Thomas Friedman's Dystopia and Open Thread

 

"Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" - Magnetic Fields

As you know, Thomas Friedman irritates me more than just about any human being alive.  Oh not because he writes the stupidest or most dishonest stuff that is featured in the Times -- Douthat, Brooks, and Dowd all top him in that category.  It's because he writes the stupidest shit that more moderate people mistake for wisdom.  And really, the man is a monumental dumbass, a clueless enabler of our rapacious corporate culture and the inside the Beltway ideology that sustains it.

Last week, Friedman issued another magnum opus extolling the virtues of individual choice that technology and the free market are providing to us, which he titled "It's a 401(k) World" as if that were a good thing.  In it, Friedman suggests that the economy of the day requires us all to pass a bar exam of sorts and that if we do, presumably pennies will rain from heaven into our 401(k)s.

Now just so any Randist types reading this don't get any false ideas, I've passed two bar exams (2 for 2 and retired undefeated) and have a pretty healthy balance in my own 401(k) -- I have not been buried by Friedman's economy, for which I feel rather fortunate.  But I don't mistake this for virtue on my part.  I see a lot of luck, the good fortune to have had enough disposable income to fund a retirement in the most horrible of investment eras, and enough professional knowledge because of what I do for a living to have avoided horrible mistakes after initially being crushed in the 2008 onslaught.  (I have 100% of my retirement money in stocks, as I have had through my entire career -- I lost 41% in 2008 alone and probably from the height of the market in 2007 through its low point on March 9, 2009, I was down about 60%.  Fortunately I hung in there and recouped my losses -- but if the market hadn't bounced back I would have been screwed as so many people were.)

Friedman glibly assumes that we are in some golden age of opportunity:

What’s exciting is that this platform empowers individuals to access learning, retrain, engage in commerce, seek or advertise a job, invent, invest and crowd source — all online. But this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you.       

If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone.

Seriously -- "the boundaries are all gone."  Try telling that to twenty-somethings all throughout the developed world as they struggle to find work.  Try telling it to the 600 or so poor souls crushed to death in Bangla Desh as a result of their societal wager in favor of wealth versus worker safety -- talk about the world being flat.*  Basically the world that so excites the husband of the billionaire heiress -- Tommy is much more a traditionalist than you might imagine -- is one in which there is zero job security, zero retirement security, and a smaller social safety net as a result of grand bargains that Friedman and his ilk long to see struck.  What does this world offer to the vast majority of people -- not just the average person, but pretty much anyone who has to work for a living?  Here is how Friedman describes it (seemingly with approval):

Last week, The Economist quoted one labor expert, Peter Cappelli of the Wharton business school, as saying that companies now regard filling a job as being “like buying a spare part: you expect it to fit.”

People, by and large, do not want to have a life filled with economic adventure, much less being treated as spare parts.  Most people crave some sort of stability and security in their work lives, the oppornity to have a career, to settle down somewhere, to not be an eternal and ever-disposable free agent.  The economy is not some capricious creature of nature, but rather a man-made construct that should, ideally, serve to make our lives better.  The notion that we should embrace a world in which all of us are going to have to continuously reinvent ourselves and claw our way from job to job as careers disappear and free agency becomes the norm is a nightmare. 

As someone who has spent the last 28 years working with defined benefit pension plans, I can assure you that whatever their flaws, they have proven vastly superior to the 401(k) in terms of fulfilling their intended purposes, i.e. the retirement security of millions of workers, while 401(k) plans have by and large been an abject failure.  It is a mark of just how out of touch he is that Friedman views the 401(k) as any kind of societal model.  (And the idea that it is a great thing for the average person to be the investment manager for his or her own retirement is just nuts.)

The "flat, hyperconnected" world that Friedman imagines as some sort of golden age of opportunity is far more likely to prove to be a Hobbesian nightmare.  My suggestion to all of you is do as Tom did -- marry rich.  It beats the hell out of enhancing your brand every day. 

*Sarcasm.   

Comments

[low-tech cyclist]

Hell, even Matt Yglesias has enough awareness of the real world to realize that It's a 401(k) World and It Basically Sucks:

Here's the essential shape of 401(k) as a backbone of the retirement system:

— Poor people get absolutely nothing.

— Wealthy people who would have had large savings anyway get a nice tax cut that offers no meaningful incentive effect.

— For people in the middle, the quantity of subsidy you receive is linked to the marginal tax rate you pay—in other words, it's inverse to need.

— A small minority of middle-class people manage to file the paperwork to save an adequate amount and then select a prudent low-fee, broadly diversified fund as their savings vehicle.

— Most middle-class savers end up either undersaving, overtrading, investing in excessively high-fee vehicles or some combination of the three.

— A small number of highly compensated folks now have lucrative careers offering bad investment products to a middle-class mass market based on their ability to swindle people.

He further notes that "The only way for anyone to make any money managing your savings is to try and trick you into making trades you shouldn't make, or buying products you shouldn't buy."

When Matt Yglesias is the guy wielding the clue stick on Tom Friedman, then you know how badly Friedman's lost any connection to reality.

[Sir Charles]

l-t c,

Indeed.

