Matt Yglesias is showing real signs of cognitive dissonance. He wrote a very perceptive but confused article this afternoon, Companies With “Cash on the Sidelines” Should Pay Their Workers More. Let me explain what he’s talking about before getting to the dissonance. Corporations are currently sitting on piles of money. Conservatives claim that they do this because the future is uncertain and that the problem is all this government regulation. Their theory is that the government needs to provide regulatory “certainty.”[1] That theory is just silly. For one thing, the future (including regulation) is always uncertain. That’s why business is hard. What’s more, “regulatory uncertainty” is rarely mentioned by businessmen themselves as a cause for not spending, and it is pretty clear that those few who do mention it are just conservative ideologues who have been trained by right wing media to do so. The truth is what the vast majority of businessmen themselves say: they aren’t investing because there isn’t enough demand for their products.

Yglesias understands this very well. In his article, he points out that the companies should be doing something with their assets. Just sitting on them makes no sense. What does make sense is to pay workers more:

But why should companies do that? It’s their money, after all. It makes no sense to sit on the sidelines and claim that businesses ought to be—What?!—nicer to their employees. That isn’t the way that our economic system works. There are really only two options that will help this system. First, the government could tax assets that companies just sit on. That would have two benefits. It would encourage businesses to invest and hire. And it would give money to the government to redistribute. (This would almost certainly have to go along with an individual wealth tax, otherwise, the companies would just pay their top managers huge bonuses.) Second, we could have a regulatory framework that supported rather than suppressed labor unions.

I’m in favor of both, but clearly having strong unions is critical to having a reasonably egalitarian country with a large middle class. But here’s where Yglesias’ cognitive dissonance comes in. He has never been all that big a supporter of unions. Now, he isn’t like some conservatives who think that unions are evil incarnate. But he seemingly never misses an opportunity to slap down the who idea of them: teacher’s unions suck because they are public; unions are unpopular; the decline of unions is inevitable. It isn’t that Yglesias necessarily thinks this is a good thing. Not at all. I’ve just never gotten the idea that he cares about—for that matter knows about—labor unions.

It is all very fine to stand around and wish that we were all one big happy family singing Kumbaya. But as Yglesias reminds us again and again: the world doesn’t work that way. What we need is for business and labor to be equal players in the economy. But since the Taft–Hartley Act, labor has had far less power. And since Reagan, there has been an effective open season on their existence at all. Doug Henwood, in arguing against Yglesias, put it well, “The ‘what about the taxpayers?’ lament is straight out of the Reagan playbook—from which it’s clear that a lot of Democrats are taking instruction these days.”

At this point, political reform is blocked by sociological issues. The first issue, which I don’t think plays a role with Yglesias, is resentment. My sister told me that she was in the car with her husband when they drove past a group of BART strikers. She said, “We should honk.” Her husband scoffed at this and made some comment about how overpaid they are. The interesting thing here is that both my sister and her husband are union members. In particular, he makes a lot more money than I ever have. What’s more, he makes way more than those striking BART workers, but given the coverage of the strike, I can understand where he got the misinformation. But whether union or non-union, there are a huge number of workers who resent unions because they think union members are getting an unfair advantage.

The other problem is apathy. That’s what you get from people like Yglesias. His father might have been in the WGA, but that’s about the extent of his experience with unions. I know what it’s like to work at jobs of the kind that Yglesias and all of his friends have. It’s really nice. In general, you are well compensated and people are nice. You are in the upper-middle class, if not in the upper class. Why would you want to be in a union? Of course, I’m sure that Yglesias has a fairly good idea what it’s like to work, say, framing a house. But I don’t think he has much of an emotional connection to it. So it’s easy for him to have airy thoughts about companies using their money to pay their workers more while not caring too much about the demise of unions.

I most definitely don’t think Yglesias is a villain in all of this. But his article was uncharacteristically facile. And it fits into a broader narrative of disregard for what economics means to actual people.

