I was thinking back on the story, Three Little Pigs. Apparently, in the original story — dating to the 1840s — the wolf eats both the pigs in the substandard houses only to be boiled to death by the brick house building pig. But that isn’t the story that I heard growing up. For people of my generation, the story was probably based upon the 1933 Silly Symphony “Three Little Pigs.” In this telling, the pigs escape and eventually make it to the brick house. And the wolf only gets scalded and runs away.

Here is the whole cartoon:

In 1942, Merrie Melodies did a parody of it, “Pigs in a Polka.” And we got roughly the same thing:

The Merrie Melodies does not go in for the over moralizing of the Silly Symphony version. But clearly, Three Little Pigs is a fable and so is supposed to teach some moral lesson. And that lesson is that one should work hard else she will end up eaten by a wolf. It’s the kind of folk wisdom that Americans have learned a good deal too well. Americans work far too much, and it is a problem.

But I’m struck by the modern incarnation of the tale. Because it shows the power of social bonds. If the three pigs had been John Galt types who didn’t have any connections to other people, two of the pigs would be dead, as they were in the original telling of the story. In fact, even if the two shortsighted little pigs had gotten away, it isn’t clear that the John Galt pig in his brick house would have taken pity on the them.

The original story actually teaches at least one moral that is absolutely false: that we are alone in the world. Despite the ridiculous conservative idea of the rugged individualist, humans would have gone extinct long ago if they did not work in collectives. And this is why in natural economies — as opposed to the ones where power is wielded to create excessive inequality — one doesn’t see straw, stick, and brick houses right next together. But I remember very clearly taking the train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou and seeing people living in houses built of rotting wood and tarp within a mile of people living in skyscraper penthouses of a quality un-excelled in the world. So the modern world has allowed us to create a kind of Three Little Pig scenario.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the fable is the idea that the houses people choose to live in are based upon how hard they are willing to work. In the original Silly Symphony telling, the first pig chooses a straw house so he’ll have more time to play his flute. The second pig chooses a stick house so he’ll have more time to play his fiddle. But given that houses are a one time investment and the third pig has plenty of time to play his piano when his brick house is built, the story doesn’t speak to anyone’s moral character. It is just that the first two pigs are silly for the purpose of the plot.

Similarly, in an earthquake, the straw and stick houses are far superior to the brick one. So the implication is that what matters is not the result of the house but the amount of work that it takes. As I noted earlier, this is the American mentality. There is no time, as there is in the fable, for the pigs to finish their work and play their instruments. In this regard, the third pig is the least believable because he would never finish his house; he would just make it bigger and stronger and never have time to play that piano.

In the Silly Symphony version of the tale, the first two pigs never do learn their lesson. They take no part in getting rid of the wolf and are still hiding under the bed when the third pig knocks on the piano making them think the wolf is back. In the Merrie Melodies version, there is more of an equal outcome for the pigs — but still the first two pigs are silly. But in both cases, the silly pigs are safe because of the the care of the wiser pig. That is ultimately what we ought to learn from the story: we have to take care of each other. All the other lessons are either untrue (that we are alone) or obvious (that hard work has rewards).

Ultimately, we needn’t be afraid of the big bad wolf. We need to be afraid of being alone. And we live in a society that fetishizes the idea that aloneness is the natural state. Working alone, we can’t do much. Working together, we went to the moon.

The always great Mike Konczal over at Next New Deal told us, The One Where Larry Summers Demolished the Robots and Skills Arguments. If you’ve been following my economic writing for the last couple of years (And really, why would you?) then you know that I have very mixed feelings about this. But first I should point out that there are two issues here, not one. So let me start with the “skills” issue because it is so stupid and evil, there really is no need for nuance.

The skills argument goes something like this: the reason that people don’t have jobs is that they just don’t have the skills that the modern economy needs. First of all, this just isn’t true. I know all kinds of smart, technologically sophistocated, and well educated people who are struggling in this economy. Just to name one: perhaps the most brilliant engineer I’ve ever worked with — and I’ve worked with a lot of great ones — is struggling as a “independent contractor” at Cisco with relatively low pay and pretty crummy benefits. It just isn’t the case that the people with the right skills are cleaning up as would be the case if the “skills” argument were true.

The skills argument was also made during the Great Depression. Yet when World War II came, suddenly people had the skills that were necessary. Now it is certainly true that modern corporations don’t want to have to do even the slightest amount of training because they’ve gotten used to the government and the workers themselves doing all of that at their own costs. But mostly, the “skills” argument is just an excuse for companies not hiring. It is a way to push the problem into the future: make workers go into debt while they spend years getting the supposedly marketable skills, only to find themselves just as unemployable. It’s not only disingenuous, it is cruel.

