And apparently, it's finally come to where they can't afford to do anything that might make us think they've been lying to us the whole fuckin' time.
Jan 31, 2024
Weird Lonely Insecure Men
Colin Cowherd on MAGA rubes losing their whole shit over Taylor Swift being on screen for maybe 30 seconds of a ball game that runs about 10,800 seconds.
Econ 201
Capital is free to go where the highest profit potential is.
Labor is chained to the country of its origin.
Opinion
If you want to know where the world economy is headed, look at the bottom of this toy car
What if I said you could read real world history on the underside of your kids’ Hot Wheels?
In my Philippine childhood in the 1970s, my brother Hector and I played with die-cast toy cars. I remember the first time I looked at the underside of these cars, soon after I had learned to read, and realized they had been made in different countries in different years. Some were made in the United Kingdom and the United States; the newer ones were made in Japan. Decades later, as my work as an economist brought my family to the United States, my two children got toy cars nearly identical to mine — first made in China and, later, Vietnam.
We now have a small collection of these cars, and occasionally I use them as a teaching tool. I ask students in my economics classes to inspect the cars’ undersides, and together we trace the gradual movement of toy car manufacturing: from England and the United States in the 1960s to Japan in the mid-1970s, from South Korea in the mid-1980s to China in the late 1990s and Vietnam after.
I tell them the process of making die-cast toy cars is nearly unchanged since the 1960s and has been steadily passed from one country to another, marking the beginning of the transformation of entire economies. We observe how toy-export data mirrors worldwide trends in industrial sector employment over the past 60 years: the gradual rise of toy manufacturing and toy exports in developing economies, the expansion of light manufacturing in those countries, followed by the growth of more complex production and the entire industrial sector, soon dwarfing the traditional agriculture sector and lifting people out of low-paid, low-productivity work.
And then we see, almost as rapidly, the decline of the industrial sector in a now-richer economy, as production at lower prices becomes available from the next industrializing country. In the graphical representation of this phenomenon, individual countries’ data looks like hills all over the world and over time; it is a beautiful, astonishing understatement of how countless lives have been changed in the process.
This much world history reflected in a handful of toy cars.
Several years ago, at the end of those class conversations on economic transformation, I would boldly tell my students: If you would like to know where the world economy is headed, go to a toy store and look at the underside of a die-cast car. I was confident they would find some from Vietnam, considering my children’s cars and the country’s rapid industrial transformation. Or maybe from fast-growing Bangladesh or Ethiopia.
I was wrong.
Then came the covid-19 pandemic, and the industrial world reeled from massive supply chain disruptions. In early 2022, Mattel — which makes Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars — made a move to “near-source” some production, bringing its supply chain closer to the United States and away from Asia and China: It announced an injection of $50 million to its factory in Mexico. So I expected to start seeing toy cars manufactured in Mexico.
Wrong again. In two years, sometimes things change, sometimes things remain the same.
This past holiday season, my children and I took turns visiting the toy section of a large store just outside Washington. It was like a game: find a random car, take a picture of the box and the car’s underside, send it to our group chat. We found none from Bangladesh, Ethiopia or Mexico. They came from Malaysia, Thailand and, surprisingly, China, still. In the journey toward the inevitable transformation of economies, it seemed the world had taken a few detours.
It turns out that near-sourcing is more complicated than expected, as recently documented in the case of Mexico. Part of the difficulty involves scaling and coordination: As more businesses seek nearby production facilities, the nearby economy, with its limited human and infrastructure resources, is quickly overwhelmed. And just as critical pieces in toy manufacturing are still imported from China, inputs from China more generally are integral parts of more sophisticated global supply chains.
In addition, toy manufacturing reflects not only the promise of industrialization but also its disappointments. In late 2022, Mattel commemorated its 40th year of manufacturing in Malaysia by announcing the growth of its Hot Wheels factory there, the world’s biggest. This was a positive development, but Malaysia’s economy reached middle-income status decades ago; in the familiar pattern, it would by now have progressed to manufacturing more complex, profitable products. Instead, the country has remained in what economists Indermit Gill and Homi Kharas defined as the “middle-income trap” — caught between developing and rich nations.
As my children and I inspected this generation of toy cars, I struggled to explain what we were seeing. Not because toy cars do not tell us something about the world but because they do. They reflect the world’s reality, including its surprises.
