Farewell, Bob Herbert

Losing Our Way

By BOB HERBERT

More like “Losing our jobs.” Frank Rich is already out at the Times, and now Bob Herbert follows today’s column with the declaration that “after an exhilarating, nearly 18-year run [sic] I’m off to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society.” If he were a politician, I’d believe that he just got caught finger-banging the 17-year-old daughter of his largest donor. If that’s not PR-spin for “I just got shit-canned” then Barry Bonds is the patron saint of good sportsmanship. (Please ignore the used syringe hanging out of his ass-cheek.)

This is terrible news for me personally. There are very few targets I enjoy savaging as much as Bob Herbert. Thank God I still have Gail Collins. I regard Herbert as the paragon for the liberal hyper-conscience: sloppy in its arguments, constantly offended and outraged, reactionary in its deference to the perpetual victims, and poorly punctuated. This is the man who has appointed himself as the sentinel of the impoverished and the guardian for the unemployed. Now he’s one of them.

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash

Technically, we’re pouring shiploads of treasury securities, but don’t let that bog you down.

into yet another war, this time in Libya,

Admittedly a very questionable decision, given that the operation is being run by the Canadians. I’m going to rename the Libya Mission “Operation Neutral Zone Dump-And-Chase.” For those of you not down with ESPN 6 or higher, that’s hockey lingo.

Oh wait. There was a vote of no confidence in the Canadian parliament.

while simultaneously demolishing school budgets,

Clearly, after eighteen years, Bob Herbert still doesn’t really understand the Tenth Amendment or the separation of powers between federal, state, and local governments. School budgets are an issue for local governments; “Kinetic Military Action” in Libya is very much federal.

closing libraries,

Local.

laying off teachers

Still Local.

and police officers,

Local and/or state.

and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home.

It’s downright depressing that the quality of your life is contingent upon how many libraries we build and how much we pay teachers.

Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century.

“Welcome to Barack Obama’s America,” you mean. Where the media doesn’t care about military murders and persistent economic malaise is viewed with phlegmatic indifference.

An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies.

Holla! Dude sees the light!

Optimism is in short supply. The few jobs now being created too often pay a pittance, not nearly enough to pry open the doors to a middle-class standard of living.

Yep. It sucks out there.

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish,

Sounds a lot like plagiarism to me.

liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline.

Take it in, people, you don’t get this type of concentrated ineptitude from many other writers. It’s absolutely glorious.

Greed is part of the human condition; nothing of the last ten to twenty years has changed its role in American society.

Corporate power is massively restricted. The “Big Oil” syndicate is still unable to drill in the Gulf of Mexico despite a judge ruling that the Obama moratorium is unconstitutional and hordes of industry lobbyists. Wal-Mart, perhaps the quintessential “big business” is clawing to get into cities like Chicago, where there is an overwhelming demand for their jobs and low prices. Corporate taxes in the United States are higher than any other industrialized country except Japan. Our regulatory environment is crippling the competitiveness of American businesses.

And despite our addiction to “foreign oil,” the policies of the left have put up every roadblock imaginable to stop us from developing domestic oil. Seven years ago, when ANWR was a major issue in the 2004 election, John Kerry and his allies regularly made the argument that the oil wouldn’t be ready for five or six years anyways. They still make that argument to this day! And all we get is more fucking windmills (which, FYI, are more dangerous than nuclear plants.)

 Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone.

The baby boomers are pretentious assholes that have squandered the hard work of the greatest generation and failed to adequately relay the cultural maxims of American exceptionalism and individual responsibility to their children. Instead, they’re still obsessed with their own adolescent self-image as long-haired rebels, litigious and whiney by habit, and thirsty for significance in all the wrong places. It took them until recently to figure out that they sucked.

The U.S. has not just misplaced its priorities.

Not a sentence.

When the most powerful country ever to inhabit the earth finds it so easy to plunge into the horror of warfare but almost impossible to find adequate work for its people or to properly educate its young, it has lost its way entirely.

Goddamn I’m going to miss Bob Herbert. This isn’t even a coherent ideology. This is attempting to wish away the constraints of scarcity. We shouldn’t go to war unless we have a perfect educational system or full employment? Maybe we should employ more teachers in the military. Dumbass.

Nearly 14 million Americans are jobless and the outlook for many of them is grim. Since there is just one job available for every five individuals looking for work, four of the five are out of luck.

Yes, but the labor market isn’t static. We could have a glut of new jobs if we had a pro-growth agenda from the White House.

Instead of a land of opportunity, the U.S. is increasingly becoming a place of limited expectations. A college professor in Washington told me this week that graduates from his program were finding jobs, but they were not making very much money, certainly not enough to think about raising a family.

That’s because undergraduate programs like English, Sociology, Gender Studies, or virtually anything else within the humanities are absolutely worthless in the job market.

There is plenty of economic activity in the U.S., and plenty of wealth. But like greedy children, the folks at the top are seizing virtually all the marbles.

It’s hard to get exasperated. It’s just fun to let the last of Bob Herbert’s unfathomable nonsense wash over me.

