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Joseph E. Stiglitz

Autor(a) de Globalization and Its Discontents

83+ Works 7,502 Membros 109 Críticas 7 Favorited

About the Author

Joseph Stiglitz is professor of economics at Columbia University. Influential economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Eugene Stiglitz was born in Gary, Indiana on February 9, 1943. He received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1967. He was awarded mostrar mais the John Bates Clark Medal in 1979 and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001. Stiglitz has taught at Yale University, Stanford University, Duke University, Oxford University, and Princeton University. In 2000, he founded the Initiative for Policy Dialogue. Stiglitz worked for the Clinton Administration beginning in 1993 and was the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1995 to 1997. For the next three years he served as the World Bank's Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. Stiglitz chaired the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System in 2009. He has written several hundred articles and many books, including Making Globalization Work and Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. His title The Price of Inequality made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Séries

Obras por Joseph E. Stiglitz

Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) 2,363 exemplares
Economics of the Public Sector (1986) 127 exemplares
Economics (1993) 68 exemplares
Principles of Microeconomics (1672) 62 exemplares
Principles of Macroeconomics (1993) 37 exemplares
The Economic Role of the State (1989) 12 exemplares
Principles of Economics (2013) 5 exemplares
Comércio Justo Para Todos (2009) 4 exemplares
PANICO EN LA GLOBALIZACION (2000) 2 exemplares
UN'ECONOMIA PER L'UOMO (2016) 2 exemplares
Microeconomía (2014) 2 exemplares
Escaping the Resource Curse (2007) 2 exemplares
Introductory microeconomics (2015) 1 exemplar

Associated Works

The Best American Political Writing 2008 (2008) — Contribuidor — 37 exemplares
The Best American Political Writing 2009 (2009) — Contribuidor — 26 exemplares
La Crisis Economica Mundial (Spanish Edition) (2009) — Contribuidor — 4 exemplares

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Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Críticas

A precise recent history of globalisation around monetary policy of the IMF. I don’t understand how this process relates to the global political transformation. Are we globalising volatility...
 
Assinalado
yates9 | 18 outras críticas | Feb 28, 2024 |
We all sense that there is something wrong in American economic and geo-political policies, that they have not been good for the world, but most of the time we are unable to put our finger on precisely how. Stiglitz, Nobel prize winner and one-time chief economic at the World Bank, and economic advisor to American Presidents, spells out in detail what exactly is wrong with the received neo-liberal economics as laid out in the so-called Washington Consensus, pushed unthinkingly on many of the newly independent countries of Eastern Europe with disastrous consequences, and ultimately damaging to the Americans themselves, with their astronomical national debt and individual indebtedness, failing public welfare institutions like public hospitals, education, public safety and law and order, deteriorating race relations, deteriorating public infrastructure,and other manifestations of their cult of individualism. All this is supported by the author's intimate presence in the Presidential bodies during Clinton's time,as well as his wide knowledge of international relations and of course his academic brilliance. The writing, moreover, is transparent and direct, easy and pleasant to read through.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Dilip-Kumar | 3 outras críticas | Nov 7, 2023 |
On the one hand, economics is kinda unfortunate in that it’s supposed to be the most academic thing, the most rational thing, the schooliest thing, vis a vis personal finance and prosperity, even though economics writers don’t teach you how to get ahead and in some cases don’t talk about people’s lived experiences at all, right. I mean, those on the right are more likely to dismiss the problems of the little people, and those on the left to dismiss the hope of things, you know, but either way economics is the life that we as individuals have less control over, and it’s the ‘better’ thing, right.

At the same time, the community aspect does matter, since many collective problems that Joseph points out like corporate leaders taking huge bonuses for leading their corporations, as far as it was up to them, into oblivion, really shouldn’t come up; it shouldn’t even be an issue. Even if some crazy corporation offered a failed leader a huge bonus, that leader should have the honor—a word that does exist in American English even if we spell it the right way lol—to turn it down. I’ve heard that in Japan leaders are more likely to turn down bonuses that aren’t warranted by the situation, although I don’t know much about Japan. Certainly the community counts for more there; historically America is a country without a strong sense of community. The fate of the 300 million plus Americans is slightly less important than the moods of the family dog…. You get that anywhere sometimes but it’s more likely here. I know I certainly value individual life—sometimes community life is pretending—but I try to see how the two are connected. People make fun of Plato with the idea of dismissing family life, but the whole rich failed banker is kinda what he was getting at: if all I care about is me and my kids, then you and your kids count for zero and I’m a schmuck. And people make fun of liberal Christians—if your wife can’t be forgiven for getting the wrong kind of milk at the grocery store, how much more imperative is it for people to realize that religion exists so that there exists something that people are not allowed to disagree with you on—but maybe the Bible isn’t about screwing over your neighbors, right, maybe. Who knows.