What if I said you could read real world history on the underside of your kids’ Hot Wheels?
In my Philippine childhood in the 1970s, my brother Hector and I played with die-cast toy cars. I remember the first time I looked at the underside of these cars, soon after I had learned to read, and realized they had been made in different countries in different years. Some were made in the United Kingdom and the United States; the newer ones were made in Japan. Decades later, as my work as an economist brought my family to the United States, my two children got toy cars nearly identical to mine — first made in China and, later, Vietnam.
We now have a small collection of these cars, and occasionally I use them as a teaching tool. I ask students in my economics classes to inspect the cars’ undersides, and together we trace the gradual movement of toy car manufacturing: from England and the United States in the 1960s to Japan in the mid-1970s, from South Korea in the mid-1980s to China in the late 1990s and Vietnam after.
I tell them the process of making die-cast toy cars is nearly unchanged since the 1960s and has been steadily passed from one country to another, marking the beginning of the transformation of entire economies. We observe how toy-export data mirrors worldwide trends in industrial sector employment over the past 60 years: the gradual rise of toy manufacturing and toy exports in developing economies, the expansion of light manufacturing in those countries, followed by the growth of more complex production and the entire industrial sector, soon dwarfing the traditional agriculture sector and lifting people out of low-paid, low-productivity work.
And then we see, almost as rapidly, the decline of the industrial sector in a now-richer economy, as production at lower prices becomes available from the next industrializing country. In the graphical representation of this phenomenon, individual countries’ data looks like hills all over the world and over time; it is a beautiful, astonishing understatement of how countless lives have been changed in the process.
This much world history reflected in a handful of toy cars.
Several years ago, at the end of those class conversations on economic transformation, I would boldly tell my students: If you would like to know where the world economy is headed, go to a toy store and look at the underside of a die-cast car. I was confident they would find some from Vietnam, considering my children’s cars and the country’s rapid industrial transformation. Or maybe from fast-growing Bangladesh or Ethiopia.
I was wrong.
Then came the covid-19 pandemic, and the industrial world reeled from massive supply chain disruptions. In early 2022, Mattel — which makes Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars — made a move to “near-source” some production, bringing its supply chain closer to the United States and away from Asia and China: It announced an injection of $50 million to its factory in Mexico. So I expected to start seeing toy cars manufactured in Mexico.
Wrong again. In two years, sometimes things change, sometimes things remain the same.
This past holiday season, my children and I took turns visiting the toy section of a large store just outside Washington. It was like a game: find a random car, take a picture of the box and the car’s underside, send it to our group chat. We found none from Bangladesh, Ethiopia or Mexico. They came from Malaysia, Thailand and, surprisingly, China, still. In the journey toward the inevitable transformation of economies, it seemed the world had taken a few detours.
It turns out that near-sourcing is more complicated than expected, as recently documented in the case of Mexico. Part of the difficulty involves scaling and coordination: As more businesses seek nearby production facilities, the nearby economy, with its limited human and infrastructure resources, is quickly overwhelmed. And just as critical pieces in toy manufacturing are still imported from China, inputs from China more generally are integral parts of more sophisticated global supply chains.
In addition, toy manufacturing reflects not only the promise of industrialization but also its disappointments. In late 2022, Mattel commemorated its 40th year of manufacturing in Malaysia by announcing the growth of its Hot Wheels factory there, the world’s biggest. This was a positive development, but Malaysia’s economy reached middle-income status decades ago; in the familiar pattern, it would by now have progressed to manufacturing more complex, profitable products. Instead, the country has remained in what economists Indermit Gill and Homi Kharas defined as the “middle-income trap” — caught between developing and rich nations.
As my children and I inspected this generation of toy cars, I struggled to explain what we were seeing. Not because toy cars do not tell us something about the world but because they do. They reflect the world’s reality, including its surprises.
Jan 30, 2024
Asymmetric Information Warfare
It's easier to make a mess than it is to clean it up.
Commentators and influencers get so tuned into the ITS and LIKES and SHARES and SUBSCRIBER numbers that they begin tailoring their posts to accommodate their fans - "...they become radicalized by their own audience."
That's some really scary shit.
Today's Brando
I'm a Boebie, she's a Boebie, they're a Boebie - wouldn't you like to be a Boebie too?
Today's Stoopid
OK fine, I'll chime in on this crap too.
