The five fallacies of doom-and-gloomers

1) the old white-guy expert who regrets his entire career (my favorite is nuclear weapons, although Soros is the current poster-child)
2) the senseless extrapolation ad infinitum (e.g., confusing standard of living with consumption)
3) our children are idiots (timeless)
4) changes in direction as "the end of ..." (the slippery slope as demonizing tool = "Obama is a socialist!")
5) "those people" will screw it up (non-whites are inherently inferior and won't match what Europeans did in the past)

A note to myself for next week's column.

Comments

[Robert Langland]

My generation should have outgrown 1,2,3 and 5. At least I hope so. When researching #4, perhaps you could answer it both ways? Obama is... and Obama is not... Wow! That would be different, just show me the evidence and let me make up my own mind...

To me Obama is a blank slate, even at this late hour. Unless he is defined more clearly, he is an unknown catylist or a free radical (pun intended). If he receives the mandate the press seems to say he will receive (although I have a funny feeling it may not turn out that way) I do not see him acting as calmly and carefully as previously suggested. Self adulation and a ego stroking posse (all wanting something) have a tendancy to make people act stupid, not ignorant -just stupid.

[JFRiley]

Interesting, did something specific propt this?

Where did the Soros comment come from?

[Tom Barnett]

His latest book is an attempt to fix economics from the perspective of a parasite who's always made tons of money exploiting its current flaws.

[Stephen Pampinella]

My opinion is biased since I still feel like one of the 'children', but its more carelessness than idiocy. Raising kids on Boomer values of instant gratification makes poor citizens who only want fast cars, easy women, and cheap booze. That's an overly broad generalization, but living in a college town for the last seven years, that's the dominant trend I see.

[jason]

Is Soros wrong about the flaws?

[gunnar]

6) threat obsessed people who think parasites grow larger than hosts (remember when oil was gonna be $200 this year) are one horseman short of an apocalypse7) the bears are who we thought they were!

[Louis Heberlein]

Interesting how our elections come so soon after Halloween. Should we expect surprises in what next crew does?

Truman called his investment in saving West Europe from Russia's Cold War expansion by calling it the Marshall Plan and invoking his heroic image. He got the bare margin of political support by including, and emphasizing, government agricultural export subsidies to win isolationist Democrat and Republican votes.

IKE slipped in major economic and technical change by by using Cold War anxiety. He justified a huge, and transformational, national highway investment based on WW II insights from German highways even though they were not as useful in nuclear conflicts. He ordered about 600 KC-135 tankers that gave Boeing & US a great advantage in introducing the civil jet air transport era. Neither had a proportionate direct military payoff, but the economic stimulation made more $ available for future needs.

JFK made the crazy Man on Moon project to spur technological focus and morale in US, and show Russian limits in a way that did not promote risky Cold War competition by emphasizing military technology investments.

Reagan used a race involving obsolete military technology like battleships and questionable Star Wars technology to force Russia toward economic bankruptcy and military waste.

So what will the the next administration really want to do, and will we notice what it is really up to?

[Tom Barnett]

Yes, Jason, he is wrong to try and reduce the entire economy to the sort of speculation he was famous for--and still is.

Globalization does not suffer from too much short-selling, but too little.