What surprised me in Konczal’s article was this sentence, “There’s been a small, but influential, hysteria surrounding the idea is that a huge wave of automation, technology and skills have lead to a massive structural change in the economy since 2010.” I have my concerns about automation, as I discussed in, Robots, Patents, and Inequality. But it is outrageous to suggest that any issues are recent and even more to say that our current economic slump is due to robots and not, you know, the bursting of the housing bubble. What’s more, as Ha-Joon Chang has noted in the past, “The washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has.”

The problem I see regarding any improvements in technology is the way that the rich have been able to game the economic and political system so that they can keep all the productivity increases as a result of this. This is a large part of the story of the total lack of economic gains for workers over the past four decades. But clearly, this is not a question of the technology itself. It is part of political dysfunction. Technology is not changing any faster today than it was fifty years ago. But strong labor unions, social norms, and many other things made sure that workers saw their lives improve at that time.

There is another issue that is related to this, but which isn’t currently a big problem. It is the “CD effect.” It is the way in which technology can allow a small group of people to capture a much larger share of the market. So whereas without CDs, many solo violinists could be employed, it is only necessary for one to be employed. Now this doesn’t happen in exactly this way, and the economics of it is actually fairly complicated. But I think we need to free ourselves of this philosophy that claims that whatever the “natural” market value of someone is is also what they are worth. This is an argument that Greg Mankiw likes to make. It may be true in the land of Ayn Rand utopias, but in the real world, it is a very bad thing. It leads to economic monocultures that are unstable and certainly not nutritious for those in the economy.

So yes, I admit, our economic problems are not robots and other technologies. But our insistence at looking at the economy in a fundamentally conservative way makes the effects of technology bad for the economy, when it ought to be great for it. Technology is not the culprit. But we are allowing the power elite to manipulate society to use technology against us.

Rudy Giuliani thinks that Obama doesn’t love America. There are a lot of articles talking about it, and Giuliani himself is going everywhere to make sure no one misunderstood that he’s absolutely right and not a racist. I think Jonathan Chait has written the best summary of the whole thing, If Giuliani’s Obama Smear Wasn’t Racist, What Was It? He’s very charitable to Giuliani and does a deep dive into the former mayor’s comments. And he finds: nothing. So if Giuliani’s comments were not racist, they were nothing at all. And we all know they were something. The logic ain’t hard.

Ramona Grigg wrote, Yes, Rudy, It Was a Horrible Thing To Say. Thank You. Her point is that the comments were so over the top offensive that he’s done a great favor for Obama. Now reporters will dig up video of Obama saying things like, “I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.” Of course, Rush Limbaugh was quick to jump on board, “I’m the guy who’s been saying for six plus years now… Obama does not like this country.” Brian Powell at Media Matters pointed out, most Republicans politicians will just avoid the subject because among the base, this kind of talk is commonplace.

I’m not especially interested in the controversy. It may be a tired cliche, but it is also a fact that at least half of the Republican popular support is based upon racism. So this kind of racism and more generally the implication that liberals are not “real” Americans is forever spilling over in conservative comments when they don’t think anyone is listening. What I’m more interested in here is how exactly it is that Obama is supposed to “love” this thing called “America.” I agree with what Rudy Giuliani said: I don’t think Obama loves America. I don’t think that Rudy Giuliani loves America. I know that I don’t love America because I don’t even know what it is I’m supposed to be loving.

Traditionally, the phrase “love of country” is just an expression of jingoism. It is the idea that country is always right, regardless of what it does. It’s the old Stephen Decatur toast, “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!” If we lived in a democracy, I might be tempted to go along with that. But we don’t. When we go to war, it is usually the government doing it against the wishes of the people. So what Decatur’s toast means in practice is fascism, “Right or wrong, our government!” I’ve never met a liberal or conservative who would go along with that. And given that even the most powerful person doesn’t always get what she wants, I can’t imagine anyone at all agreeing to that.

I remember Bill O’Reilly claiming, “And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins.” But even he added “unless facts prove the operation wrong, as was the case in Vietnam.” The truth is that O’Reilly, like demagogues everywhere thinks people should shut up whenever they are saying things he disagrees with. But if he agrees, it is patriotic to protest. So it is pretty clear that when people talk about loving the country, they don’t mean the government.

