Category Archives: Social Commentary

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Perverse Incentives Of ObamaCare

14 Comments

Yes, by all means, you should earn less money:

This, right here, is the toxic essence of the welfare state. It’s already been proven over and over that for the lower classes, welfare incentivizes permanent dependence: Since one gets more money receiving a raft of federal entitlements than one would get earning a salary at a low-level job, it’s a rational economic decision to remain unemployed, on purpose. Which millions of Americans do, generation after generation, creating a permanent underclass that only consumes the common treasury without ever contributing anything to it.

What Obamacare does, as demonstrated by this eye-opening article, is bring the same economic disincentive to the middle class: It is now a rational economic decision for the average American to earn less money. And to earn less you must work less, and when you work less, you contribute less to the common good.

With people intentionally contributing less to the common good, there will be less federal money available to finance the subsidies (which are fiscally unaffordable even without this problem), leading to an unavoidable downward economic spiral for the entire nation.

That’s OK. Remember, the president told us that, at some point, you’ve earned enough money. He’s just lowering that point.

Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

The Paleo Diet

11 Comments

Is it a fad? An interesting interview by Ben Domenech:

…the existing food movement that sprang up around organic food was largely driven by, particularly in the early years, the vegetarian world and the plant-based diet world, with a good bit of progressive ideology. And so that is alienating to a lot of people who might want to be healthier, who do care about where their food comes from. We saw the same thing happen in the environmental movement. You’ve got scores of hunters who care deeply about conservation and practice it in their own lives, and but due to differences in culture hunters have largely been excluded from the environmental movement.

I think there was a latent demand for an alternative approach to healthy eating and healthy living that wasn’t, that didn’t require you to buy in to all this other ideology. Because basically until paleo, until this general evolutionary approach came along, the only options were, you can be a sort of like a hippie vegan progressive, or you can eat tons of McDonalds and become obese and proudly tout that you don’t care where your food comes from, or you can go on some fad diet. And those aren’t actually very good options for a lot of people.

So, first I just think there was latent demand for it. And then there there’s definitely something to the fact that paleo doesn’t look down on eating meat and that definitely appeals to a slightly more masculine group of folks. The latest surveys have shown that paleo is actually split about 50/50 between men and women, but that’s far more men relative to all other dietary movements, which tend to be 70, 80% women. So, people will say it’s all macho, all these men are into it. It’s actually about 50/50, but it just feels a little bit more masculine relative to everything else.

It really has taken off more among libertarians than the general population, I think.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Thoughts Of Old Blighty

6 Comments

I agree with Lileks:

As I’ve noted before – this week, I think – the middle portion of Holst’s “Jupiter” has always hit me as the most English Thing Ever – uncomplicated at its heart, outwardly stern, stoic in its cultural patriotism, sweeping up everyone in a broad assertion of national identity that prides itself for the treble virtues of tradition, decency, and resolution. Doesn’t mean that’s the case, of course; music seduces. There’s a reason the Sirens sang instead of sending sailors well-written notes. One of the most moving national anthems I’ve ever heard is for Oceania, from “1984.”

But.

Holst captured something at its peak and its prime, a moment of leonine gravity as true as it was idealized. I’ve waited decades to go there and stand at the place where I start to hum it to myself. Wonder where that’ll be.

Anyway. My daughter has been to a dozen countries because I want her to get the flavor for the Marvelous Elsewhere early on, and also experience the joys of seeing home through new eyes when you return. We have the occasional dinnertime conversation about why America is different, and why America is good, arguments to counter the schoolmates who say the world would be better off if there wasn’t an America. (You can imagine the usual reasons.)

I hope the lessons take.

Sadly, too few want to teach them. And that is also my favorite movement from The Planets. When I was a kid, all I knew it as was the theme to the evening news (Huntley and Brinkley, I think, on NBC), but just the opening of it. Hmmmm…[googling] Yup. I never heard the whole thing until I bought an album of the entire suite, and I loved the middle section.

[Update a few minutes later]

Amazing. I still tear up when I listen to that passage. Just beautiful. You can hear where John Williams got a lot of his influence for the movie scores.

[Afternoon update]

OK, there seems to be some dispute about the Huntley-Brinkley theme, and it does seem to be Beethoven. OK, so which news show from the sixties used the Holst?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Bleeding Heart

6 Comments

When it becomes the iron fist:

Whatever the perceived shortcomings of Ted Cruz and his hardy band of stalwarts, they’ve performed a remarkable public service by highlighting the fate that awaits all who rub wrongly the translucently thin skin of King Barack the Petulant. The Spartans may have had their shields, Native Americans their tomahawks and arrows, the Samurai may have wielded his sword with all the deadly grace of a tiger in mid-attack, but pound for pound, nothing comes close to the audacious stupidity of “Barrycades” and people in pointy little Smokey the Bear hats, poised to protect America’s monuments from law-abiding citizens.

Welcome to liberal utopia, where barriers are not erected against terrorists or illegal aliens on our nation’s borders, but rather against citizens, and where wheelchair-bound veterans enroute to honor their comrades face tighter security than terrorists enroute to murder a US Ambassador. This is where up is down, wrong is right, illegality is celebrated as progress, and where Constitutionalism is derided as racist. No longer relegated to the fever swamps of academic fancy, utopia has acquired real estate and made known its demands.

“Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual…” the First Lady warned us, and she wasn’t just whistling Alinsky either.

…The federal government has shut down some 17 times previously, and at no time were these memorials closed. Is our Sovereign so besotted with power, has his impudent leftism so robbed him of reason that he fails to understand what is so obvious: That in barricading Americans from memorials and icons that stand as testimony to an exceptional culture founded precisely on liberty from oppressive government, he perfectly validates the arguments of the right?

But remember, they’re compassionate, and we’re heartless.