Thomas Friedman makes up absurd positions and pretends they are held by people he doesn’t like. (cc photo: Charles Haynes)
Thomas Friedman really is a gift to the world. As a long-established New York Times columnist and author of many widely touted books, he is a great source of insight into establishment thinking. He comes through brilliantly in his column today.
Friedman’s basic story is that the two parties need to work out compromises, like the “Grand Bargain” on the budget that President Obama tried to negotiate in 2011 with then-Speaker John Boehner. Friedman blames the intransigence of the Republicans for failing to come to an agreement on this and other important issues. He argues that Trump is where this extremism gets them. His hope is that now the Republicans will move to the center and work out the deals that Friedman would like to see.
It’s good to see that Friedman is looking forward to working with Republican centrists again, but let’s look at the nature of his argument. Basically, his story is that the truth lies in the center and these know-nothing types need to be chased out of the political debate:
In this vortex [the 2008 economic collapse and the political polarization that followed] a lot of the public got unmoored and disoriented, opening the way for populists with simple answers. Get rid of immigrants, end trade with China or eliminate big banks and all will be fine. It’s nonsense.
Friedman is right that it is nonsense, but it is also not what anyone is saying. Even Donald Trump doesn’t propose getting rid of all immigrants, which is not to say that his plan for departing 11 million unauthorized immigrants is not absurd and inhumane. Neither Trump nor Sanders propose ending trade with China. And while Sanders agrees with many leading economists that breaking up the big banks is important, he has certainly never implied that this would somehow make everything fine.
In short, Friedman is making up absurd positions, attributing them to the people he doesn’t like, and using this as an excuse to throw them out of the discussion. He wants to leave it to the real experts.
Okay, let’s see how the experts have done, starting with some of the details of the “Grand Bargain.” As Friedman reminds us, a big part of the Grand Bargain was cutting Social Security and Medicare. Is it really true that in a world where few workers now have traditional pensions, and most are not able to accumulate substantial sums in 401(k)s or other savings, Social Security is too generous? The vast majority of the public does not hold this view. On what basis has Thomas Friedman decided it is true?
With Medicare, the problem is a wasteful healthcare system, not the coddling of the over-65 population. One of the ironies that has apparently escaped Friedman’s attention is that the slowdown in healthcare cost growth over the last six years has actually led to more savings in Medicare than had been sought by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson in their deficit-cutting plan that was the basis for the Grand Bargain.
Of course, the whole idea that we needed to reduce the deficit in an economy that was and is still well below its full employment level of output is wrong. Had the Grand Bargainers gotten their way in 2011, the recovery would have been even slower and weaker.
But this is the real story of the establishment. After all, the 2008 crash was not a rare weather event that struck the country and the world unexpectedly. It was the result of the incompetence of our country’s leading economists in both parties. They could not see the dangers in an $8 trillion housing bubble.
A similar story applies in foreign policy circles, where many foreign policy experts were prepared to believe the Bush administration’s transparent lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. And they actually thought that the United States could go into Iraq and put in place a stable government that enjoyed popular support.
The amazing part of the story is that the establishment types pay no price for being wrong in really big ways in their areas of expertise. This is best exemplified by Friedman himself. He can be wrong on every single thing he writes, every day of his life, and it will not in any way jeopardize his standing as one of the country’s most respected commentators on policy and politics.
And he wonders why the public is angry.
Respected? Only by other establishment types.
I too read TF’s column and tend to agree with him. He actually concedes selling-out of private enterprise USA manufacturing to China has been too much. The problem with that is “how much is too much,” and how can that be regulated? I think I may disagree with DB’s slant, because TF is discussing the inflexibility of the nay-saying wacko politicos who’ve taken over the House of Representatives to the point of mal-adaption if not insanity. When the S&P (or is it Moody’s?) rating was lowered on our federal credit rating after the GOP/ Tea Party peed away $27 billion dollars by shutting-down the federal government (10 days?), one realized their refusal to raise tax revenue and/or renew/raise our national debt had gotten idiot-logically extremely nuts. Yet, with the gerrymandered districts, they’ll continue the outrageous whether Hillary or The Donald wins.
But, if you love fiction why not read a novel or go to a movie knowing full well that your into fiction, why be so self-delusional as to think that fiction communicates something other then fantasy and fairytale? Otherwise you have a real problem, for,
“A man who strays from the path of understanding
comes to rest in the company of the dead.”
I don’t see how anyone could read, much less trust a rag that syndicates Friedman, Brooks, Krauthammer, et al. Friedman got Iraq 2003, a hundred years foreign policy debacle, completely wrong. As Baker points out, Friedman pays not a scintilla of a penalty for it.
Friedman’s overwhelming optimism as to how W’s Iraq invasion and occupation would conclude (it was always within six months, no matter when he was interviewed) has added a phrase to the English language–the Friedman unit, meaning in six months. As an example–How long until Thanksgiving? One Friedman unit and 18 days.
House liberal for the NYT, Friedman has been a fraud for far too long.
Problem is, it was not “a lot of the public got unmoored and disoriented,” it was the vast majority, as they could see clear as day that they were sucker-bait for voting into the White House a paid actor who would never jail the big bankers and end the problem, as Obama gave the criminals a key to U.S. Treasury guaranteeing a miserable repeat of the problem.
Tired, false liberal meme: “the slowdown in healthcare cost growth over the last six years….” This is a White House talking point, not an economic fact.
The nominal annual growth rates have flattened, but underlying inflation is lower. Although 2014 was a good year, as a multiple of inflation, private sector health insurance premium growth rates actually increased in the five years after the passage of the ACA, compared to the five years before.
Go here: http://kff.org/health-costs/report/2015-employer-health-benefits-survey/
Ignore the stupid text, in which Kaiser ignores its own data to hype the slow growth meme. Click on “Summary of Findings.” Look carefully at Exhibit B. Five years pre-passage premiums = 225% inflation; five years post = 300% inflation. data in comparison to worker earnings are even worse.
For laughs, after you look at Exhibit B, go back and read jason Furman’s idiotic press release hyping the Kaiser data: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/09/22/new-data-show-slow-health-care-cost-growth-continuing
I have no idea why liberal and Democratic-leaning economists keep insisting that health care cost increases have come down. Krugman is adamant about this, but Dean, you keep doing it too. It’s willful ignorance, and embarrassing to read. You’d flunk any freshman who tried to use nominal growth numbers without reference to general inflation in an introductory macro class.
Health care costs aren’t under control. Stop saying they are and start looking for ways to fix the ACA. 16 million more insured is a great thing, but our health care system is still unraveling at a terrifying pace.