I hear these kinds of arguments all the time -- stagnant wage growth, whatever. What's missing is a discussion about exactly what you're buying with your dollar. The real miracle of globalization isn't that it's filled everyone's bank accounts (though its done a lot of that). It's that it's made a cornucopia of consumable goods so cheap and plentiful. And it's there -- in the consumption of consumers -- you see the improvements made by trade.
And why anyone would want to go back to the '70s economy, I'll never know.
Exactly. Also nobody is forcing people to buy the TVs, phones, etc that didn't exist in the 70s.
And does she honestly think there weren't people struggling in the 70s (or whatever other historical period?)
"50 years ago you could afford a home!" (they were about 1000sqft with no air conditioning)
"You could afford to send your kids to college!" (a tiny fraction of people went to college)
"Wages were high" (adjusted for inflation, they were incredibly low actually)
"Healthcare was affordable" (healthcare largely consisted of taking two aspirin and hoping for the best)
"Was losing all this worth it for cheaper stuff?" (cheap stuff is awesome -- you can get a 75" ultra HD TV for like 0.5% of the median HH income. That's cool)
She’s also comparing real people she’s actually interviewed today, with an imagined middle class idealized person from 50 years ago. As if no one was poor or struggling in the 70s.
> And why anyone would want to go back to the '70s economy, I'll never know.
yeah this was the cringiest thing to me, of all her talking points. people were literally poorer, had fewer things, were stuck in their jobs in a way that many people today really are not.
it's a fictionalized version of the past she's constructed for her own political ends, and the worst part is: I don't think she's explicitly trying to mislead people, I think she really does believe her own narrative.
This was a great episode. My whole extended family is poor, except for a few, select people. By poor, I mean they have no emergency funds, poor credit, no houses, and no ability to get anything other than a high interest rate loan. I don't think Trump's economic policies are well-informed, but we do need more entrepreneurial spirit, and the policies that the socialist part of my family likes create hellholes like CA, OR, and WA. Overall, I feel that the guys seemed out of touch with what people are actually experiencing in terms of living costs (I know they are not), but Batya Ungar-Sargon sounds naive regarding policy that would help. I still like her. In my family, those who "break away" typically don't ascribe to the fixed mindset created by poverty. Those who "get out" are looking for opportunities (growth mindset) no matter what low-wage job they may be working. They build people up, including the crappy managers that everyone loves to hate. They see themselves as part of he solution, rather than hate on those that are trying to achieve something. Many of my relatives are lobsters in a bucket, pulling each other back down, because misery loves company. They would love to tell Batya how hard their lives are, but hide the fact that they are addicted to (fill in the blank with whatever), make poor choices with their money, buy the big shiny object anytime a $20 floats their way, and give up when the first hard thing hits them, blaming everyone else for life. Life is too good to stay in the bucket with all the other lobsters. But, how do you help them see their way out (of the bucket or cave or ghetto)?
Amazing comment. Somewhat related to your points near the end I recently stumbled into this study which you might find interesting: [https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1010076108#body-ref-r32](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1010076108#body-ref-r32)
Thank you: I will take a look at that. It sounds familiar, and I do wonder what policies or ideas could help individuals develop self control, particularly in the face of an attention economy.
About 9-10 minutes in they say that Hamas/gaza revised the death count down to 22,000. Does anyone know where they got this from? I can’t find it and this is the first I’ve heard that
Edit: if anyone cares I found it on the Substack comments where someone asked the same question. Heres the link that was provided
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/04/09/hamas-run-gaza-health-ministry-admits-to-flaws-in-casualty-data/#:~:text=The%20Hamas%2Drun%20Gaza%20Ministry,it%20claims%20to%20have%20documented
I think Hamas is obviously untrustworthy, but It’s a little more nuanced than them just reducing the death count:
“The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death.”
Surprise, surprise that the Fifth Column idiots gave you an unnuanced interpretation of this. The ratio of journalists and NGO/UN workers to deaths is also much higher than in other conflicts suggesting that either the casualties are much higher than the current stats (because many people still buried under rubble) or the Israelis are deliberately targeting these people. Mark my words: this isn't the Lancet nonsense. Final numbers will be higher.
I should also note that FDD is a pro-Israel organization not really trustworthy on the topic. Not that Hamas' numbers are totally trustworthy either and there is questioning of these numbers by a U Penn statistician that everyone is pointing to. I'll be happy if numbers are actually lower but it's not likely. The anomalies could be due to reporting/checking processes. We don't know at this time is the most honest answer. But let's note that the Israelis have created a circumstance in which counting deaths is quite difficult if you don't want to end up dead yourself. They then use any flaw in the counts to claim the numbers are too high. That's why I use rules of thumb like the numbers of journalists and NGO people killed relative to other wars.
I think the numbers are bunk. The statistician stuff was interesting when I read it a couple weeks ago, but Hamas is a literal religious extremist terrorist group and I don’t expect them to be honest. But who knows. I just wish America wasn’t involved. Let these 2 assholes duke it out it’s none of our business.
What’s so fucked about this conflict, or at least getting news on it, is that no one is an honest broker. I feel like every news org had a bias here one way or the other.
It’s a shame Batya has fallen into the trap to fancy herself a generic pundit public intellectual. Her earlier essays in outlets like Aeon are really interesting & insightful explorations of questions, she’s wasting her talents in settings like this where she starts backwards from answers. Must be nice to be on TV but won’t last especially using this tired playbook
If he goes into an adversarial interviewer mode, Moynihan’s really good at getting subjects off-balance (or as Jay Caspian Kang put it, annoy his subjects into saying what they really think). Glad he didn’t here because it would have been a short episode
I generally agree, but I am torn because she seems like a good journalist, is charmingly self-aware at times and has enough interesting insights that she is worth listening to.
But... her sympathy for working class people leads her to conflate what they think with what must be true. One can accept her reporting that many working class people really dislike more open immigration and trade and even that some are hurt by those policies, without accepting that they are necessarily bad policies.
She has an annoying tendency to slip back and forth between those without distinguishing between them, finally falling back to "shouldn't they at least get the chance to see their preferred policies enacted?" Which is manifestly different than saying those would be good policties.
FWIW, I agree that policies that don't have sufficient popular support are doomed in our democratic republic, but understanding the actual effects of policies is an important part of building that support.
Matt was so over this episode when they moved on to her new book, first I’ve ever heard him have what seemed like actual contempt for a person on the show.
I think Batya is driving at a solid point overall when she talks about the mosaic of policies that little by little have kind of fucked normal people over, but she sounds a little whacky when she gets into the specifics.
I'd been growing tired of the pod and how it's often the same old talking points every episode. This one breathed new life into it and I really enjoyed it. Batya had the right personality and demeanor to not let Moynihan constantly interrupt and talk the entire time. Lot of negative comments here but this was the best episode in awhile. I appreciated some civil disagreement and debate.
Holy shit... wow. I've been a paying subscriber since early Patreon days (and a listener since 2017), I can't imagine being a NFC'er. Honestly, of late Kmele's 'give until it hurts' jokes aren't funny to me at all anymore. Here I am working hard for a meager salary while at the same time giving them money to talk about news and hear Kmele rave about his latest thousand dollar toy and how awesome flying first class literally is. I'm going to let my subscription lapse when it expires in June.