MAGA is fraught with radical skepticism, and melting down as they watch one thing after the next "go against them".
And they're so well-conditioned to look for "signs" of The Great & Evil Librul Cabal in action, they glom onto anything - and I mean any-fuckin'-thing - that helps them deny that they're losing, that they're insistent on following losers, and that they're more and more desperate about being made to feel comfortable with the fact that they're losing - and denying.
The uncomplicated, dumb engine driving political false claims about Taylor Swift
A team won a football game, which is obviously part of a devious plot for Democrats to retain power via a pop star
I am professionally obligated to begin this article by explaining to you who Taylor Swift is, who Travis Kelce is and why I am talking about them. I know this will come off as condescending (if not insulting) to most of you, but for that one person who, this very morning, emerged from a 20-year-long meditative retreat atop Aconcagua and — as one would — opened The Washington Post’s website: Here you go.
Taylor Swift is a musician. More specifically, she is one of the most famous musicians that has ever existed on this Earth, in the company of Michael Jackson, certainly … if not, like, Beethoven. Travis Kelce is a football player who was well-known in sporting circles a year or two ago but who, by virtue of dating Swift, is now also well-known among Swift fans and, by extension, most Americans.
The reason I am talking about them is that Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, won a playoff game Sunday that will return them to the championship game. And in response, a surprisingly large section of the American political right decided that this was somehow related to politics.
A team won a football game, which is obviously part of a devious plot for Democrats to retain power via a pop star
I am professionally obligated to begin this article by explaining to you who Taylor Swift is, who Travis Kelce is and why I am talking about them. I know this will come off as condescending (if not insulting) to most of you, but for that one person who, this very morning, emerged from a 20-year-long meditative retreat atop Aconcagua and — as one would — opened The Washington Post’s website: Here you go.
Taylor Swift is a musician. More specifically, she is one of the most famous musicians that has ever existed on this Earth, in the company of Michael Jackson, certainly … if not, like, Beethoven. Travis Kelce is a football player who was well-known in sporting circles a year or two ago but who, by virtue of dating Swift, is now also well-known among Swift fans and, by extension, most Americans.
The reason I am talking about them is that Kelce’s team, the Kansas City Chiefs, won a playoff game Sunday that will return them to the championship game. And in response, a surprisingly large section of the American political right decided that this was somehow related to politics.
There are lots of manifestations of this, including multiple presentations on the right’s preferred cable news channel. The iteration that attracted perhaps the most attention, though, came from former presidential candidate and Donald Trump cheerleader Vivek Ramaswamy (speaking of people who suddenly emerged in the public consciousness to polarizing effect).
In a social media post, a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist linked Swift to … let’s see here … ah yes, George Soros. In response, Ramaswamy offered a prediction.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” he wrote. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”
The implication (again: forgive my telling you something obvious) is that the Chiefs are being ushered to the Super Bowl … somehow … to secure Swift’s endorsement for President Biden.
This makes a lot of sense because the Chiefs haven’t been to the Super Bowl since, uh, last year, when they won. But before that they hadn’t been since, well, two years before. But that one they lost! But they’d won the year before that.
You can see why they need … someone … to give them a boost. Because otherwise, Taylor Swift wouldn’t endorse Biden, something she hasn’t done since 2020 — the last time Biden ran.
A lot of the responses to this broad line of argument — that the commingling of the Chiefs and Swift is somehow targeted at politics — note that it’s probably not wise for Republicans to side against the NFL. The NFL is wildly popular, and attacking popular things is not a good way to yourself become more popular.
But this backlash from the Fox-News-iverse isn’t about electoral politics. It is about appealing to a more immediate source of power on the right: online and on-air attention.
This was the crux of Ramaswamy’s entire presidential campaign. He understood, having observed Republican politics over the past decade, that attention can be parlayed into a lesser form of power, elected office. Trump blazed this trail, certainly, showing others the path and helping clear it of overgrowth. Ramaswamy’s 2024 bid was centered on jumping into the online conversation and bringing its themes and rhetoric to the campaign trail. It built him a loyal following of similarly online types, enough to get him about 4 percent of the primary vote by the time he dropped out.
But this is the incentive path that’s feeding the Swift clamor. The wilder your assertion, the more traction it’s going to get. Your allies will riff on it and build on it, and you can come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll end up as a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia or Long Island. Maybe you’ll go higher: landing a recurring spot on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show.
