It Matters

What matters? Well, New York City for one. We get to that topic towards the end of this show, but prior to that we visit first with economist Kevin Warsh of the Hoover Institution. He has a lot to say about humongous stimulus packages, Congress, the role of China in this thing, and what the Fed should and shouldn’t be doing. Then, newly minted Ricochet podcaster and chip the old block Spencer Klavan stops by to explain why he’s a heretic and we’re not (at least not yet). Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), Young Heretics, his new podcast is a must listen. Finally, as promised — a meditation on New York City, the lockdown, why it needs to end, and why what happens there matters for the rest of the country and yes, even the world. Yes, it really is up to you, New York, New York.

Music from this week’s show: New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down by LCD Soundsystem

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There are 65 comments.

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  1. Hammer, The Inactive
    Hammer, The
    @RyanM

    @jameslileks, with all of this uncertainty in the world…   I think that there has never been a better time for you folks on the podcast to start throwing out predictions.  Never before, in the history of Ricochet, has there been a more appropriate time for a segment … which might be titled:  “Next Week’s BIG Story.”

    (complete with sound effects)

    • #1
  2. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    Does Ricochet Podcast #437 even exist?

    • #2
  3. Goldwaterwoman Thatcher
    Goldwaterwoman
    @goldwaterwoman

    Did I just hear Rob say it would be a good thing for the rich people to leave NY so a younger creative class could move in? This, from a conservative without any regard for the jobs those rich people have created, not to mention the taxes they pay to help provide the city services? Surely I misunderstood remarks that sounded more like Bernie Sanders than a conservative.

    • #3
  4. Blue Yeti Admin
    Blue Yeti
    @BlueYeti

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Did I just hear Rob say it would be a good thing for the rich people to leave NY so a younger creative class could move in? This, from a conservative without any regard for the jobs those rich people have created, not to mention the taxes they pay to help provide the city services? Surely I misunderstood remarks that sounded more like Bernie Sanders than a conservative.

    He said that IF they leave the city would be fine in the long run, not that they NEED to leave. Meanwhile, that appears to be exactly what is occurring right now.

    • #4
  5. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    Hey you like the main show, want more.  Come check out the show from the members for the members.  Land of Confusion show in the members feed. :)

    We interviewed @rushbabe49 yesterday.

    • #5
  6. Rightfromthestart Coolidge
    Rightfromthestart
    @Rightfromthestart

    The Gary Condid Case was a classic hilarious incidence of the media’s ‘hide the party’ game. He was a Democrat, I’m as much and maybe more aware of politics than most people and yet it took me a few weeks to figure that out. The press thought he was guilty so they simply omitted his party affiliation calling him ‘the California conservative’ and ‘from a conservative district’ in one case putting ‘Rep’ before his name but leaving out the customary (D-CA) , of course allowing the uninformed to think it meant Republican.  

    • #6
  7. Hank Rhody, Badgeless Bandito Contributor
    Hank Rhody, Badgeless Bandito
    @HankRhody

    EJHill (View Comment):

    Does Ricochet Podcast #437 even exist?

    If you round up.

    • #7
  8. Eustace C. Scrubb Member
    Eustace C. Scrubb
    @EustaceCScrubb

    Peter says Rob is a much nicer guy than he is. Is there anyone on Ricochet who really believes this?

    • #8
  9. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Did I just hear Rob say it would be a good thing for the rich people to leave NY so a younger creative class could move in? This, from a conservative without any regard for the jobs those rich people have created, not to mention the taxes they pay to help provide the city services? Surely I misunderstood remarks that sounded more like Bernie Sanders than a conservative.

    Hasn’t it been said that something like a dozen or possibly a few dozen wealthy people, make up most of NYC’s tax base?  And if many more of them leave, NYC will be in big trouble?  No matter how “energetic” or “innovative” the young(er) people might be, they wouldn’t make up for that.

    • #9
  10. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Eustace C. Scrubb (View Comment):

    Peter says Rob is a much nicer guy than he is. Is there anyone on Ricochet who really believes this?

    Well, if I didn’t hate beer, I would much rather have a beer with Rob than Peter.  Does that count?