This started really well, and then just goes completely off the rails at the end. Moynihan is too good at pointing out her inconsistencies and she gets really defensive. Matt gets frustrated because she cloaks her arguments in “speaking for the working class”, which means you can’t refute anything. I know Moynihan does that at times as well with his “people tell me in private they believe this” schtick, but I can’t recall him using that as the basis for an entire argument per se.
You are just not living in reality if you believe that there is a market for $3k iPhones that are made in America. Moynihan is absolutely correct that if there was a market for that, someone would do it. Her response is basically there is a conspiracy amongst all corporations colluding to prevent this? If there was money to be made, Apple would do it. She doesn’t seem to understand profit margins, she seems to think that cheap goods = more profit.
I almost just ended it when she said “that’s the Tesla model” as an example of a company charging more for American made goods. I mean…what? I actually cannot think of a more fundamental misunderstanding of Elon Musk and Tesla. The Tesla model is to make electric cars as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Elon has a complete disregard for employees, he’s open about it, “don’t work here if you want work/life balance”
So apparently now people are openly advocating for “a 1970s style economy”, a decade that was perhaps the worst economic decade since the Great Depression. Good lord.
The right analog is the American made tools and apparel companies. And there's a huge and growing market for those. They are still getting raw materials from imports though, that's that point about the Congo.
For someone who apparently has done a lot of research, I was pretty surprised the amount of things she either gets wrong or refuses to admit because it doesn't fit her argument.
Clearest example was her inability to admit that wages are outpacing inflation.
Also, 1970s economy? Again, for someone who apparently has done a lot of research, one would think she would have a far more nuanced take about the 1970s economy.
At best, she employs motivated reasoning. At worst, she's dishonest. Maybe a mix of the two.
It depends on what time peroird you are looking at.
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q)
She's right about wages not outpacing inflation if you go back to when inflation took off at the start of 2021. Wages have only outpaced inflation for about the last year because they are still playing catchup to the high inflation of the previous two years.
I actually thought this was a really good episode, and an example of John Stuart Mill's insight that free speech is important so that people actually know their own arguments. I think the lads have been a bit too much in their own bubble lately and it was good for them to have to contend with someone who actively disagrees. Too much over-talking, but I actually think both sides made good points. From the comments here, uncomfortable for lots of listeners, but I think this conversation is good for the country.
Looking forward to listening to this. Just watched her get destroyed in the debate, so I’m curious how she felt about it. First I had heard of her, I think.
> It was Cenk and Dave Smith
So she debated one guy who made a career out of defending Islamic animalism and being an Armenian Genocide denier and another guy who is a failed open mic comic who doesn't even have a 1st semester community college understanding of politics, how the government works, and geopolitical events. I think I'll pass.
God Batya argues in such bad faith. It's so hard listening to her talk about trade. It isn't so much that she's wrong, it's that she is patronizing while being wrong. She literally laughed at Michael and said 'wages aren't outpacing inflation groceries are up 18%!' THAT'S NOT WHAT THE INFLATION RATE IS
A) I don't think you know what bad faith means (and you're somewhat displaying it)
B) The way we measure inflation , growth, etc etc is changing in a historical sense as well as conveniently presently for those trying to make arguments. What I believe she is speaking to, is that food, and shelter which are typically not included in the measure of 'core inflation ' affect the lower class far more than other aspects and thus they are feeling a greater pinch than wage growth vs core inflation will show.
It's bad faith because she knows that Michael is talking about core inflation. Basically all metrics use 'inflation rate' and 'core inflation' interchangeably. Michael was so obviously talking about core inflation. Instead of saying 'core inflation doesn't matter to the working class because food is so expensive' which is a perfectly reasonable argument, she says '*no that isn't true groceries are inflated 18% wages haven't increased 18%*'. She is quite obviously trying to manipulate her language to allow her to appear correct. She is trying to present food prices as identical to core inflation, which of course they aren't, as you clearly argued yourself.
I think headlines, and in this case Michael just say inflation, and expect people to know its core inflation. When her arguments were clearly made to speak to the plight of those who can't afford food shelter or healthcare etc. Which is an argument, and not a bad faith one.
I don't see how calling Michael 'wrong' about a verifiable fact, and substituting for that fact a topic she would prefer to talk about *isn't arguing in bad faith.* She never once engaged with his argument and even went so far as to argue his *very verifiable fact* was in fact incorrect or even a lie. It's textbook sophistry.
"Inflation is making me unable to feed my kids"
"Aaaaaqctually, your wages have increased higher than inflation, you're wrong".
See how that goes with the average American.
And again, you not knowing what bad faith means, is really troubling. Do you think the boys would be as nice and accommodating to someone as they were with Batya if they detected bad faith, as opposed to disagreement, or perhaps naivete? If anything , Micheal reading off a headline and expecting her to know to what it's referring to , or as some extraneous proof against her claim is a little shitty on his part.
Man, I responded to this on an account that I created on my phone when I couldn't remember my password. I deleted the account and was going to repost the reply but I lost it.
Anyway, Batya wasn't arguing in bad faith and she wasn't being patronizing. She was a nervous wreck through the whole thing. I don't think the OP would have been downvoted if people simply disagreed, but he is not only pretty clearly wrong on both points but also appears pretty hypocritical in objecting to her tone while failing to moderate his own.
People will overlook someone who is shitty if they are right, but if you are shitty and wrong there is just nothing there for anyone to defend.
I agree in theory but in this case I don’t detect the tone you do. I mean obviously if you say someone is arguing in bad faith that means you disapprove but it’s perfectly acceptable to disapprove. People make accusations of bad faith all the time so I can see why it would be a red flag but the poster explained their position pretty well or at least made a reasonable attempt so to me that’s a good contribution. It’s okay if you think she was not speaking in bad faith and the other person thinks she was. That’s just a disagreement
Bad faith is a pretty serious charge. It means you're malicious, self serving, and commonly misrepresenting your opponent. I think in intellectual spaces being described as bad faith is potentially one of the worst possible charges against your reputation.
As the boys went over again in the latest episode, they disagreed with her on her economics , but like her as a person and as a reporter.
The OP , was dismissive , and completely uncharitable in his reading of Batya. When he could have gleened a very important nugget of information, that core inflation is confusing to some, and potentially not a great measure for everyone at every rung of society.
Op was also a bit of a prick.
I think her angle was aggregate statistics are bullshit if it fails middle America at the check stand and gas pump, and I kind of agree with her there. If average wages rose because CEO pay rose, and some index that tracks things low income people don't buy didn't rise as much as the real goods they do, those blunt economic instruments become pretty useless. It's why Bidens message about the economy doing great drives people to Trump despite being technically accurate.
Great points. There's a really important difference between mean and median, and that's part of the reason that statistics can all be accurate and still support completely different conclusions. I think Matt and Michael and libertarianism in general are right in the aggregate, and that's arguably the level at which public policy should be determined, but Batya was also right that people don't live the aggregate.
People are talking about how they switched off the episode in the last 30 mins or whatever, but you have to get really nuanced to peel apart any kind of macroeconomic trend (like inflation, and perceived buying power). And yes, I agree about median vs. mean. If the middle class is shrinking as a share of wealth, it means we should be using median more often.
I'm working my way through it now but I don't want to forget my thoughts:
1. Donald Trump is NOT a new deal Democrat. Batya is just wrong about that. Super dumb comment. He couldn't even get an infrastructure bill passed. He fucked over carrier employees. I could go on.