It’s important to recognize the overlaying element here: The speculation should leverage the widespread belief on the right that Democrats only get legitimate votes by brainwashing their idiotic base. (Republicans also believe Democrats get lots of stolen votes too, of course — a similarly incorrect theory.) This idea comes up a lot, that Democrats win by snookering college kids or duping credulous city voters into ignoring their apocalyptic surroundings. (This is ironic, given that believing that cities are hellholes requires a credulous acceptance of propaganda from the right, but I digress.)
Republicans losing the presidential popular vote in 2016, the House majority in 2018, the presidency in 2020 and underperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms has built a strong incentive to look for nonpolitical explanations for strong Democratic performance — since many Americans don’t know anyone who holds opposing political views, including Republicans baffled at the idea of voting Democratic. So, particularly given Trump’s insistence that the 2020 race was “rigged” by media and cultural elites … somehow, it is quite fashionable on the right to suggest the existence of intricate plans aimed at securing Democratic votes from glassy-eyed voters.
Like, say, that a football team gets ushered into the Super Bowl to secure an endorsement from Taylor Swift.
I’ve avoided doing so but I can no longer resist: How would this work? Did the Baltimore Ravens take a dive? Did someone pay them? Are they just that committed to Democratic politics that they all agreed to lose? Did the Buffalo Bills before them? And the Miami Dolphins before the Bills? Or does the government have some Havana-Syndrome-esque device that it trains on opponents, causing field goals to go wide right? What’s the mechanism, exactly?
It doesn’t matter, obviously. These are not rational conclusions drawn from observed facts. They are, instead, clout-chasing assemblages of words that, through a process of grim Darwinism, seek rewards in the right-wing conversation.
Never mind that the supposed outcome here — the Swift endorsement — is itself wildly overpowered in the right’s imagination. One of Swift’s first prominent endorsements came in 2018 when she backed the Democrat in Tennessee’s U.S. Senate race. Polling was close; he then lost by double-digits. You think that Swift — whose fan base includes millions of people younger than voting age — is so valuable an endorser that you’re going to rig the NFL? Okay. Sure.
It’s all silly, but the silliness exists over a range that runs from innocuous to bizarre.
I’ll leave you with the wise words of Ramaswamy, almost certainly responding to the (wonderful! desired!) controversy he’d stirred up with his football observations.
“What the [media] calls a ‘conspiracy theory’ is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight,” he wrote. “Once you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious.”
The natural Step 2 here: When the media points out that my comments make no sense, it proves that I’m right. Okay.
Wait. Actually, I’ll leave you with an observation attached to Ramaswamy’s second post, one that comes from the world’s most prominent seeker of attention by way of posting controversial/bizarre/unnecessarily-political comments.
“Exactly,” wrote Elon Musk.
In a social media post, a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist linked Swift to … let’s see here … ah yes, George Soros. In response, Ramaswamy offered a prediction.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” he wrote. “And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”
The implication (again: forgive my telling you something obvious) is that the Chiefs are being ushered to the Super Bowl … somehow … to secure Swift’s endorsement for President Biden.
This makes a lot of sense because the Chiefs haven’t been to the Super Bowl since, uh, last year, when they won. But before that they hadn’t been since, well, two years before. But that one they lost! But they’d won the year before that.
You can see why they need … someone … to give them a boost. Because otherwise, Taylor Swift wouldn’t endorse Biden, something she hasn’t done since 2020 — the last time Biden ran.
A lot of the responses to this broad line of argument — that the commingling of the Chiefs and Swift is somehow targeted at politics — note that it’s probably not wise for Republicans to side against the NFL. The NFL is wildly popular, and attacking popular things is not a good way to yourself become more popular.
But this backlash from the Fox-News-iverse isn’t about electoral politics. It is about appealing to a more immediate source of power on the right: online and on-air attention.
This was the crux of Ramaswamy’s entire presidential campaign. He understood, having observed Republican politics over the past decade, that attention can be parlayed into a lesser form of power, elected office. Trump blazed this trail, certainly, showing others the path and helping clear it of overgrowth. Ramaswamy’s 2024 bid was centered on jumping into the online conversation and bringing its themes and rhetoric to the campaign trail. It built him a loyal following of similarly online types, enough to get him about 4 percent of the primary vote by the time he dropped out.
