Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Dear Conservative Life Coach…
1983
Dear Conservative Life Coach,
I’m 23 and just graduated from college and I’ve met the most wonderful girl. Neither one of us believes in sex before marriage so ‘shacking up’ is out of the question. Should I ask her to marry me even though my career is still in its infancy?
Bob in Ohio
Dear Bob,
Absolutely! We know that the way to prosperity is to get married and have children.
CLC
1993
Dear Conservative Life Coach,
I’m 33 and just got a nice promotion at work. My wife and I have been renting but the kids are growing and we’re thinking about buying a home. Should we make the leap?
Bob in Ohio
Dear Bob,
Absolutely! Home ownership is a surefire way to prosperity! Plus home ownership makes for stronger neighborhoods and stronger communities in general. And with all the tax breaks and programs designed for first time buyers there’s never been a better time!
CLC
2005
Dear Conservative Life Coach,
My wife’s father has Alzheimers. We’ve been looking at extended care facilities but neither of us liked what we saw. Should we add a room on to the house or petition the government to expand care to the elderly?
Bob in Ohio
Dear Bob,
First of all, we conservatives know that government is never the solution to any problem. If I were you I’d take out a small loan, build your father-in-law a room and take care of him! Nobody is going to do that better than family. And to encourage and reward good people like you we’re working on providing tax breaks for caregivers.
CLC
2013
Dear Conservative Life Coach,
My oldest just graduated from high school and we’re looking at colleges. Are Federal Student Loans really the way to go?
Bob in Ohio
Dear Bob,
Absolutely! With the changing economy you know your child is going to to have to have at least a Bachelor’s degree to compete in the job market. Besides, we’re working to pass new changes to the Dependent Child Tax Credit that will reward good people like you!
CLC
2017
Dear Conservative Life Coach,
I’ve done everything you told me to do in the past. I’m 57 and farther and farther away from retirement with all the changes in Social Security. Now it seems my company is moving production overseas. All of the tech jobs here in the home office are being filled by H1B visa workers from India. I’m losing my job and my health insurance. I had to refinance the house after the ’08 crash plus I have those additional loans that I took out for the addition for my elderly father-in-law and college loans for both kids. And the real estate market here is pretty depressed. What do I do now?
Trump Voter in Ohio
Dear Ohio,
Why are you asking me? If you voted for Trump you’re obviously not a true conservative. Stop whining and looking to others to solve your problems! You should have thought about this a long time ago.
CLC
2019
Published in GeneralDear Conservative Life Coach,
Screw you.
Angry in Ohio
Indeed. Deflation is a reduction in aggregate demand, not an increase in aggregate productivity.
Picking a subset of the population (which could be in the majority) is what politics is about–and representing their interests by means of public policy; e.g. free-trade vs. fair-trade, or open borders vs. assimilated immigration.
What I understand to be the beef of the OP is that the advocacy of pure policy without attendant consideration of the “friction” of its effects can lead to unnecessary failure. And that those advocates not only seem to wash their hands of it, they express an obnoxious attitude towards those who are attempting to readjust the downside (calling them “populists” if not stupid, racists, etc.).
It’s certainly possible to feel empathy for them; that’s a core reason for enjoying fiction. I think it proper and compassionate to feel their pain. I’m with you on the performance of the compassion, but it is possible that you and I incite comments about how we lack empathy in general, and other critiques of our character when we do not explicitly narrate our feelings. If that reduces the clarity of our arguments, it may be that we should look to change that.
Absent a change in the money supply, productivity gains (and other increases in the supply of goods) are the same thing as deflation.
The left has been mocking stuff like this for years and many on the left would agree with your larger point.
Why does Trump have to be your vessel, especially since he has allied himself with those who have said almost all of the above for the past 30 years?
That was Van Buren’s view. I think that one can approach the question of how we should organize society in a less factional manner. Most of us hold views on, and engage politically, with matters that have very little personal relevance.
Friction is a core part of policy. Indeed, it is the arguably the most fundamental tenet of conservatism; prescription is about the costs of getting us to utopia, or even striving to do so. It’s why we don’t, generally, “readjust the downside” much.
I’ll take it on your word that I’m a Van Burenist (Van Burenian ? Van Burenista ?).
The rest, I’ll also take it on your word the “we”.
When I put forth policies–yes, been there, done that–the downside was considered and integrated into it. Happy Van Burenista I must be ! Who knew ?
Although,
he looks tight and low. I’m high and tight. On well, not a perfect Van Burenista.
Flag me, ban me, hit me with your best shot because I’m gonna say it: some people do not have the temperament to be moderators. That the people at this site don’t recognize this says all that needs to be said.