Of course, all countries have problems and while I don’t have this unchallengeable belief that America is always the best at everything, I’m also kinda a homebody who doesn’t like to travel and I don’t have the leaning that some educated liberals have that all the other advanced countries are better than the US. All countries have problems, which tend to be more when you have to live there (unless all the other countries are filled with suspicious foreigners lol), and although the collective wealth and might of a superpower can be oversold, I guess there are some fringe benefits at least. And obviously ‘the other advanced countries’ is really only a few; most countries got it much worse from colonialism than the USA, especially large diverse countries, right. I don’t know. To be honest, Americans probably trust each other less than most other countries do, and we probably do have weaker communities and more inequality, but, I don’t know. It still could have come off a lot worse than living here.

And then, when I’m a powerful executive, I’ll only accept a huge payout if we’re not simultaneously asking the taxpayer to bail us out because we suck, you know.

…. Like, I know that it can be tiresome to always be making rules for people, and I know that some people wrongly believe that they’re of necessity harmed by some smart girl making a killing and benefited by some rich man’s son drinking it all away instead of staying at the top, (why I personally don’t like “the 1 percent”—there’s just one person I don’t like here: and it’s YOU!!!), but obviously not all business practices are beneficial or permissible, and somehow or another we’ve got to evolve past the mentality that says, It’s okay because I got away with it—what the Bible might call ‘the scoffers’, you know. Making a few basic rules to safeguard those too morally moronic not to screw up their karma or whatever on their own would generally be good policy, you know.

…. But I don’t know, rent-seeking is bad, don’t get me wrong—the wealth you accumulate should come from actually adding value, not from upper-class gaming of the system—but sometimes he just tries to wow you with the numbers, these abstract numbers, like, the Wal-Mart family owns as much wealth as all the people who shop there, or whatever the numbers are; it’s like, Well, they own a store, and that is a service, which a lot of people value and support, so that creates wealth. Most of the people who shop there, on the other hand, don’t have a business or any way to accumulate money over time aside from their wages (which isn’t wealth, it’s income), and their house (which is really more like a service that they’re using anyway; the only way to cash in on your house is to move out), so in that case, how can you have any wealth? It will take oodles and oodles of them to have the same amount of wealth as the Wal-Mart family…. I mean, on the one side, democracy and stability does require a certain community, a common-wealth, you know. But on the other side, there’s this extreme democracy where it’s like, Hey, I’m here; I showed up. Where’s my wealth? —Not even income but wealth, you know. Are we supposed to just create businesses for people on unemployment? I mean, it probably is too difficult or whatever to go from the bottom to the top, and the people on the top probably could help more, and are probably too scared to. But just the wowing with numbers, “Being rich LITERALLY means you have A-LOT more money!!! Ahhh!!!” I don’t know. I also wouldn’t go back to the 50s, you know. I know that might seem like a false choice, but it is kinda funny. Ah, the 50s, a good time for the white male auto worker. Good times for radicals!…. I don’t know. There is both good and bad in change, but a lot of times analyzing it abstractly and saying, Some people are rich! Moo-hahaha! 🧛‍♂️ I don’t know, you know. I mean, I certainly don’t believe we should starve and refuse medical treatment or whatever to people who haven’t found their way to wealth yet, like the punishment-conservatives. They aren’t even libertarians, really, not really a political-economy, more like a military-politics, you know. “You’re the enemy! You’re poor!” “No no, the rich are the enemy!” It’s like, No one’s the enemy; we should all be rich…. Calm down, okay?

…. I’ll try to keep this brief, since I know that two earner families often struggle too, but the examples he gives are extremely unrealistic—a minimum wage earner providing for a whole family by himself? Seriously? Did that ever really happen even in the heyday of the feminine mystique? And who wants to do work that they don’t get paid for? Work done in the home for no pay is the worst kind of the work, with the lowest social status; having one person do that kind of work exclusively is an extremely questionable decision, to say the least…. Of course, something should be done to make sure that workers can afford child care services, assuming the country needs many many more humans living here than we already have, by no means a shoo-in kind of argument for me!