[1] Although this is what conservatives say, it is not what they mean. Businesses would be just as certain if the government stepped in and said, “Corporate taxes will be 90% now and forever more.” So what conservatives mean is basically no regulations. It is rather annoying. It’s one thing to be for that, but it is quite another to hock a theory you don’t actually support.

Update (19 July 2013 4:35 pm)

It just occurred to me why so many labor unions voted for Reagan in 1980: self hatred—or more accurately, hatred of other people’s unions. My experience is that people in unions tend to be conservative. In fact, not that long ago, I almost came to blows with a union man over Occupy Wall Street. This is yet more evidence suggesting that the Democratic Party really needs to focus on economic issues. And by focus, I mean, focus on liberal ideas. The New Democrats have been very focused on conservative ideas for two decades now.

Washington insider Mark Leibovich has written what is apparently a breezy and funny indictment of the insular political culture, This Town. And it is apparently stirring things up. Yesterday, Mother Jones reported that Politico—more or less the official news source of insular Washington political culture—has published 17 articles on the book. These articles are both positive and negative. It seems that Politico understands that the book is an attack on its very being, but is also so narcissistic that they just love reading about themselves.

This morning, Jonathan Chait wrote an article discussing this very dynamic, Politico Is This Town. It’s a good article and I encourage you to read it. But what I found most interesting is what Chait had to say when he got a bit sidetracked. He noted that although Leibovich completely nails this power culture, he doesn’t really analyze it. So Chait provided his own, which will sound awfully familiar to readers of this blog.

Basically, in Washington social circles certain things are just known. There is no need to think about issues. It’s like fashion, everyone just knows that Peter Pilotto is very “in” this year. And that’s why, for years when unemployment was over 8%, all anyone in Washington (and pretty much in the media) could talk about was the federal debt. This is my argument against Fox News. I don’t mind that it is biased; every source of news is. The problem is that it pushes the idea (widely accepted by its audience) that they are getting fair and balanced information. People who get their news from Fox don’t even have to think about their views because they only hear news to justifies what they already believe. Well, the exact same thing is going on in Washington, except the effects are less visible and infinitely more damaging.

Chait wrote:

This gets us to the whole idea of the Overton window: the window of acceptable policy debate. A good example of this was single payer healthcare reform. Many liberals were very unhappy that it got no traction in 2009. But the truth was that it couldn’t get any traction; it was outside the Overton window; all the people in the mainstream press understood that it was not serious. And what made it “not serious”? The power elites in Washington, of course. The people who dismiss economic populism as stupid do the same thing with healthcare. And we are all worse off for it.

Mark Twain may have said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” It’s frightening to think that our policy making is based upon cocktail party chatter. “Did you read that new Niall Ferguson article?!” Whenever I waste some time watching one of the Sunday morning political shows, I’m amazed at how much uncontested nonsense is spoken. That’s why when someone like Paul Krugman shows up, there is a feeling of anxiety. Here’s a guy who knows we he’s talking about, who doesn’t form his opinions on the basis of party invites. But the solution for the Washington insiders is always the same. They don’t consider the new ideas. They just wait until the outsider invasion is over so they can go back to thinking their comforting thoughts—the thoughts that everybody knows.

[1] I have a real problem with Chait modifying “right of center on fiscal issues” with “slightly.” That just goes to show how effective Washington groupthink is. No centrist commentator in Canada or Europe would look at American conventional wisdom on economic issues and say that we were “slightly” to the right. And Chait is supposedly a liberal! If he really thinks that our barely progressive tax system (including all levels of taxation) with our excessive level of inequality and pathetic social safety net is only slightly to the right of center, then he’s a lot more conservative than I thought.

