Economic Blinders
I reserve the term "hogwash" for David Brooks' latest column which posits nine reasons why the economy is awesome and Democratic populism is premised on fear mongering, demagoguery and falsehood. The piece concludes
All of this is not to say everything is hunky-dory. Inequality is obviously increasing. There's evidence that global trade is producing more losers.Instead, the main point is that the Democratic campaign rhetoric is taking on a life of its own, and drifting further away from reality. Feeding off pessimism about the war and anger at Washington, candidates now compete to tell dark, angry and conspiratorial stories about the economy.
I doubt there's much Republicans can do to salvage their fortunes by 2008. But over the long term a G.O.P. rebound can be built by capturing the Bill Clinton/Democratic Leadership Council ground that the Democrats are now abandoning. Whoever gets globalization right will have a bright future, and in the long run, the facts matter.
"Drifting further from reality." "Feeding off pessimism." "candidates now compete to tell dark, angry and conspiratorial stories about the economy." For David Brooks, reality consists of getting in a car, driving to a few suburbs to collect anecdotes, then writing a book about these real Americans. His thesis is that the upper-middle class' interests are identical with that of the economy at large, so anything that is good for the national GDP is good for everyone. The main flaw is hitching incomes to a national average. As we all know, the average income of everyone sitting in a bar goes up considerably when Bill Gates walks in, but real income doesn't change. And if people are so well off, then why do so many people feel insecure about the economy (discounting Iraq as an issue) and why do an astounding number of people think the country is on the wrong track? Have they been brainwashed by the Democratic conspiracy?
Brooks is simply a liar and an ideologue. He admitted only a few days ago to making up statistics--surely this makes him a trustworthy authority on the health of the economy. To the editors of the NY Times: please hand over any columns about the economy to the only guy on your staff who is an economist instead of the guy who once interviewed Milton Friedman and experienced an Augustinian conversion.
UPDATE: Specific and factual refutation of Brooks' nine economic indicators can be found here. I didn't bother with it myself because I knew I would find such a link with little effort. Blogging makes fact-checking easy!
UPDATE II: Atrios notices the political strategy of letting hacks like Brooks continue to lie to the country:
While I don't think dishonest hackery should have any place in the NYT or any other supposedly respectable paper, I actually hope conservatives and Republicans keep trying to explain to the great masses that the econonomy is AWESUM!!!!! People are under the impression it's really not awesome. Such impressions are not formed by taking a look at facts and figures - even dishonest Brooksian ones - but by personal direct experience, that of friends, family and neighbors, and probably overall by anxiety about the future. Telling them that everything is wonderful isn't going to convince them, it's just going to piss them off.
I would add that in addition to pissing people off, the bonds between libertarian Republicanism--in a word, Reagan--and the people will erode and that is a good thing. The supply-side dog-and-pony show had a good run, but it always was voodoo and now that people are waking up to that fact, they will be more likely to embrace the Democratic approach to the economy which--gasp!--doesn't lead to communism. It's also amusing to hear Brooks anticipate capturing the middle good ceded by Clinton. Brooks just isn't very smart. That triangulation bullshit had its time and place. Now, like supply-side economics, it is destined for the museum of economic curiosities like so many systems that preceded it.
UPDATE III: Just because I love picking on David Brooks. Here's another refutation, this time with charts and graphs! Of course none of this changes the fact that Brooks still has a cushy columnist job (in addition to his other engagements) and isn't in danger of losing that status, either. Therein lies the problem.