But if not that, then what? Really! The people? Given that many conservatives seem to think that President Obama hates the country, I find it hard to believe that they love the American people any more than they love the government. Are we supposed to love Charles Manson? Or are we supposed to think that the American people in aggregate are somehow lovable? Or is it the geography? The climate? The economic system? None of those are specific to America.

What I think the America is that we are supposed to love is some idea of America. And this is dangerous, because none of us has the same idea of what America is. I’ve written a lot about this in the area of economics. Liberals like to complain when Republicans talk about creating jobs. The liberals rightly point out that all Republicans mean by this is, “Cut taxes on the rich! Allow more oil spills!” While it’s true that these things actually will not, in general, create jobs, this is what Republicans think they will do. So when a poll comes out that says that 90% of the American people think the government should do more to create jobs, it doesn’t mean anything.

And similarly, the fact that I love Thomas Paine’s idea of America means something to me. But John McCain’s idea of America is that we should have the biggest military and go to war at every opportunity. And with ideas as divergent as that, there is no “America” that we love. And this is why when conservatives start to talk about the issue, they always fall back on “American exceptionalism.”

But I still don’t understand what is exceptional about America. It is a country — just like 195 other countries. We are an enormously powerful country, but if the rest of the world decided to work together to take us down, it would have no problem doing it. There are great things about America. And there are awful things about America. So this whole matter of loving America is just a stupid game. It means nothing. When Rudy Giuliani and Rush Limbaugh say that Obama doesn’t love America, they are just saying that Obama is a doody pants. And that’s about as deep as American politics goes. And that, my friends, is one of the awful things about America.

Kevin D Williamson wrote a really pathetic apologia for Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Is Right. As I will write in a later article, I agree: Obama doesn’t not love America. But I have something actually interesting to say in that article. As far as what Giuliani meant when he talked about Obama not loving America, Williamson perfectly encapsulated it by way of refutation. You know, the way huge numbers of conservatives will believe something truly outrageous and someone who writes for National Review brushes it aside as though mentioning it means that that it isn’t a real thing.

Williamson wrote, “To ask the question is not the same as venting the familiar swamp gasses: that he’s a foreigner, at heart if not in fact; that he’s a Manchurian candidate sent to undermine the republic; that he’s a secret Marxist or secret jihadist sympathizer; etc.” Well actually, yes it is. His argument is basically that well, maybe the Fox News hicks believe that nonsense, but not a “respectable” man like Rudy Giuliani. There is no other way to put it: Giuliani doesn’t think that Obama loves America because Giuliani either believes and just wants to push the idea that Obama is some foreign other. Is it that he’s black? Yes. But not just that. Obviously, Giuliani would never say the same thing of a black conservative.

But what really blew my mind was how Williamson managed to lump all progressives into one tight knit group who, like Holden Caulfield (Really!) just hate all those phonies of American history:

Now this is pretty much the way I see these discrete things. Just look at what I wrote the last three years on George Washington’s birthday. But the fact is that the Constitution was a racist document and even the Revolutionary War was largely a racist war. But we get better. America is a better place now than it was then. But what is it that America is for conservatives? As Williamson himself talks about, they aren’t without their criticisms. So the real difference is that liberals tend to be proud of America in an aspirational way, “Look how far we’ve come!” But the conservative take on America is one of decay, “Look how far we’ve gone!”

So the conservative ideal is some lost long ago. But of course they won’t tell you when that was. They won’t say the 1960s because that was probably the greatest triumph of liberalism. So they generally have to go back further. But the further you go back, the worse it gets. This leads to the kind of stuff I discussed in, More Libertarian Economic Hokum. In the article I was addressing, the writer argued that we didn’t need child labor laws because the market would take care of it. The same argument is more commonly made about how slavery was dying — if it weren’t for Lincoln and his Civil War, the free market would have ended slavery!

Thus, as I’ve discussed before, conservatives don’t believe in the America of today or the America of any given time. They believe in “America” — some mythical place that never existed. So if Williamson thinks that we liberals are all a bunch of discontented adolescents, what exactly are the conservatives? I think David Cross has it right: conservatives hate this country. They just love a myth they’ve created:

And that’s not love. I’ve had a surprising number of women who loved some idea they had about who I was. And there have been a fair share of women about whom I loved some idea rather than the actual woman. But that isn’t love. That’s the immature crap of, “I love her, but I don’t really like her.” Yeah, that means you don’t love her. It means she treats you like dirt and you “love” the idea that maybe some day she might treat you like a human being.

