Last week, Tom Philpott wrote a really interesting article over at Mother Jones, People on Food Stamps Make Healthier Grocery Decisions Than Most of Us. It references a number of studies that back up this claim. And it isn’t surprising. I know when I’m hungry, the last thing I want is a candy bar. Those are things that people buy when they have the rest of their nutritional needs taken care of.

The fact that we assume that poor people eat poorly is just like assuming that African Americans smoke more cannabis, “I knew this black guy and all he did was smoke pot!” Of course, African Americans actually use cannabis a bit less than whites. But once a stereotype is formed, people filter data so it fits the narrative of the stereotype. I’m sure we’ve all seen people purchasing junk with a SNAP card. But that proves nothing. And think about it: is it something so common that you don’t even notice it? Or is it something that is rare enough that it sticks out? In my case, it is the latter.

What’s more, the issue is not whether people on food stamps are perfect consumers. The question is whether they are reasonable consumers. And the studies indicate that they are better than average. But an even better question is why we are so hung up on the issue at all. Philpott correctly noted, “No one denies me the occasional candy bar or Coke; why would I feel entitled to exert that kind of control over poor people?” Don’t worry: I am well aware what most people would say in response to that, “Because they aren’t paying!”

Except: that isn’t true. I’m so tired of this ridiculous notion that people have about government programs. Every person on Social Security claims that they deserve their benefits because they paid. But then they will claim that poor people didn’t pay for their SNAP benefits. That’s a total distortion of reality. We all pay taxes to the government and we all get benefits from the government. That’s how it works. And a rich person is being served by the safety net just as a poor person is, the same way people with insurance — whether healthy or sick — are being served by it.

The main thing about welfare in the United States is that we want to make the poor feel bad about any help that they are getting. When we help more affluent people, we don’t do that. In fact, we go out of our way to hide the fact that they are even getting welfare. Every year, the government pays my sister thousands of dollars toward her house in the form of the mortgage interest deduction. Yet my sister — and maybe even you, if you haven’t been reading me regularly — doesn’t think of this as welfare. And why should she? The program is designed so that people like my sister don’t feel that they are getting a handout.

But a handout they are getting! As I discussed a couple of years ago in Fixing the Unfair Mortgage Interest Deduction, this welfare program costs the federal government $70 billion per year. This is roughly the same price as the entire SNAP program. People who want to micromanage the nutrition of food stamp recipients really need to ask themselves why they don’t want to micromanage the housing choices of people who are benefiting from the mortgage interest deduction.

Really, it all comes down to the fact that people getting food stamps are poor. Now I don’t think that the average American looks down on the poor any more than they look down on African Americans. But it is now embarrassing for people when they explicitly talk about African Americans as if they were lower forms of life. But there are no norms that stop people from speaking about the poor as though they are lesser people or children who must be taught the basics of life. In fact, we seem to be going in the opposite direction. The Ayn Rand belief that capitalism is perfect and gives people exactly the amount of money they are worth is usually presented as in, “Mark Cuban deserves his billions.” But the other side of that is even worse, “The poor deserve their poverty.” And that’s something that you can hear any day on Fox News or CNBC. It needs to stop.

On Thursday, Jonathan Bernstein made a good point, Democrats Have No Bench? Be Serious. He’s been making the case that people should lay off the criticism of Hillary Clinton. A lot of people are making this assumption that Clinton is just being given the Democratic nomination for president out of some feelings of duty on our part — rather than her having earned it. The truth is that she would be the presumptive nominee regardless. But her four years as Secretary of State sealed the deal. As a result of that, there aren’t people lining up to run for the nomination. His point is that there are plenty of really qualified (And exciting!) Democrats to run.

But I’m focused on who the Republicans are running. Bernstein lists what he and most everyone else consider to be the top tier candidates: “Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, and Bobby Jindal.” Are we really supposed to think that these are great candidates? The only one on that list that strikes me at all interesting in a general election is John Kasich. Walker is exciting to the press because billionaires love him. Rubio continues to come off like a 12-year-old playing at being a Senator. And Jindal is destined to be the Herman Cain of of this election.

The fact that the Republicans think that a third Bush is their best route to the White House should be some indication of how desperate the party is. And he is the only person they have that dates from a time when the Republicans can claim to have been somewhat reasonable. And this is the guy who had a law passed so he could take control of the healthcare decisions of one particular woman. And he is the main “adult” that the Republicans have to run in 2016. That’s pathetic.