Does anyone have any empathy for newspaper journalists? Our profession has been hammered flat in the last 15 years, and certainly not by anything the journalists themselves did. You could say “they twisted the news to fit their liberal views, and now they’re suffering because no one wants it,” but that’s not what decimated the industry. It wasn’t foreign competition. The world changed, and the people at the top of the business either couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt.
Those were good middle-class jobs of all sorts, from drivers to warehousemen to pressmen to clerical to the newsroom. A lot of people would have been saved from perilous times if the government had decided to subsidize the news media.
Good idea? Bad? Why? Why not?
Good question (IMHO).
Is there a difference between relinquishing energy production (the preeminence of which we have regained) uranium assets (thank you Hillary), consumer goods production (also gaining ground within our shores), and the buggy whips of leftist rags ? Yea, there is. Priorities—may a coherent society keep them, ours.
Bad idea, but the government should subsidize the education and retraining of the journalists. Nobody should have any pretensions that changing a job is like changing toothpaste, and markets never function like they do in Econ 101. The journalists can learn a new trade, and since it is through no fault of their own that they are unemployed in a society that ideally wouldn’t have to choose between technological progress and short-term economic security, it is best for everyone if their education were subsidized.
Related to this, there was a John Stossel special on America that aired in 1999 on ABC. It looks very stupid now. At one point Stossel talks about outsourcing, and he seems to suggest that things always turn out fine for the employees. Many took it as an article of faith back then. Does anyone believe it now?
Well, yes! I do. It’s unfortunate that too many talented journalists were put out of work by pretty faces who played a good game. Whose fault? Impossible to say… everyone? But one sad thing… journalists haven’t been calling each other out enough. That undermined the entire profession.
I certainly miss regular journalists.
No one is advocating for government subsidies.
The issue is ….a rigged game. And, further, if the game is rigged, how bout at least cutting us in- in exchange for our votes? I mean, at least you can share right?
Or how bout just making it more fair? Somehow anyone asking for fairness in this game is labeled a leftist who wants a handout.
The laws and regulations overwhelmingly favor corporations over medium and small businesses.
Are you saying the left’s mocked the advice to get married, have kids, get a house, do the whole white-picket-fence nuclear family thing? I remember mocking that back in my days as an enlightened youth who knew better.
Trump is the vessel into which anything can be poured.
I listened to a panel of journalists talk in 2017 about the First Amendment. The moderator was the managing editor of the Dallas Morning News (a far leftie based on his comments). I asked a question derived from my book; I asserted that journalists too often are both lazy and ignorant. They didn’t like it. It’s similar to Mollie Hemingway’s assertion that, rather than reflecting on how they got 2016 so wrong, the MSM has dug in and has become even more partisan. Journalists criticize everybody else but react too often with fury when they’re criticized. This is the thread I started:
http://ricochet.com/462348/archives/discussion-of-the-1st-amendment/
I agree that the media is important. But almost without exception I catch major errors when they write a subject I know. It’s been the case for a long time. As some of you know, my Dad designed the Vanguard 1 which was the second American satellite. At the 50th celebration in March 2008, he related in detail the many errors published in 2007 about Project Vanguard.
Absolutely. Of course. I agree! (Actually, the thought of the government keeping the IV drip open on newspapers, and even paying the newspapers is a great idea. But it reminds me of the old headline: He Who Paid Piper Called Tune.)
The left has been mocking the right’s advice over one should live their life and the view that one should bear entirely the cost of their own family’s welfare.
Except that it took twenty years for newspapers to get where they are and attrition could and should have been allowed to be factored in. Drivers can always drive, but the newspapers went on hiring, writers that write mostly fiction and editors that can’t spell or keep a lid on bias, as if there was always tomorrow. Sure you need a big critical mass of employees to run a newspaper, but that doesn’t say it couldn’t have been managed better. (Of course, who saw it coming. Maybe a lot, actually.)
You know what my real beef is? I would be reading two newspapers a day today if I could find one delivered to me in the morning that wasn’t a propaganda machine for views I don’t want to support and subsidize. I liked the Oregonian what forty years ago. Since then? I’ll stick to my Drudge and ZH.
Sure. Because they suffered from bad business decisions. Back in the early days of the Internet too many publishers thought they only had to have a “presence” on the web, dismissed it as the alternative delivery system and gave their product away. All products being worth what consumers are willing to pay for it, they shot themselves in the foot.
I don’t have anything against creative destruction. It’s the way of the world. But when we shipped textile jobs to Asia and other poorer countries we all didn’t stop wearing clothes. It was destruction for destruction’s sake.