…. I mean, I know he’s not a communist, but he’s still part of this pattern that’s really funny: the commie who’s like, We’ve got to make sure that every working man can dominate his broad, you know. Every, working man: dominating every, single broad. 👨‍🌾👨‍🏭

…. I mean, in a way, I try to be sympathetic, since many libertarians are assholes, you know, (a racist? Was Hitler really a racist? I beg to differ! He was a socialist! If anything, he was pushing the races together too much! 😸), and certainly there are problems in the system—if there were none, many people /would/ do better, you know, but education here teaches them little that they need to know, although Joe seems to buy into some of these things, like, “all an economy needs is inventors”—wow, too bad the academics aren’t in charge; gee whiz, you know, I guess I would benefit. 😁

And it is kinda strange that he talks about “division” and then buys into, deny the problem vs. deny the solution—like anything a normal person could do to better herself, is like a trick, a distraction from Teh Problems, you know.

What are you gonna do.

…. But I do know that conservatives or whoever use the government, you know. It can be sad.

…. It is true that the government should make some things illegal. I would even go beyond that—hey, this is economics! We’re supposed to be boring!—and say that we should create a society where people /don’t want/ to do the things that should be, and hopefully are, illegal. “Hey, that’s crazy!” I know. It’s crazy to think that humanity will survive. /the villain’s cat jumps up on the desk/

And he just never gets over his obsession with the idea that high-prestige actions should also be highly-financially rewarded, you know. Isn’t there more than one way to be rewarded? If everything high-prestige were highly paid, and no one could get paid for doing something un-prestigious, then the economy would only work if we were all spirit beings, because everyone would be studying philosophy and nobody would be bagging groceries or mopping the floor, you know. I mean: I’m the perfect judge, but I think my writing is equally valuable with Danielle Steel’s, you know. 😸 Now, all I have to do is convince half the girls in the entire world that their opinion is garbage…. /the villain’s cat tips over your glass of water, and then jumps down from the desk/ You see where I’m going with this? It’s like, money is money, and prestige is prestige. You can’t make money be something it’s not. Some rich people are either hated or totally unknown. Some cool people are totally out of step with what the 49th percentile wants, and don’t have a lot of money. That’s just how it is. You can’t blame the rich freaks for everything. That we try is probably half the reason why they get resentful and use their systems-knack to excessively set things up in their favor. The other half is basically that an age with values in transition is bad at being able to create community and restrain or devalue greed…. And neither half of that is really helped by, Oh, poor me: I’m so smart, but she went out with a banker, and I’m going to sit home and compose songs that nobody likes on black guitars, you know. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do, but…. Hey. You know, get over yourself.

And, sure, there are some things, some economic practices, that the government should make illegal.

…. How do we know that the masses are reacting the right way to a changing world. People in general, you know, can be a little—
—Things ain’t working out, that’s how we know the working man is the true man, right. Gosh, I wish I were a Swede: can you imagine how much better the numbers would be if there weren’t hardly any minorities? Of course, the people who are very American might also find me a little—
—Yeah, maybe. But maybe the schools don’t teach people how to succeed.
—We teach the people that money is bad, and school is something you can’t afford, not a ‘good school’ right, and that they have no other options, no other way: it’s either get into a good school you can’t afford that will teach you to loathe money, or else! Or else, dammit!
—I think we should have a class on liberal white men and how they tend to alienate other people, you know. We could call it, “Intellectualism: The Promise, the Peril”.
—Thinking about my life is what I went to school to avoid!
—You and the conservative intellectuals, right—Ancient Greece, so precious, and discrimination: something that eggheads who don’t care about people have Proven, that they don’t care about…. You’re not always that much better, though.
—But I have a graph of 27 countries: look, the brown skin man is pushing our numbers down!

…. We really don’t have a non-colonial left, we just have a left that feels weird about people having money…. And maybe that person can look at poor red man super-tramp and pity him, on a good day, but the stars really have to align for anything good to come from it. Mostly it’s just two sides of a toxic colonial debate: blame the fuckers for being taught the wrong way for a decade or two, right; or close up the gaps: some people figure money out for themselves, or are born into families that pass down helpful beliefs about money—let those fuckers know, money’s not okay, and if you have more, someone else will have less of that bad stuff, and that’s not okay.