But this is the incentive path that’s feeding the Swift clamor. The wilder your assertion, the more traction it’s going to get. Your allies will riff on it and build on it, and you can come along for the ride. Maybe you’ll end up as a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia or Long Island. Maybe you’ll go higher: landing a recurring spot on Sean Hannity’s prime-time show.
It’s important to recognize the overlaying element here: The speculation should leverage the widespread belief on the right that Democrats only get legitimate votes by brainwashing their idiotic base. (Republicans also believe Democrats get lots of stolen votes too, of course — a similarly incorrect theory.) This idea comes up a lot, that Democrats win by snookering college kids or duping credulous city voters into ignoring their apocalyptic surroundings. (This is ironic, given that believing that cities are hellholes requires a credulous acceptance of propaganda from the right, but I digress.)
Republicans losing the presidential popular vote in 2016, the House majority in 2018, the presidency in 2020 and underperforming expectations in the 2022 midterms has built a strong incentive to look for nonpolitical explanations for strong Democratic performance — since many Americans don’t know anyone who holds opposing political views, including Republicans baffled at the idea of voting Democratic. So, particularly given Trump’s insistence that the 2020 race was “rigged” by media and cultural elites … somehow, it is quite fashionable on the right to suggest the existence of intricate plans aimed at securing Democratic votes from glassy-eyed voters.
Like, say, that a football team gets ushered into the Super Bowl to secure an endorsement from Taylor Swift.
I’ve avoided doing so but I can no longer resist: How would this work? Did the Baltimore Ravens take a dive? Did someone pay them? Are they just that committed to Democratic politics that they all agreed to lose? Did the Buffalo Bills before them? And the Miami Dolphins before the Bills? Or does the government have some Havana-Syndrome-esque device that it trains on opponents, causing field goals to go wide right? What’s the mechanism, exactly?
It doesn’t matter, obviously. These are not rational conclusions drawn from observed facts. They are, instead, clout-chasing assemblages of words that, through a process of grim Darwinism, seek rewards in the right-wing conversation.
Never mind that the supposed outcome here — the Swift endorsement — is itself wildly overpowered in the right’s imagination. One of Swift’s first prominent endorsements came in 2018 when she backed the Democrat in Tennessee’s U.S. Senate race. Polling was close; he then lost by double-digits. You think that Swift — whose fan base includes millions of people younger than voting age — is so valuable an endorser that you’re going to rig the NFL? Okay. Sure.
It’s all silly, but the silliness exists over a range that runs from innocuous to bizarre.
I’ll leave you with the wise words of Ramaswamy, almost certainly responding to the (wonderful! desired!) controversy he’d stirred up with his football observations.
“What the [media] calls a ‘conspiracy theory’ is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight,” he wrote. “Once you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious.”
The natural Step 2 here: When the media points out that my comments make no sense, it proves that I’m right. Okay.
Wait. Actually, I’ll leave you with an observation attached to Ramaswamy’s second post, one that comes from the world’s most prominent seeker of attention by way of posting controversial/bizarre/unnecessarily-political comments.
“Exactly,” wrote Elon Musk.
Going Toe To Toe
Maddow makes some great points. The interview isn't the best thing I've ever seen, but there's something about the fact that E Jean Carroll is not a particularly good interviewee that brings home the concept of real equality under the law. ie: Normies can win.
Carroll's had a little public heft to her, so she's not just some 'regular Joe'. But she was living a pretty quiet, regular life when she decided to step up and put it all on the line by fighting back.
She's weathered a pretty heavy storm. And while that makes her a bone fide total shero for women, she's won this fight for all of us.
So I say again:
Women will save us.
All we have to do is stay the fuck out of their way and let 'em do it.
BTW, when the question is whether you want 4 years of a Biden presidency or 4 years of a Trump dictatorship, the glaring absence of the followup is maddening.
Given what Trump tried to do on Jan6, what makes you think he'd stop at the end of four years and hand over power to whoever wins the 2028 election?
It has to be obvious that if there's an election (and it'd be stoopid to assume he wouldn't suspend democracy altogether for whatever bullshit reason Mike Flynn and Stephen Miller handed him), it would be a standard Daddy State affair that goes in Trump's favor by 50 or 60 or 70 points. Who the fuck do the rubes think they're foolin'?
Jan 29, 2024
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