Reheated (41)
For newcomers, more items from the archives.
Paul Krugman and Polly Toynbee are awfully concerned by how much you earn. Themselves, not so much.
When very well-heeled ‘progressives’ decry income inequality as at the very least something to be fixed, and fixed urgently, at what point can we expect the people saying this to act as if it were true? I mean, act individually, themselves, in accord with their own professed values and imperatives. Curiously, the most typical position is to do nothing whatsoever unless the state acts coercively against everyone, thereby deferring any personal action aside from the usual mouthing. And so inevitably that mouthing looks a lot like chaff, a way to divert the envy and tribalism they’re so happy to inspire in others: “Yes, I’m loaded, but look at those people over there – the ones who disagree with us – they have slightly more, or almost as much. Let’s all hiss at them.”
Gender studies lecturer Hila Shachar doesn’t think the public should have any say in how its money is spent.
Dr Shachar is careful not to explain the “contribution to society” made by her own work, or by the humanities research projects that were highlighted as examples of non-essential spending, including a $164,000 grant for studying “how urban media art can best respond to global climate change.” Or by the boldly titled research project Queering Disasters in the Antipodes, which hopes to probe the “experiences of LGBTI people in natural disasters” and ultimately provide “improved disaster response” to gay people, whose needs in such circumstances are apparently quite different from those of everyone else. The princely sum of $325,183 has been spent on this endeavour.
Their Mighty Brains Will Save Us.
The Guardian unveils its hot and sassy trainee journalists. A snapshot of the nation and its everyday concerns.
There’s Emma Howard, 26, who studied English in Leicester and Strasbourg and lists her credentials as “community organising” and “having fun with other social activists,” which, we learn, “can mean standing on the street with placards.” “I think about power a lot,” says she. Podcast enthusiast Fred McConnell, 27, is the sole male in a group of ten and tells us that, “After university I headed to Afghanistan to produce multimedia for a skateboard charity.” As one does. And there’s Hannah Jane Parkinson, 24, who “performs poetry” and whose areas of expertise are “lifestyle and pop culture.” Ms Parkinson is “from Liverpool, but moved to Russia to drink vodka and play at being Lara from Dr Zhivago.” She moved again, to London, “for a great job,” one in which she “got to look at cat gifs.” “I couldn’t be happier at the Guardian,” says Ms Parkinson. “It’s where I always wanted to work.”
There’s more, should you want it, in the greatest hits.
Paul Krugman and Polly Toynbee are awfully concerned by how much you earn. Themselves, not so much.
It’s easy to be ‘altruistic’ with someone else’s money.
It’s easy to be ‘altruistic’ with someone else’s money.
Or as Theodore Dalrymple put it, “Generosity at the expense of others, whether it be financial or moral, is not generosity; it is moral exhibitionism.”
Dr Shachar is careful not to explain the “contribution to society” made by her own work,
If we don’t waste taxpayers money on make-work schemes for people with useless degrees what will happen to them? Don’t you care about unemployed gender studies lecturers?!
“Queering Disasters in the Antipodes”
I thought it was a new, Australian, version of ‘Queer eye for the Straight Guy’.
A lot of skateboarders in Afghanistan, are there?
A lot of skateboarders in Afghanistan, are there?
It’s one of those If you build it, they will come concepts, where if you just import enough skateboards, then following that, insert hand waving . . .
It’s one of those If you build it, they will come concepts, where if you just import enough skateboards, then following that, insert hand waving . . .
No, no, no…you don’t import the skateboards, you build massive skateboard infrastructure via more massive government spending combined with tax cuts financed via increased debt. Then theose who built the infrastructure and the bureaucrats who stood around and watched now have money to buy skateboards….that they, uh…built. Cart then horse.
No, no, no…you don’t import the skateboards, . . . .
Ah, yes, that would be the hand waving . . . .
Polly belongs to a class of people for whom altruism is defined not by giving their own time and money, but by voting to have the state take more of other people’s earnings… Given that this entails the coercion of a great many third parties, it’s a strange definition of compassion and philanthropy… As Polly’s conscience is apparently troubled more by what you earn and keep than by what she earns and keeps, that life-changing gesture, that personal action, will simply have to wait.
That.
‘Paul Krugman and Polly Toynbee are awfully concerned by how much you earn. Themselves, not so much.’
But it is a fair bet that, as correct-thinking socialists, their earnings are considerably higher than yours. Happily, they aim to keep it that way.