It makes me wonder just what it means to be a serious candidate for president. It seems that all it means is that the mainstream media take you seriously. There is a kind of tautology here where a candidate is serious because she is serious: the media take her seriously because the media take her seriously. And along with that is the media’s disinterest in anything substantial about a candidate. I keep coming back to Todd Akin, but his example is telling. Everyone knew that he was an abortion absolutist. But when he said the wrong words, the media decided that he was beyond the pale. And like the good social animals we are, many people just followed along.

At this point, does anyone really question but that Al Franken would make a perfectly good presidential candidate? He’s one person who Bernstein mentioned but who no one talks about. But it really doesn’t matter. If Clinton drops out or implodes, the vacuum will be filled with at least a few good candidates. In the end, it’s all going to come down to the economy in 2016. None of the Republican candidates pose a special problem, just like Ronald Reagan posed no special problem in 1980. It’s the economy, stupid.

It is hard to be a defender of Venezuela in this country. I find that I constantly have to add caveats to what I say. Because the truth is that Venezuela has real problems. And it is hardly perfect when it comes to human rights and press freedom. The problem is, it is so much closer to perfection than it is to the despotic hellscape that is portrayed in US media. And that’s probably the main reason that I defend Venezuela: it is the best example I know of to show what lapdogs the press is in this country.

Glenn Greenwald wrote a good article earlier this week that highlights the problem, Maybe Obama’s Sanctions on Venezuela Are Not Really About His “Deep Concern” Over Suppression of Political Rights. It is in direct response to the new sanctions against Venezuela that are based upon the country being “an extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States. That’s just too pathetic. I’m always amazed that countries like Venezuela are both about to crumble because they don’t show our corporations enough love and so powerful that they will destroy the US. Of course we know what the problem is: our government just doesn’t like Venezuela because its government doesn’t do what our government wants.

But good luck finding a mainstream source that will do anything but parrot back official US policy about Venezuela. Or, as Greenwald noted, Saudi Arabia. If there were anything objective about which countries the US likes and doesn’t like, we wouldn’t even be talking to Saudi Arabia. This is Saudi Arabia:

But this is nothing compared to Venezuela having a state run television network and generally being suspicious of the “independent” media who were involved in the most recent coup against the democratically elected government in Venezuela. Yes, I know there are worse things that have been done by the regime. But there is no doubt if the coup had been successful and the US liked the government, Venezuela could do far more and the United States — most especially its media — would be just fine with it. Any criticisms would be countered with apologetics, just as I can easily provide an apologia for the current regime in a single word: coup.

Here is Greenwald on this issue:

The main thing, however, is that even among liberals, it is hard to find defenders of Venezuela. And it’s strange. Somehow, because Venezuela is an official enemy of the American power elite, it’s wrong to defend Venezuela unless it is perfect. Meanwhile, most liberals stand silent as Saudia Arabia is presented as some bastion of freedom in the Middle East. Regardless, the US government shouldn’t be able to get away with claiming that Venezuela is a threat to us. But it isn’t even questioned. Undoubtedly, the people of Venezuela deserve a better government. But the government that we want to give them would be much worse. And if we continue to do everything we can to destroy the democratically elected government in Venezuela, it has no incentive to become more of what I would like it to be. Of course, our government — and the media that supports it — have no interest in that happening; they all just want a government in Venezuela that supports our power elite.

Afterword

You should also read Mark Weisbrot’s great article, Obama Absurdly Declares Venezuela a Security Threat:

See also: Venezuelan Protests Get Usual US Media Treatment

Paul Krugman wrote a good article in which he came out against the trade agreement, TPP at the NABE. Basically, he makes the same arguments that I’ve been making: there is already free trade and this is mostly about enhancing support for intellectual property law enforcement. He estimates that even a 0.5% increase in global incomes is probably a major exaggeration. This deal is not going to do much for the economy. So you have to ask why it is there is so much interest in the Obama administration and elsewhere in the American political system in favor of this deal.

I think it is the same as it was during the Bush administration and all the talk of drilling oil on federal land in Alaska. At the time, everyone understood that it would have a negligible effect on the oil supply and thus prices in the world and specifically in the US. People wanted to do it because it meant a whole lot of money to the corporations doing the drilling. A billion dollars is nothing in the US — much less the world — economy. But it is a huge amount of money for a company. And that’s why the Bush administration cared about the project: it was good for their friends.