So it is pretty funny that Kevin D Williamson calls liberals Holden Caulfield, when the liberal approach to America is nuanced, and I dare say mature. It’s the conservative who believes in clear myths that blind her to whatever it is that “America” is. Which is what I’ll be writing about later.

I was talking to my father the other day and he told that this “Walker fellow” seemed like he might be reasonable. It wasn’t my father talking; it was the Charles Krauthammer talking. My father doesn’t really drink. Like kids spinning in circles, my father gets loopy listening to Krauthammer’s calm monotone. Dad’s always been a sucker for people who put forward an air calm rationality. But I am not similarly fooled. Krauthammer is a joke. I’ve called him on his anti-science global warming denial. And his hypocrisy. And his general stupidity. But dad hears him say that Scott Walker is just the kind of reasonable politician America has been looking for, and dad follows along.

I didn’t shout. I just pointed out two things that I knew my father would bristle at. First, Scott Walker is a major union buster. Although in years past, my father was anti-union, in his middle years he became part of union and found that it was very nice. It wasn’t the leading the edge of communism as conservatives have been arguing since, well, since unions came into being. The second thing that I told him was that Scott Walker was a total supply sider — trickle down economics! Well, in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was pushing trickle down economics, my father was totally on board. A lot of people were. It sounded plausible. But over the following decade, he learned what a con it was.

So my father’s enthusiasm has waned for Walker. But sadly, it isn’t just Krauthammer who is going to cram Scott Walker down our throats for the next year or more. Yesterday, Media Matters reported, CNBC Host Demonstrates How Not to Interview Scott Walker About His Weak Economic Record. You see, Walker doesn’t have a good economic record. He has a great record as far as the power elite are concerned: funneling money to the top and destroying unions. But as Eric Hananoki pointed out in the article:

But what does any of that matter? For the CNBC set, making the economy better has nothing to do with economic growth and new and better jobs. It is about making the economy better for the people for whom the economy is already working really well. That’s the Republican Party platform. It’s all they really believe in. But they aren’t going to put it that way, because almost no one would vote for them. So they talk about how great economic grow is under Republicans like Ronald Reagan, even though it wasn’t that good under Reagan. And they needn’t worry. No television commentator is ever going to challenge them on their lies.

As expected, Germany has balked at the new Greek government’s quite reasonable request for changes in its austerity plan. Paul Krugman has the main details, Insert German Curse Word Here. I think two words are necessary: verdammte arschlöcher. (Look it up; I don’t do English curse words here anymore.) Basically, Germany is trying to force Greece out of the euro. And that makes sense, because the oh so moral Germans have never had economic problems and have never started a world war and never staged a genocide. So it just makes sense that they would want to divorce themselves from a country that spent beyond its means a decade ago.

What the Germans seem to want to do to the Greeks is what the French and British did to the Germans after World War I. The mistakes are different, but Germany wants to punish the Greeks just as they were punished just short of a century ago. I’ll be honest, I’m not fond of Germany. It is the country most like the United States: absolutely convinced of its moral superiority. And it is the big dog in the European Union. And it doesn’t just use that power; it abuses that power.

What Greece absolutely must do is stand strong. They have to be willing to leave the euro. Although as Dean Baker has previously suggested, maybe it would be best if Germany left the euro. But if Greece left the euro, big deal. It would certainly cause some disruption. The next year would be marginally worse than it would otherwise be. But it would be marginally worse — not a lot worse. And then things would get better — and fast. The German prescription for Greece is Khan’s to Captain Kirk, “I’ve hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you.” Does Greece really want to live through another five years like the last five years? Because that’s what Germany’s plan for them will provide.

So Greece needs to say, “You won’t yield? Fine. We’re gone.” I doubt seriously that Germany, much less the rest of the euro countries, are going to go for this. As many other observers have noted: if Greece exits the euro and it goes well, there will be enormous pressure on Spain and Italy to exit it as well. And at that point, how exactly is the euro a shared currency?

Although I have to wonder what good the shared currency is anyway. I understand that a shared currency makes trading easier. But it doesn’t make it that much easier. And the down side is that when there is a recession and a country like Greece needs to reduce labor costs, it can only do it with great difficulty. As it is, when the euro was first being discussed, many economists recommended against it for this very reason. And history has born this out.

It isn’t just in Greece’s interest to play hardball with the Germans. It may be what saves the European Union itself. As it is, the euro gives the large German economy far too much power. And as we know from at least a century, a Germany with too much power is not a good thing.