Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Best Wishes On Your Endeavor

There was a discussion in the comments of one of my posts (I can't remember which one) in which we noted that McArdle seemed to be working a bit harder than usual. Her posts had more data and she attempted to be more fair-n-balanced. Now we know why.

One of the reasons that women are paid less than men is that they don't negotiate.  The advice that follows is usually, "Well, negotiate!"  But in fact, women don't negotiate for very good reason, as Kevin Drum points out....

Some woman or women unknown (we have absolutely no idea who) was negotiating for a raise (or perhaps applying for a new job).  McArdle said she and P. Suderman, boy house toy, make over $300,00 a year, so we can see how she, or someone like her, must be suffering.

For some reason, this post comes to mind:

Why not food stamps?


By Megan McArdle

Jan 24 2008, 5:52 PM ET 187

1) The poor don't need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don't have an address), food insufficiency is not.

2) Food stamps only imperfectly translate into increased cash income, meaning that the poor will spend . . . more money on food.

3) If the increase in food stamps takes the form of expanded eligibility, rather than larger grants, the administrative issues and public outreach will delay your stimulus until well after it is no longer needed.

4) The limits on the type of goods available to food stamp consumers, and the growing season, mean that some (it's hard to say how much) of the food stamp spending will simply draw down perishable stocks rather than generating new economic activity. Eventually this will probably generate more economic activity, but probably well after your stimulus is needed.

5) The economy doesn't need a food sector more distorted by daft government programs than it already is. If you want to give money to the poor, give it to them. Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates.

Meanwhile, liberal bloggers need contributions because you don't have to pay people to tell the truth, they are driven by innate decency to do so. You have to pay people to lie.

Enjoy your gastropubs and $1500 kitchen appliances, Mrs. McArdle. You earned them.

9 comments:

Downpuppy said...

Now we know why?

We know nothing.

Even if we got complete accounts from Bradley & McArdle they'd be so different we'd still know nothing.

kth said...

Everyone who objected to the stimulus because the recession will be over before the effects kick in should definitely kill themselves.

antonello said...

The poor don't need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don't have an address), food insufficiency is not.

McArdle, like many a well-paid hack, imagines food stamps providing a veritable Land of Cockaigne, where goodies drop into the gullets of the poor as they wallow in an stupor of sloth.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Pieter_Bruegel_d._%C3%84._037.jpg

Meanwhile, back in the real world, where I am a welfare caseworker, here are the maximum monthly food stamp limits in my county:

One person: 200 dollars.
Two people: 367 dollars.
Three people: 526 dollars.

And so on. These are the figures, by the way, in a county with the highest per capita income in the state (Pennsylvania).

Therefore someone living alone and with no income must thrive on about seven dollars of food a day. A jobless parent and a child must make do on about twelve bucks a day.

It isn't the poor who are living in a daydream of idleness: if it's a vacuous sense of entitlement attitude that you seek, look no further than Megan McArdle.

Freshly Squeezed Cynic said...

2. For their own personal good, women should stop first, because if they keep talking, they do not strike a telling blow for feminism; they get labeled as an unbearably pushy and difficult sort of person.

Megan McArdle, striking a telling blow for inaction.

Anonymous said...

This is a woman who playacts as a housewife for her political blogging guests when she has them over for dinner.

*sigh*

Anonymous said...

Also, I should note that she is a self-proclaimed expert in obesity.

fish said...

It is funny to see her usual sycophants act a little confused and defensive when she crosses the libertarian line and acknowledges sexism in the workplace. They really don't know what to do.

atat said...

"McArdle said she and P. Suderman, boy house toy, make over $300,00 a year[...]"

Does he make his share of that by testing videogames, because, jesus, did you see his holiday gift list that McA posted? I guess I'm not a "gamer," but how does an adult with any sort of job (no matter how cushy) manage to piss away that kind of time on this stuff? I mean I used to play videogames when I was a teenager, but even then I didn't have the luxury of investing a fraction of the time that it looks like Suderman has spent on it.

Mr.Wonderful said...

It occurred to me that, all the authoritarian and libertarian bullshit aside, all McArdle is, is a snob. Or--worse--she aspires to be a snob.

Hence the affected Britishisms ("daft"). Hence the faux-gourmet affectations with hi-priced appliances and pink salt, and the low-kwality results. Hence the forces she defends vs. those she attacks.

Hence, too, the indifference to research, the "as far as I know" and "from what I can see" disclaimers, as though her authority should be enough. She doesn't want to explain, teach, or enlighten--i.e., to share. She wants to be admired and, from that standpoint, affirm in her own mind her membership in the elite.

Period! It's that pathetic, yes. At a time when economics and finance have been transformed from background, esoteric abstract concerns to immediate, public, inescapable vectors of pathology, the Atlantic presents us with this bourgeois climber, who would rather allude to having dinner with a banker than explain what the banker has done.