The same thing is going on here. Pharmaceutical companies and Hollywood studies are looking at huge gains from this deal. People will claim that we must do this to incentivize “innovation!” But that’s not true. For one thing, as Dean Baker talks about all the time, there are other (And better!) ways to incentive creative work. Regardless, this is about trying to extract ever higher rents from work these companies have already done. We are not going to get more or better movies as a result of this deal. And even if we got more from the pharmaceutical companies, what would it be? Yet another erectile dysfunction drug?

I have a more fundamental problem with this and all other “trade” deals: in our current economic environment, little gain is going to go to workers. So even if this deal was going to increase average incomes by 50%, what would it matter when 93% of it went to the top 1% and the rest went the next 9%? And that is what will happen. That is the way that the economy is set up. Given that the lower classes don’t share in prosperity, why should we be in favor of deals that increase the prosperity of the already prosperous?

Here’s an idea: maybe the Obama administration could use some of its political capital to work on things like a higher minimum wage, given that that is what an increasing number of college graduates makes? Or perhaps some effort could be put into strengthening unions? We could start just by enforcing the laws that are still on the books. But there are other things we could do as well like card check and repealing these awful Orwellian “right to work” laws. But for some reason, there isn’t intense interest about this kind of thing — even from Democrats.

I say we make a decision right now: no more “trade” agreements — not even negotiations — until America starts working for Americans. If Hillary Clinton wants to prove to me that she ought to be president, she could start by talking about this. But my expectation is that she is going to be even worse than Obama and her husband were. They all know that these deals work because, “A rising tide lifts all the yachts of my friends!” No more trade deals.

“You should negotiate more stuff; you’re pretty good at it.” It’s supposed to be funny. You see, he’s Mark Cuban. He must be a great negotiator: he’s a billionaire! And he’s on television! I don’t especially know what to think of the guy. Pretty much all of his money comes from Broadcast.com — a company that he and Todd Wagner are generally given credit for starting, even though they were just the money guys and it was really all Chris Jaeb’s concept and implementation. But that’s pretty typical of the business world. I think it is actually because the business types know that what’s really hard is coming up with a new idea, they tend to push it aside.

Regardless, Cuban got all his money by selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo! at the height of the dot-com bubble when it was certainly way overpriced. But this isn’t an indication that Cuban is a good businessman or negotiator; it just shows that he was in the right place at the right time. This was, after all, the time of Pets.com. One thing we know about Cuban is that he is ethically challenged, and this has doubtless served him extremely well in business.

Normally, I wouldn’t have anything to say about Cuban — he’s just another example of how capitalism doesn’t work as it has been sold to Americans for the last two centuries. But I’ve been forced to watch these terrible AT&T commercials that feature him. Here is the shortest edit that I’ve been able to find:

I suspect that people are supposed to know him from that great pox on American television, Shark Tank. And so based upon the highly asymmetric “negotiations” on that show, it’s supposed to be a real thigh slapper. But what most comes across to me is just how self-impressed Mark Cuban is. And that’s always what comes across from Mark Cuban. That (and no sense of honor) seems to be all that he brings to the world — and sadly, this is more than enough. As Dean Baker and Karl Bode have recently noted, he’s not the sharpest of thinkers. But that’s why he writes for The Huffington Post — they love rich know-nothings.

But I find the commercial fascinating in that it seems to show that Cuban might be just self-aware enough to feel the need to star in a commercial that flatters him. Somewhere inside he must think that he’s a fraud. But it could be simpler than this. One thing that has been especially clear over the last several decades is that being rich is not enough for these people. They also must be loved. They must constantly be told that their wealth is a sign of their greatness. What is the point of having the economic power of a god if people don’t also treat you as a god? This is one reason that I believe in confiscatory taxes: no one should be allowed to be this rich because it makes them nutty. If Mark Cuban needs his boots licked, he can hire a boot licker, we don’t need our politicians and journalists doing it for free.

You have to wonder why is he doing this AT&T commercial. And the only reason I can think of is that he’s doing it because it flatters him. And he needs to be flattered: all the time and on a very big stage. And that is so pathetic that it actually makes me feel sorry for him.

Dean Baker is not the kind of guy to use expletives. Tuesday morning he posted, The Problem Is Not the Specter of Deflation, the Problem Is the Inflation Rate Is Too Low. And right out of gate, he wrote, “Okay, this is no longer amusing. Can we stop the nonsense about deflation? It doesn’t make a f***ing bit of difference whether prices are rising at a small positive rate or whether they are falling at a slow rate, except for the fact that the inflation rate is lower.”