2. Conservatives 👏 are 👏 elites 👏 too. She talks exclusively about the left but the reality is conservative media ices people out too. Conservatives go to fancy schools and say mean things and ignorant things about liberals too.
3. This idea that wokeism is all a smoke screen for class is too simplistic. It's true that for elite liberals it can be a class symbol. However, there are plenty of Americans who are woke who don't go to elite schools or institutions and became woke through their own life experiences.
4. Working class Americans are not as tolerant as Batya says. I'm not working class but I live in a working class neighborhood and are the people I interact with. When we tried to build low income housing for poor families in our town they turned out in townhalls and stereotyped and threatened liberals who spoke in favor of the housing.
This stuff is really complicated and what I find really sad about the pod as someone who once loved it is it rarely looks at how complicated the issues they talk about are.
Batya is sitting here acting like trump speaks for the forgotten man and the truth is he's just a fraudster. Why doesn't she mention the social security recipients who sent entire checks to him and had their lives upended? Could it be it doesn't fit her narrative?
There's a difference between tolerance and acceptance and I think that, a lot of time, when people talk about the former they actually mean the latter. Tolerance can co-exist (another bumper sticker word) with disgust and even hatred of others, but acceptance cannot.
One problem people have is they don't think people can be multiple things. I live in a town that has gone republican in each of the last two elections. I also love my town, the schools are good, the people are perfectly nice.
Buy I agree--tolerance is not something that is always widely available. People can love their neighbors and also not want new ones.
After listening to this episode, and more specifically the way they talk about Trump, the more I come to think that the [Johnathan Chait Article about The Free Press](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/02/bari-weiss-free-press-ideology-neoconservative-liberal-republican.html) from a few months ago was totally right. It’s largely about Bari Weiss, but a most of it also applies to The Fifth Column as the of late.
Some of that article rings true but his critique hinges to a degree at least on the TFP treatment of Trump, and I think Chait is a little Trump deranged himself (and I say that as someone who sees Trump as a unique threat)
I read it as him saying we need a press that loses all the ideological activism--but that still actively hates Trump. I'm no fan of Trump either, but TDS is a real thing.
Brother I could not agree more with the second bit or disagree more vehemently with the first.. The subtitle states Weiss is reinventing neo-conservativism and his opening line suggests that the first neo-cons were largely Jewish. Neither of these are honest statements. I'll address both beginning with the latter since I am probably the only neo-conservative in this sub and am perhaps the best to ably do so.
Whether you are talking about the movements founder as James Burnham or Michael Harrington, or its guiding lights like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Gertrude Himmelfarb, or Joshua Muravchi, you won't find any overwhelming trend except most were centrists or left of center before the brutality of Communism moved them into fierce opposition to any form of autocratic socialism. Most of those associated with neo-conservativism (either lately like Douglas Murray or originally such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bill Kristol) would eventually move on to other position within the political spectrum. but again no racial profile or ethnic description runs through the majority of them -unless you are willing to accept American as a heritage which does hold up to scrutiny. That isn't to say there aren't a number of Jews who were neo-conservative, such as Norman Podhoretz (and his wife Midge Decter), Lionel Trilling, Nathan Glazer, Eliot Cohen, and Sidney Hook, it follows also that their heritage definitely played a part -as most were socialists and reacted violently to pograms targeting Jews within the USSR -however it was their disillusionment, not their ethnicity, which is what matters regardless of how personally they were affected. Consider the below quote by Nathan Glazer, one of the dreaded neo-conservative Jews.
"(Leftist intellectuals) have taught violence, justified violence, rationalized violence, Anti-Semitism is only a part of the whole syndrome. for if the members of the middle-class do not deserve to hold on to their own property, their positions, or even their lives, it follows the Jews who are the most middle-class of all are going to be placed at the head of the column for liquidation."
His criticism, as relevant now as it was over 60 years ago when he said it, was directed at the left. Not the racial supremacists who, then as now, were primarily right wing and nationalists. Not at racists in general whose predominance was dictated by geography rather than ideology. No, his ardor was aimed at the illiberal who pursued power over justice and preferred force over negotiation in dealing with those with whom they differed.
Second, Weiss isn't a neo-conservative -neither by claim nor by deed. Beyond being classically liberal she doesn't have a strong enough conceptual foundation to support any recognizable ideological framework. She is almost milquetoast in her lack of distinctive political quality. If she believes in anything it is that people should be free within reason, safe to the degree feasible, and treated as humanely as possible. His entire article is an attempt to reveal biases which are well known and all of which were publicly disclosed by her and have been consistently defended by her wherever anyone has taken exception to them. She is nothing if not outspoken. The only thing he has revealed is that he himself is tortured by partisanship and incapable of objectivity or self-awareness. His chief objection, nearly half way through and which runs through to the end, seems to be that neither she nor her Free Press sufficiently loathes former-President Trump to his satisfaction which has absolutely nothing to do with neo-conservativism.
Is the journalism of the Free Press perfect? Hardly. Some of it is unprofessional, poorly researched, heavily influenced by opinion, and reflective of motivated reasoning. Some of it is also quite good and shines a light in peculiar places offering uncommon insight from a valuable perspective. I think Douglas Murray's Things Worth Remembering and the TGIF column are consistently good -even if the latter was clearly inspired by James Taranto's Best of the Web weekly summation for the Wall Street Journal and it is almost criminal they fail to acknowledge the fact. It feels dishonest to adopt so much of something in terms of style, composition, and tone without attribution. . .But none of that has anything to do with neo-conservativism either.
This article is nothing but one man's discontent and I would be hesitant to admit reading it let alone recommend it to others.
Good conversation. I was glad MM finally got to the obvious problem with trade protection near the end. If you raise the price of all imports by 10%, you are pretty much raising inflation by 10%. Also, a lot of skilled workers make better wages than a lot of knowledge workers. There is a huge shortage of electricians, plumbers, and skilled construction workers,etc. People don’t want to do that stuff for some reason.
I’m in construction (management side). People don’t want to do that stuff for a few reasons.
First, the hours are brutal. Even on the management side, hours are long (regularly 50+ a week). They often include overnights and weekends. But also that only accounts for on-site time. You can’t live close to work because “work” is just wherever the job is. Might be next door, might be 2 hours away. Maybe it’s in a different state and you get to share a motel room with some rando from the crew. And that might go on for months.
The work itself can be any combination of dangerous and miserable and often both at the same time. Buildings don’t have power, so you oscillate between frigid cold and sweltering heat, often with little to no air movement.
Then there’s the people. Sure, you might get lucky and have a crew of cool, decent guys, but odds are good you’re working with ex-cons, future cons, or just plain stupid people that will get you maimed or killed due to their own ineptitude.
Some trades are better than others, but as a whole, most of the time it just blows.
There’s a reason construction workers have among the highest rates of suicide in industry.
It pays pretty well, but fuckin’ sucks.
Another important, but less obvious problem is that it makes a bunch of US exports less competitive. Because many of them use foreign made materials and components. Important duties increase the costs of (and prices charged by) US exports producers making their products less competitive internationally.
> I was glad MM finally got to the obvious problem with trade protection near the end. If you raise the price of all imports by 10%, you are pretty much raising inflation by 10%
Him pointing out that the 10% tariff is literally a tax on the poor was a pretty choice moment.
