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

Dear Conservative Life Coach,

Screw you.

Angry in Ohio

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  1. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    , it is best for everyone if their education were subsidized.

    That is not at all clear. Government job training programs have a dismal record. 

    • #121
  2. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Misthiocracy secretly (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    hen computers eliminated

    This is deflation. More output for less.

    That’s productivity.

     

    Indeed. Deflation is a reduction in aggregate demand, not an increase in aggregate productivity.

    Oh God. Not this conversation again. 

    • #122
  3. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    James Of England (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    hen computers eliminated

    This is deflation. More output for less.

    That’s productivity.

    Absent a change in the money supply, productivity gains (and other increases in the supply of goods) are the same thing as deflation.

    Thank you.

    This topic causes so many economic and political problems. People have no idea.

    • #123
  4. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    the government should subsidize the education and retraining of the journalists.

    GOSPLAN

    • #124
  5. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Franco (View Comment):

    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.

    That’s what I think. Starting with the financial system, but it’s everywhere.

    • #125
  6. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Flicker (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):
    It was destruction for destruction’s sake.

    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.

    This is one hell of a topic, and it’s very complicated. I do not see how Walmart got all of its power as 100% benign, but Amazon is way worse. The one difference with Walmart is it helped the poor’s money go further on everything.

    • #126
  7. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    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?

    I think the difficulty is in working out what to pay for. If you pay for clicks, there’s an enormous industry of fake clicks ready to deceive you. If for hard copies, I suspect you’ll find a lot of carousel fraud. If for the price, a lot of what the London Telegraph did for a while in which it gave a free gift of a bottle of water to the reader, said bottle having a typical value slightly greater than the cost of the paper, or the same. And carousel fraud. 

    And then there’s the question of whether Drudge is a newspaper. Is the Amazon front page, or Google’s? Would it be if there were a news clicker at the top right corner? Are concert programs? Concert tickets?

    Even before getting into the question of content neutrality, it seems like it would be hard to privilege the Lesser Wilton On The Wold World News and Telegraph over news free outlets. Once you’re into content questioning, is Bridget Phetasy’s daily email to patreon donors with intimate photos of herself a newsletter?  I suspect people don’t like the theory because they think the government would control the media as it does the schools (lets hear it for Grove City!), but that it would be more likely to had other issues.

    For the most part, film subsidies have been a huge waste of money (that should have stopped their original creator, Gary Johnson, from ever being called a libertarian), but they haven’t led to government control of the content. Their biggest success was Breaking Bad, which is far from consistently flattering to the state. The successful form of traditional public TV that did change the content in a traditional manner is PBS, which is able to do so because it is essentially a fundraising mechanism for private donors who want middle brow stuff. 

    A C-Spann equivalent, on the other hand, would be useful, particularly with better transcription. That way, we can all find out about the local issues that really matter to us, even if we only find out we care years later.

    • #127
  8. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Walmart’s leverage over its vendors should have been investigated by congress.

    What’s interesting to me is, the Walmart family got all of its money fair and square. They made millions of people’s purchasing power go way further. But here’s the deal: lefties want to seize their wealth anyway they can think of. Just take their assets when they die and let the government consume it. The next thing will be “net worth taxes”. None of this does jack for our fiscal picture.

    If you asked them why we should do it they will say something like “it makes an intuitive sense” or ‘we have to prevent oligarchies.” Swell.

    • #128
  9. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    toggle (View Comment):

    James Of England (View Comment):

    That was Van Buren’s view.

    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 ?

    Do you mean that you tailored policies to transfer resources to people who had voted for you (or for your boss), or that you strove to mitigate harm generally?

    • #129
  10. Hank Rhody, Acting on Emotion Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Acting on Emotion
    @HankRhody

    James Of England (View Comment):
    If for hard copies, I suspect you’ll find a lot of carousel fraud. If for the price, a lot of what the London Telegraph did for a while in which it gave a free gift of a bottle of water to the reader, said bottle having a typical value slightly greater than the cost of the paper, or the same. And carousel fraud. ?

    Sounds fun. What is carousel fraud and how would I go about committing it?

    • #130
  11. James Of England Inactive
    James Of England
    @JamesOfEngland

    Hank Rhody, Acting on Emotion (View Comment):

    James Of England (View Comment):
    If for hard copies, I suspect you’ll find a lot of carousel fraud. If for the price, a lot of what the London Telegraph did for a while in which it gave a free gift of a bottle of water to the reader, said bottle having a typical value slightly greater than the cost of the paper, or the same. And carousel fraud. ?

    Sounds fun. What is carousel fraud and how would I go about committing it?

    If I get a quarter every time I sell you a mug, you might find it worth your while to buy that mug from me a bunch of times. Originally, I believe, applied to VAT/ Sales tax rebates that one got when one left the territory without having sold the goods, smuggling them in again, etc.

    • #131
  12. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):
    If someone bought a house in 1993, I have a hard time believing the 2008 crash would not have knocked them underwater or caused them to need to refinance the 30 years mortgage that they’d be halfway through by that point.