Income and wealth inequality in the U.S. have reached stages that would make the third world blush.

Can someone please explain to me when we all decided that it was an acceptable goal for the United States federal government to use its authority to promote “income equality?”

As the Economic Policy Institute has reported, the richest 10 percent of Americans received an unconscionable 100 percent of the average income growth in the years 2000 to 2007, the most recent extended period of economic expansion.

This isn’t 1895. If you don’t like your pay, quit. If you think you’re worth more, leave. If you think you can do better on your own, start your own business. The age of the internet has unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurs. Seize it!

Americans behave as if this is somehow normal or acceptable.

It’s both. It’s also a worthless statistic. How does it factor negative growth? Is it calculated in percentages, or nominal terms? Does it account for class mobility?

It shouldn’t be, and didn’t used to be. Through much of the post-World War II era, income distribution was far more equitable, with the top 10 percent of families accounting for just a third of average income growth, and the bottom 90 percent receiving two-thirds. That seems like ancient history now.

Remember when liberals used to claim that conservatives too-often pined for the past, implying that conservatives somehow wanted to return to the era of segregation? It’s why they insist on calling themselves “progressives,” which is just foolish. (The reason that the term “liberal” has such a bad connotation in the American lexicon is because of colossal failures that always seem to be the result of liberal ideology.)

The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent.

If you’re going to be serious about income inequality, geek out on it. The United States’ Gini Coefficient is, of course rising (indicating more income inequality), but since 1950, the United States Gini Coefficient has ranged from about .36 in the early 70’s to about .45 today. This is a less precipitous rise than that of the UK, but one of the major features of the United States Gini Coefficient is that it is relatively stable in its fluctuations, unlike France, Canada, Bulgaria, Mexico, and others.

In short, this is both normal and acceptable.

This inequality, in which an enormous segment of the population struggles while the fortunate few ride the gravy train,

 They’re known as welfare recipients and old people.

is a world-class recipe for social unrest. Downward mobility is an ever-shortening fuse leading to profound consequences.

What on earth do you think the Tea Party is about?

A stark example of the fundamental unfairness that is now so widespread was in The New York Times on Friday under the headline: “G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether.” Despite profits of $14.2 billion — $5.1 billion from its operations in the United States — General Electric did not have to pay any U.S. taxes last year.

Keep in mind, their Chairman and CEO is a close Obama advisor and was a major donor. Also keep in mind that I genuinely believe that GE is right in this instance. The fact of the matter is that our congress has passed a tax code that only an idiot-savant can decipher, as well as legions of tax credits for worthless economic activity. None of that means that GE should not take advantage of our Congress’ ineptitude.

As The Times’s David Kocieniewski reported, “Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

Keep in mind, that if we had, say, a 15% corporate tax rate instead of a 38% marginal corporate tax rate, that most of that revenue would be realized and taxable in the United States. This is precisely what conservatives are talking about when they argue that lower tax rates can generate higher tax revenues.

G.E. is the nation’s largest corporation. Its chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is the leader of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. You can understand how ordinary workers might look at this cozy corporate-government arrangement and conclude that it is not fully committed to the best interests of working people.

This is also why we prickle when we see hordes of Obamacare waivers being given out to Obama supporters, including Unions (who pushed the damn thing in the first place) and the state of Maine.

Overwhelming imbalances in wealth and income inevitably result in enormous imbalances of political power.

You’ve got that backwards. Enormous imbalances in political power result in imbalances in wealth.

So the corporations and the very wealthy continue to do well.

It takes a particular brand of cynicism to believe that corporations are doing very well. Not to mention, it completely ignores who owns the corporations.

The employment crisis never gets addressed. The wars never end. And nation-building never gets a foothold here at home.

New ideas and new leadership have seldom been more urgently needed.

Except for the guys who fired you at the Times. I can't say that they were wrong to fire you. You're kind of an asstard. That's not even a word.

---

This is my last column for The New York Times after an exhilarating, nearly 18-year run. I’m off to write a book and expand my efforts on behalf of working people, the poor and others who are struggling in our society. My thanks to all the readers who have been so kind to me over the years. I can be reached going forward at bobherbert88@gmail.com.

Redundancy

When Democracy Weakens

By BOB HERBERT

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States.

Yes. You could have helped wondering. And in all likelihood, you did. But you’ve got a deadline, and you’re trying to mask your utter incompetence in foreign affairs with your utter incompetence in domestic issues. Worst of all, I already know with absolute certainty that it’s going to be fucking stupid.

I think it’s on the ropes.

Says the mouthpiece for the party that’s losing.

We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

We are a democracy in name only; the United States of America is a republic. Those who have successfully navigated 4^th grade civics are expected to understand this basic fact.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living,

The existence of poverty does not indicate a failure of democracy. This isn’t even an A+B<>C thing. This is a pineapple + socket wrench <> feral cat.

the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite.

First, how is one vote per citizen an insufficient distribution of First. for this to indicate a weakening of democracy, I challenge Bob Herbert to name a time when the “levers of real power” were not wielded by the elite. Second, how is one vote per person insufficient

It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want.

