hilarious, in that depressing way

So there's the expected orgy of liberal Seriousness going on about the death of Hugo Chavez. I would merely point out that a lot of the self-same people who recently spoke out against privilege are now lecturing Venezuelans about their late president and what is best for their country. Perhaps they should pause and think it over.

Update: See anti-privilege warrior Cord Jefferson for the Platonic form of this sort of thing.

Update II: The spasm of Chavez coverage, in the next few days, is going to be absolutely hilarious. You're going to get such nakedness, such purity, in what people actually are, when push comes to shove.

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it turns out that class matters

I've been doing this for 5 years or so now, and I still have a limited capacity to predict what things I write will be considered offensive or "out of line" by the jet set. For example: I am still surprised that people get worked up when I point out that the socioeconomic conditions of a writer and his or her upbringing deeply influence their analysis. My example is usually education. When you read the professional opinion writers, you're constantly encountering discussions of education that seem not to realize that failure is a likely outcome in education. They seem not to understand, at all, that willpower alone means essentially nothing for solving our ed problems. Why? I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that so many of the people in our media grew up upper middle class or upper class. They've shuffled from preschool for gifted kids to expensive Montessori private elementary schools to elite private academies to Ivy League colleges. They don't know that educators and education can fail because they've never been exposed to anything but educational success.

That seems pretty elementary and entirely anodyne. But when I've said it in the past, the reaction has been as if I kicked somebody's dog. I broke some sort of code in bringing up the upbringing of people in professional media.

So take this response by Matt Yglesias to Nate Thayer. You might say to yourself, why, this person is remarkably callous about the ability of a broad swath of people to earn enough money to live. Why is he being so glib about other people's professional lives, which is to say, their ability to secure material security for themselves and their families? Well, it's much easier to understand when you realize that Yglesias's father is a millionaire and that he grew up in great material comfort. He's never had to choose between putting gas in the car or going to the doctor. He's never been desperately afraid about paying the rent. He just doesn't know. And it colors a lot of his writing.

Now, perhaps the problem is that people read some sort of furious critique into this. It happens that I think Yglesias should think things through a little more deeply, for reasons both of human compassion and to improve his analysis. (He might, for example, ponder the fact that Tyler Cowen has a regular salaried job, making his situation wholly irrelevant to the concerns of a freelancer like Thayer.) What I am not doing, however, is saying that Yglesias is history's greatest monster, or that he shouldn't be read, or that I'd like to punch him in the groin. I don't begrudge Yglesias his secure upbringing; indeed, that's what we're working for, for more people to get access to that kind of security. I'm saying that he's being his usual short-sighted self, and that you should read his work with interest but also with an appropriate skepticism. I am also saying that perhaps he should endeavor to think a little more outside of his own particular class consciousness. You should also read me with an appropriate skepticism about my own biases.

However, if this post attracts attention, it is guaranteed to engender a response that acts as if what I said is as bad as saying that Yglesias fucks children. Just speaking from experience here.

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you can't eat buzz

This post has been spreading like wildfire, for obvious reasons, among the journalist set. The Atlantic, a publication that never stops talking about how profitable it is, deigned to offer a seasoned professional journalist the grand total of $0 to republish his work-- after he made some revisions for them. But, as the editor says, he'll get buzz! And besides, they only pay $100 for original reporting.

For context, I've talked to tiny academic publishing houses about republishing my work, and they've always offered at least a little cash. It might be $25 or $50, but they've offered, and we're talking about non-profit academic publishers. There, too, the understanding is that nobody makes money off of publications themselves, but that there is a standard procedure whereby your publications lead to salaried employment and professional advancement. (There aren't enough of those jobs, but that's a separate discussion.) For a freelancer, there is no eventual gig.

If this isn't glaringly obvious: writing for The Atlantic is the kind of gig people think they'll get once they get the buzz. What is the higher rung, exactly, that the buzz is supposed to get you than The Atlantic? Where's the big money magazine, if that magazine doesn't qualify? The sense I get is that the big publications assume that they can pay writers in "exposure" and then the smaller publications will pay them. But the smaller publications can't pay, or think they can't pay. They think they're building exposure for the writers to eventually get published in the big, profitable publications... like The Atlantic. 

