Because nothing says class like larger than life (?) Hello Kitty sculptures, mysteriously featured outside of the W Hotel in South Beach. Rusty too.
Heading back to DC first thing in the morning with deadlines a loomin'. On the plus side, I'll be reunited with Stanley.
I have a question -- why does Matt Yglesias think that Barack Obama is not opposed to offshoring of American jobs? And why does he seem to suggest that it's preposterous to view offshoring -- at least in some circumstances -- as immoral. He raises the issue of Toyota and BMW setting up production facilities in the U.S. and whether anyone would object to that? Well, I think there is a fundamental difference between setting up a production facility in a place where your product is being sold versus sending jobs overseas -- to have your product reimported back into the U.S. -- in order to take advantage of incredibly cheap labor.
And yes, I actually do have a problem with BMW -- they set up their facility in rat-bastard, right to shirk South Carolina, instead of place where their facility would be unionized as they are back in Germany. Mercedes has followed suit in Alabama and now Airbus seems ready to do the same. It's more than a little galling to watch the American South serve as some kind of glorified third world production facility for German enterprise to exploit.
Let me assure Matt -- and the villagers whose sentiments he seem to echo -- that most Americans strongly object to offshoring and view it as an attempt to drive down American wages and the middle class standard of living that was once viewed as synonymous with the greatness of this country.
On a different, but in some ways similar note, next to Glenn Kessler, I think the member of the Washington smugocracy I'd most like to knee in the nuts is Matt's buddy Tyler Cowen. His piece on Medicaid in the New York Times today is notable for its complete inattention to the issue of the uninsured. This guy is the most overpaid, underworked state employee this side of Glenn Reynolds.
What say you?