    Is that what you meant to say?  We bought a house in 1995, and were not underwater in 2008.

    • #132
  13. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):
    If someone bought a house in 1993, I have a hard time believing the 2008 crash would not have knocked them underwater or caused them to need to refinance the 30 years mortgage that they’d be halfway through by that point.

    Is that what you meant to say? We bought a house in 1995, and were not underwater in 2008.

    What if shelter prices didn’t constantly increase?

    • #133
  14. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Misthiocracy secretly (View Comment):
    I’d like to see some stats on how many people who bought a home to live in were brought down by the 2008 crash, compared to the number of people who were buying real estate as investments.

    Agreed.  We bought our house to be a home.

    • #134
  15. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy secretly (View Comment):
    I’d like to see some stats on how many people who bought a home to live in were brought down by the 2008 crash, compared to the number of people who were buying real estate as investments.

    Agreed. We bought our house to be a home.

    How un-American of you. 

    • #135
  16. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    EJHill (View Comment):
    All people ask for is for their government not to change the rules on them and not to actively work against them.

    I think it’s the government’s job to work against them. 

    • #136
  17. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):
    All people ask for is for their government not to change the rules on them and not to actively work against them.

    I think it’s the government’s job to work against them.

    Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™

    • #137
  18. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):
    If someone bought a house in 1993, I have a hard time believing the 2008 crash would not have knocked them underwater or caused them to need to refinance the 30 years mortgage that they’d be halfway through by that point.

    Is that what you meant to say? We bought a house in 1995, and were not underwater in 2008.

    What if shelter prices didn’t constantly increase?

    Didn’t matter.  The house would have had to have lost about 75% of it’s value.  We’re pretty serious about paying down the mortgage.  In fact, we paid it off the other day.

    • #138
  19. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    RufusRJones (View Comment):

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):
    If someone bought a house in 1993, I have a hard time believing the 2008 crash would not have knocked them underwater or caused them to need to refinance the 30 years mortgage that they’d be halfway through by that point.

    Is that what you meant to say? We bought a house in 1995, and were not underwater in 2008.

    What if shelter prices didn’t constantly increase?

    Didn’t matter. The house would have had to have lost about 75% of it’s value. We’re pretty serious about paying down the mortgage. In fact, we paid it off the other day.

    I was making a general point. Our financial system and government depend on housing going up all the time. It deflates the debt that you use to buy it, which props up our wonderful financial system and then ultimately, government gets to tax the asset inflation.

    The problem is, with cheap globalized labor, I’m not sure this makes sense anymore.

    • #139
  20. Chris Campion Coolidge
    Chris Campion
    @ChrisCampion

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male: If you leave out the “you should have seen this coming” part, “go to where the jobs are” has been good advice in this country for 200-plus years.

    But it’s always easier said than done. And skills aren’t exactly as transferable as the used to be. “You were an assembly worker at Carrier? No problem, you’ll catch on to this coding for 3-D printing in no time! Sure, we’ll be patient while you learn! Here’s 100k to start, mkay?”

    Whose fault is that?  If you’re walking around with your eyes closed, and your job goes away, and you’ve never spent any time for the past 10 years of the same job improving your skillset, trainings, certifications, education, etc, now someone else has to fix your problem for you?  Save your job?

    No.

    • #140
  21. ctlaw Coolidge
    ctlaw
    @ctlaw

    Chris Campion (View Comment):

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male: If you leave out the “you should have seen this coming” part, “go to where the jobs are” has been good advice in this country for 200-plus years.

    But it’s always easier said than done. And skills aren’t exactly as transferable as the used to be. “You were an assembly worker at Carrier? No problem, you’ll catch on to this coding for 3-D printing in no time! Sure, we’ll be patient while you learn! Here’s 100k to start, mkay?”

    Whose fault is that? If you’re walking around with your eyes closed, and your job goes away, and you’ve never spent any time for the past 10 years of the same job improving your skillset, trainings, certifications, education, etc, now someone else has to fix your problem for you? Save your job?

    No.

    There is a huge problem with this.  It is the difference between the buggy whip industry that dies of natural causes and highly productive industries that are murdered.

    The problem is any high productivity industry will be targeted by our enemies. It does not matter that we have both comparative and absolute advantage in such industries.  Trade barriers allow less efficient competitors to conquer those industries. This is particularly the case with China due to the large size of its market and the associated economies of scale and bargaining power. 

     Also it begs the question of what you wish this hypothetical person to train for. Even if that person is brilliant enough to identify the next high productivity industry and train for it, it is even more likely that that industry in the US will be strangled in its cradle.

     

    • #141
  22. Viruscop Member
    Viruscop
    @Viruscop

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    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.

    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?

     

    It’s more the fact that they deign to offer it. It is arrogance on their part to assume that they have figured out a lifestyle that works for everyone. 

    • #142
  23. Miffed White Male Member
    Miffed White Male
    @MiffedWhiteMale

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Miffed White Male (View Comment):
    If someone bought a house in 1993, I have a hard time believing the 2008 crash would not have knocked them underwater or caused them to need to refinance the 30 years mortgage that they’d be halfway through by that point.