The 401(k) is an incredible tax dodge for folks like me who can defer the legal maximum. For someone making $30,000 a year -- not so much.

[Crissa]

We've only recently been offered a fund via 401K that would even have held its value, let alone increase it. I wonder how many people are locked into some crappy high-fee or negative-return fund because that's all their job offered.

And I look at it, and I see, what is another 100K going to do us at retirement, exactly? How do you choose to split out that little money across possible decades of remaining life? In comparison from buying a house, paying of loans at 25%, etc, saving a few dollars of tax now just seems pointless.

[low-tech cyclist]

Contemplating the moral abyss that is Tom Friedman gives me the proverbial head full of ideas that are driving me insane.

First up is that Friedman looks at people as they are and says, in effect, "most of you aren't good enough - we need a better class of humanity, and those that are ready to be part of that race of perpetually self-motivated ubermenschen are the only ones I'm concerned about. The rest of you can go fuck yourselves - your lot is to be spare parts to be used up and discarded."

Second is that a race of his ubermenschen wouldn't, as a group, be any better off in this economy than the people we already have. There simply aren't enough jobs, isn't enough demand, isn't enough money in the hands of the people who would spend it on goods and services and get the economy going again. They'd be just as fucked as we are.

Third, of course, is that Friedman is saying, "It's your own fault" to everyone who's struggling now. The fact that there simply aren't enough jobs to go around doesn't matter in his calculus. I guess we were a nation of self-motivated people in 1999, but mysteriously lost our self-motivation between then and now.

[Sir Charles]

L-t c,

Yes!

And I find it particularly galling from a guy who is an intellectual mediocrity and one of the worst writers I've ever read. In a truly meritocratic world, Thomas Friedman would have a hard time getting a job with a third tier newspaper.

[big bad wolf]

Amen, ltc.

and exactly right SC that these are choices people make, not immutable, unavoidable laws.

[nancy]

In the same vein, I thought of Friedman when I read this piece which I much liked -- "Money Doesn't Make You Magical, CEO's, It Only Makes You Rich".

You too, Tom, of the "suck on this" and Pottery Barn shards platitudes. Master of the universe, press-style. Pundit for life. Also too -- the world is most definitely not flat, although West, Texas, where it is, is probably not what Tom intended to forecast.

[nancy]

It's because he writes the stupidest shit that more moderate people mistake for wisdom.

Indeedy. He was the featured speaker on campus here this spring. I hate, hate, hate the idea of our little kind, decent Jesuit school coughing up a speaker's fee for his unthoughtful rehearsed blather. I'm not a fan of rude, but the YouTube of Tom getting the pie in the face at, I believe, Brown, makes me not all that unhappy. I'm sure Gonzaga students were warm and polite. And I'm also sure he didn't mingle with a one of them.

[low-tech cyclist]

On another topic, I know nothing about Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, but based on the following, I sure do like his attitude:

Less than a week after Rhode Island became the 10th state to approve marriage equality, Delaware became the 11th yesterday afternoon. Gov. Jack Markell (D) signed it within minutes of the bill passing the legislature, declaring, "I am signing this bill now because I do not intend to make any of you wait one moment longer."

We're just two states (PA and NJ) away from marriage equality in the entire Northeast U.S. Pennsylvania will be a heavy lift - as has often been said, you've got Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and a whole lot of Alabama in between.

But I could see a marriage equality bill passing the NJ legislature. It would be great if they did that while Christie was still governor, because it would be fun to see him squirm, knowing that he would be kissing goodbye to any remaining Presidential hopes either way.

[oddjob]

YAY! I knew it was pending in Delaware but didn't know the outcome.

The only thing between New Jersey and marriage equality is its governor.

[oddjob]

Next up: Minnesota (tomorrow).

[low-tech cyclist]

Twine ball or bust!

[nancy]

I dunno. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi feels to me like Whitewater redux. These people are nuts, and while the sequester barrels on, this is what our Congressional GOP watchdogs are up to.

Help. Lord love a duck.

[nancy]

Well yeah. "The Whitewater of the New Century." Pierce. And we're off.

[advocatethis]

Twenty somethings struggling to find work? What are ya talkin about? My daughter has three jobs! With that and her four roommates seven other jobs they can maintain a toehold on renting a space in the middle class.

Of course, only two of them have health insurance (thanks to their parents and Obamacare) and none of their jobs feature paid vacation or sick leave. But someday, if they stay healthy and scramble, they may have an opportunity to...um...stay where they are?

[nancy]

Oh my. No comment necessary. Take it way Taibbi. "Surprise Winner in Thomas Friedman Porn Title Contest."

Perhaps a fitting close bracket with which to enter the weekend. :)

[Sir Charles]

advocate this,

I laughed for a minute and then sighed. Yeah, kids today have the world at their fingertips.

Nancy,

Thanks for that. I laughed my ass off -- especially the ending.

[beckya57]

The Taibbi porn contest is posted on Balloon Juice. Enjoy.

[nancy]

Sir C and Becky -- I so look forward to the update to his Wiki this could provoke. Temporarily anyway.

More outside reading for our twice weekly sage: "Student Debt Slows Growth As Young Spend Less". Feature that.