Popular economist Tyler Cowen has provided us with a vision for the future of average Americans whom all elements of responsible opinion -- Marco Rubio, Chuck Schumer, Bill Gates, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the strawberry growers, Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, Carlos Slim, Ted Cruz, and Michael Bloomberg -- can unite behind:
Of course, the stage after that of converting America to a globalist economists' utopia will be:
Assume a can of beans!
And, finally, America will reach the the nirvana of the economists:
(These are all from the comments on this and theprevious post, where there a lot of other good one-liners.)
Let the Mexicans eat lute-fish.
ReplyDeleteAbout the bottom 75-90% of the population having it much worse off, if not in terms of lacking the necessities, but in lacking the typical markers of middle class status, Razib Khan once mentioned this:
ReplyDeleteWe all react to 'market signals'...eventually - Gene Expression | DiscoverMagazine.com
Also related:
Human Labor Becoming Obsolete? | JayMan's Blog
and
A Second Great Depression? | JayMan's Blog
For a long time I have tried to figure out why the elites don't like it when the commoners eat meat. The elites issue a constant stream of propaganda against it: meat is bad for you, it's an inefficient use of agricultural resources, it uses too much energy, etc. The USDA's food pyramid doesn't have much meat in it: it urges you to load up on cheap, diabetes-inducing carbs.
ReplyDeleteMy best guess it that behind the scenes, the powers that be have been worried about galloping food price inflation since Nixon took us off the gold standard. They want you to be a good citizen who does not cause food price inflation (which will make the proles angry with the regime). Your duty is to not to eat much meat.
Eat beans! Help keep the elites in power as they print trillions of dollars and keep them for themselves!
I fart in their general direction.
ReplyDeleteLet them eat cake to let them eat beans. Free trade lifts all boats indeed!
ReplyDeleteOf course, we all know what happened to that person who said "Let them eat cake."
ReplyDeleteIf you want a vision of the future, imagine a can of beans stamping on a human face - forever.
ReplyDeleteLet them eat cornbread and butterbeans!
ReplyDeleteSure beats tortillas and refritos.
>Of course, we all know what happened to that person who said "Let them eat cake."<
ReplyDeleteWhat you will see is akin to the FT special on Arab Education. Most teachers fail students unless parents pay extra for tutoring.
ReplyDeleteThere are not enough police to keep order when people don't respect authority. The USSR fell when everyone was forced to participate in the black market and the elites were known to be corrupt and oil fell meaning crisis of not enough money.
Elites are betting that with ever more money devoted to the NAM population and total money diminishing they will continue to rule. A poor historical bet. Even without forcing people into the violent underclass.
Stupid economist. White guys unable to mate attract via middle class earnings will go full thug. Faster than you can say Walter White.
OT: interesting iSteve-like opinions by Judge Posner inequality and IQ, but then he embraces immigration??
ReplyDeletehttp://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/10/equality-of-opportunity-posner.html
When some kid in the future flunks Algebra I:
ReplyDelete"He'll never amount to a can of beans."
I attempted to think of a jews + beans joke and apparently:
ReplyDeletehttp://njjewishnews.com/article/16753/let-them-eat-beans-a-passover-dilemma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfCpfIYSwRc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitniyot
Jews seem to have an antagonistic relationship with beans.
In An Economist Goes to Lunch, Cowen admits Mexicans cook their beans unhealthily: they don't add a sprinkle of freshly ground cumin, but rather buckets of fat and salt. Cowen says the trashy diet in Mexico is because poor people can't easily imagine a long, happy life. Are the poor bean-eaters in America going to be unlike other poor communities in this respect?
ReplyDeleteSo Tyler Cowen believes 10% of Americans should live well while the remaining 90% live in squalor.
ReplyDeleteWell, that worked just swell in France back in 1791.
Someone needs to remind Tyler that even people who only eat beans can work a guillotine...
OT, but now Irish police have taken a 7-year-old blonde girl from a Gypsy family living in Dublin.
ReplyDeleteEat beans while the elite feast on 32oz organic, grass fed, hormone free, dry aged steaks.
ReplyDeleteLet them eat butterflies - and get sick.
ReplyDeletePretty sure Voltaire died of old age David.
ReplyDeleteThe Zip Code Rapists (Neil Hamburger's old band) had a song called 'Ranch Style Beans'. It rocks.
ReplyDeleteIt could be the anthem of New America.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't find too much of this amusing.
ReplyDeleteBecause 'opinions' like this are more than just that -- it's government policy. For several generations the government -- influenced by idiots like Cowen -- has pursued policies that have made the lives of ordinary Americans much more difficult economically, impoverishing many of them. Immigration, H1B, etc etc. Now they want to amnesty millions of illegals, and admit even more millions on top of them, including maybe every foreigner who graduates here, all of whom will compete with Americans in the job market. Then they'll demand by law that Americans subsidize their healthcare.