    • #10
  11. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Did I just hear Rob say it would be a good thing for the rich people to leave NY so a younger creative class could move in? This, from a conservative without any regard for the jobs those rich people have created, not to mention the taxes they pay to help provide the city services? Surely I misunderstood remarks that sounded more like Bernie Sanders than a conservative.

    Perhaps not the rich people who create jobs and pay a lot of taxes, but the Chinese businessmen and Gulf State / European sorts who have been the main customers for the enormous condo projects.  Manhattan has become the shining symbol of inequality – odd, since it’s Democrat run all the way; how did that happen – and it would benefit from diversification on every level, from income to age to the type of industries it hosts. Sez me, anyway.

    • #11
  12. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    James Lileks (View Comment):

    Goldwaterwoman (View Comment):

    Did I just hear Rob say it would be a good thing for the rich people to leave NY so a younger creative class could move in? This, from a conservative without any regard for the jobs those rich people have created, not to mention the taxes they pay to help provide the city services? Surely I misunderstood remarks that sounded more like Bernie Sanders than a conservative.

    Perhaps not the rich people who create jobs and pay a lot of taxes, but the Chinese businessmen and Gulf State / European sorts who have been the main customers for the enormous condo projects. Manhattan has become the shining symbol of inequality – odd, since it’s Democrat run all the way; how did that happen – and it would benefit from diversification on every level, from income to age to the type of industries it hosts. Sez me, anyway.

    That’s a money laundering operation so it will take some effort to shut that down. 

    • #12
  13. Jon1979 Inactive
    Jon1979
    @Jon1979

    The problem, I suppose, in hoping to chase the ultra rich foreigners out of Manhattan, who simply see the city as a safety zone for their money, is the fear you’ll also chase out the hipsters and other upper-middle income 30-something or early 40s types. They were the ones who, in the wake of the lowered crime rates of the Giuliani-Bloomberg years, have essentially created a ring around Manhattan of new residential neighborhoods, either converting ones that had fallen on hard times back into areas of development (Williamsburgh, Bushwick), or taken what previously had been wholly industrial zones and either repurposed the old factories and warehouses or occupied new apartment buildings in areas that would have been unthinkable 25 years ago (as annoying as it might be to hear people in new apartment buildings next to the Long Island Railroad yard in Long Island City complain about the sounds of the trains  stored there, the city really does need the people willing to make their homes next to a 180-year-old railroad yard not to move away).

    Manhattan between 14th and 96th streets for the most part weathered the dark years of 1966-93 OK — Times Square might have been the Mos Eisley Cantina of NYC tourist destinations, but there were always people to fill up the residential properties closest to the Midtown business district. It was the outer borough areas, including most anything close to the East River not named Brooklyn Heights, that rotted out in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s from people moving away because of their declining quality of life. If the current group of gentrifiers decides to head for the suburbs or other metro areas, then you’re going to see the same type of downward spiral as started 50-plus years ago, while the super-rich in Manhattan will, as they did back then, have the money to wall themselves off from the worst aspects of the decline, where the only question would be how risk adverse they are to any future bug, once the current risk recedes.

    • #13
  14. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Jon1979 (View Comment):

    Manhattan between 14th and 96th streets for the most part weathered the dark years of 1966-93 OK — Times Square might have been the Mos Eisley Cantina of NYC tourist destinations, but there were always people to fill up the residential properties closest to the Midtown business district. It was the outer borough areas, including most anything close to the East River not named Brooklyn Heights, that rotted out in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s from people moving away because of their declining quality of life. If the current group of gentrifiers decides to head for the suburbs or other metro areas, then you’re going to see the same type of downward spiral as started 50-plus years ago, while the super-rich in Manhattan will, as they did back then, have the money to wall themselves off from the worst aspects of the decline, where the only question would be how risk adverse they are to any future bug, once the current risk recedes.

    Other bugs like cholera, typhus, maybe even leprosy which the homeless enclaves around Los Angeles and San Francisco seem to be bringing back?

    • #14
  15. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Andrew Klavan’s book on religion left me cold. I didn’t understand what he meant by joy or why he believed in G-d. It seemed too mystical and sentimental.  

