Throwing Strikes

Avedon Carol has the good stuff today:

It's funny, I've known all my life that high income inequality leads to macroeconomic crisis, and Krugman himself is still working it out. But surely it's obvious that if you squeeze the rest of the population, the lazy rich people who think that financial "innovation" is the only kind that's interesting are not going to be the people who invest in creating an environment where real innovation can flourish. The truth is that since economic "conservatives" have taken over running our economy, there hasn't been any real innovation at all. And that stands to reason, since this environment is one in which the ordinary people who do things for themselves and do the real work - and are therefore the most likely to be inspired to real innovation - are simply not in a position to put their ideas into practice, to bring them forward. The very rich do not like real innovation because it destabilizes their order, it makes change possible - change that could weaken their position, or make the behavior of the masses less predictable. They like us to be predictable. But now, here we are, in a situation where we have allowed a few people to amass most of our nation's wealth and refuse to spread it around where it can do some good, and, well, bad things happen to unequal people. But of course, the remedy, we are told, is to apply leeches to stem the blood loss, and if you haven't stopped losing blood, bleed you some more. [Links in original.]

Also via Avedon, Sara Robinson on the word "global" and why conservatives fear it:

And that's a fear that grabs them like nothing else, which is why this anti-internationalism has hung on so persistently for 90 years already. One of the core personality traits common to all right-wing authoritarians is a very low tolerance for ambiguity of any kind. The best bulwark against ambiguity is black-and-white rules and clear boundaries that define what is and what ain't. This is why they're such sticklers for strict gender roles, for example; and why they get so uptight about people who cross racial lines or whose right to be here isn't a bright-line issue. Any time things fall outside of their narrowly- assigned boxes, it forces them into a state of not knowing that can create measurable, physical fear reactions. (The full download on ambiguity as a central motivator of conservatives is a post for another time.)