    Is that what you meant to say? We bought a house in 1995, and were not underwater in 2008.

    wow, that went a long time before anyone noticed.

     

    You are correct.

     

    • #143
  24. Misthiocracy secretly Member
    Misthiocracy secretly
    @Misthiocracy

    Now, if the argument is that welfare should be limited to conscientious hard-workers who’ve made good life choices, I could get behind that. 

    I’d have little problem with the thesis that a 55-year old who is married with a mortgage and children in college who has lived a clean life and worked steadily for decades should get a bail-out before the 20 year old single drug user with no work history gets one.

    It’s not conservatives’ fault that taxpayer-funded social assistance programs don’t work that way. 

    • #144
  25. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    A couple of points about the original post and some of the reactions to it:

    One of the questions that has dogged us since Mr. Trump locked up the GOP nomination and then pulled off the upset and won the White House is “How did we get here?” It was my attempt, in a humorous way, to answer why so many staunch conservatives rebelled and ended up voting for the man and continue to support him despite his many and obvious flaws. The recent L’affaire de Tucker was the most recent example of this.

    The reactions were interesting to say the least. They ranged from lawyerly cross examination (Where was your mythical letter writer on June 14th of 2003?) to anger like I had snuck into someone’s house in the middle of the night and killed their cat. (I don’t like cats but I assure you I am incapable of felinocide.)

    It was not an attempt to be biographical to any real person. I don’t have the energy to create a comprehensive 36-year back story for a mythical being just as you wouldn’t have the energy to plow through it. So when much of the reaction began to be centered on whether or not “Bob” was really underwater with his mortgage in 2008 I had to laugh out loud. I know “winning” the argument is a serious business with most of us, but c’mon. (Since I am Bob’s God-Creator here, I decree Bob’s boss was talking layoffs at the time and Mrs. Bob lost her job because of the financial crisis and they refinanced to bring the payments down. Happy now?)

    During the days of the same-sex marriage debate on this site, proponents kept telling us that the GOP had to change or they were doomed. Society just wasn’t where so many of us were. Of course, when they said that the GOP had to change they meant it needed to be less conservative. But as Trump gathered momentum the cry became “He’s not a conservative!” Well, you said we had to change to win and you got your wish. Now purity of conservative thought became essential.

    While most of us have a lingering nostalgia for the Reagan years, many points of the Reagan philosophy have been ditched by those with the most visible hatred for the current President. Out the window went the “11th Commandment,” the idea of accepting 75% of what you want as a victory and even the occasional protectionist measure to keep American jobs in America. None of that matters to those who now snarl, “Every real conservative believes ‘X’…”

    Someone asked why I care (or give a rat’s ass) about what conservative commentators write or think. As Lincoln said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” In our zeal to win the argument we adopt their lines and philosophies. What we have adopted is a zeal for internecine warfare while our real political enemies gallop toward Marxism.

    Everyone needs to understand where and why Trump has so much support within the conservative sphere. Stop questioning their purity. Don’t question the religious faith of others based on their support of the president. Realize that the resentment is real and the reasoning behind it is not necessarily irrational.

    “But… but… Trump attacks in his tweets!” Ok. You keep telling me you’re of better character than him, so prove it.

    • #145
  26. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Misthiocracy secretly (View Comment):
    It’s not conservatives’ fault that taxpayer-funded social assistance programs don’t work that way. 

    I think it’s the tax-payer funding that’s the problem.  maybe other people would rather give their money to people they know, and know need the money.

    • #146
  27. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Flicker (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy secretly (View Comment):
    It’s not conservatives’ fault that taxpayer-funded social assistance programs don’t work that way.

    I think it’s the tax-payer funding that’s the problem. maybe other people would rather give their money to people they know, and know need the money.

    Back in the 19th century in the U.S. when these programs were local, you often needed a local character reference to qualify. Some people who wanted these programs replaced by entitlements said that was demeaning. So now they’re demeaning on a larger scale. If you don’t show proper gratitude and submission, you get the Clarence Thomas treatment. 

    • #147
  28. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Viruscop (View Comment):
    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.

    I’d say that’s the union’s job. I’d rather my dues went to help unemployed journalists than take money from someone else who had nothing to do with the situation. What sort of retraining are we talking about, though? Anything short of college will probably be insufficient.

    • #148
  29. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Flicker (View Comment):
    Your reference to the girl found missing Wisconsin I never heard about. I take it it was local?

    Yes, big story – parents shot, teen disappears. Three months, nothing. Then she escaped. 

    • #149
  30. DrewInWisconsin Member
    DrewInWisconsin
    @DrewInWisconsin

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Flicker (View Comment):
    Your reference to the girl found missing Wisconsin I never heard about. I take it it was local?

    Yes, big story – parents shot, teen disappears. Three months, nothing. Then she escaped.

    Everyone at work seemed a bit happier on Friday after the news broke.

    • #150
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