Ah, but what if they’re not leftist rags engaged in buggywhippery? I’ll concede that the average journo in the fat days shaded towards the Democratic side – the installed base was old line Democrat, JFK technocratic / bear-any-burden, with the post-Watergate cohort more inclined to the delicious thrills of Improving the World, instead of observing and reporting on it. But local news is different. Who stabbed who, what the city council said, what the park board cut, what the school board wants – these are essential stories in any community, and no one volunteers to tell them. Without a professional newsgathering operation, there’s no one to cover them. Bloggers? I love bloggers. But they don’t take time off to cover the sewer board meeting.
Keeping with the thread’s theme, though, the slant of the newspaper’s product should be irrelevant to whether or not government should protect the jobs. Because if these are good jobs, and the changing economic landscape threatens to eliminate them, are the Elites and Solons to be criticized for not preventing their evaporation?
I agree with what you wrote, but I think there is a little more to that last thought. I have no fondness for Walmart and have never really shopped there (even when they were the only big store within forty-five minutes). But it never liked the stuff. Even the meats were — well, I’d never before seen meat that looked and cut like that once cooked.
There was mockumentary about Walmart that made the rounds for years and the one line that stuck with me was an inventor(?) and appliance producer who said he was told by a Walmart purchaser that his product was great and they would carry it but not until they brought the unit price down a few percent. He said he couldn’t. The purchaser said, with a dower look, then you’ll have to get it made in China.
I don’t know it this is destruction for destruction’s sake, or if it’s a benign “creative destruction” or just fulfilling your fiduciary responsibility to be bringing your shareholders the greatest possible return on their investment, but much of what is troubled about America today, and what is wrong with every appliance I’ve purchased in the past twenty years extends from this business practice.
Who stabbed whom: Two or three times I subscribed to the Sunpaper (if you know who I mean, and I think you do) but always let the subscription lapse because there was nothing in there that I actually trusted to be true and unbiased, even of the dismally chosen content that was there.
As for bloggers covering sewer board meetings: that’s done by i-phones and facebook now.
It’s late and I may be thick with fatigue and a wee dram, but I’m not getting your point. Are you saying the left mocks the particulars of the right’s advice, or the fact that they deign to offer it?
As for the view that one should bear entirely the cost of their own family’s welfare, that used to be the default – and it concentrated the mind wonderfully, as the man said. The rise of private benevolent associations backstopped that Puritan notion for a long time.
Then government stepped in. Thanks, Elks, IOOF, Pythias, Masons, all you guys – we got this. Given the state’s appetite for influence and resources, it’s no surprise that the charitable instinct morphed into benevolent paternalism that infantilizes the subjects – and now the idea that one should bear any aspect of one’s own family’s welfare is cruel. If a single woman has three children by three men, and cannot provide, the fault is not with the woman who was but a cork buffeted by various intersecting isms, but the failure of the state to confiscate by force the resources of a hedge fund manager.
As Bill De Blasio said, there’s lots of money, but it’s in the wrong hands.
Something like they weren’t wrong, the outcome was. MSM have abandoned the profession of reporting what happens in life for usurping a smug authority as arbiters of what ought to happen. Their lust for control and power is obvious. No need for an X-ray to see they are joined at the hip with the Ds.
But shipping jobs overseas is a good business decision, according to the toppity-top elites. So we have sympathy with the victims of good decisions, and shrug about the ones who suffered from bad decisions.
If the destruction of journalism jobs was abetted by blinkered elites in the executive suites who didn’t realize, or care, about the effect it would have on the workers, shouldn’t government have intervened? Whether or not one approves of creative destruction is irrelevant, if the objective is preserving industries and employment.
Because none of the domesticated Republicans would. During the primary, I kept hoping that Carly Fiorina would step up and address Chinese trade practices. Instead she left this winning issue to Trump.
Yeeeeah, no. How many Facebook “journalists” left work and headed to Wisconsin when they found the girl who’d been missing since her parents were shot? We need a dedicated cohort of people who are paid to gather the news, and have institutional accountability.
When my wife worked for WBEZ in the late 90s (NPR affiliate in Chicago), they hired a morning editor who took her cues from whatever the NYT had published that day. If the local WBEZ reporters came back with stories she didn’t like because they didn’t fit into the Left’s paradigm, she’d send them out to do further research. As other have written, even local stories can and often are covered in a biased manner.
Yeah, I was being tongue in cheek — though I do see the occasional town meeting that was recorded and posted when there’s a healthy argument. My paper prints about the local priests’ behaviors and who was arrested most recently, but the rest is — well, I don’t think I miss much by not reading it.
Your reference to the girl found missing Wisconsin I never heard about. I take it it was local?
I don’t doubt it. What you described still happens today. Perhaps the solution would be offshoring news collection to dispassionate Chinese technicians who work the phones, get the quotes, and write the stories.