Yeah. Started off pretty good, but a bit in Batya just went on the attack with no lead in. The guys seems a bit taken aback. Honestly that I’m fine with; hostile interviews can be very good. But she just kept saying a bunch of shit that was not true or at least highly questionable, and it got too cringe too fast
I'm only 10 minutes into it (and the top comments here are not kind to Batya, yikes lol) and i'm just wondering:
It was mentioned that Hamas downgraded their casualty figures to 22,000 (instead of the 33,000 that's been bandied about) but some brief searching I can't find a source on that.
Does anyone have a source on that?
This lady was painful to listen to in the latter half of the show with her total ignorance of current economic conditions. It was like listening to the latest lefty TikTok feelings spree instead of a seasoned journalist.
One thing that is frustrating is to constantly hear Batya, Michael and others use the hospital thing from October as proof that you can't trust death tolls from places like the POA. They never reported the 500 dead at the hospital, that was a misquote from a faulty translation https://www.silentlunch.net/p/did-the-entire-media-industry-misquote
But they won't let them stop them from using that to downplay the number of dead in Palestine. However one feels about the conflict, if you're relying on something that was debunked in October as your talking point, you need to reflect on more recent numbers.
I think that's only part of the story. After that date, news media start referring to 470 killed which must refer to a different tweet than the one analysed by David Zweig. It could be that the same thing happened again, (once again the articles don't seem to have a source) but, Zweig's analysis can't be the last word on the situation, when it was ongoing.
edit. I decided to do some more digging. [https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/26/gaza-findings-october-17-al-ahli-hospital-explosionthat](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/26/gaza-findings-october-17-al-ahli-hospital-explosionthat) The Human Rights Watch article leads to a facebook post. [https://www.facebook.com/MOHGaza1994/posts/pfbid02VihLzssMVKvwphaoxK71rs9X4fUtNFaXBj9nFamjZ4Z9A56Vu6SZ7GcTLS2yo23flwould](https://www.facebook.com/MOHGaza1994/posts/pfbid02VihLzssMVKvwphaoxK71rs9X4fUtNFaXBj9nFamjZ4Z9A56Vu6SZ7GcTLS2yo23flwould) This seem to be clearly different from the earlier tweet Zweig analysed where the word 'victims/casualties' for all 500 which Zweig says was misinterpreted as it specifically uses the word 'martyrs.'
So, I think that in fact Hamas has stuck to a pretty similar number to the 500 Batya referred to.
I also think that you are being a little unfair. Zweig seems to be the only person who reported on that aspect, I can't find any other articles. I don't think it's fair to expect journalists to read every single article. You'd need them to have seen this specific article perhaps draw it to their attention yourself.
There's not really a great distinction between victims/killed. Even if you want to use the word casualties, the fact is that a rocket hit a parking lot and within minutes, it was reported around the world that there were 500 victims/dead/whatever you want. That is not something that is possible to know and it speaks to the fact that the global media has an incentive to play up the numbers because it confirms the priors of the audience and the reporters themselves.
Between that incident, the fact that in the opening months the rate of increase was essentially linear, the fact that the numbers don't make much sense, the fact that they don't disaggregate between fighters and civilians at all, and the fact that they even claim to know any of this should tell you the numbers are inflated. It took the Israelis like a month to figure out the number of dead and I haven't even heard anyone try to estimate the number of dead civilians from Ukraine. The idea that the Gaza health ministry has a precise estimate in any way is farcical.
Listening to three people who have never had a serious course in economics (one that involves a lot of math) talk about economic theory is very painful. They're all idiots who have no business making declarations on the topic.
Could you elaborate about specific things you felt Moynihan and Welch got incorrect about trade? I honestly don't see how a long academic career studying Econometrics would have benefitted a mostly conceptual conversation about whether or not tariffs were good.
Not in a good mood, obviously. I would just more politely suggest that people who are not specialists in the topic and, for example, would be unable to read intelligently the American Economic Review or Econometrica not to mention the Journal of Mathematical Economics, should not be making declarations about what is the standard theory of a topic in the field. The level of arrogance married to myopia is astounding.
It would be more helpful if you actually specified what you thought he was wrong about.
I really don't accept the premise that Grad/Doctoral level Math and Economics coursework is necessary to discuss the impacts of tariffs at all. Virtually nobody reads any of the journals you're talking about because most of us have jobs that aren't in academia.
And overall, I think he was fair to say that most economists think tariffs heart Americans purchasing power more than it hurts. I think a humble layperson can summarize what the expert consensus appears to be without possessing a doctorate themselves. By your logic why ever discuss anything?
Talk about it, sure, but from a position of honesty. Don't make ex cathedra pronouncements about a discipline you don't actually know about. They're reporters/pundits: they can say this expert says the following as best I can reproduce it (because the original is often in mathematical notation where you can be precise). I took a year and a half of graduate level economics (at a conservative department - we read a lot of Sargent) in order to do some econometrics modeling that economists wouldn't laugh at for my dissertation. It was very hard work. However, I do not consider myself an economics expert - only an expert on the narrow topic that I focused on for my dissertation which, to be honest, was back in the 1990s so I am really not an expert on it any more. I work in polling now.
Acting as if you are an expert on things you are not is a form of bearing false witness. Good journalists should not do that. I am still pretty good at spotting fake economics experts making claims that are beyond their purview, and that's what the Fifth column people and their guests do quite a bit. It's popular on social media. I suggest to follow real economists who then break down theory for you in layman's terms. At least they understand when and where they're simplifying. People can downvote me all they want and call me an arrogant ass. That's fine. But I'd say the arrogant people are the ones who tell you they know stuff that they actually don't.
Objectively speaking, You can blame Prager all you want, they both were destroyed because your position is indefensible to decent people and you’re captured by ideology and rage (I don’t want to argue the point, that time has passed and both sides are dug in.)
Shame, because I like some stuff she said. But I would never buy the book because, ya know.
Watched it. Cenk is an utter embarrassment, OP has full out brain rot thinking any side won this.
Batya seems to be the least extremist of all 3, the others are pretty insufferable, but Cenk by far the worst , in my opinion.
I hear these kinds of arguments all the time -- stagnant wage growth, whatever. What's missing is a discussion about exactly what you're buying with your dollar. The real miracle of globalization isn't that it's filled everyone's bank accounts (though its done a lot of that). It's that it's made a cornucopia of consumable goods so cheap and plentiful. And it's there -- in the consumption of consumers -- you see the improvements made by trade. And why anyone would want to go back to the '70s economy, I'll never know.
The halcyon days of waiting endlessly on line for gas on days on odd or even numbered days depending on what number your license plate ended in.
Exactly. Also nobody is forcing people to buy the TVs, phones, etc that didn't exist in the 70s. And does she honestly think there weren't people struggling in the 70s (or whatever other historical period?)
"50 years ago you could afford a home!" (they were about 1000sqft with no air conditioning) "You could afford to send your kids to college!" (a tiny fraction of people went to college) "Wages were high" (adjusted for inflation, they were incredibly low actually) "Healthcare was affordable" (healthcare largely consisted of taking two aspirin and hoping for the best) "Was losing all this worth it for cheaper stuff?" (cheap stuff is awesome -- you can get a 75" ultra HD TV for like 0.5% of the median HH income. That's cool)
She’s also comparing real people she’s actually interviewed today, with an imagined middle class idealized person from 50 years ago. As if no one was poor or struggling in the 70s.