Not when you, a member of the elite, insist on telling the “ordinary people” what they want.

The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

But the politicians are wealthy. This whole ballad of the impoverished is really falling apart on him.

So what we get in this democracy of ours

It’s a republic.

 are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest,

The wealthy, who still pay a higher effective income tax rate than anyone else.

while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them.

Has this guy even looked at the debt clock?

One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills.

With the exc eption of Texas, pretty much all of them have been Democrat-controlled for years. Illinois. California. New York. New Jersey.  

Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands.

In his last column, Herbert made the same asinine point last column. The public sector has shed a total of 2.05% of its jobs. For the most bloated bureaucracy on the planet, this is unacceptably low.

 Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force.

Without knowing the internal machinations of Camden, NJ, why should the same ineffectual police apparatus be kept in place when it is so clearly a failure?

Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

That’s because it’s obscenely expensive, and people should be able to provide their own healthcare.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from.

We have more avenues today to hear from the poor than ever before. Twitter. Facebook. Massively powerful political organizations like ACORN assert that they speak for the poor.

And here’s the important repudiation of Herbert’s central thesis that American “democracy” is somehow slipping away: they vote.

In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist.

You could say the same thing about Joe Biden.

The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.

Is Bob Herbert just now finding out that Democrats are the party of the rich? Check out the list of Obama’s top donors in 2008:

University of California                 $1,591,395

Goldman Sachs                               $994,795

Harvard University                         $854,747

Microsoft Corp                                $833,617

Google Inc                                        $803,436

Citigroup Inc                                    $701,290

JPMorgan Chase & Co                   $695,132

Time Warner                                    $590,084

Sidley Austin LLP                            $588,598

Stanford University                        $586,557

National Amusements Inc            $551,683

UBS AG                                              $543,219

Wilmerhale Llp                                $542,618

Skadden, Arps et al                        $530,839

IBM Corp                                          $528,822

Columbia University                      $528,302

Morgan Stanley                              $514,881

General Electric                               $499,130

US Government                              $494,820

Latham & Watkins                         $493,835

All the banks on this list from JP Morgan to Citi benefitted from Obama’s reckless devaluation of the dollar. Meanwhile, General Electric’s ex-CEO is now in the White House. The reasonable conclusion is that we need to take power and money away from the whims of indebted politicians. This is what the Tea Party is all about.

In an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian people

Oh, we’re back to Egypt again. I was wondering if the whole Egypt thing was even relevant.

 “have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.”

First, John Kerry has no clue what he’s talking about. This thing in Egypt is more likely to turn out an Islamist coup than it is to turn out a genuine democracy movement.

Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale,

I don’t think he realizes it, but this is precisely why the United States is a republic instead of a democracy: to impede the tyranny of the majority. What was privatized never should have been nationalized in the first place.

and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.

I think there’s a clear moral to this story: get rich.

The corporate and financial elites threw astounding sums of money into campaign contributions

And Barack Obama.

 and high-priced lobbyists

And Barack Obama.

 and think tanks

And Barack Obama.

 and media buys

And Barack Obama.

and anything else they could think of.

Barack Obama.

They wined and dined powerful leaders of both parties. They flew them on private jets and wooed them with golf outings and lavish vacations and gave them high-paying jobs as lobbyists the moment they left the government. All that money was well spent. The investments paid off big time.

Truly, I don’t disagree. This is why the government should have less power.

As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote in their book, “Winner-Take-All Politics”: “Step by step and debate by debate, America’s public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the many.”

At least someone on the left knows what a thesis statement is. It’s a little light on support, though. I’ll blame that on Bob Herbert’s inability to adequately select quotations.

As if the corporate stranglehold on American democracy were not tight enough, the Supreme Court strengthened it immeasurably with its Citizens United decision,

That damn Constitution! It’s always getting in the way of a democracy with its insistence on a republic.

which greatly enhanced the already overwhelming power of corporate money in politics.

I can’t help but think this is just sour grapes because the left got smoked in ’10.

Ordinary Americans have no real access to the corridors of power,

Twitter. Facebook. Phone calls. Marches. Rallies. Petitions. Running for political office. Voting. Raising money—all points of access to the corridors of power.

 but you can bet your last Lotto ticket

Seriously? Has the Lotto ticket become the totem of the impoverished? If so, then it must be representative of poor financial decisions, because a lotto ticket holds an expected return somewhere around -70%. By the transitive property of electoral math, does this also mean that Democrats—who overwhelmingly represent the poor—make poor financial decisions?

 that your elected officials are listening when the corporate money speaks.

This also speaks to a good argument for term limits.

When the game is rigged in your favor, you win. So despite the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash,

Sitting on “mountains of cash” is extremely bad for a business. It means that investors are dissatisfied because a)that money being held by the company isn’t earning any significant rate of return and b) that money has not been distributed to them through dividends. I hate having to explain this to  Bob Herbert. It’s like he doesn’t even read my helpful comments!

the stock markets are up

Again, markets are up only compared to colossal losses. If you bought the S&P index and held from January 1, 2008 until now, you would be down a truly abysmal 8.2%.

 and all is well among the plutocrats.

