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Friday, April 5, 2019

DAVID BROOKS CALLING OUT AMERICA RE CANADA

'...The Americans who talk about community don't have a community of their own....'

Do better governed societies just have better journalists than Brooks?

That seems to be the case.

Brooks does nothing here, really, re Canada, but call out US failure by comparison.

He has no actual structural positive political contribution to suggest.

Cf Thomas L Friedman grass roots initiatives.

He thinks that Americans can best prosper by local populist grass roots initiatives.

Monday, July 9, 2018


WHAT MATTER GRASS ROOTS COALITIONS AND LOCAL INITIATIVES

WHEN EVERY STATE AND LOCAL ELECTION IS NOW A REFERENDUM ON TRUMP

MR GLOBALIZATION HAVE CIVIC COALITIONS SUCCEEDED WHERE GOVERNMENTS HAVE FAILED?

Not much, almost zero, flat, and not for long, baby.

The grass roots world of Thomas Friedman is also his Flat World. 

In the Flat World, almost everything turns flat.

Here's the 800 pound question for Friedman:

Why have globalist flat world governments, which he has tirelessly espoused throughout his career,  and which he now admits, confesses really, in this article have failed, why? 

Why have they so failed their citizens requiring grass roots ostensible rescue? 

Answer: grassroots are flat!

Grassroots movements, when governments fail, are inherently revolutionary. They may be and often are violent. They are fifth columns.

They fill a void abandoned by government. A political spiritual and economic wasteland. The flatland.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

RE LEONHARDT'S HOW TO POLITICS GRASS ROOTS NYT POPULISM

This will help you all a lot after the Chinese take over here...

You can grass roots the Chinese until you are the color yellow. Guess what? The Chinese won't care if you make yourselves out to be yellow. They can see the difference. 

Forget about the color purple, or the color white. 

These are passe colors, going forward.

Here was DK re Power:

"Indeed, important elements within our leadership remain committed to the fantasy of popular upheaval leading to more democracy in the Middle East.  This is the theme of an article in the current New York Review of Books (which unfortunately is available to subscribers only) by our UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, who wants us to do more to show that we are on the side of oppressed peoples and against their governments. She specifically calls on our diplomats not to spend so much time dealing with their host governments--always their primary function--but instead to engage with the people.  "This should include building relationships not only with well-known civil society organizations," she writes,  "but also with groups like teachers’ associations, workers’ unions, and leaders in the business community—and not only with the vocal majorities, but with the minorities who are harder to find and hear. This kind of engagement demands a greater investment in our diplomatic efforts at a time when many governments—including the United States—are facing significant pressure to scale back the resources they dedicate to investments overseas, and to cloister diplomats in fortress-like embassies in the parts of the world where such local connections are actually needed most. So leaders must make the case to the public not only for why we cannot isolate ourselves from these problems, but also why we must widen the scope of our diplomatic engagement as a national security imperative."  With large portions of the world sliding towards anarchy and suspicion of American motives higher than ever, this is a recipe for disaster, not least among the people whom Power wants to help.



"Power, essentially, is clinging to the Hegelian vision that has seduced the US foreign policy elite since the fall of Communism, the idea that western values are now destined to triumph everywhere and that we can easily hasten the process." DK

Thursday, July 5, 2018

KRUGMAN SEES THE MINIMUM WAGE FALLACY SEE ALSO THOMAS FRIEDMAN GRASS ROOTS

Minimum wage hikes here don't significantly reduce employment here.

What does that mean?  Why?

1. Not all that much employment here anyway....faux employment numbers....


2. Employment here is much more affected by much lower wages elsewhere than by chicken shit increases in the minimum wage of our already higher wage workers, which fewer and fewer workers here can take advantage of anyway. What these workers have really been looking at is the very real and horrific bogey of global wage convergence. That is the topic Krugman dances all around in discussions like this.  Piketty, didn't touch it, baby!

Re Thomas Friedman grass roots civic coalitions where government here has failed: 

Try grass rooting your ass out of the global flat world situation I have described above, civic coalition grass rooting your way to wage prosperity here in America.

Just to make an important connection they will not:

You could just about as easily minimum wage yourselves to prosperity as you could quantitatively ease yourselves there!

Slavery was a bad, but in North America not all that bad, but it was a guaranteed job. A slave couldn't be fired, and usually had to be fed clothed and sheltered to be worth something.

If you were sold, you had another guaranteed job.

Indentured servants were in very similar conditions, and believe me there were a gadzillion of them too.

Thursday, July 12, 2018

THOMAS FRIEDMAN GRASS ROOTS QUICKSAND IS VERY FLAT

You can struggle your ass off, at a million local grass roots level places. Here, or over there somewhere, anywhere. 
They are each struggling, and reachingout,  for those errant bits of grassy roots, here and there, for support of their urgent initiatives.

This is what happens, in the flat world:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKDVz6TV2Gs

Thursday, July 5, 2018

JOSH BIVENS KRUGMAN FRIEDMAN BIRDS OF A FEATHER

Krugman refers to progressive economists: do not ask governments to even try to do very much, baby!

Does that sound a little familiar?

Oh, that is what Friedman said re why civic coalitions are stepping in to do grass roots programs which governments have failed, at the local, state, and or federal levels, to do....

Krugman: There are better ways to get to a jobs guarantee than a jobs guarantee.

Maybe he is referring to Friedman's grass roots civic coalitions?

Why is a healthcare guarantee a no brainer for an advanced economy, but a job guarantee an apparent economists' impossibility for that same economy?

Why is a healthcare guarantee an economists' no brainer, but a balanced budget a really bad idea for almost all economists, for the same economy?

Let's put it a little differently, for the idea challenged:

If our government, according to Krugman and Bivens, is guaranteed to queer a jobs guarantee, why then wouldn't it be guaranteed to queer a healthcare guarantee?
Or:
If we are guaranteed to queer a jobs guarantee based on costs overruns, as they admit, then why is a balanced budget a really bad idea?

Have we caught Krugman (and Bivens) in a Morton's Fork? You tell me.


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