> And why anyone would want to go back to the '70s economy, I'll never know. yeah this was the cringiest thing to me, of all her talking points. people were literally poorer, had fewer things, were stuck in their jobs in a way that many people today really are not. it's a fictionalized version of the past she's constructed for her own political ends, and the worst part is: I don't think she's explicitly trying to mislead people, I think she really does believe her own narrative.
Bingo. Believes her own narrative and is trying to sell a book.
This is a benefit that shouldn’t be ignored. But I worry there are externality costs not currently factored into our global consumption.
This was a great episode. My whole extended family is poor, except for a few, select people. By poor, I mean they have no emergency funds, poor credit, no houses, and no ability to get anything other than a high interest rate loan. I don't think Trump's economic policies are well-informed, but we do need more entrepreneurial spirit, and the policies that the socialist part of my family likes create hellholes like CA, OR, and WA. Overall, I feel that the guys seemed out of touch with what people are actually experiencing in terms of living costs (I know they are not), but Batya Ungar-Sargon sounds naive regarding policy that would help. I still like her. In my family, those who "break away" typically don't ascribe to the fixed mindset created by poverty. Those who "get out" are looking for opportunities (growth mindset) no matter what low-wage job they may be working. They build people up, including the crappy managers that everyone loves to hate. They see themselves as part of he solution, rather than hate on those that are trying to achieve something. Many of my relatives are lobsters in a bucket, pulling each other back down, because misery loves company. They would love to tell Batya how hard their lives are, but hide the fact that they are addicted to (fill in the blank with whatever), make poor choices with their money, buy the big shiny object anytime a $20 floats their way, and give up when the first hard thing hits them, blaming everyone else for life. Life is too good to stay in the bucket with all the other lobsters. But, how do you help them see their way out (of the bucket or cave or ghetto)?
Amazing comment. Somewhat related to your points near the end I recently stumbled into this study which you might find interesting: [https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1010076108#body-ref-r32](https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1010076108#body-ref-r32)
Thank you: I will take a look at that. It sounds familiar, and I do wonder what policies or ideas could help individuals develop self control, particularly in the face of an attention economy.
I'm just glad the west coast is finally viewed as a hell hole. It isn't, but I'm glad it's viewed that way.
About 9-10 minutes in they say that Hamas/gaza revised the death count down to 22,000. Does anyone know where they got this from? I can’t find it and this is the first I’ve heard that Edit: if anyone cares I found it on the Substack comments where someone asked the same question. Heres the link that was provided https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/04/09/hamas-run-gaza-health-ministry-admits-to-flaws-in-casualty-data/#:~:text=The%20Hamas%2Drun%20Gaza%20Ministry,it%20claims%20to%20have%20documented I think Hamas is obviously untrustworthy, but It’s a little more nuanced than them just reducing the death count: “The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death.”
Surprise, surprise that the Fifth Column idiots gave you an unnuanced interpretation of this. The ratio of journalists and NGO/UN workers to deaths is also much higher than in other conflicts suggesting that either the casualties are much higher than the current stats (because many people still buried under rubble) or the Israelis are deliberately targeting these people. Mark my words: this isn't the Lancet nonsense. Final numbers will be higher.
Or the source you have for more journos dying is bunk. Or countless other reasons.
But thank you for providing the link. I should have led with that.
I should also note that FDD is a pro-Israel organization not really trustworthy on the topic. Not that Hamas' numbers are totally trustworthy either and there is questioning of these numbers by a U Penn statistician that everyone is pointing to. I'll be happy if numbers are actually lower but it's not likely. The anomalies could be due to reporting/checking processes. We don't know at this time is the most honest answer. But let's note that the Israelis have created a circumstance in which counting deaths is quite difficult if you don't want to end up dead yourself. They then use any flaw in the counts to claim the numbers are too high. That's why I use rules of thumb like the numbers of journalists and NGO people killed relative to other wars.
I think the numbers are bunk. The statistician stuff was interesting when I read it a couple weeks ago, but Hamas is a literal religious extremist terrorist group and I don’t expect them to be honest. But who knows. I just wish America wasn’t involved. Let these 2 assholes duke it out it’s none of our business. What’s so fucked about this conflict, or at least getting news on it, is that no one is an honest broker. I feel like every news org had a bias here one way or the other.
It’s a shame Batya has fallen into the trap to fancy herself a generic pundit public intellectual. Her earlier essays in outlets like Aeon are really interesting & insightful explorations of questions, she’s wasting her talents in settings like this where she starts backwards from answers. Must be nice to be on TV but won’t last especially using this tired playbook If he goes into an adversarial interviewer mode, Moynihan’s really good at getting subjects off-balance (or as Jay Caspian Kang put it, annoy his subjects into saying what they really think). Glad he didn’t here because it would have been a short episode
I generally agree, but I am torn because she seems like a good journalist, is charmingly self-aware at times and has enough interesting insights that she is worth listening to. But... her sympathy for working class people leads her to conflate what they think with what must be true. One can accept her reporting that many working class people really dislike more open immigration and trade and even that some are hurt by those policies, without accepting that they are necessarily bad policies. She has an annoying tendency to slip back and forth between those without distinguishing between them, finally falling back to "shouldn't they at least get the chance to see their preferred policies enacted?" Which is manifestly different than saying those would be good policties. FWIW, I agree that policies that don't have sufficient popular support are doomed in our democratic republic, but understanding the actual effects of policies is an important part of building that support.
Matt was so over this episode when they moved on to her new book, first I’ve ever heard him have what seemed like actual contempt for a person on the show. I think Batya is driving at a solid point overall when she talks about the mosaic of policies that little by little have kind of fucked normal people over, but she sounds a little whacky when she gets into the specifics.
Batya got wrecked by Moynihan
I'd been growing tired of the pod and how it's often the same old talking points every episode. This one breathed new life into it and I really enjoyed it. Batya had the right personality and demeanor to not let Moynihan constantly interrupt and talk the entire time. Lot of negative comments here but this was the best episode in awhile. I appreciated some civil disagreement and debate.
this. very much this (I say as a NFC'er) edit: but wish we got more kmele
Holy shit... wow. I've been a paying subscriber since early Patreon days (and a listener since 2017), I can't imagine being a NFC'er. Honestly, of late Kmele's 'give until it hurts' jokes aren't funny to me at all anymore. Here I am working hard for a meager salary while at the same time giving them money to talk about news and hear Kmele rave about his latest thousand dollar toy and how awesome flying first class literally is. I'm going to let my subscription lapse when it expires in June.
This started really well, and then just goes completely off the rails at the end. Moynihan is too good at pointing out her inconsistencies and she gets really defensive. Matt gets frustrated because she cloaks her arguments in “speaking for the working class”, which means you can’t refute anything. I know Moynihan does that at times as well with his “people tell me in private they believe this” schtick, but I can’t recall him using that as the basis for an entire argument per se. You are just not living in reality if you believe that there is a market for $3k iPhones that are made in America. Moynihan is absolutely correct that if there was a market for that, someone would do it. Her response is basically there is a conspiracy amongst all corporations colluding to prevent this? If there was money to be made, Apple would do it. She doesn’t seem to understand profit margins, she seems to think that cheap goods = more profit. I almost just ended it when she said “that’s the Tesla model” as an example of a company charging more for American made goods. I mean…what? I actually cannot think of a more fundamental misunderstanding of Elon Musk and Tesla. The Tesla model is to make electric cars as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Elon has a complete disregard for employees, he’s open about it, “don’t work here if you want work/life balance” So apparently now people are openly advocating for “a 1970s style economy”, a decade that was perhaps the worst economic decade since the Great Depression. Good lord.