Well, except the Tea Party has significantly undermined the traditional vehicles for power in the Republican Party. For all Bob Herbert rails against the extablishment, he really missed the boat on the anti-establishment Tea Party.

The endlessly egregious Koch brothers, David and Charles, are worth an estimated $35 billion.

Boy, that sounds like the sort of thing we should be celebrating. How many people do they employ?

 Yet they seem to feel as though society has treated them unfairly.

Answer:  ~80,000.

As Jane Mayer pointed out in her celebrated New Yorker article, “The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation.”

This is a fairly bland overview of the libertarian position. This belief structure holds vastly more support than progressivism. Bob Herbert is really bad at picking quotes. It’s like he didn’t even read this article.

(A good hard look at their air-pollution record would make you sick.)

I can guarantee that Bob Herbert didn’t take a good hard look at anything. He’s not that diligent.

It’s a perversion of democracy, indeed, when individuals like the Kochs have so much clout while the many millions of ordinary Americans have so little.

What? Is the argument here that we need to regulate society to equally distribute an unquantifiable intangible commodity? That’s not democratic. It’s totalitarian.

What the Kochs want is coming to pass.

Freedom?

Extend the tax cuts for the rich? No problem. Cut services to the poor, the sick, the young and the disabled? Check. Can we get you anything else, gentlemen?

Scaled-back regulations on existing industry, eliminated regulations on new business and business expansion, a financial climate that favors stability, a monetary policy that doesn’t debase the currency, and a tax code that doesn’t require millions of dollars spend on compliance.

The Egyptians

Jesus, back to the Egyptians? Haven’t you realized that they’re irrelevant to this article yet?

 want to establish a viable democracy,

There is a dearth of evidence that the Egyptians want a democracy.

and that’s a long, hard road.

 Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.

After an entire article of self-congratulation defending the poor, there is absolutely no evidence of this.

I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn

What’s the opposite of name-dropping?

just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S.

Of course he was. He was a socialist/anarchist. Those are the type of people that that should be chagrined.

but not at all daunted.

There’s only one thing more deplorable than an old man who clings to a demonstrably failed ideology: an old man who actively recruits the ignorant to his own failed ideology.

“If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

Bob Herbert: Back to Work

Don’t think that just because I shredded up your last two articles about class disparity in a volley of righteous elitism (It’s not a bad thing when I really am better than you.) that I won’t come right back at you, Bob Herbert. Let this be a lesson to all of Op-Ed writers–except Maureen Dowd, who really only writes about menopause and her poor, pitiable family—I’m at least as mean as a high school outcast projecting body-image issues onto pictures of cheerleaders. Is this supposed to be self-depricating? I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.

Anyways, I'll take a step away from the italicized voice that heckles my heckling and simply point out that Bob Herbert is perhaps the most professionally incompetent of all the whiny losers that draw a paycheck from the New York Times' Editorial Board. (At least I assume that's how they segment their payroll; I don't have great insight into accounting practices for the Times.) It is no ironic twist of fate that this incompetent buffoon is leading the charge for better pay for incompetent buffoons everywhere. How does one argue incompetently in favor of incompetence? By supporting public school teachers.

A Terrible Divide

My marketing consultants have obligated me to cordially request that you Embrace the Divide. Perhaps while Being All That You Can Be, Obeying your Thirst, or Just Doing the Dew. … Every Kiss Begins with Kay. Good, now we all feel nice and corporate clean! Seriously, I can’t even tell if you’re being sarcastic. You love corporations.

By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 7, 2011

The Ronald Reagan crowd loved to talk about morning in America.

The message is that when America stands for freedom, we are a nation in perpetual ascent. Feel free to disagree, but kindly do not shit on the sentiment.

For millions of individuals and families, perhaps the majority, it’s more like twilight —

I bet $10 Bob Herbert is “Team Edward.”

with nighttime coming on fast.

Does this guy know how to party or what?

Look out the window.

Sorry, I’m one of those “data zealots” you deplore so much for not having a window. Oh! I can open up a webcam of a window though.

More and more Americans are being left behind in an economy that is being divided

Embrace the Divide™

ever more starkly between the haves and the have-nots.

I still steadfastly object to the idea that a goal of the United States government should be to reduce income disparity. Please provide Constitutional support for the hypothesis that it is even permitted of the federal government.

Not only are millions of people jobless and millions more underemployed,

You want a hard job search? Ask a 65 year-old with scant journalistic credibility and no marketable skills. Wait, what year were you born in again?

but more and more of the so-called fringe benefits and public services that help make life livable,

Fringe benefits and public services make your life livable?

or even bearable,

Well clearly this man gave has forfeit those attributes which once made him a man. In case there’s any confusion, I’m alleging that Bob Herbert is dickless.

in a modern society are being put to the torch.

The “torch” is intended as an allusion to a frightened mob of townspeople, fearful of change, science, and outsiders. That’s what he thinks of us.