Americans finance all of that with their taxes. They pay tax to finance a government that is working against them.
Some Americans are finally catching on. But it looks like too few, too late.
I feel sorry for young Americans who are beginning their working lives. I really do.
Steve: the rest of that review of Cowen's book was mirthful and replete with other howlers, you needn't go only after the low-hanging beans here
ReplyDeleteI mean, the guy actually believes it's wonderful how Apple beta-tests its buggy smartphones on the customer.
ReplyDeleteApple should be called Aspel.
ReplyDelete...A much cheaper model might work better... with people who are part drill sergeant and part yoga instructor, able to inspire and put the fear of God into students
ReplyDelete^^ With some light editing, probably a sneak preview of major policy proposals outlined in Obama's next SOTU speech, I'm sure.
What with recent public discourse centering so much around questions of defining marriage, it makes sense Tyler would take up the cause of "the marriage of man & machine."
ReplyDeleteA much cheaper model might work better... with people who are part drill sergeant and part yoga instructor, able to inspire and put the fear of God into students
ReplyDeleteWhy? Yoga instructours don't even believe in God.
Maybe they can put the fear of Ganesh into their clients?
ReplyDeleteIf that De Blasio doesn't have the guts to come out in favor of people marrying their iPhones I'm staying home Tuesday after next. It's the defining issue of our generation.
ReplyDelete"...A much cheaper model might work better... with people who are part drill sergeant and part yoga instructor, able to inspire and put the fear of God into students"
ReplyDeleteYour kids'll meditate in school...
Your kids'll meditate in school...
Mellow out or you will pay...
California! Uber Alles!!
America, not a melting-pot but a three-bean salad.
ReplyDeleteCowen campaigns for politicians who dish out pork and beans.
Get Cowen by the beans and his heart and mind will follow.
Cowen is such a pacifist he won't eat navy beans.
Life in America is like a big tamale: the more dough you have, the fewer beans you have to eat!
Cowen's video to teach the future modal American (non-)worker about Section-8 housing and EBT SNAP benefits: Freebie and the Beans.
Will future unemployed American mothers tell their children to "eat their kidney beans" so that they "will have something to sell when they need money for college?"
Will future unemployed American mothers tell their children to "eat their kidney beans" so that they "will have something to sell when they need money for college?"
ReplyDeleteEat your (beef) kidneys.
The phrase "hoist with his own petard" comes to mind, meaning "to be harmed by one's plan to harm another"; a petard was a small bomb used in the middle ages which, if detonated early, would lift the petardier into the air.
ReplyDeleteThe word petard comes from the French peter, to break wind.
Tyler's houseboy: "Run, Lord Tyler- the peasants are revolting!"
Tyler (holding perfumed hankerchief to his nose): "Of course they're revolting, you twit! All they eat are beans! -chortle-guffaw-snort."
Was that joke from Black Adder?
ReplyDeleteSo the WSJ has confirmed, Tyler is full of beans. Explains why he is such a gasbag.
ReplyDeleteSo Tyler wants to sell our country for a handful of beans . . .
ReplyDeleteA guy about a decade ago was on Lou Dobb's show debating free trade. Lou asked what should be done to displaced workers, and the guy said they needed to retrain for new careers at JUCOs. Lou asked for what jobs? The guy said he did not know because the economy was dynamic. When Lou pressed him, he said Americans would just have to get used to the fact that in this day and age, they'd have to change careers every seven years.
ReplyDeleteLike the bean comment and the anecdote above, I've noticed that the elites never admit they were wrong about free trade or immigration. Instead when pressed, they double down and demand that American people deal with it by altering their lifestyles.
Note they never suggest that maybe we need to stop what we are doing that is messing up the status quo, let alone trying to reverse it. Free trade and mass immigration are apparently set in stone and everyone must adapt to it.
"So Tyler wants to sell our country for a handful of beans . . ."
ReplyDeleteSell our country for a handful of magic beans.
Or as Waugh quoted Eliot:
ReplyDelete"I will show you fear in a handful of beans."
"Child, if you don't finish your kidney beans, how will you ever grow big enough to sell a kidney?"
ReplyDeletethis is right up your alley: google this headline: Zionist Orthodox Girls In National Civil Service Banned From Working Hospital Night Shifts Due To ‘Race Mixing’ Fears
ReplyDeleteSteve, I'm no good at being empathetic, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three hundred million little people don't amount to a can of beans in this Bohemian Grove world. Someday you'll understand that.
ReplyDelete--T.C.
"Maybe it's just me, but I don't find too much of this amusing."