    • #15
  16. Leslie Watkins Inactive
    Leslie Watkins
    @LeslieWatkins

    Really enjoyable podcast. BTW, if I’m not mistaken, Anthony Fauci was a prominent proponent of the heterosexual AIDS scare, and I don’t remember any follow-up on how that turned out to be immensely overblown. Also, the Alar scare trumpeted by the marvelous but not very deep thinker Meryl Streep. Three-Mile Island. The ozone hole. 8 Minutes to Midnight. Carl Sagan predicting nuclear winter before the first Gulf War started (caused by Saddam Hussein blowing up the oil fields, which he did end up doing, but just like most of the experts, Sagan never considered the existence of a guy like Red Adair who quickly capped them all).

    I don’t remember any scare in my lifetime living up to the panic it caused. But we always fall for it because we know a hit is coming, and we fool ourselves into thinking we can do something to ward it off. How can this not make god laugh?

    • #16
  17. Peter Robinson Contributor
    Peter Robinson
    @PeterRobinson

    Leslie Watkins (View Comment):

    Really enjoyable podcast. BTW, if I’m not mistaken, Anthony Fauci was a prominent proponent of the heterosexual AIDS scare, and I don’t remember any follow-up on how that turned out to be immensely overblown. Also, the Alar scare trumpeted by the marvelous but not very deep thinker Meryl Streep. Three-Mile Island. The ozone hole. 8 Minutes to Midnight. Carl Sagan predicting nuclear winter before the first Gulf War started (caused by Saddam Hussein blowing up the oil fields, which he did end up doing, but just like most of the experts, Sagan never considered the existence of a guy like Red Adair who quickly capped them all).

    I don’t remember any scare in my lifetime living up to the panic it caused. But we always fall for it because we know a hit is coming, and we fool ourselves into thinking we can do something to ward it off. How can this not make god laugh?

    Ah, Leslie, week after week, engaging prose–and wisdom. Thank you again.

    • #17
  18. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Leslie Watkins (View Comment):

    Really enjoyable podcast. BTW, if I’m not mistaken, Anthony Fauci was a prominent proponent of the heterosexual AIDS scare, and I don’t remember any follow-up on how that turned out to be immensely overblown. Also, the Alar scare trumpeted by the marvelous but not very deep thinker Meryl Streep. Three-Mile Island. The ozone hole. 8 Minutes to Midnight. Carl Sagan predicting nuclear winter before the first Gulf War started (caused by Saddam Hussein blowing up the oil fields, which he did end up doing, but just like most of the experts, Sagan never considered the existence of a guy like Red Adair who quickly capped them all).

    I don’t remember any scare in my lifetime living up to the panic it caused. But we always fall for it because we know a hit is coming, and we fool ourselves into thinking we can do something to ward it off. How can this not make god laugh?

    As He turns up the thermostat on the sun, and watches the left blame SUVs and power plants?

    That the burning oil wells of Kuwait would cause “nuclear winter” was never really credible, it sounds like the kind of thing Baghdad Bob would have come up with.  Along with people I’ve heard claim that Osama bin Laden didn’t really attack the US, because if he had, he was so powerful that the entire US would have been reduced to smoking ruins.

    • #18
  19. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Peter Robinson (View Comment):

    Leslie Watkins (View Comment):

    Really enjoyable podcast. BTW, if I’m not mistaken, Anthony Fauci was a prominent proponent of the heterosexual AIDS scare, and I don’t remember any follow-up on how that turned out to be immensely overblown. Also, the Alar scare trumpeted by the marvelous but not very deep thinker Meryl Streep. Three-Mile Island. The ozone hole. 8 Minutes to Midnight. Carl Sagan predicting nuclear winter before the first Gulf War started (caused by Saddam Hussein blowing up the oil fields, which he did end up doing, but just like most of the experts, Sagan never considered the existence of a guy like Red Adair who quickly capped them all).

    I don’t remember any scare in my lifetime living up to the panic it caused. But we always fall for it because we know a hit is coming, and we fool ourselves into thinking we can do something to ward it off. How can this not make god laugh?