Employer-based pensions, paid vacations, health benefits and the like are going the way of phone booths and VCRs.

There is a reason that we don’t have phone booths anymore.

There is a reason that you can’t go into Best Buy and get a VCR.

The comparisons that Mr. Herbert chose serve no other purpose than to undercut his point. Phone booths were eliminated because a new technology did the better and cheaper. Same with VCRs. That is because these technologies were subjected to market influences. Meanwhile, public benefits have resisted the market for decades by pretending that governments did not operate in the same environment of resource scarcity as the rest of the world. It’s time to embrace progress in government, which means precisely the opposite of what progressives think.

As poverty increases and reliable employment becomes less and less the norm,

The barriers to entry for new businesses are reduced, as risk-takers are further enticed to take risks working for themselves than they are to take risks working for someone else. This is why recessions end.

 the dwindling number of workers with any sort of job security or guaranteed pensions (think teachers and other modestly compensated public employees) are being viewed with increasing contempt.

This sentence is really poorly written. Are people contemptuous of the workers or the dwindling of the workers? You know what fixes this? Effective sentence construction rooted in the ability to “just say no” to excessive commas.

How dare they enjoy a modicum of economic comfort?

Teachers have 3 months off per year and they make more money than most at the entry level. Promotions are arbitrary. Talent and effectiveness are subjective. With massive evidence of product quality in decline, teachers—both collectively and individually—should be punished.

It turns out that a lot of those jobs were never so secure, after all.

I know that I spent an entire column last week about how you would fail junior high math, but I’m about to throw down some knowledge on you. The realization of a risk does not change the probability of that risk occurring going forward. In other words, there was always a low chance that teachers can lose their jobs. The fact that it happened doesn’t mean that it was ever less likely to have occurred. This is the exact same as pulling all your money out of the stock market after a 30% decline.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities tells us:

The standard-bearer for the “nonpartisan” left. Even so, I’m not going to dispute the facts presented, both because that entails research that would conflict with my general lethargy and I can guarantee with absolute certainty that Bob Herbert didn’t make it past the executive summary of whatever report he’s about to cite.

 “At least 44 states and the District of Columbia have reduced overall wages paid to state workers by laying off workers, requiring them to take unpaid leave (furloughs), freezing hew hires, or similar actions. State and local governments have eliminated 407,000 jobs since August 2008, federal data show.”

Well that sounds awful impressive, except that August 2008-February 2011 covers the height of the worst recession in forty years. Census data from 2009 (and yes, I am pissed because I had to do research anyways) shows a total state and local government employees numbering 14,951,433 full time plus 4,857,171 part time. Since the above statistic doesn’t segregate full time from part time, neither will I. Bob Herbert, not being one for math, doesn’t understand that losing 2.05% of the state and local government work force is nowhere close to what happened to the private sector. January 2009, for example, saw 741,000 net jobs lost.

We have not faced up to the scale of the economic crisis that still confronts the United States.

2.05% is not a crisis unless it’s your batting average. (And yes, I realize that it would be formatted .025 for you baseball snobs.)

Standards of living for the people on the wrong side of the economic divide are being ratcheted lower

That’s not really how ratchets work. If you want to loosen something, just use a wrench. Ratchets really only exist to build pressure.

We have officially begun the gradual meld from mathematical ineptitude to general ignorance.

and will remain that way for many years to come. Forget the fairy tales being spun by politicians in both parties — that somehow they can impose service cuts that are drastic enough to bring federal and local budgets into balance while at the same time developing economic growth strong enough to support a robust middle class.

I know the New York Times Editorial Board thinks so, but does anyone else genuinely believe that private sector growth or the existence of the middle class is contingent upon government services? (Notwithstanding police)

It would take a Bernie Madoff to do that.

See, more confusion about the private sector. Bernie Madoff didn’t actually achieve the returns that he claimed. Just like government doesn’t actually create any economic growth—and yes, the argument that it does is tantamount to fraud.

In the real world, schools and libraries are being closed and other educational services are being curtailed. Police officers are being fired. Access to health services for poor families is being restricted.

While that’s true—and it should be. Ineffective schools should be closed. Bad or incompetent police officers should be fired, and the poor should not have access to health care coverage beyond what they can afford to pay for or what private charities provide.

“At least 29 states and the District of Columbia,” according to the budget center, “are cutting medical, rehabilitative, home care, or other services needed by low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities, or are significantly increasing the cost of these services.”

Can we call them death panels yet?

For a variety of reasons, there are not enough tax revenues being generated to pay for the basic public services that one would expect in an advanced country like the United States.

That is because one—aka you—expects too much from the country. The rest of us expect great things of the country.

The rich are not shouldering their fair share of the tax burden.

The stats on this are well known. Only the rich pay income taxes. And even so, federal revenues have trended flat around 18% of GDP. Tax policy has only a trivial role in determining revenue. Meanwhile, tax policy has a very large role in determining GDP growth.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue to consume an insane amount of revenue.