I have to admit that this one took me a little while to get my head around. And it was almost certainly Dean Baker who straightened me out about it. The problem seems to be that people think of the inflation rate as some number at which prices are going up. But that’s only true in a statistical sense. Imagine if the economy had only ten products in it — all costing the same amount and representing the same amount of purchases. If six of them went up 10% in price and four of them went down 10% in price, there would be a modest positive inflation. (If my figures are right: 2% inflation.) Now suppose that it was the opposite: six of the items went down in price and four went up. In that case, there would be a modest negative inflation — or deflation. (If my figures are right: -2% inflation.)

Baker’s point is that crossing over the zero doesn’t matter. Having a -0.01% inflation rate is not especially worse than a +0.01% rate — or at least it isn’t any worse than a +0.01% rate is compared to a +0.03% rate. This is actually really important. The reason is that people have this tendency to think that everything is just fine as long as we don’t cross over into negative territory. But the truth is that very low inflation tends to cause economic stagnation just like negative inflation.

I remember many years ago, when I was a libertarian, reading people arguing for the gold standard. (In my defense, I was never keen on the gold standard.) But there was this reasonable sounding argument for why the money supply didn’t need to increase: if the economy grew, the existing money would just grow in value. Wouldn’t you like it if the money in your wallet got more valuable over time?! Well sure. But it would be terrible for the economy as a whole and it would mean a lot of people would be unnecessarily unemployed. If people know that their money is going to be worth more in a year, they have an incentive to put off even necessary purchases.

The same is true if they know their money is going to be worth the same amount. Except, as Dean Baker pointed out, “for the fact that the inflation rate is lower.” And this is the reason that I think the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target is too low. I think it should be 3% or even 4%. I don’t have any data to back that up. But neither does the Fed’s 2% target; it is just something that Alan Greenspan pulled out of the air, as far as I can tell. I just think the 3-4% range is low enough that it wouldn’t get out of control, but high enough to keep the economy pumping so that people had jobs.

Regardless, just remember: -1% inflation is worse than +1% inflation — but only in the same way that +1% inflation is worse than +3% inflation. Crossing the zero doesn’t mean anything special. So don’t make this mistake. You’ll make Dean Baker angry. You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

Although I think that The Nightly Show is good and getting better, Larry Wilmore still annoys me a lot. I’m not sure if he and his staff are ignorant about certain things or if they are just pandering. I think it is the latter. Regardless, I don’t like it. On Monday night’s show, he briefly discussed the fact that by and large, the Republicans were a no-show at the Selma 50th anniversary celebration last weekend. And he got around to presenting the statistic above: the Republicans were more supportive of the Civil Rights Act than Democrats were. Wilmore was making the point that since the Republicans were a major part of the constituency that pushed for civil rights, they ought to be part of the celebrations.

The statistic he picked was a bit of a deceptive choice, given that he was talking about the Voting Rights Act, not the Civil Right Act. And I know the reason why: Democrats voted for the Voting Rights Act at roughly the same rate as the Republicans: 78% to 85%. And it was only that far apart because of the Senate; in the House it was even closer. But I take the point: in the early and middle 60s the Republicans were the party of civil rights. As I’ve discussed before, Martin Luther King Sr was a Republican at that time. So okay, the Republicans were better at that time.

But that’s not true anymore. Those 40% of Congressional Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act? They are now in the Republican Party. In 1960, 32% of African Americans voted for Richard Nixon. But just four years later, only 6% voted for Goldwater. The arc of history may be long, but Republicans were bending toward white identify politics really fast. And modern Republicans like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner know this. They know that African Americans are not going to vote for them in sizable numbers and they don’t care about it.

I always find it amusing that Republicans hearken back to the days when they stood for things that they most clearly don’t stand for now. Political Parties change. The Democrats used to be a terrible, racist party. Even after the Democrats stopped being a terrible party, they remained a racist party for a long time. But that doesn’t mean that modern day Democrats are racist. And it doesn’t mean that modern day Republicans support civil rights just because historically they did.

And what is especially bad is that the Republican Party has become so dependent upon their bigot base that now they can’t even risk being hypocritical. Just 24 Congressional Republicans went to Selma this weekend. As I discussed that day, that represented just 8% of the Republican caucus. That is in comparison to at least 32% of the Democratic caucus going. I don’t especially like the question, “What have you done for me lately?” But in this case, it is fair to ask, “What have the Republicans done for civil rights over the last fifty years?” And the answer is that the Republican Party has done everything it can to make things worse. And now they aren’t willing to even fix the Voting Rights Act, which ought to tell you all you need to know about how today’s Republicans would have voted on the law if they had been around fifty years ago.

