federal income tax is only major tax that is modestly progressive. And so the rich want to vilify the federal government because they want to get rid of this one progressive tax. The Republican base has been good enough to go along with this plan, even though it isn’t the federal government that is going to bother them or tax them excessively. It is the state and local government. And the anti-government types are loudly screaming for the kind of government that is most intrusive.

The Paris attacks continue to really bother me. Violence, I understand. It happens all the time. But I keep feeling paralyzed regarding the response to it. A small group of extremists carry out a terrorist operation — killing themselves in the process. And suddenly it is clash of the civilizations? Especially here in the US, it seems that conservatives want to use this as a second chance to fight the Iraq War. This time it will be different!

I’ll admit: I don’t know what to do. The situation in Iraq and Syria is bad. But that was true before the Paris attacks. I get that the French government used it as an excuse to step up its minor bombing campaign. I think that’s probably the wrong thing to do. I think building a coalition is probably better. But it is all understandable. What isn’t understandable is all the conservatives in this country who shockingly claim that we need to start bombing ISIS. When countered with the fact that we have been bombing them hard — many thousands of missions — then the conservatives change the subject to something that Obama isn’t doing. He isn’t giving the Kurds enough support; he isn’t backing the right groups; he isn’t dropping nuclear weapons. Whatever.

Tuesday morning, I watched a new documentary by Max Blumenthal and James Kleinfeld, Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie (I am not Charlie). It looks at the rise of Islamophobia following the Charlie Hebdo massacre. What really struck me was how the French fascists have embraced the Jews but are using the Muslims in exactly the same way that fascists traditionally used Jews in the last century. And a few people note that it is all simply because it is useful to their imperialistic aims. As soon as the Jews are not useful to the fascists, I’m sure the Jews will find themselves in the same category as the Muslims, blacks, and Gypsies.

But what’s really amazing to me is the way that almost no one learns anything. Sure, most people have learned that it is wrong to hate Jews. Yet these same people did not learn to avoid treating Jews as a monolithic group. And they did not learn to avoid applying the same vile logic to a new minority groups. And here in America, it seems we will never learn that we can’t bomb our way to peace. Not that I’m surprised. The entire conservative approach to policy is to look for an excuse to do what they want to do anyway.

I’m sure that to some extent, I fall into the liberal trap of thinking that there are reasonable solutions to the problems of belligerent groups. But I’m not suggesting that anyone just roll over. We in the advanced economies have the advantage of great resources — especially in terms of knowledge and time. So why is it that we seem to be doing exactly what ISIS wants us to do? Why is it we act like third grade boys who can’t wait until tomorrow to answer a challenge properly because we think we’ll look like wimps if we don’t act without consideration.

The monthly jobs report came out last Friday and it was pretty good. Dean Baker wrote, October Jobs Growth Pushes Unemployment Rate Down to 5.0 Percent. And you know what that means: the inflation is coming! Because, as we all learned in Econ 101, 5% unemployment is full employment. Of course, that actually means nothing. But that doesn’t mean that the Federal Reserve isn’t going to step in and slow the economy to stop even the possibility of inflation.

The unemployment rate may be down, but that doesn’t actually mean that much. As Baker noted, “The labor force participation rate is actually down 0.4 percentage points from its year-ago level.” The employment to population ratio of people between the ages of 25 and 54 was 80.0% in January of 2008. Today, it is 77.2%. So we have a low unemployment rate because lots of people in the prime working age range are simply not trying to find jobs because they aren’t readily available.

But what does that matter?! The Federal Reserve wants to increase interest rates because rich people think they might lose a little money due to inflation. So what is inflation currently? The core inflation rate right now is 1.89%. It has been almost three years since inflation has been above 2% — and then just for a single month. You have to go back a year further to find inflation above 2% for several months. How high? It peaked at 2.31%. And then you have to go back to November 2008 to be above 2% again.

They reason I bring this all up is because the Fed’s inflation target is supposed to be 2%. But it sure doesn’t look like that. It looks like the Fed has a 2% inflation ceiling. If we had a 2% inflation target, we would think years of less than 2% inflation would be followed by years of more than 2% inflation. But that’s not the way the Fed works, apparently.