ReplyDeleteSame here. Yes, he deserves to be ridiculed. But mostly this pisses me off. Not that he thinks this way, because I already knew they did. But that he can say, "Let them eat cake," and yet he and his will still be running things tomorrow, still deciding what's right for the rest of us, and this revelation won't slow them down at all. While at the same time, someone like Paula Deen can be attacked and her career destroyed just because once upon a time she said something that might indicate she had politically incorrect views about something.
Cowen won't pay a dime or lose a bit of influence for saying that American citizens should shut up and accept a third-world lifestyle because he knows better. No, that's not very funny.
The GOP needs a full scale removal of libertarians.
ReplyDelete>Pretty sure Voltaire died of old age David.<
ReplyDeleteSo did Rousseau.
Pythagoras forbade his followers to eat beans because their fetus shape suggested they (the beans) had souls.
ReplyDeleteHe also believed that "Numbers are of the essence."
Another hero in the immigration-restrictionist hall of fame, then.
Compared to most people in the UK I am very well off, but I live on beans. In the supermarkets here we get tins of what they call salad beans. They are a mixture of kidney beans, butter beans and some vegetables. When added to some spiced rice it makes a very nice and wholesome meal. I would rather eat my own fingers than touch the rubbish so many Americans call food.
ReplyDelete(Staircase wit. Feel free to discard inferior first attempt.)
ReplyDeleteSteve, I'm no good at being humble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three hundred million little people don't amount to a can of beans in this Bohemian Grove world. Someday you'll understand that.
--T.C.
Gas Who's Coming to Dinner?
ReplyDeleteI support Tyler Cowen's vision of the future because "I (am) determined to know beans..."
ReplyDeleteHenry David Thoreau
Re: question from Anonymous 10/22/13, 10:45 PM
ReplyDeleteI think I remember the "peasants are revolting" joke from Mel Brooks' History of the World Pt I; but I loved Black Adder and may have heard it there.
Hmmm. Let me see if I can sum up Mr. Cowen’s opus: “We top 10% smart people are getting smarter, and in the future will control everything! HA HA, you proles! Here, have some beans. Don’t say I was never nice to you, or never told you it was coming.” I can practically see his ego inflating to Hindenburg size as he was writing, secure in his circular confirmation-bias argument with himself.
ReplyDeleteLet them eat bean cakes.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a fairly tasty recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/spicy-black-bean-cakes/
"For a long time I have tried to figure out why the elites don't like it when the commoners eat meat".
ReplyDeleteFellow weightlifters and I surmised back in the late 1980's that the anti-meat push was part and parcel of the overall anti-male agenda and the push towards feminizing Western males. We understood the effects of a high protein diet (increased muscle mass, resulting in a more formidable physical specimen with above average testosterone levels). Body builders are on the cutting edge of nutritional science and have know what works for decades. Running for an hour on a Stairmaster fueled by a diet of whole grains and 15% lean protein isn't the regimen that's going to help the 98lb Weakling turn into the Incredible Hulk.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a can of beans stamping on a human face - forever."
ReplyDeletelol
We need real bohemians in Bohemian Grove and the Trilaterial Commission and the Skull and Bones Society.
ReplyDeleteOccupy Bohemian Grove, anyone?
@The Derb: the position of Pythagoras on the eating of beans remains a matter of dispute among the learned. At least one ancient source claims that he was in fact partial to (eating) beans. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Pythagoras is very helpful on this interesting point.
ReplyDeleteIt is to another Magna-Graecian philosopher that we owe the most impassioned & unambiguous of all recorded denunciations of bean-eating:
"Wretches, utter wretches! Keep your hands off beans!"
That would be Empedocles.
And, as it happens, Empedocles was also the first to propound a rudimentary theory of evolution!
So, personally, I'd put him before Pythagoras in the queue for the immigration-restrictionist hall of fame.
At some point in the early or mid-2000s during the "Bush boom", one of the aisles in our local grocery store become a Hispanic foods aisle. Something like half the food in that aisle are canned beans from the Goya foods company.
ReplyDeleteActually I went back in time and poisoned him David. But made you look and taught you something to boot.
ReplyDelete>But made you look and taught you something to boot. <
ReplyDeleteI knew it beforehand; you didn't. You may thank me for making you look. "Marie Antoinette," btw, is now an archetype, a phrase, an idea, and maybe - a cause.
***
Everyone check out my latest post on President B.O.; just boogie on over to The Passing Parade, accessible from the link at my highlighted name, above. You people are the sweetest beans I've ever known, and I mean that.
Beans, being legumes, aren't paleo.
ReplyDeleteTry the link again, sorry.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Let me see if I can sum up Mr. Cowen’s opus: “We top 10% smart people are getting smarter, and in the future will control everything! HA HA, you proles! Here, have some beans. Don’t say I was never nice to you, or never told you it was coming.” I can practically see his ego inflating to Hindenburg size as he was writing, secure in his circular confirmation-bias argument with himself.
ReplyDeleteUnited States of Weimarica.