The great French Baroque painter Hyacinthe Rigaud was born on this day in 1659. He is one of the best painters of that era. You really should check him out. The anti-Hegel, philosopher Immanuel Hermann Fichte was born in 1796. See if you don’t think he looked a lot like Denholm Elliott. The great satirical novelist and write of Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray was born in 1811. The great physicist Hendrik Lorentz was born in 1853. Gangster Machine Gun Kelly was born in 1895. He is notable because he lived to the ripe old age of 59. It helps to be caught. But just to show that in many ways, the universe evens out, the same year Kelly was born, so was one of the 20th century’s greatest ballerinas, Olga Spessivtseva. There is only one video of her dancing; it isn’t great, but it is worth watching:

The playwright Clifford Odets was born in 1906. He is perhaps best known for his first play, Waiting for Lefty. Overall, he’s known for his socially conscious Great Depression era plays. That was when a financial collapse actually caused the country to think about what had happened. Today, it is more like Sarah Palin said: it’s a hopey changey thing. The great theatrical producer and damned good actor Hume Cronyn was born in 1911. Comedian Red Skelton was born in 1913. His humor is far too broad for me now, but when I was a kid, I thought he was hysterical. In fact, I saw him when I was a kid and he was very much like this on stage:

The great historian of science Thomas Kuhn was born in 1922. Wildman Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was born in 1929. Here he is doing one of my very favorite songs:

And writer Hunter S. Thompson was born in 1937.

Astronaut John Glenn is 92 today. Reuben, Reuben director Robert Ellis Miller is 81. Kitschy science fiction film (e.g. Total Recall) director Paul Verhoeven is 75. Steve Forbes is having a birthday today, but who cares? Actor Elizabeth McGovern is 52. And actor Vin Diesel is 46.

The day, however, belongs to Nelson Mandela who is 95 today and apparently out of intensive care. What I find so remarkable about him is our perceptions of him. There is a good article on this in the current hard copy edition of The Nation—as it applies to South Africa. But it is important to remember that here in the west, he was loudly labeled a terrorist by those great defenders of freedom Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. But now, of course, he is the “good negro.” It is just the same old conservative idea: any man who demands his rights is a terrorist. Regardless, Mandela was never a terrorist. He was just a man who made the lives of the power elite harder. And that’s why he’s a great man.

Happy birthday Nelson Mandela!

I like checking out the MSNBC prime time lineup on the computer. As much as I like Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and even Lawrence O’Donnell, I find that I can miss vast swaths of their programs without being deprived of any insights or entertainment. And so it was as I skimmed through The Last Word. There was a segment on the controversial new Rolling Stone cover with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, so I clicked in for a listen. It annoyed me almost from the first word. O’Donnell’s smug conventional wisdom can often be overpowering, and that was fulling on display. So I skipped ahead several times, never having to wait more than a couple of seconds before he said something else that I thought was stupid or irrelevant.

I was thinking back to the year after 9/11 when Time‘s Person of the Year was… Rudy Giuliani. I was talking to my sister-in-law and I remarked at how ridiculous that was. Traditionally, the Person of the Year was not necessarily a good guy. Clearly, Osama Bin Laden should have been given the award, not Giuliani. She said if they had done that, she would have canceled her subscription. Well, what do you expect from someone who subscribes to Time? Still, it struck me then and now as a very childish reaction. Can’t we admit that a man is bad and important? What did Giuliani do other than somehow demonstrate to the world how to act after 9/11?[1]

I feel the same way about all the outrage over the Rolling Stone cover. And really, I think this is all forced outrage. You have to be determined to be outraged in this case. The whole point of the article is to show that just a regular kid—just like dozens of other kids you know—can turn quickly into a homicidal fanatic who holds his ideology above the lives of fellow human beings. He is not insane. He has no horns. This young man’s sweet face is what evil looks like. That is an entirely reasonable argument to make and the cover does that.

What’s perhaps most amazing is that this is not a new idea. In 1999, Time put two attractive smiling teens on its cover: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. They were the two Columbine shooters who were responsible for 13 murders. Yet there wasn’t much outrage over that cover. And I think we need to look at why that is. Mark Joseph Stern over at Slate thinks that the reason that one is acceptable and the other isn’t is because of the different way the two magazines are perceived. (But he agrees with me that the cover is effective.) That might be part of it, but it isn’t the core.