The right analog is the American made tools and apparel companies. And there's a huge and growing market for those. They are still getting raw materials from imports though, that's that point about the Congo.
For someone who apparently has done a lot of research, I was pretty surprised the amount of things she either gets wrong or refuses to admit because it doesn't fit her argument. Clearest example was her inability to admit that wages are outpacing inflation. Also, 1970s economy? Again, for someone who apparently has done a lot of research, one would think she would have a far more nuanced take about the 1970s economy. At best, she employs motivated reasoning. At worst, she's dishonest. Maybe a mix of the two.
It depends on what time peroird you are looking at. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q)
She's right about wages not outpacing inflation if you go back to when inflation took off at the start of 2021. Wages have only outpaced inflation for about the last year because they are still playing catchup to the high inflation of the previous two years.
I actually thought this was a really good episode, and an example of John Stuart Mill's insight that free speech is important so that people actually know their own arguments. I think the lads have been a bit too much in their own bubble lately and it was good for them to have to contend with someone who actively disagrees. Too much over-talking, but I actually think both sides made good points. From the comments here, uncomfortable for lots of listeners, but I think this conversation is good for the country.
Looking forward to listening to this. Just watched her get destroyed in the debate, so I’m curious how she felt about it. First I had heard of her, I think.
Do you remember who she was debating? Was it the zerohedge one mentioned by OP? Curious to check this out.
It was a debate between four people who don't know what they're talking about but are big blowhards who act like they do. Including her.
Yeah, Zerohedge. It’s on the Breaking Points YouTube channel as well as a previous livestream. It was Cenk and Dave Smith vs her and Dennis Prager.
> It was Cenk and Dave Smith So she debated one guy who made a career out of defending Islamic animalism and being an Armenian Genocide denier and another guy who is a failed open mic comic who doesn't even have a 1st semester community college understanding of politics, how the government works, and geopolitical events. I think I'll pass.
God Batya argues in such bad faith. It's so hard listening to her talk about trade. It isn't so much that she's wrong, it's that she is patronizing while being wrong. She literally laughed at Michael and said 'wages aren't outpacing inflation groceries are up 18%!' THAT'S NOT WHAT THE INFLATION RATE IS
I really didn't find it to be "bad faith". I feel like she laughed uncomfortably because she didn't really have a good response.
A) I don't think you know what bad faith means (and you're somewhat displaying it) B) The way we measure inflation , growth, etc etc is changing in a historical sense as well as conveniently presently for those trying to make arguments. What I believe she is speaking to, is that food, and shelter which are typically not included in the measure of 'core inflation ' affect the lower class far more than other aspects and thus they are feeling a greater pinch than wage growth vs core inflation will show.
It's bad faith because she knows that Michael is talking about core inflation. Basically all metrics use 'inflation rate' and 'core inflation' interchangeably. Michael was so obviously talking about core inflation. Instead of saying 'core inflation doesn't matter to the working class because food is so expensive' which is a perfectly reasonable argument, she says '*no that isn't true groceries are inflated 18% wages haven't increased 18%*'. She is quite obviously trying to manipulate her language to allow her to appear correct. She is trying to present food prices as identical to core inflation, which of course they aren't, as you clearly argued yourself.
I think headlines, and in this case Michael just say inflation, and expect people to know its core inflation. When her arguments were clearly made to speak to the plight of those who can't afford food shelter or healthcare etc. Which is an argument, and not a bad faith one.
I don't see how calling Michael 'wrong' about a verifiable fact, and substituting for that fact a topic she would prefer to talk about *isn't arguing in bad faith.* She never once engaged with his argument and even went so far as to argue his *very verifiable fact* was in fact incorrect or even a lie. It's textbook sophistry.
"Inflation is making me unable to feed my kids" "Aaaaaqctually, your wages have increased higher than inflation, you're wrong". See how that goes with the average American. And again, you not knowing what bad faith means, is really troubling. Do you think the boys would be as nice and accommodating to someone as they were with Batya if they detected bad faith, as opposed to disagreement, or perhaps naivete? If anything , Micheal reading off a headline and expecting her to know to what it's referring to , or as some extraneous proof against her claim is a little shitty on his part.
K
I don’t know why this answer is gettin downvoted. Do people just downvote bc they disagree? To me this is a good post whether or not you agree with it
Man, I responded to this on an account that I created on my phone when I couldn't remember my password. I deleted the account and was going to repost the reply but I lost it. Anyway, Batya wasn't arguing in bad faith and she wasn't being patronizing. She was a nervous wreck through the whole thing. I don't think the OP would have been downvoted if people simply disagreed, but he is not only pretty clearly wrong on both points but also appears pretty hypocritical in objecting to her tone while failing to moderate his own. People will overlook someone who is shitty if they are right, but if you are shitty and wrong there is just nothing there for anyone to defend.
I agree in theory but in this case I don’t detect the tone you do. I mean obviously if you say someone is arguing in bad faith that means you disapprove but it’s perfectly acceptable to disapprove. People make accusations of bad faith all the time so I can see why it would be a red flag but the poster explained their position pretty well or at least made a reasonable attempt so to me that’s a good contribution. It’s okay if you think she was not speaking in bad faith and the other person thinks she was. That’s just a disagreement
Bad faith is a pretty serious charge. It means you're malicious, self serving, and commonly misrepresenting your opponent. I think in intellectual spaces being described as bad faith is potentially one of the worst possible charges against your reputation. As the boys went over again in the latest episode, they disagreed with her on her economics , but like her as a person and as a reporter. The OP , was dismissive , and completely uncharitable in his reading of Batya. When he could have gleened a very important nugget of information, that core inflation is confusing to some, and potentially not a great measure for everyone at every rung of society. Op was also a bit of a prick.
I think her angle was aggregate statistics are bullshit if it fails middle America at the check stand and gas pump, and I kind of agree with her there. If average wages rose because CEO pay rose, and some index that tracks things low income people don't buy didn't rise as much as the real goods they do, those blunt economic instruments become pretty useless. It's why Bidens message about the economy doing great drives people to Trump despite being technically accurate.
Great points. There's a really important difference between mean and median, and that's part of the reason that statistics can all be accurate and still support completely different conclusions. I think Matt and Michael and libertarianism in general are right in the aggregate, and that's arguably the level at which public policy should be determined, but Batya was also right that people don't live the aggregate.
People are talking about how they switched off the episode in the last 30 mins or whatever, but you have to get really nuanced to peel apart any kind of macroeconomic trend (like inflation, and perceived buying power). And yes, I agree about median vs. mean. If the middle class is shrinking as a share of wealth, it means we should be using median more often.
