You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
Thomas Frank may be wrong most of the time, but he is a powerfully influential writer. The media seem to follow his lead. You'll recall the years spent fawning over his "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Anyway, he has a new book out arguing that what really ails this country is our embrace of severe austerity measures. Stop laughing! I'm serious. It's titled, in his typical purple prose "Pity the Billionaire: The Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right."
Nick Gillespie of Reason pats Frank on the head in his review of the book:
Lest we forget, the major response to the financial crisis in 2008 was the bailing out of Wall Street and the auto companies under a conservative Republican president and the implementation of an $800 billion stimulus plan promoted by a Democratic president.
That’s not to mention a health-care reform package that was routinely described as “historic” and “transformational” at its passage. Ironically, such immediate, massive and — in the case of the stimulus — ineffective actions are in keeping with those of Herbert Hoover. After all, the stimulus failed to achieve any of the targets set by its proponents.
Gillespie reminds people how much federal spending ballooned under George W. Bush. And how much worse it's gotten since then. He reminds how Bush hired 90,000 net new regulators, signed Sarbanes-Oxley, passed a record number of regulations costing the economy $100 million or more and spent more money issuing and enforcing federal regs than anyone prior.
All this happened during what Frank calls “the golden years of libertarianism.” So I have problems understanding what he is talking about when he issues dicta such as “free-market theory has proven itself to be a philosophy of ruination and fraud.”
He is surely correct that many anti-government types conveniently minimize the role bad actors played in banks, financial houses and elsewhere in the private sector in causing the financial crisis. But he also never provides a compelling response to the argument (common among libertarians) that the root of the problem remains implicit and explicit bailout guarantees that securitize irresponsible risk-taking. When it comes to free markets, I feel more like quoting Gandhi’s answer when asked how he felt about Western civilization: “I think it would be a good idea.”
In short, "Pity the Billionaire" suffers from "a lack of engagement with reality" and "dismisses out of hand those with whom the author disagrees."
In other words, it will be another huge success and driver of mainstream media discussion.
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Apr '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
What's the matter? Franks's only making the case that socialized risk (i.e. bad guys on Wall St) is wrong when purveyed by bad (read: private sector) actors, but that socialized ruin by public sector (read: good) actors is the antidote to that poision. Makes perfect sense.
The USA gotta fever, and there's just one thing'll cure it...
Aug '10
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
I bet Thomas Frank hangs out with Naomi "Shock Doctrine" Klein a whole heck of a lot.
They seem to have the same methodology.
Jan '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
Great review by Nick Gillespie. In addition to the Gandhi quote, this line pretty much sums up the book:
“Pity the Billionaire” suffers ... from a lack of engagement with what I consider reality.
Feb '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
I heard Frank on an AM station Saturday night while taking a short drive, it was one of those freak AM at night pickups, so I have no idea what station this was - his basic take on the "comeback of the right"...we dumped W as soon as it was convient, (because we love big government and are all in bed with Wall St., we're just pulling a web of lies out of pockets), and we are trying to trick the American people into believing that we are for fiscal sobriety, and we are all in the pockets of Wall St. on the right, the wars cost way to much and we will be funding our industrial military buddies, sounded like he and Ron Paul have much in common...tripe, tripe, tripe...
Edited on Jan 9 at 9:04amJul '10
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
So Frank has evolved from rank condescension to outright lying?
I smell a Pulitzer.
Apr '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
Thomas Frank's rhetorical strategy - the nominal fallacy - is very common these days. Call the status quo a 'free market', and then every problem bugging people today becomes a problem of free markets. You see it the other way around, too. Call modern libertarianism 'doctrinaire marxism', and every problem of marxism becomes a problem of libertarianism.
In its extended form, the fallacy can become the genetic fallacy. For example, in calling libertarianism 'doctrinaire marxism', one can further mislead people into thinking there are essential ideological beliefs that unite marxism and libertarianism, libertarianism being the latest mutation of the "old marxist" strain. See Paul Rahe's latest writings.
Using this strategy of bad rhetoric - naming things base on accidental qualities rather than essential qualities - one can generate faulty conclusions that seem immensely plausible to one's own ideological party. There are doctrinaire libertarians! There are doctrinaire marxists! They must have a common ideology. Look, they split into sects, too! And so on.
It's tough to combat. Who's going to listen to a rebuttal based on formal reasoning principles? No many, even here at Ricochet. Bad rhetoric persists because, by and large, it works
Mar '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
Wylee Coyote: So Frank has evolved from rank condescension to outright lying?
I smell a Pulitzer. · Jan 9 at 9:07am
Frank has always been patently dishonest. All his books are one big temper tantrum, a way of spelling out his anger that we backwards Americans refuse to embrace socialism like the rest of the civilized world.
Apr '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
What's the Matter with Kansas? certainly reads like that, but not angry so much as smug. It's the Fatal Conceit all over again.
Mar '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
Frank bores me.
Jun '10
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
The only serious austerity measures that I am aware of are those taking place in my family budget.
Wylee Coyote: So Frank has evolved from rank condescension to outright lying?
I smell a Pulitzer. · Jan 9 at 9:07am
I believe that would be the "Walter Duranty Memorial" Pulitzer, wouldn't it?
Jun '10
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
I think Frank would be fine with the federal government (to survive financially) just confiscating everybody's 401K assets and replacing them with government IOUs. Obama just needs another term, and a couple of successful Supreme Court appointments to provide legal cover. Then, problem fixed. I'm glad we solved that.
Mar '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
Sadly, for everyone not on the right the ideas in his book will become the conventional wisdom. Much like big government Republicans like Nixon and Bush were conservative.
I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system. ~ George W. Bush December 16, 2008
NOT A CONSERVATIVE!
Jan '11
Re: You Remember Our Severe Austerity Measures, Right?
Frank hangs out in lefty lala land such as Democracy Now; need I say more?