If you're trying to write professionally and you're regularly working hard and getting paid in buzz, you're getting played for a sucker. People get exposure all the time and end up broke. It goes for publications too; magazines or blogs or whatever get written up in some prominent place, have everybody buzzing about them, and can't pay their editors. There's no natural endpoint for buzz. Sometimes you get paid. Lots of times you don't. A lot of the young writers I talk to have this notion, they'll get the buzz, and suddenly people will start sending them checks. Doesn't have to happen. Usually doesn't happen.

Sadly, the long-term trend will be towards more and more of the journalism and opinion class coming from the ranks of the born wealthy, a trend I think actually began long ago. Especially because those who want to do it professionally are always getting undercut by the amateurs-- like me.

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you've actually got to redistribute the wealth, not just the income

Regular commenter Brett says

I wonder how the actual revenue math would work out in terms of what you'd need for taxation, if you replaced the patchwork of welfare spending with universal single-payer and a basic stipend for every adult. About 76.3% of the US's 313 million people is above the age of 18, so a $25,000 stipend for every adult would lead to an annual cost of $5.97 trillion.

In a somewhat similar vein, a commenter on this Derek Thompson post says

The compensation for GM CEO Dan Akerson was $9 million for 2012. The total number of GM employees worldwide is two hundred thousand. So if we took his entire salary and stock compensation and gave it to the employees, it would be about $45 per employee.

Another commenter makes the fair point that the CEO of GM is, in the absurd world of CEOs, rather poorly paid. And I would also point out that there are hedge fund guys and assorted figures who make hundreds of millions in a year. But, yeah: the general point is a fair one. Taking income alone won't solve it. I imagine you've all seen the video with the graphical representation of the wealth distribution in this country. I think you've got to take the wealth, not just the income. Just as a practical matter.

Of course, that's the sort of thing that would put the wealthy into full-fledged revolt. But I also think that, eventually, the majority of people will revolt against a situation as extreme as it looks likely to become. It just isn't likely to become anything like the socialist revolution of my preference. It's more likely to just be an ugly, violent spectacle. The question is not whether this situation will eventually change. The social contract, which is what really keeps people from coming into your house and taking what you have-- not the police-- can only withstand so much. The question is whether it changes for the better. It seems likely, though, that however change comes, we won't be ready for it.

Either way, understand: I am not calling for class war. I am describing an already-existing class war. The charts in that Derek Thompson post? That video on wealth distribution? That's class war.

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the forest for the trees

Hamilton Nolan's work for Gawker, from the past several years, is a truly mixed bag. Nolan has always been a talented and perceptive writer, and one with an admirable willingness to get angry. His dispatches on unemployment and the individual lives affected by it are admirable and necessary, given the tendency of numbers and statistics to appear impersonal and vague. And he is absolutely right in his repeated insistence that the philosophy of college-for-everyone, and specifically college-funded-by-loans-for-everyone, is a bad idea.

I also think, though that he can be a bit sloppy in making his case. He is far too enamored of the analogy between student loan debt and the housing bubble. I have made this case many, many times. (Nicole Allan and Derek Thompson have an infographic about it.) I don't think and haven't said that there is no crisis coming, and I would argue that we currently have a slow-moving crisis. But that crisis should be thought of as a humanitarian one, and whatever shape a financial meltdown will take, it will unfold in a very different way than the housing bubble did. I won't rehash all the reasons why, but the basic point is that the size of the problem is exaggerated, that nontransferable and immaterial assets behave differently from transferable material assets like houses, that the relationship between the value of a degree and the debt used to purchase it is different from the relationship between a house and its value, that a degree is not subject to perceived changes in value in the way that a house's value is subject to the perception of value of others on its block, that student loan debt is not dischargable in bankruptcy (or by walking away), and that the holder of a majority of student loan debt is the world's most powerful government, which controls a fiat currency and access to the printing press. Again, I'm not saying that nothing bad is going to happen. I'm sure that something bad is already happening! And I've proposed a lot of ways to fix it. But we need to think and speak clearly about the problem.

