Chait vs Manzi, Ctd

Manzi takes another look at the numbers. His bottom line:

However you slice it, the same observation holds true: European countries as a whole, and especially the major “social market” economies of Germany, France and Italy, have lost 20% – 30% of their share of global GDP versus the U.S.

Reihan defends Manzi:

To me, the evidence in favor of open, entrepreneurial economies is extremely strong and shouldn't be a partisan issue. U.S. Republicans haven't pursued the policies we need to strengthen ours, some European social democrats have pursued policies to strengthen theirs. It's depressing to watch this debate become a partisan squabble. The thing about Jim's essay is that he didn't frame it as a celebration of Republican policies. Rather, it was a thoughtful take on the upsides and downsides of social democracy, and why the United States needs a more balanced growth model. The hyperpartisanship of some critics blinds them to the central insights of the essay.

Justin Fox follows up:

I'd be interested in knowing if we maintained that lead in output per hour, since Western Europeans have chosen less work (and more vacation) over more pay, while Americans have done the opposite.

Yglesias makes related points.

“To Legalize Is To Encourage”

DiA responds:

Andrew Sullivan thinks proponents of torture are motivated by vengeance and are more comfortable with the idea of torturing "them" as opposed to "us". There may be some truth to that, but I think if America legalised torture, even if only for specific situations, you would gradually see an erosion of the limits placed on the tactic. As we said in a 2003 leader, "To legalise is to encourage." And, once the taboo is broken, why wouldn't torture proponents follow their argument to its logical conclusion: the widespread use of torture?

But the taboo has been broken.

The premise of the broken taboo, moreover, is that the government can and should torture, even while torture is illegal. This strikes me as far more dangerous. The constant assertion of the government's right to torture anyone it deems aware of "active threats" to the US with no acknowledgment that this means the rule of law is over … carries consequences far greater than legalization and formal withdrawal from Geneva. It gives the government no limits on what it can do; it leaves the decisions about whom to torture to men not laws, it discredits the rule of law culturally, and requires massive hypocrisy, euphemism and outright lies as a critical part of our public discourse.

I find this more dangerous than outright legalization. If we truly believe we have to become barbarians to defeat barbarians – and that is the Cheney view – then we should have the courage of our fascist convictions.

The View From Your Recession: Checking Back In

This reader was an information architect who had been out of work for four months. Original post here. The reader writes:

Cautiously, I'd say I'm doing okay now. Today I'm working steadily as a freelancer, with four long-term clients and a bunch of others in the works. The money coming in is enough that I'm comfortably on top of my expenses, and I'm slowly climbing out of my own personal Pit of Debt (credit cards and parents), but at least I can see daylight.

It's been no picnic getting here, though. I first wrote you in April, and I'm glad that person had no idea August was coming, because August was AWFUL.

That was the month employers started auto-replying to job applications with a sinister "don't contact us unless we contact you, or we'll take your resume out of consideration" message, I hadn't been called by a recruiter or heard back from a job app for months, and I was going into debt to my parents at a massive rate and seriously considering giving my landlord notice so I could move back home to my childhood bedroom. Ugly, ugly month.

A few things happened in September. I got an interview and, just like the few prior interviews, got to the final stages before hearing that the job had been pulled "for budget reasons". But instead of leaving it, I immediately turned around and pitched myself as a contractor. (I know my initial email to you said I was a contractor, but there are different types — in 2008, I was in a full-time onsite contract-to-employee role through a staffing group, so really a "contractor" in name only.  2009 was a whole new ballgame, where I was really pitching myself as a self-employed freelancer, someone who'd be billing a handful of hours per week.) I'd sensed the department head was desperate for help, and figured this might be an HR restriction, and I was right — after some negotiation, I signed on as a part-time independent contractor.  This, paired with a completely random contact on a message board that turned into another ongoing working relationship, got my head above water by the end of October.