I think it’s fair to say that the outrage over the Rolling Stone cover is not about protecting the victims of the Boston bombing. It is about racism, pure and simple. It was fine to remember that something terrible must have gone wrong if these two white teens went on a murderous rampage. But we can brook no such questions about dirty foreigners with their anti-American religion. I don’t mean to suggest that everyone shouting about the cover is a racist. Outrage has a tendency to perpetuate itself. Once the whole thing got going, especially with a reasonable rationale (the understandable concern for the victims), it fed itself.

As a people, we are badly in need of greater education about why people do bad things. In general, it is not because they’re just bad to the bone. There are all kinds of things that affect how people behave. That, for the umpteenth time, does not justify the act or the actor. But we need to remember that all of this terrorism isn’t just about those funny looking people over there who hate us for our freedom. And we need to realize that we aren’t going to bomb away this problem. In other words: we need to be smart. And that means treating the Rolling Stone cover as more than a bit of outrage fodder.

[1] Here is the money quote from David Letterman, “And I just want to say one other thing about Mayor Giuliani: As this began, and if you were like me, and in many respects, God, I hope you’re not. But in this one small measure, if you’re like me, and you’re watching and you’re confused and depressed and irritated and angry and full of grief, and you don’t know how to behave and you’re not sure what to do and you don’t really… because we’ve never been through this before… all you had to do at any moment was watch the Mayor. Watch how this guy behaved. Watch how this guy conducted himself. Watch what this guy did. Listen to what this guy said. Rudolph Giuliani is the personification of courage.”

In the trial of Bradley Manning, Judge Colonel Denise Lind has ruled that the most series charge of aiding the enemy cannot be dropped. She said, “He was knowingly providing intelligence to the enemy.” That statement shocks me on two levels. First, she seems to have already convicted him. Second, really?! If we are talking about Osama Bin Laden, then this is clearly not true. If we are talking about the press, then okay. In modern America, the government has defined its enemies so broadly and the concept of damage so vast that no one can say anything without risking indictment.

But the government apparently now knows that some of Manning’s leaked information was found on Bin Laden’s computer. When the government killed him, you were probably like me in thinking, “I’ll bet there is some good information that the government can use to fight terrorists.” But apparently not. There was good information there for the government to use to oppress its citizens. James Madison would be so proud!

In general, I’ve always seen military courts as little more than well catered drumhead court-martials. So I’ve never expected that Bradley Manning would get justice. The only question in my mind is whether he will die in prison. Judge Lind’s ruling is yet another step in that eventuality. There is still some hope, but I’m not optimistic.

The fundamental problem with the military is that it stands against everything that is supposed to make America great: our individual spirit. I’ve increasingly found the Nuremberg trials hard to accept. Certainly, I strongly believe that it is no excuse to say, “I was just following orders.” But there is a bait and switch that has gone on—a clear demonstration that the winners write the history. What we are told is that one should push against authority if that authority will go on to lose. But here in the United States where our military is as big as the next 11 countries combined, one should always follow orders. If you try to shed some light on the misbehavior of our government, we will hunt you down to the end of the earth. And as in Manning’s case: we will deprive you of basic human rights and charge you with outrageous offenses.

I hate to say this, but it’s true. The only way one can be really proud of this country right now is to live in delusion. The more you know, the worse it is. Whether for our own citizens or others, we don’t stand for what is right. Like all countries that get big enough, we stand for might. And God help those who forget that.

Update (20 July 2013 1:32 pm)

I have not seen any information indicating that leaked documents were found on Bin Laden’s computer. The case the government is making is weaker even than that. The idea is that if Manning leaked any information that Bin Laden might have found interesting, then Manning is a traitor. I’ll keep you updated.

The film Devil in a Blue Dress was recommended to me. It is freely based upon the Walter Mosley novel. And it manages to do something that it quite interesting. It is a very funny comedy pretending to be serious film noir. In that way, it really brings back memories of The Big Sleep. But that film is too much part of creating the style to be self-aware of being part of the style. And that is the delight of Devil in a Blue Dress.

