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In a recent post, Ricochet member anonymous posits that the U.S. has become “an unserious country.” Today, we do our best to dispel that notion just a bit (despite the disturbing image above from EJHill) with our guests economist Russ Roberts from the Hoover Institution as well as his legendary EconTalk podcast and Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen (read his new book Cheney One on One). In our attempt to be serious, we cover inequality, Ben Carson’s many controversies, Kentucky’s new governor, the Bush-Cheney squabble, and the upcoming debate. Also, don’t miss James Rosen’s spot on impersonation of Barack Obama. Seriously.
Music from this week’s episode:
Stuck In the Middle With You by Stealer’s Wheel
The opening sequence for the Ricochet Podcast was composed and produced by James Lileks.
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Sorry to miss the taping. Broker open house here today, so I made a lunch date. EJ, this picture is truly disturbing.
“Disturbing” is the very word.
Rod and Peter, when are you going to accept the fact that The Politico and The NYT, et. al, are either lying or at least trying to grossly mislead you?
When you see a damaging story about a Republican in those publications, wait 24 hours to find out the truth.
I’m very disappointed with the color of my shirt, E.J. Don’t you know that I’m an Autumn?
Gentlemen,
It appears we are all Bozos on this Bus.
Regards,
Jim
“…we cover inequality…”
That’s awfully unspecific. I haven’t listened to the podcast yet – what kind of inequality are we talking about? Inequality of intelligence? Of education level? Of work ethic? Of risk-tolerance? Of entrepreneurism? Of height? Of pi and e?
Of course, I’m being facetious, but I’m trying to make a serious point that I’ve made elsewhere on Ricochet. Conservatives should cease and desist from using the term “income inequality”. It implies that incomes ought to be equal, which even the most rabid socialist (probably) wouldn’t agree with. Even worse is shortening “income inequality” to “inequality”! We should not dignify the term by using it, and certainly not by using its shorthand.
I had previously suggested the term “income disparity”, but “disparity” is just a synonym for “inequality”. I therefore propose “income differences” or “differences in income”.
When you make concessions in your language, you make concessions in your argument.
I absolutely agree. Over here I offered the term “Income Diversity”.
[Edit: Oh, of course, Johnny Dubya, you were in that very conversation!]
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
I absolutely do want my President watching cat videos.
Kennedy and Nixon weren’t serious, they were unserious. The guys today are serious.
The population then wasn’t serious. The population today is serious.
Get this straight. ASAP.
You have no idea how much this podcast upset me.
To quote Milt Rosenberg quoting Casey Stengel – “Don’t nobody here know how to play this game!?”
I was going to go for Long and Robinson as Holmes and Watson looking for the missing James Lileks. Instead you got a personal Rorschach test… Disturbing R Us…
In addition to Mr. Roberts’s repetitive use of “inequality”, I found it odd that his prescriptions for reducing income differences had to do with reducing the income of high-earners and not with increasing the income of low-earners.
He ought to have a conversation with Thomas Sowell about that.
The Carson team answered back immediately calling it a complete lie. I couldn’t help but notice that the media was slow walking the Carson team reply so that hours later they were still reporting the ‘ Carson campaign admits….’ nonsense.
2) The naivety is quite touching , the unemployment rate in Oct of 2016 will be exactly what Hillary needs it to be.
Why do we view Nixon v Kennedy as serious and current environment as unserious? Because back then Republicans and Democrats and liberals and conservatives were much more opposite sides of the same coin as opposed to today where we seem to be entirely different currency. Today it’s more socialism vs libertarianism at the fore instead of liberalism vs conservatism.
Daley’s Democrat machine was certainly corrupt but it was also grounded in capitalism, freedom, and prosperity and never questioned that capitalism was the key to providing prosperity whether or not it was self aware enough to recognize the parasitic relationship; today that is very much in question. Daley probably never thought his corruption and patronage system would do too much damage to our capitalist engine while today more and more it seems that the Democrats want to do damage to capitalism because it deserves it and because they believe socialism would work better anyway. Of course I was born only two years before Daley died so I don’t know him or that machine, but I do know Bridgeport and I know the people that populated that machine (at lower to mid levels). I have no data, just a general sense of what kind of people they were.
As I was helpfully reminded by Ricochet, this happened during the 1968 campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qRZvlZZ0DY
Why do Bush 41, Bob Dole and other “establishment” Republicans always feel need to arrack fellow Reublicans rather than their Democratic adversaries. I though it was the base that supposedly does that. Really disappointing to hear about Bush 41’s comments.
Thanks for having Mr. Rosen on. I really enjoyed The Strong Man, his book about John Mitchell and Watergate.
Does Peter know who Russ Roberts is? He is not a political animal; he’s an economist.
Read this http://www.nationalreview.com/article/426728/ben-carson-liberal-media-victim. I hope you guys are up for an apology to Dr. Carson.
What’s to apologize for? Ben Carson said something untrue, multiple times. The untruth he told benefited his image. If a democrat had done that, this site would have crucified the candidate. Upon being called on it by the media, he restated his former claims in a way that still don’t answer the untruth he told. Carson said he received an offer from West Point to attend. He did not receive any such thing. His new explanation is that he was saying that Westmoreland made an informal assurance he would get into West Point. This new explanation cannot be squared with what Carson has definitively written and said previously.
I like the term “superficial inequality.” It underlines how the push for material equality undermines legal and social equality. As Milton Friedman said, enforcing material equality means giving some people the right to take things from others.
The inequality of pi and e is a long term trend that is increasingly troubling. In Denmark I am told they are much closer and people are happier there.
Hoagie Ziggurat is the stage name I use for my Dada performance art.
Has Kevin Williamson posted that clown photo at Twitter yet?
Would like to echo Basil’s comments on Rosen’s book The Strong Man about John Mitchell. Excellent book
Was that you? I didn’t recognize you without your coffee cup.
Unemployment psychology:
More than usual, people are thinking “If I lost/left my job, would I find another in a reasonable time? No.”
Serious candidates:
Rob, everything you said about serious candidates (Kennedy and Nixon) is why we all thought that Romney would win three years ago.
I’ve always been amazed at the concept of “discouraged workers” workers that have not looked for a job in the last few months and therefore not considered unemployed… how does this happen? I know my mom, my landlord or my wife would have put a boot in my CoC if I tried to lay around for a month without looking for a job.
After long runs, I like to re-charge the batteries with an extra-large Hoagie Ziggurat.