Not that October should be seen as the magical month where the recession suddenly lifted, mind you.  Everything came together in October, but I'd spent my unemployment focusing on a few projects, something I could show so the months weren't entirely wasted. I set up an extensive site for my LLC, I imported all my existing blogs to a central location, I started a new blog about urban gardening (I was home all the time anyhow, dammit), I did some free work for local NGOs, I wrote the majority of a novel. And it turns out that lots of that stuff played a role in getting me the work I have today. So while it felt like shouting into a void at the time, those projects became hugely valuable later.

So that's where I am now. Nine months of unemployment, followed by three of self-employment. It's a new, piecemeal style of living; I work from my home, my hours can be bizarre. But I'm liking the variety. As a matter of survival I'm learning all sorts of new software and I'm using more of my accumulated skills than ever before. And I stopped being shy about hitting up friends and old coworkers to push my resume, and I'm starting to see those efforts bear fruit as well.

It wasn't easy getting into this freelancing thing, and I'm fully aware that luck and timing played a large part in where I am today.  I really was about a week away from packing up and moving, and I don't see many signs that I'd have gotten a full-time job by now.  I'm incredibly thankful for my new, weird career path.  The whole family's still getting potholders for Christmas, obviously, but I finally feel like I just might make it.

The Lost Hikers

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Robert Faturechi goes searching:

With street protests raging in Iran, political activism is on the rise among Los Angeles' already vocal Iranian American community. […] But when it comes to the three young American hikers being held in Iran on espionage charges the community has been decidedly silent. No large demonstrations, little conversation, virtually no push for action. "If you ask 10 [Iranian Americans], seven of them don't even know about the hikers," said Siamak Kalhor, a popular host on the local Iranian-language radio station, KIRN-AM (670).

Mike Allen Or Rick Sanchez?

A reader writes:

Let's get down to the bottom of it…if a fatuous quasi journalist like Rick Sanchez on CNN can nail Ensign, than Politico should do enough homework to push back on Cheney.  Is it possible that the so-called "journalists" at Politico could learn a thing or two from Rick Sanchez?

I think this misunderstands how Allen views journalism. His role, he seems to believe, is to become very very close to people with power, to become their friends and confidants, in order to get an advantage over delivering the messages those people want to deliver. And if he can become their main outlet, he gets more status in Washington as someone more connected than anyone else, he garners more pageviews for press releases from often anonymous power-brokers, and thereby generates more money for an organization he helped found.

This is what Washington journalists think is their job; and they value one another by the proximity of their ties to the powerful. In a business sense, they can also brag about their close ties to Cheney as a way to get major corporations to buy ads under the impression that the powerful read the Politico. This is the model. And it's a problem.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the notion that journalists are really accountable to their readers, that the powerful should be afraid of them rather than their best buddies, and that the goal is to challenge government, not act as its informational tool. Politico is to the US government what Blackwater was for the US military. It acts as an ancillary privatized forum for the powerful to express themselves outside of the box of, say, releasing statements to the press in general.

This is why the MSM was much more interested in getting an interview with Palin rather than forcing her to hold a real press conference. The MSM works for itself and its advertizers in a bid to become closer and closer to power. Few places prove this more potently than Politico.

“Sick” Of The Israelis And The Palestinians

Ben Rhodes has denied that Rahm said this to the Israelis. Well, it sure sounds like Rahm.

More to the point, who wouldn't be sick of the Israelis and the Palestinians at this point?

I too am sick of the Israelis for their contempt for the interests of their most important ally, their continuation of brutalizing colonization of the West Bank, their shameless ethnic engineering in East Jerusalem, their pulverization of Gaza, the direct manipulation of domestic American politics by their ambassador, and on and on. And, yes, I'm also sick of the war crimes and theocratic insanity of Hamas, and the lame passive-aggression of the PA, and the inability of the Palestinian leadership to prepare for actual governance as opposed to the victimized preening and theatrics and violence they prefer to the difficult compromises required if we are to move forward.

And if Rahm Emanuel is sick of them all, one can imagine how the average American feels. My own view is moving toward supporting a direct American military imposition of a two-state solution, with NATO troops on the borders of the new states of Palestine and Israel. I'm sick of having a great power like the US being dictated to in the conduct of its own foreign policy by an ally that provides almost no real benefit to the US, and more and more costs.