I’ll agree to defund Iraq if you agree to completely defund the NEA, FCC, Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Education. Fair?

And there are not enough jobs available at decent enough pay to ease some of the demand for public services while at the same time increasing the amount of taxes paid by ordinary workers.

The U.S. cannot cut its way out of this crisis.

Depends on how you define the crisis. I define the crisis as the floundering economy, so you absolutely can budget cut your way out of the crisis. You define the crisis as government budget cuts.

Instead of trying to figure out how to keep 4-year-olds out of pre-kindergarten classes, or how to withhold life-saving treatments from Medicaid recipients, or how to cheat the elderly out of their Social Security, the nation’s leaders should be trying seriously to figure out what to do about the future of the American work force.

They do that. In the private sector.

Enormous numbers of workers are in grave danger of being left behind permanently.

What the hell does that even mean? How can we leave them behind if we’re not going anywhere?

Businesses have figured out how to prosper without putting the unemployed back to work in jobs that pay well and offer decent benefits.

So one would be wise to encourage workers to adapt to the new climate.

Corporate profits and the stock markets are way up. Businesses are sitting atop mountains of cash. Put people back to work? Forget about it.

This argument bleeds my judgment of Bob Herbert from general ignorance to professional incompetence. He needs to know what stocks, why people invest, and how profits are distributed to shareholders in order to be a productive member of society, let alone use the biggest megaphone in print media to tell us what is going on with the economy.

The stock market is way up (I take the approach that the stock market is a mass noun). There are three reasons for this:

1)      They were undervalued in the first place because skittish investors overreacted to the initial market plunge.

2)      Companies have re-assessed their business models to become more profitable.

3)      The herd has already been thinned. It’s not like the S&P still includes Lehman Brothers.

Second, the argument that profitable businesses have a moral obligation to hire unproductive employees simply based on an unemployed person’s need for a job is downright un-American.

Finally, the reason that companies are sitting on cash instead of reinvesting it is because they still see opportunities for growth but have opted to wait until there is a more favorable economic and regulatory environment. If businesses had no intention of reinvesting their cash, they would have paid this cash out in dividends to their shareholders.

This is basic stuff here, people.

Has anyone bothered to notice that much of those profits are the result of aggressive payroll-cutting — companies making do with fewer, less well-paid and harder-working employees?

Yes. That’s good business.

For American corporations, the action is increasingly elsewhere. Their interests are not the same as those of workers, or the country as a whole.

Their interest is money because their investors interests are money. The employee’s interests are money because employees are often investors. The country’s interests are money because the country is made up of employees. I fail to see a disconnect.

As Harold Meyerson put it in The American Prospect: “Our corporations don’t need us anymore. Half their revenues come from abroad. Their products, increasingly, come from abroad as well.”

I fail to see a disconnect.

American workers are in a world of hurt. Anyone who thinks that politicians can improve this sorry state of affairs by hacking away at Social Security, Medicare and the public schools are great candidates for involuntary commitment.

I told you they’d come for you. Go to hell, Bob Herbert! You’ll never take us alive!

New ideas on a grand scale are needed.

No, new ideas on a very small scale are needed. That is because invention and innovation are what drive the economy. Believing that the banking industry is going to lead the national recovery is as crazy as thinking that the government is going to do it. It will happen in garages nationwide.

The United States can’t thrive with so many of its citizens condemned to shrunken standards of living because they can’t find adequate employment.

How does he miss the point that finding adequate employment is about the well-being of employers, not employees.

Long-term joblessness is a recipe for societal destabilization. It should not be tolerated in a country with as much wealth as the United States. It’s destructive, and it’s wrong.

I’m relatively sure this is a veiled call for armed revolution.

Why Do We Need More Math Education If It’s All a Conspiracy Propagated by the Rich ?

Bewitched by the Numbers

"I mean, there are two Darrin Stevenses,
right? Dick York and Dick Sargent. Yeah, right,
as if we wouldn't notice. Oh hold on:
Dick York, Dick Sargent, Sergeant York...'
-Mike Myers, Wayne's World

Not even the delightful Elizabeth Montgomery could make Bob Herbert's inanities enjoyable. Brace yourself. Put on some happy music. I’m throwing down some 80’s one hit wonder-ific repeat-one action with Katrina and the Waves Walking on Sunshine. I suggest you do likewise. May I recommend Brett Dennen’s new single Sydney (I’ll Come Running)?

By BOB HERBERT

Published: February 4, 2011

They 

Who are "they?"

were expecting something on the order of 150,000 new jobs to have been created in January.

This has been going on for two years. “Weaker than expected” jobs numbers are the only thing that we actually do expect with any regularity.

That would have been a lousy number,

I haven't seen you in forever. Yeah. the
nineties were crazy. Sorry you missed them.

True dat. You can’t pull that off. I’m inclined to agree. It felt very wrong.

but they were fully prepared to spin it as being pretty good.

So “they” is the Obama Administration?

They thought the official jobless rate might hop up a tick to 9.5 percent.