The film tells a compelling story of Easy, a black homeowner in 1948 Watts. He is out of work and getting desperate because he’s two months behind on his mortgage. And in walks a friend of friend with a job to find a missing white woman. Before long, Easy is a suspect in two murders. When his violent friend Mouse shows up to help, things just get more complicated. But it all works out in the in. It’s a comedy, after all. A dark ending just wouldn’t work because even though the material in the film is dark, the tone never is.

There is something really nice about watching characters who understand that they are in a movie. Don Cheadle as Mouse is perhaps best at pulling this off. His performance is so breezy that it is easy to forget that he is playing a psychopath. Similarly, Jennifer Beals as the title character (Daphne Monet) brings an otherworldly feeling to the part that makes her transcend the femme fatale she clearly is. I’m divided about Denzel Washington’s Easy. He has many great and funny lines. But his is the only character that seems to be taking the plot seriously. And maybe that is what makes the whole film work: Easy the the true believer in a world of characters who are all in on the joke.

Devil in a Blue Dress is also beautiful to look at. The cinematography and art direction are superb. It’s surprising that it didn’t get a bunch of awards. But that may just be due to the fact that Hollywood doesn’t believe in giving out awards for films that weren’t financially successful. It’s like they’ve taken Ayn Rand’s philosophy to heart and think that something can only be good if it is popular. Regardless, the film is worth watching just for the technical details: beautiful, professional, artistic movie making.

The other thing about the movie is that it is interesting from a sociological standpoint. Primarily, the film highlights the racial divide that is less distinct today, but still clear. There is the obsession with interracial sex, the disinterest of the white police in the murder of a black woman, and so much more. But there is also a lot of intraracial interactions that are of great interest. This is seen a lot as Easy and Mouse go around interrogating people. But the best example is also probably the high point of the film for me. Easy has figured out that Joppy has been playing him for Daphne Monet. Joppy says, “She is something else, man. You know what I’m saying?” Easy knows exactly what he’s saying and leaves shaking his head with tears in his eyes. I think that scene says more about sexual politics and the relationships between men than you are likely to learn in a whole sociology course.

I do find it surprising that the film wasn’t a big hit. It stars Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals. It’s a fun and funny movie. It’s an interesting whodunit. What’s not to like? But maybe it is bit too much of an adult film. After all, the critical issue in it is that Easy needs to pay his mortgage. What’s more, he is hardly your typical movie hero. He seems always to be the last one to learn what everyone else (except Mouse) already knows. And then the film ends with the simplest of wisdom, “All you’ve got is your friends.” That’s the kind of thing that makes old guys like me weepy and makes the young mock. So maybe Devil in a Blue Dress was always destined to just be a good rental. But that’s a lot more than the vast majority of films.

Jared Bernstein wrote a very insightful article over at the Economix Blog, The Path to Complexity on the Health Care Act. As a member of the administration during the development of Obamacare, he accepts a lot of the blame for it being complicated. Well, perhaps “blame” is not the right word, because he thinks he was right. Basically, he claims that being able to say that people could stay with their current plans was essential to the law’s success. And I get that. But I think there is something deeper going on that he doesn’t realize.

Think back to 2010. Although it was true that those with employer provided health insurance could (and still can) keep the coverage, people didn’t think that at the time. All we heard at the time (except those of us who trolled the wonkosphere) was that this was a government takeover of healthcare. There were going to be “death panels” to kill off granny. The American Revolution ended in defeat on 23 March 2010! (A date which will live in infamy!) I think it is fair to say that the American public knows very little about Obamacare, but most of what they do know is conservative propaganda.

To me, it is clear: Obamacare is so complicated because the Democrats tried to get the Republicans to sign onto it. And not one of them voted for it! So while I do think that the Democrats (in particular our current president) were hopelessly naive in how they handled healthcare reform, the true villains are the Republicans. The Democrats started with a Republican bill—written especially to appeal to them because this was the bill that for two decades they’d been trumpeting as the “conservative approach” to healthcare reform. That bill was already very conservative and complicated. But in the name of making the bill more to their liking, the Republicans got the Democrats to change it—making it even more conservative and complicated. That’s why we have this complicated bill!