But more than those specific disagreements, there's the broader sense in which Nolan is indicative of people who make accurate damning critiques of particulars but never quite gets to causes. He advocates ending uncapped student loans-- an idea I fully support-- as part of a move away from college for all. OK. But what next? You see tons of people calling for a return to trade schools. But the rolls of the unemployed are filled with people from the trades, as trades broadly defined are deeply sensitive to the housing market. People say, "we need to get back to making things in this country!," but American manufacturing is in great shape-- it just doesn't employ people at nearly the same rate as it once did. The notion that we're going to reinvigorate the uneducated labor sector seems just as unrealistic to me as the notion that our current higher education funding system is sustainable.

Also, it's worth saying: the problem with both the mortgage fiasco and the student loan debt issue is not the specific industries. The problem is an unrestrained financial sector. The conditions are stark: we've socialized risk in the financial industry while keeping the profits privatized. If the student loan debt bubble is in fact a bubble and it does in fact burst, the banks know that they will be bailed out, one way or another. And literal bailouts are just the most obvious and direct sense in which the government prevents our finance industry from being accountable for its behavior. Trust me: they will find a different vehicle for risky investments, before, after, or during a student loan crisis. To focus on the individual students, or the individual colleges, or the federal loan system, is to miss the actual culprit, which is a completely rapacious and unaccountable financial sector.

When Nolan writes about the unemployed, he does so very poignantly. And he seems to understand how deep our problems are, with our entire economy becoming a machine for siphoning resources to an ever-shrinking number of people at the top, while productivity gains have become totally decoupled from wages. But like a lot of bright, critical people I know, he seems to think that we can tweak our way back to the old economy. People know that it's silly to think that the 1950s Fordist economy is coming back, but they are being just as naive if they think that the economy of the early 2000s is coming back. The finance industry will never restrain itself, and it holds too much power to be effectively regulated. Meanwhile, the pace of technology prevents us from returning to full employment under anything like the working conditions that we would deem minimally necessary. We need to nationalize the finance industry, establish a universal basic income or negative income tax, institute a single-payer health care system to restrain health spending, and raise taxes on the upper and (yes) middle class. I know, I know-- and a pony. But that's no more of a fantasy than getting back to an economy where there's about as many jobs that can provide for a minimum of material security as people who want them. That world is never coming back. Guys: the social contract you thought you signed is dead. Enough good jobs for enough people is never coming back under present conditions.

In the short term: enforce a rigid cap on student loans; prosecute predatory student loan lenders; stop making for-profit universities eligible for federal funds; forgive some significant portion of extant loan debt held by the government (ideally all); and refund the public universities through the state governments, the way they used to be. Institute college cost reforms as I've advocated for to go along with ending uncapped loans on demand. All of that is necessary.

But it is not sufficient. Not when our system is so horribly bent towards remunerating the few at the expense of the vast majority. Until we bend that curve back, by force, the rest is rearranging deck chairs.

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no enemies (because they are) to my left

A common complaint I've heard, occasionally in real life but usually just here online, is that I am "leftier than thou," that my primary purpose is to be the furthest to the left rather than other, more fruitful goals. (To pick one example, that was the tack Gawker took.) That's actually not the purpose of my orientation towards spectrum and extremity. I'm not the leftist-of-all. I'm sure there are dozens of people, if you were inclined, that you could make the case are further to my left. The point is never that I am the most leftest guy. The point is never to define my disagreement with someone as a product of their left-wing extremity. I don't need to be the further to the left. I do need to never, ever say that somebody else is too far to the left.

I emerged into adulthood in a flagrantly reactionary time in this country, the immediate post-9/11 world. And I watched as the nominal liberals undertook daily rituals of exclusion and rejection, endless "Sista Souljah moments," calls for purges of the unworthy ala Peter Beinart.... It was one of the most sickeningly McCarthyist displays I can imagine. I was opposed to it for reasons of fairness and basic commitments to intellectual and political freedom. Since then, I have also come to oppose this shameless behavior for political reasons. I believe that the tendency to hamstring the person to your left is one of the many self-destructive pathologies of the American left, along with the learned helplessness and the chronic refusal to express straightforward pride in what we believe. I've said it a thousand times: conservatives drag the center to the right; liberals chase the new middle over there, so that even if they win the center, they've lost ground. What's more, the tendency of people to support specific liberal policies but to identify with conservatism seems to me a consequence of the profound sense of shame that many prominent liberals still project about their own politics. Conservatives project pride about their beliefs, and operate as if their preferences are straightforwardly correct and better for their country. Liberals project embarrassment about their beliefs, and operate as if their preferences are always in danger of being exposed as out-of-touch, irrelevant, or flat wrong. Is it any wonder that conservatives often enjoy rhetorical success that exceeds their demographics?