…. I wonder how you can be happy if you think that everything is a zero-sum game, and that THEY are to blame, you know.
—Happiness isn’t the point. The point is, THEY are to blame!

It’s also funny how the anti-free trade people can just dismiss China, and really, most of the world, pretty casually. But then, the world is a zero-sum game, and THEY, are not Us!

…. It’s not so much that he never tells the truth, as that I don’t trust him; he’s just as ideological as many of the people on the right, who tend to be punitive and in denial about discrimination. But with Stiggs, it’s like—I mean, you know that Some business and prosperous people do good things, and you know there are some ways to make the system fairer without—I mean, not getting into Plato vs Aristotle; I actually kinda liked the Republic—being paranoid about people helping out their children, right. Not that we’re fundamentally rethinking family vs society; we just don’t want people to “hurt” people by being successful, right. I mean, how do you solve problems if you think like that? And I understand that we can’t punish blue-collar whitey by making Every book about discriminated groups vs the general society, but he does kinda cover that perfunctorily, and I think a lot of people walk away from that sort of discussion thinking that, because they don’t like rich people, they’ve solved racism (and twelve different ways that blue collar whitey suffers). The result? People magazine is the problem, and over-educated white guys who get frustrated with ordinary people and how most people think most of the time, are the solution. Phew. For a minute there, I thought we were confronting something. It turns out, the gate keeper’s still in business! 👩‍💼

…. He just has no imagination. I know I’ve probably said this but I don’t know if I’ve used these words: it’s like, if he could solve the problem, that would be like a loss, the loss of the problem that he’s proving…. Whatever the stats are now, basically with different kinds of discrimination: obvious (almost) discrimination against Blacks and even subtler discrimination against people with physical intelligence, in all but literally a handful of exceptional cases, right—I mean, you shouldn’t have to go to a university to study Plato to get a decent job. Much of what they teach there anyway has little to do with working, and often a lot to do with looking down on those who do, although they use pricing to select for people who have lots of money and therefore statistically will earn a lot…. But you shouldn’t be bullied into talking about Plato’s cave, and even if you’re able to and inclined to, you should be gently prodded to consider the content and not just the implicit class aspect: /go back to the cave/, /leave/intellectual ultimate reality, and give back…. It’s funny, they never talk about the awesome skills you learn in college, just: if you have $200,000 to spend, I bet you’ll earn a lot; if people were doing street drugs at your high school, I bet you’ll be smacked down by the man…. Well, /yeah/, genius…. And these are the “liberals”, you know, saying these things. Makes you wonder what happened to Brother Malcolm.

…. It’s certainly true that your bank balance isn’t a measure of your worth, even if sometimes your wealth is a measure of how much and how openly you’ve given—fortunately not necessarily how much you’ve suffered, or the way to get ahead in life would be to trade your sanity for dollars, and even your health, which is still what too many people think. But it is true that money is what you have, not who you are, even if it comes from this game you play. But many leftist intellectuals play it the other way: they arbitrarily define their worth as being much, much more than their income—or even other people—because…. Well, because that’s what they wanna do. Scientists are studs, salesmen are duds. “How do you define your invention as worthwhile if nobody wants it?” Well, Prole, I’m a scientist, and I define my contribution as the most, Because I Say So. In return, I demand…. I don’t know, a nice house, or at least small children to bully and beat the joy of life out of, because…. Well, because that’s what I demand. I discovered science, and I define that as being the best. —Well, I discovered a really good tennis serve and I’m a basketball center, because I’m really tall, so I define that as being the best. But I’m glad you’re really secure in yourself, to define your unpopular niche activity as the best when most people don’t understand it. —I’m not secure, dammit. I’m the best. Go fuck yourself. I’m calling the mayor. I want the best house in this town. Maybe the mayor can give it to me.

…. I realize that he paints himself as a moderate, (which basically amounts to: as much negativity as I can muster without calling for blood in the streets), and doesn’t own all of his negativity, because of these nothing concessions that mean nothing and are felt as nothing—but basically, it’s like there’s this rule, I WILL talk about bad businesses, and I WILL NOT talk about good businesses, like he’s running “Failure” magazine, or something. I know he looks down on the individual layer, but there are good aspects to our /system/ as well, despite all the naivety and crookedness, and a lot of elitism in what he represents, too…. And just crippling, unhappiness-making negativity.