    Ah, Leslie, week after week, engaging prose–and wisdom. Thank you again.

    We always think it’s the end of the world.

    • #19
  20. Leslie Watkins Inactive
    Leslie Watkins
    @LeslieWatkins

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Leslie Watkins (View Comment):

    Really enjoyable podcast. BTW, if I’m not mistaken, Anthony Fauci was a prominent proponent of the heterosexual AIDS scare, and I don’t remember any follow-up on how that turned out to be immensely overblown. Also, the Alar scare trumpeted by the marvelous but not very deep thinker Meryl Streep. Three-Mile Island. The ozone hole. 8 Minutes to Midnight. Carl Sagan predicting nuclear winter before the first Gulf War started (caused by Saddam Hussein blowing up the oil fields, which he did end up doing, but just like most of the experts, Sagan never considered the existence of a guy like Red Adair who quickly capped them all).

    I don’t remember any scare in my lifetime living up to the panic it caused. But we always fall for it because we know a hit is coming, and we fool ourselves into thinking we can do something to ward it off. How can this not make god laugh?

    As He turns up the thermostat on the sun, and watches the left blame SUVs and power plants?

    That the burning oil wells of Kuwait would cause “nuclear winter” was never really credible, it sounds like the kind of thing Baghdad Bob would have come up with. Along with people I’ve heard claim that Osama bin Laden didn’t really attack the US, because if he had, he was so powerful that the entire US would have been reduced to smoking ruins.

    Actually, I think at the moment the sun is cooling down a bit (sun spots-wise), but I get your point. Alas, the left will always blame the very things they use more than anyone else yet claim not to.

    • #20
  21. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    The second episode of Young Heretics will be about Isaiah 53? I’ll be there. 

    Also, very good use of Lewis’s term “chronological snobbery”. 

     

    • #21
  22. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    I just started listening to this, but I just I want you to know I really enjoy the hate for the educational system. Burn. It. Down. 

    • #22
  23. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Just for clarity, the Lutherans that were involved were Missouri / Wisconsin Lutherans, not “Lutherans” like the stereotype people have in their heads from Garrison Keillor. There is an enormous sociological difference.  

    • #23
  24. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    kedavis (View Comment):
    Other bugs like cholera, typhus, maybe even leprosy which the homeless enclaves around Los Angeles and San Francisco seem to be bringing back?

    Make Biblical Plagues Great Again!

    • #24
  25. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Arahant (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):
    Other bugs like cholera, typhus, maybe even leprosy which the homeless enclaves around Los Angeles and San Francisco seem to be bringing back?

    Make Biblical Plagues Great Again!

     

     

     

    • #25
  26. Arahant Member
    Arahant
    @Arahant

    Great show, gents. With that last outtake, I had to go and find a decent picture of Kevin Warsh just to see what Peter was talking about.

    • #26
  27. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Arahant (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):
    Other bugs like cholera, typhus, maybe even leprosy which the homeless enclaves around Los Angeles and San Francisco seem to be bringing back?

    Make Biblical Plagues Great Again!

    I think you’ve found the Biden campaign slogan!

    • #27
  28. Richard O'Shea Coolidge
    Richard O'Shea
    @RichardOShea

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):
    Other bugs like cholera, typhus, maybe even leprosy which the homeless enclaves around Los Angeles and San Francisco seem to be bringing back?

    Make Biblical Plagues Great Again!

    • #28
  29. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Arahant (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):
    Other bugs like cholera, typhus, maybe even leprosy which the homeless enclaves around Los Angeles and San Francisco seem to be bringing back?

    Make Biblical Plagues Great Again!

    I think you’ve found the Biden campaign slogan!

    I’ve suggested Make Depression Great Again. Like last time, elect a Democrat to make an economic downturn into a decade long depression.

    Edit: darn Android keyboard thought downturn was downtown.

    • #29
  30. JuliaBlaschke Lincoln
    JuliaBlaschke
    @JuliaBlaschke

    Whoever stays in NYC I just hope they are people who don’t vote like morons and for morons. But that is probably too much to ask as they seem to love their morons.

    • #30
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