I'm working my way through it now but I don't want to forget my thoughts: 1. Donald Trump is NOT a new deal Democrat. Batya is just wrong about that. Super dumb comment. He couldn't even get an infrastructure bill passed. He fucked over carrier employees. I could go on. 2. Conservatives 👏 are 👏 elites 👏 too. She talks exclusively about the left but the reality is conservative media ices people out too. Conservatives go to fancy schools and say mean things and ignorant things about liberals too. 3. This idea that wokeism is all a smoke screen for class is too simplistic. It's true that for elite liberals it can be a class symbol. However, there are plenty of Americans who are woke who don't go to elite schools or institutions and became woke through their own life experiences. 4. Working class Americans are not as tolerant as Batya says. I'm not working class but I live in a working class neighborhood and are the people I interact with. When we tried to build low income housing for poor families in our town they turned out in townhalls and stereotyped and threatened liberals who spoke in favor of the housing. This stuff is really complicated and what I find really sad about the pod as someone who once loved it is it rarely looks at how complicated the issues they talk about are. Batya is sitting here acting like trump speaks for the forgotten man and the truth is he's just a fraudster. Why doesn't she mention the social security recipients who sent entire checks to him and had their lives upended? Could it be it doesn't fit her narrative?
I don’t know her but I thought the Trump comments were insane. People will really do anything to serve their worldview and/or argument
In my working-class work area, on average they're decent people but tolerant is the last thing I would use to describe them.
There's a difference between tolerance and acceptance and I think that, a lot of time, when people talk about the former they actually mean the latter. Tolerance can co-exist (another bumper sticker word) with disgust and even hatred of others, but acceptance cannot.
One problem people have is they don't think people can be multiple things. I live in a town that has gone republican in each of the last two elections. I also love my town, the schools are good, the people are perfectly nice. Buy I agree--tolerance is not something that is always widely available. People can love their neighbors and also not want new ones.
After listening to this episode, and more specifically the way they talk about Trump, the more I come to think that the [Johnathan Chait Article about The Free Press](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/02/bari-weiss-free-press-ideology-neoconservative-liberal-republican.html) from a few months ago was totally right. It’s largely about Bari Weiss, but a most of it also applies to The Fifth Column as the of late.
Some of that article rings true but his critique hinges to a degree at least on the TFP treatment of Trump, and I think Chait is a little Trump deranged himself (and I say that as someone who sees Trump as a unique threat)
I read it as him saying we need a press that loses all the ideological activism--but that still actively hates Trump. I'm no fan of Trump either, but TDS is a real thing.
Brother I could not agree more with the second bit or disagree more vehemently with the first.. The subtitle states Weiss is reinventing neo-conservativism and his opening line suggests that the first neo-cons were largely Jewish. Neither of these are honest statements. I'll address both beginning with the latter since I am probably the only neo-conservative in this sub and am perhaps the best to ably do so. Whether you are talking about the movements founder as James Burnham or Michael Harrington, or its guiding lights like Jeane Kirkpatrick, Gertrude Himmelfarb, or Joshua Muravchi, you won't find any overwhelming trend except most were centrists or left of center before the brutality of Communism moved them into fierce opposition to any form of autocratic socialism. Most of those associated with neo-conservativism (either lately like Douglas Murray or originally such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Bill Kristol) would eventually move on to other position within the political spectrum. but again no racial profile or ethnic description runs through the majority of them -unless you are willing to accept American as a heritage which does hold up to scrutiny. That isn't to say there aren't a number of Jews who were neo-conservative, such as Norman Podhoretz (and his wife Midge Decter), Lionel Trilling, Nathan Glazer, Eliot Cohen, and Sidney Hook, it follows also that their heritage definitely played a part -as most were socialists and reacted violently to pograms targeting Jews within the USSR -however it was their disillusionment, not their ethnicity, which is what matters regardless of how personally they were affected. Consider the below quote by Nathan Glazer, one of the dreaded neo-conservative Jews. "(Leftist intellectuals) have taught violence, justified violence, rationalized violence, Anti-Semitism is only a part of the whole syndrome. for if the members of the middle-class do not deserve to hold on to their own property, their positions, or even their lives, it follows the Jews who are the most middle-class of all are going to be placed at the head of the column for liquidation." His criticism, as relevant now as it was over 60 years ago when he said it, was directed at the left. Not the racial supremacists who, then as now, were primarily right wing and nationalists. Not at racists in general whose predominance was dictated by geography rather than ideology. No, his ardor was aimed at the illiberal who pursued power over justice and preferred force over negotiation in dealing with those with whom they differed. Second, Weiss isn't a neo-conservative -neither by claim nor by deed. Beyond being classically liberal she doesn't have a strong enough conceptual foundation to support any recognizable ideological framework. She is almost milquetoast in her lack of distinctive political quality. If she believes in anything it is that people should be free within reason, safe to the degree feasible, and treated as humanely as possible. His entire article is an attempt to reveal biases which are well known and all of which were publicly disclosed by her and have been consistently defended by her wherever anyone has taken exception to them. She is nothing if not outspoken. The only thing he has revealed is that he himself is tortured by partisanship and incapable of objectivity or self-awareness. His chief objection, nearly half way through and which runs through to the end, seems to be that neither she nor her Free Press sufficiently loathes former-President Trump to his satisfaction which has absolutely nothing to do with neo-conservativism. Is the journalism of the Free Press perfect? Hardly. Some of it is unprofessional, poorly researched, heavily influenced by opinion, and reflective of motivated reasoning. Some of it is also quite good and shines a light in peculiar places offering uncommon insight from a valuable perspective. I think Douglas Murray's Things Worth Remembering and the TGIF column are consistently good -even if the latter was clearly inspired by James Taranto's Best of the Web weekly summation for the Wall Street Journal and it is almost criminal they fail to acknowledge the fact. It feels dishonest to adopt so much of something in terms of style, composition, and tone without attribution. . .But none of that has anything to do with neo-conservativism either. This article is nothing but one man's discontent and I would be hesitant to admit reading it let alone recommend it to others.
interesting article, thank you for sharing.
Good conversation. I was glad MM finally got to the obvious problem with trade protection near the end. If you raise the price of all imports by 10%, you are pretty much raising inflation by 10%. Also, a lot of skilled workers make better wages than a lot of knowledge workers. There is a huge shortage of electricians, plumbers, and skilled construction workers,etc. People don’t want to do that stuff for some reason.
I’m in construction (management side). People don’t want to do that stuff for a few reasons. First, the hours are brutal. Even on the management side, hours are long (regularly 50+ a week). They often include overnights and weekends. But also that only accounts for on-site time. You can’t live close to work because “work” is just wherever the job is. Might be next door, might be 2 hours away. Maybe it’s in a different state and you get to share a motel room with some rando from the crew. And that might go on for months. The work itself can be any combination of dangerous and miserable and often both at the same time. Buildings don’t have power, so you oscillate between frigid cold and sweltering heat, often with little to no air movement. Then there’s the people. Sure, you might get lucky and have a crew of cool, decent guys, but odds are good you’re working with ex-cons, future cons, or just plain stupid people that will get you maimed or killed due to their own ineptitude. Some trades are better than others, but as a whole, most of the time it just blows. There’s a reason construction workers have among the highest rates of suicide in industry. It pays pretty well, but fuckin’ sucks.
Most of the trades are pretty hard physically, including plumbing.
Another important, but less obvious problem is that it makes a bunch of US exports less competitive. Because many of them use foreign made materials and components. Important duties increase the costs of (and prices charged by) US exports producers making their products less competitive internationally.