…. Although resources and outcomes are different, cynicism directed at the rich and cynicism directed at the poor both derive from the human negativity bias, and hostility-at-the-other. (Sometimes there’s even this international brotherhood of macho white men on different sides of the issue, you know, like in France with the anti-centrists, yellow jackets they call them, or even here, where Trump and Bernie supporters probably often consume some of the same sci-fi and adventure media, and complain about Biden.) Do a crime news program: Black guy shoots somebody’s grandmother—news. Black guy visits with his own or his girl’s grandmother—not news. Write a “de-regulation, no!” book, business collapses—news. Business succeeds—not news. Businesses succeeding is advertising—impure; businesses failing is negativity—pure. And plenty of people grab both ends of this. See a strange Black guy who looks poor or whatever—call the cops. See a rich person’s house in a better neighborhood, complain on the Internet. Again, resources and outcomes are different; I can’t emphasize that enough, but in terms of the energy of the person generating the negativity, well, what’s the difference, conceptually, at least?

…. It’s possible for someone to profit from a deal that’s not a good deal for everyone, but it’s good Because I Can—the arbitrariness of that—needs to be balanced with the arbitrariness of it’s bad Because I Say, you know. It’s good because I was able to swing it; it’s bad Because I Say: I’m the one who decides these things, dammit; I studied chemistry at Homeric University! —And basically, someone on the other side of this, with his disposition or emotional evolution, wouldn’t listen to him for two seconds, basically. The rich are bad because they don’t join the military to fight? What, and economists do? I bet Joey fought in Iraq, right; it’s like, It’s good if it makes you look bad, and if it makes me look bad, well, that part’s not important. Why? Because I Say, dammit.

…. I’m going to try to make this the end of my comments; he’s just so repetitive, you know. He’s just so bent on making enemies: of course doctors don’t take on larger case loads if they’re being paid more—they better not! And anyway, they think they deserve //money// for saving people’s lives? The fascies! 😸 And don’t forget: you’re either market-skeptical, or you’re “the Right”, 100%, no qualifiers, all in the same boat: you are the weakest link, goodbye! And he gets such a hard-on returning //again and again// to the brave noble true scientists, reveling in their non-rich status, you know: conveniently shelving the fact that science is arguably the most elitist aspect of modern civilization—and not always, but often, intentionally so, you know. Excluding proles from the discourse of science feels almost as good as jacking off, you know. And that’s without talking about background on top of that! 😹

…. One last: It’s not that the Twilight Zone Party is always right, obviously, if they even believe in capitalism anymore, or if that’s even our system now or ever has been. —It’s all free choice and no unconscionable violence; you can trust me! 😸— But I’m not an economist, so in terms of actively trusting something that Herr Liberalehaus says, you know…. It comes down to trust. —The other side says the answer to the equation in 30, but I did the math and the answer is really 70. Trust me! You can trust me!— But you’re a jackass. Why would I trust you?

…. P.S. I mean, I realize that if you have $1 million or more, you don’t deserve even one dollar in addition no matter what, just how it is, because you’re the villain’s cat, those are just the rules: but if you have 12 of something after being taxed at 30%, if you get taxed at 70% instead, I’m not good at math, but you’re going to be left with less than //10//, you know. “Well, those people are garbage. People in general are garbage. I’m a scientist. You can trust me.” You know, so it’s like, if I know you’re at least indifferent to the truth when I can follow the numbers, why would I trust you for the math degree stuff? The jokers on the other side lie too, but I’m at least left where I was before I picked up Joker #2, you know. Minus a huge investment of time in a repetitive book.

…. A man’s word is his law because a man is a man, and what a man has to do is tame the Wild West…. Sheesh, I mean, I hate to do the cohort thing, although sometimes it’s true: it’s quite a Silent Generation shuffle.

Tune in next week for: The damn plebs don’t oppose the 1% the way they’ve been ordered to; don’t they know that I know what’s best for the little people? After all, I’m an anti-elitist? How could I not be, right. I know a man’s word is his law, and that the Wild West has to be settled by true men….