This highlights the fact that the Republican Party could not care any less about the poor and middle classes in this country. I reported this morning on their approach to lead poisoning: they don’t care. When it comes to 11 million people living in a shadowy no man’s land: they don’t care. And when it comes to healthcare: they don’t care. Sure, they’ll propose conservative alternatives to liberal legislation; but the moment the conservative alternative becomes the legislation, they abandon it. This tactic is fully explored in Winner-Take-All Politics: they would love to help that poor, it is just that this particular bit of legislation (whatever it might be) just isn’t quite right.

Still, I can understand that having “keep your current healthcare” was a good selling point. At least, it would sound good in a television interview. But the truth is that everyone I know hates their health insurance. So what Bernstein is really saying in his apologia for the complexity of Obamacare is really kind of what I’m saying: the Democrats were always playing the game using the Republicans’ ground rules. Clearly, the positive, liberal approach would have been to say, “Everyone hates their insurance and we are going to get rid of your insurance company and replace it with an institution that doesn’t have an incentive to deny you care.” I think most Americans would have been very open to that message. And the rest would have said the same thing: they’re going to kill granny!

Afterword

There were various ways that the government could have dealt with the insurance companies. My favorite would have been for the government to simply buy them out of business. That would have worked out fine. For one thing, they really aren’t that valuable. But they could have pocked the cash and stayed in business. All countries with single payer health insurance have a private insurance industry. The rich aren’t going to accept “Medicare for all.” They will want their own very expensive and private healthcare. So there would still be money to be made. There are other issues, of course. The government would have had to do something for the people who were put out of work by the suddenly much smaller insurance industry. But that wouldn’t have been that costly either. I just don’t see the problem with this. As it is, we are all paying in a very big way for the government not taking the insurance companies out the primary healthcare system. Instead, we directly funded them with tens of millions of extra customers who are federally mandated to buy their horrible products.

On this day in 1698, the great French mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis was born. He invented the principle of least action. This later led to one of my very favorite things: the Hamiltonian formulation of mechanics. But because I am nothing if not merciful, I will spare you any further mention of it. Except that you could read the Wikipedia page on the subject, assuming that your differential equations and tensor calculus are strong. Yes, yes, moving on…

Later, but still in France, the great neoclassical painter Paul Delaroche was born in 1797. The American expressionist Lyonel Feininger was born in 1871. The great architectural photographer Berenice Abbott was born in 1898. Actor James Cagney was born in 1899. Comedian Phyllis Diller was born in 1917. She only died last year at the age of 95.

Gordon Gould, inventor of the laser, was born in 1920. Of course, it might have been Theodore Maiman who invented the laser. I’m sorry I missed his birthday, which was back on 11 July in 1927. These guys represent a good example of something I talk about all the time: ideas are in the air. That doesn’t mean that great people don’t discover them, but in most cases, the people who become rich and famous are not smarter or harder working than the people who did the same work—at times even earlier. What it really demonstrates is that our system for rewarding creative work is all screwed up. But I will leave that discussion to another time.

And jazz guitarist Mary Osborne was born in 1921. Here she is doing a medley:

Two fine actors are 78 today: Diahann Carroll and Donald Sutherland. David Hasselhoff is 61 today. I hate his work, but he still seemed like a nice guy when he was a judge on whatever show that was he was a judge on. There is nothing wrong with being a bit slow! The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel is 59. She isn’t evil the way, say, most Republicans are. But still, what she and Germany generally are doing in Europe is very bad. It makes me think, and this sounds worse than I intend, “Maybe that whole Nazi master race stuff wasn’t an outlier.” The truth is that Germany is pushing a lot of suffering on the rest of Europe, mostly because they think they deserve it. The Germans are just so much more noble than the other countries—forget all about those German bankers who made bad loans, it was all those poor borrowers who were to blame! I take it back. No birthday wishes for Merkel!

The day, however, belongs to composer Peter Schickele who is 78 today. He is best known for his comedy recordings as P.D.Q. Bach—itself a very funny name. Here he is with “New Horizons in Music Appreciation” that is incredibly funny:

Happy birthday Peter Schickele!