Two factors are in play here. First, the new jobs number is only one of many forces tied to the unemployment rate. It is offset by those who quit, are fired, or leave their jobs for new jobs. Secondly, that the unemployment rate does not include the jobless who have quit looking. I would think that literally everyone in the country knew this by now. These poor sods are labeled “discouraged workers” and cease to be represented by the data. This is why we have massive disparity between the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate, which is a much true representation of how truly bojanked (now that you can pull off) we really are.

Instead, the economy created just 36,000 jobs in January, an absolutely dreadful number.

True dat. We’ve talked about this. I know. I feel dirty all over.

But the unemployment rate fell like a stone from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent.

Which means a) no one quit their jobs in January and/or b) a lot of people quit looking for jobs.

What is this, amateur hour?

The crunchers stared at the numbers in disbelief.

I explained it in 97 characters. That’s not even a full tweet. 

They moved them this way and that. No matter how they arranged them, they made no sense. Nothing even close to enough jobs were being created

Please stop using the past perfect. It’s not working for you…or really anyone else that understands verbs.

to bring the unemployment rate down, but for two successive months it had dropped sharply. (It dived from 9.8 percent to 9.4 in December.)

Is it too late to offer a secondary explanation? Fraud. Precisely 1/28^th of a tweet. See?

Actually, the soul of wit is context, because this is decidedly
un-witty as a stand-alone tweet.

A baffled commentator on CNBC said, “I think there is an improvement in the economy, though you can’t see it in today’s payroll survey.”

This commentator is also known as “the fucking idiot CNBC hired to warm the seat." I'm not a talented enough Googler (20 years ago, that was a euphamism for prostitute) to find out who that actually was, but i'm pretty sure he's fucktarded.

Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, who is frequently very good at this stuff, said: “I think these numbers are meaningless. I don’t think they mean anything.”

Which is undoubtedly true. Statistical analysis demands that the analyst cautiously handle poorly-constructed data and extreme outliers.

What data zealots need to do

Careful. Given Bob Herbert’s proclivities, this may be a government-mandated activity within the next six months.

Can we all agree that I don't get enough
traffic to worry about narc-ing me out to
the Chicago Tribune for re-posting this picture?

is leave their hermetically sealed rooms

It’s fucking cold out. No sale.

and step outside, take a walk among the millions of Americans who are hurting to the bone.

Most of whom are actually inside their own hermetically sealed abodes. Seriously, it’s called insulation, and I highly recommend it.

They should talk with families that are suffering,

Snore. They don’t have any insight on the unemployment rate. I asked "Rusty the Vagrant." He stands outside the Walgreens down the street and grunts. I asked him about Fed policy a little while back. Big mistake. He believed that the Fed should rely less on Open Market Operations and focus instead on adjusting reserve requirements. Crackpot.

losing their homes, doubling up,

These cost-cutting mechanisms are how the economy purges itself of its own excesses during recessions. The faster these mechanisms are allowed to work, the faster we can actually recover.

checking into homeless shelters.

Befriending a vagrant doesn't mean
he won't try to eat your hand. I learned
 that from Joaquin Phoenix. Twice.

The homeless don’t tend to be “family men.” Based on my own extensive research ignoring the inarticulate ramblings of Rusty the Vagrant and the shifty-eyed lady in the entrance to the vacant store, I can say with a high degree of confidence that the homeless are absolutely batshit-crazy, and have taken concerted steps to eschew social safety net programs.

We behave as though the numbers are an end in themselves

Numbers and statistical analysis are a way of reflecting reality that is vastly more accurate than the infinitely skewed sample observed by “talking to families that are suffering.” GDP and the unemployment rate are effective metrics because all of us not named Bob Herbert understand exactly what they represent.

 — just get the G.D.P. up or the jobless rate down —

It’s not an either-or proposition, champ.

 and we’ll be on our way to fat city.

It’s astounding that he only stumbles upon an accurate conclusion when he’s trying to point out a perceived fallacy. Talk about a  broken clock.

But the numbers are just tools,

No, the tools are things like database programs or Excel.

 Abstractions

Abstractions are theoretical constructs like the CAPM or the Keynesian Cross.

to help guide us,

Sherpas.

orient us.

Compasses.

They aren’t the be-all and end-all.

Keep in mind that my last post was Katrina vanden Heuvel claiming that Liberals were the true believers in science. Granted, she then went on to show that she had no idea what science was, but the point is still valid.

They don’t tell us squat about the flesh-and-blood reality of the mom or dad lying awake in the dark of night, worrying about the repo man coming for the family van or the foreclosure notice that’s sure to materialize any day now.

Great. Now I want food.

Actually it does. We have data for family composition, size, and ages. We have data for incomes, unemployment, overall debt, and vehicle repossessions. We have data for foreclosures. What actually bothers Bob Herbert is that this family represents a mere one data point.

Also, what the hell is this family doing driving a “family van?” Anyone who drives a van is either a plumber or shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a school. 

The policy makers who rely on the data zealots are just as detached from the real world of real people.

Jesus, national “Hug a Vagrant” day is right around the bend.