Dean Baker’s conclusion is pretty much what any person in the normal economy would think, “In short, this is a much more positive report than we saw in the prior two months. However, there is much in the report that indicates there is a still a large amount of slack in the labor market.” In other words: there is no fear of inflation. Workers aren’t making more money. And the power elite think we need to stop this from happening out of fear that modest inflation might happen.

Matt Yglesias wrote a very good rundown of what everyone should know, We Could Have an Economic Boom This Winter — If the Fed Doesn’t Screw It Up. That’s the thing that is so horrible about the Federal Reserve. It is an institution by, for, and of the power elite. It is supposed to have a dual mandate: keep inflation low and employment high. But it never much frets about employment. For the last five years, it has been looking for any excuse to raise interest rates. It isn’t the case that the Fed is monitoring the economy and deciding what to do. It wants to raise interest rates and it is simply looking for an excuse to do it.

Chad Stone, the chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities tweeted out what should be obvious, “Three more months of jobs reports like today’s and maybe the Fed should start considering the possibility of raising rates.” That would be the reasonable thing. But instead, the Fed acts like an AA member standing at a free bar, “Gimme an excuse!”

In addition to suppressing workers’ wages and keeping millions of others out of work, the Fed could be setting the stage for a Republican president in 2017. Sure, there is some risk of a moderate rise in inflation if the Fed doesn’t raise interest rates. But there is a far bigger risk that it will tank the economy if it does. But that latter possibility doesn’t much concern the Fed, because it isn’t likely to hurt them or anyone they know.

I can’t even remember how many responses I’ve read to Kevin Drum’s weak argument, Liberals Should Knock Off the Mockery Over Calls to Limit Syrian Refugees. I really don’t care. I am with Martin Longman in thinking that Republicans who claim to be such strong jerks are really wimps who “become incontinent every time they think of a Muslim terrorist.” But really, it is this kind of stuff that has me depressed this week. Can’t the whole country have its entirely predictable freak out without it being considered news? Oh my God: Republicans want to increase our military presence in the Middle East! That’s right up there with: crossing guard used to keep schoolchildren safe at busy intersection.

So I was really pleased when I read Talking Points Memo yesterday, Bobby Jindal Drops Out of 2016 Republican Race. He said, “This is not my time.” And I understand: this too is on par with the crossing guard story. But at least I haven’t read it fifty times this week. And it is nice to see more people drop out of the Republican nominating contest. It’s not because I think it will make it more serious. Jindal is no more crazy than the rest of them. But getting down to a reasonable number of candidates is a good thing.

No one is surprised, of course. In fact, FARK’s headline was, Bobby Jindal Was Running for President? But it is much more than that. Back in January, The Onion published, Bobby Jindal Not Sure He Willing to Put Family Through 2-Month Presidential Campaign. They only got the timing wrong. Jindal stayed in the race for almost five months! But they were quite right that he wasn’t going to come anywhere near to the actual Iowa Caucus:

To be honest, I’m not sure what Jindal did with the extra couple of months. And I’m not too sure of what any of them are doing. I would think they would be in Iowa and New Hampshire just going door to door. It seems to me that politicians have gotten really lazy. If they aren’t talking to big crowds or on the television, they don’t seem to care. If the debates (at least on the Republican side) are what passes for campaigns, then we are in serious trouble. Because the candidates are at their worst under those circumstances. I dread seeing them all pounding their chests about Paris at the next debate.

As for why Jindal has dropped out and why he was never going to be the Republican nominee, I think I have the answer. It’s something like the uncanny valley in robotics. The idea is that we like robots that don’t look like us; they are cute or charming. And we are fine with robots that look just like us. But robots that look almost like us give us the creeps. In Jindal’s case, he wasn’t dark enough to make Republicans feel good about how non-racist they are. Just the same, he was way too dark to be white. So he was in the uncanny valley where his skin color and cultural background didn’t help him.