I am perfectly willing to disagree with people to my left. I refuse to ever call them too far to the left, or to engage in the purge mentality that has handicapped American liberalism for so long. It is a destructive, ugly impulse, and no real victory is assured for progressives or leftists until it is abandoned.

So take Charles Davis, the anarchist and journalist who writes a lot of great stuff about America's horrid foreign policy. I think Davis publishes some of the most vital and necessary work out there, on a topic that people work very hard to avoid. I also don't doubt for a second that he would look at a great deal of the stuff that I write as the worst kind of collaborationist liberal squish bullshit. That's okay. He might even be right, sometimes. Davis's work will continue to be necessary and vital. When I disagree with it, I can disagree with it without that being indicative of some kind of sectarian split. I can also continue to agree with him even if he thinks I'm wrong. That's true of tons of people I critique, am critiqued by, or argue with.

(My one piece of advice for The Youth of Today: never let someone else's dislike for you ensure that you dislike them. Why give them that power over you?)

I go after many people under the conviction that conflict makes us strong, just as I have been made stronger by the people who have beaten me up in the past. I hope that people will recognize that my purpose lies in getting stronger and getting righter. If I think that someone is genuinely anti-progress or counterrevolutionary, I'll make that perfectly plain. Otherwise I criticize because I see value, because I want the good to get better, and because I deeply believe that the prerequisite of respect is totally unsentimental appraisal. And if you want to take me down, I'm a big boy. I can dig it. I lose sometimes. I'm like a contestant on The Bachelor: I didn't come here to make no friends.

Now let's get free.

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school reform is antilogic

In Philadelphia, the war on teachers continues. I don't see what the fuss is about. Access to drinking water is a luxury!

Like neoliberalism writ large, the school reform movement is a study in contradictions. As I've written before, the laughable hypocrisy at the heart of school reform is that the self-same movement that constantly calls for quantifiable assessment and accountability totally shirks the same. The empirical metrics for major reform efforts like charter schools, private school vouchers, and merit pay are terrible, in aggregate. If the concept of charter schools was a principal, Michelle Rhee would have fired it long ago. And when you point out the continued failure of these measures to produce statistically verifiable, reliable gains-- absent the rampant cheating that attended Rhee's "progress," I mean-- the no excuses crowd suddenly has a lot of excuses. Unionized public school teachers always need to get the ax now; for nonunion charter schools that perform no better (or even worse), there's nothing but time.

That contradictory logic extends to the nature of teacher compensation, as here. The antilogic of school reform, distilled: our current teachers are not talented, skilled, or hardworking enough, so let's making teaching an immensely less attractive job. Solid thinking, there. If it were true that our current teachers are bad at their jobs, there would still be precious little incentive for better candidates to want to take the job, particularly since the self-same reformers are working tirelessly to make the terms of employment worse. When you point this out to the arch-capitalists who believe that ECON 101 will save our schools, they wax ineffable about how "real teachers" do it for love of education, love of children, love of our society.... In other words, they use the logic of capitalism to justify everything but expect teachers to be economic romantics. To which the only reply is: fuck you. Do you do your job for the love of children? Would you spend the next 30 years of your life in bad working conditions, trying to solve intractable problems, because of some vague commitment to community, while the community has no similar commitment to you?

The typical reply is, well, I support higher salaries for teachers! Which is a promise that, as they know, they have no ability to deliver on. It's just a feint. Tenure and job security are tangible employment benefits that don't cost a lot of money; that's why they're prevalent. Saying "I would pay them more in exchange for making their benefits far worse" is not a responsible claim when you can only deliver on the latter.

And it isn't enough to get them into the job. You have to get them to stay. Teachers leave the profession in droves. Turns out that those Nice White Ladies who take it on themselves to heal the world get tired of it after a couple years in the machine. They're the manifestation of school reform thinking: empty promises, fake commitment, superficial caring, and cruel optimism.

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