 They’re always promising in the most earnest tones imaginable to do something about employment,

Lower taxes. Lower interest rates. Remove obstructions to business growth. This is as simple as looking at a rejected capital budgeting analysis for business expansion.  (FYI, Bob Herbert, this is all about the numbers.)

to ease the awful squeeze on the middle class

This is precisely equivalent to economic growth.

 (policy makers never talk about the poor),

That’s because “middle class” is a euphemism for poor; not a replacement topic.

 to reform education, and so on.

That’s what you’re looking for from a politician to improve the economy? Education? How about lowering taxes? Fed policy? Restructuring the tax code? Deregulating? Even for a liberal, what about things like targeted subsidies? Infrastructure expansions and updates? Leadership in the Green Economy?  

They say those things because they have to. But they are far more obsessed with the numbers than they are with the struggles and suffering of real people.

You want to know what happens when policy-makers actually believe that numbers are mere abstractions? Policies based on the absurdity of whims.

You won’t hear policy makers acknowledging that the unemployment numbers would be much worse if not for the millions of people who have left the work force over the past few years.

Yes. You will. Regularly.

What happened to those folks? How are they and their families faring?

Probably pretty poorly. There’s a good indication that they shouldn’t have left the work force.

The policy makers don’t tell us that most of the new jobs being created in such meager numbers are, in fact, poor ones, with lousy pay and few or no benefits.

Yes. They do. Regularly. This is why we have opposition parties instead of propaganda.

What we hear is what the data zealots pump out week after week, that the market is up, retail sales are strong, Wall Street salaries and bonuses are streaking, as always, to the moon,

That would appear to have something to do with the markets being up. Most of these guys work on a pay-for-performance scale, and they’ve knocked it out of the park this last year. Why? Because idiots like Herbert thought the Dow would actually languish at 7,000.

and that businesses are sitting on mountains of cash.

Instead of accusing businesses of hoarding, why not ask why investors aren’t demanding dividend distributions for that cash? Is it perhaps because they would prefer that money reinvested?

So all must be right with the world.

Actually the take-away from this year is that if you pulled your money out of equities in early 2009, you have the financial acumen of a dimwitted peasant. The stock market has violent swings like this because it is risky. That’s also precisely why it offers long-term returns in excess of any other investment vehicle.

Jobs? Well, the less said the better.

Except that the release of employment figures still dominates the news cycle.

What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in spreading the wealth around.

Wealth is not a collective attribute. It is an individual attribute. Overwhelmingly—with the exceptions of lottery winners, inheritants, and public pensioners (See what I did there?)—massive wealth reflects the merit of competence and the intrepid risk-tolerant behavior that makes America great.

The people running the country — the ones with the real clout, whether Democrats or Republicans — are all part of this power elite.

If Bob Herbert knew anything about statistics,
he'd know that 1919-1991 was not an outlier.

Seriously, it sounds like he’s going to call for a people’s revolution.

Ordinary people may be struggling, but both the Obama administration and the Republican Party leadership are down on their knees slavishly kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.

So…Obama is working for Jeff Immelt?

I love when the wackos call President Obama a socialist.

He is. So are you.

Wasn’t it his budget director, Peter Orszag, who moved effortlessly from his job in the administration to a hotshot post at Citigroup, beneficiary of tons of government largess?

He moved to Citi because Citi wanted to ensure that they still had a direct line into the White House for more government largess if the need arose. This is precisely the opposite of capitalism. Actually the melding of government and business is more a feature of fascism, but I assume Bobby would find that comparison even less favorable than socialism.

And didn’t the president’s new chief of staff, William Daley, arrive in his powerful new post fresh from the executive suite of JPMorgan Chase?

Same role, except more local. JPMorgan wanted an in with Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago.

And isn’t the incoming chairman of Mr. Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness 

My God, doesn't this type of dipstick-ery sound like Madison Avenue trying to govern?

very conveniently the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt?

GE is the very same company whose green initiatives have come to represent the company’s public image. Far from the days of Jack Welsh, GE is now all about towing the line for the government and maximizing the federal subsidies it can snake away from the budget.

You might ask: Who represents working people?

Why would the poor not be represented by their elected officials?

The answer, as Tevye would say with grave emphasis in “Fiddler on the Roof,” is, “I don’t know.”

I don’t listen to classical music.

Maybe the data zealots have stumbled on a solution. They’ve created a model in which a radically insufficient number of jobs has resulted in a sharp decline in the official gauge of unemployment.

Seriously, don’t discount fraud. http://www.gallup.com/poll/125639/Gallup-Daily-Workforce.aspx This poll has unemployment at 9.9%.

If that trend can be sustained,

Visit www.xkcd.com/
Seriously. Do it.

Two data points is not a trend, jackass.

we’ll eventually get the jobless rate down to zero. People will still be suffering, but full employment will have finally been achieved.

This is why we have large data sets: to discourage overzealous extrapolation. Of course, Bob Herbert would understand literally all of this if he had the benefit of a junior high school statistics course. No wonder liberals say we need more math education. They suck at it.