David Brooks Does Not Get the Moral Norm of Being Broke

[phantom power]

I'm reminded of Krugman's observation that fops like Brooks really do seem to frame this disaster as some kind of Normam Rockwell inspired morality play, instead of the result of 30 years of sociopathic economic policies.

Ah, but the real brilliance is yet to come.

"The third norm is that loyalty matters. A few years ago there was a celebration of Free Agent Nation. But now most people, even most young people, would rather work long-term for one company than move around in search of freedom and opportunity."

Yes, you idiot, they would. Everyone would. Unfortunately, and I hate to keep bringing this up, Dave, but 30 years of dumb Republican economics and even dumber Republican politics, both of which you made your bones celebrating, have sort of made that impossible. (A couple of decades of bipartisan "free-trade" agreements haven't helped, either.) Who was it that was cheering on "Free Agent Nation"? It was the politicians and the pundits who were declaring the golden age of the global economy, in which we'd all have two or three jobs before we retired, fat and happy, on the 401k's that the miracle of Wall Street by then would have inflated beyond our wildest dreams. Anyone who meekly suggested that, maybe, he'd like to put in 20 years at his job and collect a pension at the end of it that he could live on, was dismissed as a whiny relic of a past age, or as a state employee. And, in any case, part of the miracle of Wall Street was devising new and complicated financial instruments by which private pension plans could be pillaged for private profit. If David Brooks was concerned about this prior to 2008, when the people who go to dinner with him and who pay his honoraria nearly blew up the world, he kept devilishly quiet about it.

What American capitalism knows about "moral norms" is that they are for other people. The people who did all the real damage are not in any way interested in "repairing the economic moral fabric" that "is the essential national task right now." They are interested in keeping the money they stole and in stealing as much more of it as they can. But David Brooks is far more concerned with some guy, sitting around his kitchen table, bills up to his elbows, who decides that, in the interest of the "economic moral fabric" of the country, he won't take the kids to Chuck E. Cheese tonight on the family MasterCard. Congratulations, good and faithful servant, says David Brooks, and orders another brandy.

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-great-restoration-6518155#ixzz1bEyHBqiI

[es35]

1. This is now how I close all of my replies to advertisers online

If you really want us to buy your products, how about not contributing to the campaigns of budget-slashing politicians who are killing are economy and our jobs. If you're not already, then maybe you can tell your business acquaintances who are.

Eric Stone

[phantom power]

2. welcome to DU

:hi:

[closeupready]

3. "You've got to be on mushrooms to believe that." That about sums up Brooks' views, IMO.

K&R

[Enrique]

4. there was a time when David Brooks was taken seriously

and Tom Friedman, and the late David Broder, and the rest.

I'm so glad that the Internet has caused those people to get the ridicule they deserve.

[Ikonoklast]

5. Loyalty matters??? TO WHOM????

That social contract was broken by the corporations, and now they are demanding loyalty again?

Why?

So they can fuck people over yet again, then laugh when they tell you that your skill set is out of date, as they replace you with H1-B visa holders, or send the division you spent the last twenty years in to China???