I know this probably sounds like I’m joking, but I am most certainly not. If Bobby Jindal looked more like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio — men who are quite literally LINOs: Latino In Name Only — then he might have had a chance. He would have done even better if he were African American, where all Republicans demand is that the candidate tell them that they are right to hate all “those kind” of black people. But a Hindu turned Catholic who was governor of a state with lots of French names? He’s more Secretary of Labor material.

Anyway, it’s great news; now he can spend every weekend with his kids.

Back in 2007, while between jobs, I worked the graveyard shift at a gas station that was a mile away from the San Francisco Airport. So I knew a lot of taxi cab and limo drivers. They were a desperate group — always looking for fares — and generally willing to screw over each other in the process. They struck me very much like small business people, even though they were technically workers. That’s because the base pay was pathetic and they really depended upon tips. It got rid of any romantic ideas I ever had of driving a cab.

So when Uber came around, I didn’t see it as being that big a deal. The main thing is that Uber seems decidedly worse. Generally, cab companies only checked to make sure you had a clean driving record. And they provided you with the car. I don’t much see the point from the user’s perspective either. In both cases, you are using your phone to get a lift. To me, it all stinks of Pets.com: nothing new, except it’s on the internet! Ultimately, the big difference is that Uber gets 20% of all fairs just because they had the idea of creating an app. It isn’t adding much value, and I really question its business model in the long run.

But I got to thinking about this from a different perspective after reading an article by economist Lawrence Mishel in The Atlantic, Uber Is Not the Future of Work. It contains a great quote, “Evidence of an exploding gig economy is, as they say, showing up everywhere but the data.” It turns out that the majority of Uber drivers do it very casually — usually only when they are looking for other (real) work. The Simpsons got Uber exactly right in their episode, “My Fare Lady“: it is best thought of as a job stay-at-home mothers have to make a little extra cash.

As regular readers know, I’m a freelance writer. It would seem pretty strange to call myself that, however, if all the writing I did was through a single service. I would tend to think that I worked for that one service. In the writing world, that “service” is generally called an agent. And those agents do a lot more for you than Uber does for its drivers. And those agents only charge 15% — not the 20% that Uber seems to think it deserves. So it seems to me that the freelance world of Uber isn’t very freelance at all. Rather, it is just called that (or “gig” — a hipster term for the same thing) so that companies like Uber can justify paying low wages and providing next to nothing in terms of support and benefits.

I wonder if it is actually possible to have a cab company actually be freelance. I mean in a legal sense of the word. One of the defining characteristics of freelance work is being able to manage it yourself. The writers that I work with generally have week long deadlines. And if they can’t manage that, they get more time. So a writer will be working on a dozen articles and she will decide when and how much to work on every bit. But people need cabs right away. Thus, they are not hiring a particular cab driver, but rather a system of cab drivers. Thus, regardless of what Uber wants to claim about it just providing an app, it is providing a fleet of cabs. It is a cab company.

Mishel showed that the fraction of the economy that is self-employed has been basically static for the last two decades — that’s through both the mother of all booms and the mother of all busts. So Uber and other “gig economy” companies have yet to change the basic contours of our economy. Yet we find ourselves talking about Uber as though it is something new. But it really isn’t. Consider the decline in the wage earning capacity of middle class workers. I think it is this and not the smartphone technology that allows Uber to exist. Cab companies in the 1960s could have been set up the same way Uber is today. The base technology hasn’t changed. What has changed is that now workers are desperate enough to provide all the startup and maintenance costs of running their own cab company without the compensation of a larger wage.

As part of my work as a freelance editor, I was recently working on an infographic that focused on things like the Uber app. It was about how regular people could have all these things (like a personal driver) that used to be available only to the rich. One of the things on it was a laundry service. We were immediately contacted by a website that wanted to use the infographic, but there was a problem: the laundry service had gone out of business just a couple of weeks before. So I went out and looked for a replacement. There used to be three such services. They had all gone out of business in the last year.

Being a driver or a cook or a launderer is not a freelance job. We are being sold a bill of goods. This is just another example of businesses using a technology to screw over workers. And these things only work so long as the economy is bad. If Uber and the “gig economy” is the future of America, then we are in for a very bumpy ride. People will stop talking about “banana republics” and start talking about “gig republics.” And I don’t think Americans are going to stand for that.