Larry Wilmore seems intent on not pushing these issues very far. And interestingly, most of that show was about the Apple Watch and not Selma. It allowed Daymond John to come on and provide some apologetics about his support for sweatshop labor. Racism in America was originally and explicitly about economics. So it all tied together — not that The Nightly Show even tried to do that. But the power elite and the Republican Party can’t be too upset with what the show is doing.

I have a slightly different take from what others are saying about the racist chant by the Sigma Alpha Epsilon boys at the University of Oklahoma. I think that Jamelle Bouie is correct, Don’t Expel Members of Sigma Alpha Epsilon for Racism. The subtitle is, “Educate them. Show them what their words mean.” Bouie went over the SAE’s history of racism and then noted that it wasn’t specific to them. He quoted Nolan Cabrera, “This behavior is endemic throughout the country.” Bouie also quoted research that showed that white millennials are no less prejudiced than their parents are. That, I think, is the critical point.

I don’t think these SAE kids are outliers; they just got caught. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be punished. And I’m not sympathetic towards them. When I was in college, fraternities were just coming back to my school. And the kind of people who gravitated toward fraternities were exactly the kind of people who should not have been in fraternities. Fraternities work as a way of closing off extended social connections. They don’t just separate by class and race; they also separate by personality types. There weren’t many physics and math majors running to join fraternities. Colleges should be about breaking down barriers, not setting up even more.

So it doesn’t surprise me at all that these frat boys left to themselves would develop a culture where they would sing a song about lynching black students. I’m sure they saw it as funny: they were singing something racist but in an ironic way because, of course, they aren’t racist. Bouie pointed out that this was common, “The ‘joke’ framing is important: it allows participants to use racial language or express certain attitudes without acknowledging any personal prejudice.” But a better way to deal with this would be to force everyone in the fraternity to take two years of African American studies. And, of course, the fraternity itself has to go. I think that was totally appropriate — but then, I generally think they should all go.

The big problem that I see if the problem that I always see in these cases. We have a racist society. When a rancher wants to tell us another thing about “the negro” or some kids sing about hanging African Americans from trees, the establishment is outraged. “How can there still be such racism in modern America?!” Meanwhile, these same outraged media sources allowed Obama’s birth certificate to be a thing in the mainstream media for two years. But that only barely scratches the surface of it.

What hurts us most is the idea that using the n-word is the real problem. And look: I get it. If people are willing to actually say things like this, it is a very bad sign. But the focus on it seems to be a way of defining the problem away. As long as we aren’t being explicitly racist, there’s no problem! Right? Right?! Well, wrong. What hurts us is actual inequality. African Americans make a lot less than white Americans. And we are fine with this. But the only way we can be fine with this is if we actually think that African Americans are stupider or lazier or generally less than white Americans. Do we actually believe this? I’ll bet there are a lot more people who believe that than we want to believe.

But that’s the philosophical basis of racial economic inequality not being a major political issue. Fox News is quite explicit about their belief that racism is a thing of the past. But CNN and MSNBC also live with pretty much that same worldview. And that worldview is simply racist. So it is true that what the SAE students did was racist. It’s fine to point that out. But it should be used to highlight the more important racism in our society, not to blind us of it.

Update (12 March 2015 9:09 am)

It’s interesting that I can spend so much time thinking about media commentators who are outraged about this stuff and gloss over the systemic problems, yet there are those who are determined to apologize for this stuff. Think Progress this morning reported, No Apology From Morning Joe Over Blaming Waka Flocka Flame for Racist Frat Chant. “Liberal” Mika Brzezinski said, “We’re all trying our best here to figure out our way through this and yesterday the conversation got real and I think some people conflated it with other things, but there’s no moral equivalency between something like rap lyrics and what happened on that bus.” No, they didn’t get real. They were claiming that these kids were chanting about lynching while using the n-word was due to having heard said word in rap lyrics. There really is no difference between that and the old conservative complaint, “Why can black people use that word and I can’t?!” The supposedly liberal MSNBC has this kind of garbage on three hours every day. When Fox News hires Rachel Maddow to do its morning show, then I’ll admit that Fox News and MSNBC are equivalent.