…. It’s true that I don’t think we should discourage poor people from voting, but I do kinda think that there are these assumptions that the stereotypical liberal makes about whether most people are right, that don’t really make sense—they’re right alright, well, sometimes anyway. Who’s right: One Direction, or one of the Top Ten Forgotten Bands of the Nineties? Excuse me, excuse me, most people don’t know this but: (forgotten band). Who’s right: someone with a median amount of money, or someone with an unusually large amount of money? Hey man, we’re all alright—except for a few rich fuckers. You know. So, which is it: 80% vs. 20%, or, 99% vs. 1%, you know: gee whiz, the one time you’re not supposed to talk about Hitler, right 😸 Now, don’t get me wrong, being biased against the 1% because of race and deciding to wipe them out is worse than being biased against the 1% because of money and deciding to form an unpopular band to mock them, but—I mean, sight unseen, is 99% vs 1% always one way or the other way? How do you decide something like that without more information? How would you know, right? I mean, really—I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think that politics matters and different political systems matter—but maybe democracy, fascism, and communism are all just variations on the same system, right. And not that aristocracy doesn’t have its own sicknesses. But it’s like, We are the 99%! We are the 99%! (art historian) God dammit, you’re all probably dumb as fuck! —Sight unseen, he’d say that, right. I mean, really, we should just shelve the whole argument. Can’t the 99% change? Can’t the 1% change? Can we really describe someone from either group, sight unseen? What exactly are we doing, then?

…. Bad things: America, globalization; people not having enough money, people having too much money; things in general
Good things: people having the correct amount of money; the Top Ten Forgotten Bands of the 90s; Doctor Who; a world in which the elite are crushed and I rule the world.

…. The people are right about things because they’re the people, and it’s important to be people-ish, you know; the right thing is the people’s thing because that’s what the people want, unless—UNLESS!—it’s not right. The people need to be guided by someone who understands the people-ish thing, you know.

(Wizard Hermes) And in that case, I call my trusty helpers, Smiley and Rex! Smiley! Rex! 🧌🧌
—Eh. What is it Master. I’ll help the Master.
—Nonsense; EYE will help the Master.
—You! Fat lot of help //you// would be!
—You’re making me mad, Smiley! (raises club)
(Wizard Hermes) But wait! You mustn’t fight each other! You must fight the people! Er—the un-people-ish people! Fight //them//!

…. In the real world, money decisions have more to do with emotion that planner’s uber-rationality, which is why we need the government and the educational elites who ought to run the government, you know, the better to uphold our racist sexist educational system that incidentally upholds planner’s uber-rationally, to—stop laughing! Damn it, I’m a scientist!

…. Analysis: Emotion has the major role in how people spend money in the free market, which is unacceptable, because people ought to be robots even though they’re not. Recommendation: Shackle the market. 🤖

…. Though of course, some white guys have racist sexist reasons to support the market, and other white guys have racist sexist reasons to oppose it.

Stiggy is funny though. —(after 98% market-critical discourse) Which is why we need a balanced society, 50/50!…. What’s that? Why, because it’s my job to hate you, dammit! I’m Mind-Boy!

…. I’d support an estate tax designed to raise money—the government does need money, after all—and not one designed to punish rich people for wanting to take care of their children, a “the perfect world is one where no child can expect a little unearned help from family”—and I guess I don’t have to tell you what Stiggy’s attitude is, you know….

And how much different would it be to say, instead of, you know—You damn pleb, my plan is in your best interests, you fucking retard—I believe you would prosper more if…. —You know, psychically, it would be pretty different, probably too much for his own evaluation of his ‘best interests’, lol.

…. And then the white boy who hardly ever said a thing about Blacks, except maybe two lines in hundreds of pages, that he probably remembered from kindergarten, mentioned Obama first to criticize him, in a section about “managing perceptions”. Translation: I shouldn’t have to manage your perception of me, you damn pleb, you damn blackie—I shouldn’t have to talk to you the right way, and God knows you shouldn’t punish me for it, the way that I’d like to punish all of you.

…. Oh, yes, I enjoy talking about the environment; it alienates people, and that’s something I love to do. I call it my “alienation strategy”, and it’s what will unite this country behind the environment…. Yes, I’d like the roast beef sub, extra roast beef, please…. What, why are you looking at me like that. Oh, I know why. —Extra cheese, too.

…. I mean, it’s like he’s going to pummel the rich people into submission, and save capitalism; maybe he should be working for Ron DeSantis, especially since it’s largely like: Inequality—Why Inequality Matters To White Men, And Why We Should All Try To Eliminate White-Man-Inequality, you know.