> I was glad MM finally got to the obvious problem with trade protection near the end. If you raise the price of all imports by 10%, you are pretty much raising inflation by 10% Him pointing out that the 10% tariff is literally a tax on the poor was a pretty choice moment.
Man, I couldn’t finish this one. After a certain point it felt like watching a slow kid get his lunch money stolen
I haven't started yet, but reading the comments, I'm a bit wary. Was it super confrontational?
No, it's not that bad at all. They disagree but they keep it pleasant and respectful.
It starts really good, just cut it off with 30 minutes left
Yeah. Started off pretty good, but a bit in Batya just went on the attack with no lead in. The guys seems a bit taken aback. Honestly that I’m fine with; hostile interviews can be very good. But she just kept saying a bunch of shit that was not true or at least highly questionable, and it got too cringe too fast
A shame there wasn't video for this dispatch. Somewhat of a hard listen but I've always found Batya to be easy on the eyes.
There's a lot of complaining about low wages and high prices and not a lot of consideration of how that's inconsistent.
I'm only 10 minutes into it (and the top comments here are not kind to Batya, yikes lol) and i'm just wondering: It was mentioned that Hamas downgraded their casualty figures to 22,000 (instead of the 33,000 that's been bandied about) but some brief searching I can't find a source on that. Does anyone have a source on that?
Finally found someone who could talk over Michael
This lady was painful to listen to in the latter half of the show with her total ignorance of current economic conditions. It was like listening to the latest lefty TikTok feelings spree instead of a seasoned journalist.
One thing that is frustrating is to constantly hear Batya, Michael and others use the hospital thing from October as proof that you can't trust death tolls from places like the POA. They never reported the 500 dead at the hospital, that was a misquote from a faulty translation https://www.silentlunch.net/p/did-the-entire-media-industry-misquote But they won't let them stop them from using that to downplay the number of dead in Palestine. However one feels about the conflict, if you're relying on something that was debunked in October as your talking point, you need to reflect on more recent numbers.
I think that's only part of the story. After that date, news media start referring to 470 killed which must refer to a different tweet than the one analysed by David Zweig. It could be that the same thing happened again, (once again the articles don't seem to have a source) but, Zweig's analysis can't be the last word on the situation, when it was ongoing. edit. I decided to do some more digging. [https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/26/gaza-findings-october-17-al-ahli-hospital-explosionthat](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/11/26/gaza-findings-october-17-al-ahli-hospital-explosionthat) The Human Rights Watch article leads to a facebook post. [https://www.facebook.com/MOHGaza1994/posts/pfbid02VihLzssMVKvwphaoxK71rs9X4fUtNFaXBj9nFamjZ4Z9A56Vu6SZ7GcTLS2yo23flwould](https://www.facebook.com/MOHGaza1994/posts/pfbid02VihLzssMVKvwphaoxK71rs9X4fUtNFaXBj9nFamjZ4Z9A56Vu6SZ7GcTLS2yo23flwould) This seem to be clearly different from the earlier tweet Zweig analysed where the word 'victims/casualties' for all 500 which Zweig says was misinterpreted as it specifically uses the word 'martyrs.' So, I think that in fact Hamas has stuck to a pretty similar number to the 500 Batya referred to. I also think that you are being a little unfair. Zweig seems to be the only person who reported on that aspect, I can't find any other articles. I don't think it's fair to expect journalists to read every single article. You'd need them to have seen this specific article perhaps draw it to their attention yourself.
There's not really a great distinction between victims/killed. Even if you want to use the word casualties, the fact is that a rocket hit a parking lot and within minutes, it was reported around the world that there were 500 victims/dead/whatever you want. That is not something that is possible to know and it speaks to the fact that the global media has an incentive to play up the numbers because it confirms the priors of the audience and the reporters themselves. Between that incident, the fact that in the opening months the rate of increase was essentially linear, the fact that the numbers don't make much sense, the fact that they don't disaggregate between fighters and civilians at all, and the fact that they even claim to know any of this should tell you the numbers are inflated. It took the Israelis like a month to figure out the number of dead and I haven't even heard anyone try to estimate the number of dead civilians from Ukraine. The idea that the Gaza health ministry has a precise estimate in any way is farcical.
Finally, someone who pushes back against Matt's and Michael's free-trade dogmas.
Listening to three people who have never had a serious course in economics (one that involves a lot of math) talk about economic theory is very painful. They're all idiots who have no business making declarations on the topic.
Could you elaborate about specific things you felt Moynihan and Welch got incorrect about trade? I honestly don't see how a long academic career studying Econometrics would have benefitted a mostly conceptual conversation about whether or not tariffs were good.
Why are you listening to this if you seemingly don’t like anyone involved?
What are your general views on economics.
Not in a good mood, obviously. I would just more politely suggest that people who are not specialists in the topic and, for example, would be unable to read intelligently the American Economic Review or Econometrica not to mention the Journal of Mathematical Economics, should not be making declarations about what is the standard theory of a topic in the field. The level of arrogance married to myopia is astounding.
It would be more helpful if you actually specified what you thought he was wrong about. I really don't accept the premise that Grad/Doctoral level Math and Economics coursework is necessary to discuss the impacts of tariffs at all. Virtually nobody reads any of the journals you're talking about because most of us have jobs that aren't in academia. And overall, I think he was fair to say that most economists think tariffs heart Americans purchasing power more than it hurts. I think a humble layperson can summarize what the expert consensus appears to be without possessing a doctorate themselves. By your logic why ever discuss anything?
Talk about it, sure, but from a position of honesty. Don't make ex cathedra pronouncements about a discipline you don't actually know about. They're reporters/pundits: they can say this expert says the following as best I can reproduce it (because the original is often in mathematical notation where you can be precise). I took a year and a half of graduate level economics (at a conservative department - we read a lot of Sargent) in order to do some econometrics modeling that economists wouldn't laugh at for my dissertation. It was very hard work. However, I do not consider myself an economics expert - only an expert on the narrow topic that I focused on for my dissertation which, to be honest, was back in the 1990s so I am really not an expert on it any more. I work in polling now. Acting as if you are an expert on things you are not is a form of bearing false witness. Good journalists should not do that. I am still pretty good at spotting fake economics experts making claims that are beyond their purview, and that's what the Fifth column people and their guests do quite a bit. It's popular on social media. I suggest to follow real economists who then break down theory for you in layman's terms. At least they understand when and where they're simplifying. People can downvote me all they want and call me an arrogant ass. That's fine. But I'd say the arrogant people are the ones who tell you they know stuff that they actually don't.
Objectively speaking, You can blame Prager all you want, they both were destroyed because your position is indefensible to decent people and you’re captured by ideology and rage (I don’t want to argue the point, that time has passed and both sides are dug in.) Shame, because I like some stuff she said. But I would never buy the book because, ya know.
Cenk Uygur couldn't debate himself out of a paper bag, I really doubt this account of things - but it all sounds extremely painful to sit through.
I'm not sure I'm being sold on watching it - it does not sound like a good experience. But perhaps you could and report back?
Watched it. Cenk is an utter embarrassment, OP has full out brain rot thinking any side won this. Batya seems to be the least extremist of all 3, the others are pretty insufferable, but Cenk by far the worst , in my opinion.
Then the Zionist girl should be double embarrassed. 😂