…. Being a man in grey tones, I really think he undersells the necessity of culture. The government can—and should—regulate a few “bad apples” who don’t care about the rules people have agreed on, but if millions of rich and powerful people are united in opposition to certain proposed rules, they’ll probably block them, especially if the great bulk of people don’t care one way or another. A “war”, if that’s what this is, is not a set-piece battle. It’s a clash of cultures—hopefully not races, lol, but that book, wow. Never mind about that one book. Cultures do clash, though—all the time. But his whole culture is: I win when I use my toxic large masculine brain to grind you to powder…. Or at least when I have you shouting at me. But that’s a //disservice// to his “side”, if his “side” isn’t just his own personal reputation as an Odinic sort of character, you know.

…. A certain amount of what he says is certainly true, but he has very little regard for the people he argues against, and, the better to insult them, lumps everyone who needs some readjusting lol, as “the Right”—which in his dualistic schema can mean anything from the most stubborn and aggressively delusional Republicans, to anyone who wants to be rich, or even who doesn’t want to be a charity case when they can’t work anymore. (Anyone who doesn’t like being rescued is bad, just like the one who doesn’t want to rescue! That makes sense, right!) He knows so little about the individual person, and is so convinced that anyone who might want to teach them to be more successful is really only trying to punish them; and obviously you have to punish the punishers, right…. But who punishes the punishers of the punishers? And who punishes //them//, in their turn? 😑

…. And don’t forget, your sister is the pretty one. (to stranger) Isn’t her sister prettier?

…. And for an economist to call you a medieval doctor, sheesh; that’s like a normal person calling you a child molester, you know. ~And he touched little children! —Fine, fine. But did he Follow the Science? 🧪

…. There should be more investment in training/re-training workers/potential workers, and more emphasis on making education practical instead of anti-practical, but I don’t see that meaning that businesses should refrain from automating and becoming more profitable because idiot jobs that machines can do are so rewarding, both financially and personally, right…. Sometimes the general population, which has the negativity virus almost as much as academics (save Ancient Greece!), has the complaint that jobs are becoming too easy! They’re taking all the mental drudgery out of being a cashier! When I was a cashier, I had to subtract 87 from 24 in two seconds 38 times and hour, and by the littlest god, you should have to suffer weird things like that happening to you, too!…. If we replace human calculators with actual fucking calculators, where will the mathematicians come from? “Dude, sorry to break your fucking bubble, but mathematicians do not sit around adding and subtracting large numbers all day to prove they can. They do interesting math, and leave the mental drudgery to calculators.”

…. Capitalism would be the perfect system if we could all just come together and agree not to make too much money, then we will have little-man capitalism, for the little white man, and that will be truly be…. The End of Inequality.

Can’t make this garbage up. I could go into this whole thing about economics being a sport, you know: you know, like, two basketball teams play, the one thing not at stake is that basketball is a great game (unless maybe if it’s a women’s game, right); it’s like…. I’m the best; I’m an economist, you know. And economics is a great game to play. You untermenschen should try some day…. Or not. Don’t worry, though; I’ll make sure there’s no “inequality” (wink wink).

What a waste of time.

…. I am writing this sentence to order you to believe that I am a moderate, and not, I don’t know, a cranky old man, even though in 99% of the sentences I’m racking up kills against system man, right. After all, I’m explicitly saying I’m a moderate, and everything is explicit knowledge. Everything is explicit. Show me your tits!

…. It’s just not a good book, and it’s not a good conclusion. If he were to show some restraint and ask for one or two, or maybe three of his reforms, you know—any one of them is possible and reform-y in isolation or as part of a limited package, but asking that all of them be passed at the same time is indeed an exercise in dreaming/enraging the reactionaries as an exercise in itself that has no possibility of success…. Conclusions, in particular, are a place for emotion, although economists don’t rightly know that that is an ordinary English word; I think at the end he should have talked about respect. He could have talked about respect for the accomplished, in a non-trivial way—use an Example, right, you abstract prude (intellectuals, it’s like, either porn or prudery, or by alternation, although usually the second, right)…. And, at least as important, maybe more: respect for the poor. Respect for the people at the very bottom, in all the most stigmatized ways, And the working poor, the ‘average’ poor, And the upward-mobility-project people who haven’t “made it” yet, whereas really the way things are now, even the latter are basically seen as a national security threat, and not as an opportunity, you know…. But like I said, there’s emotion, and then there’s the economics of this age, and perhaps respect is a sort of emotional stance, right.
… (mais)
 
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