The idea that “strong companies” don’t need help to survive an economic storm is a persistent one. The writer mentions a few aspects of the fallacy of thinking so.
Similarly, you might think that conservatives are hypocrites for supporting coronavirus “bailouts” today when they opposed bailouts during the banking crisis of 2008. But there’s a big difference. Today’s bailouts are necessary because government policy actions forced businesses into an unforeseeable calamity. In 2008, the banks and other businesses that faced insolvency had, in effect, created their own problems. The Darwinian solution makes sense only when the unfit destroy themselves.
Strikingly, these notions go to the heart of the difference between so-called conservative and liberal thinking. Under normal circumstances conservatives and liberals disagree about government intervention in the economy: Conservatives want less, whereas liberals want more.
This difference in world views, however, is more a difference of underlying assumptions than anything else. Conservatives assume that government is a necessary evil that, in any case, is a feature of the world we have, not of a world we wish to have. You can re-write that statement to create its exact opposite to see what liberals assume.
The consequences of coronavirus are almost certain to justify — over time — conservative skepticism of government. There will be those, also predictably, who will reject lessons learned. And so it goes.
It took all of one paragraph for Moran to outright lie about the AOC comment and build his own false narrative.
PJM is still laudable garbage:
https://slate.com/business/2020/03/airlines-bailout-coronavirus.html
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RE: “It took all of one paragraph for Moran to outright lie about the AOC comment and build his own false narrative.”
Which paragraph do you have in mind? I assumed it was the first one, but that paragraph quotes AOC directly, and reproduces her tweet to show that the quote is accurate.
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“The notion that wages did not go up at any American corporation for a decade is ludicrous. But we’re used to that from AOC.”
In no way shape or form did she say any such thing.
Maybe read your own post?
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Thanks for pointing it out.
I would say, though, that “The notion that wages did not go up at any American corporation for a decade is ludicrous.” is certainly implied by AOC’s statement that “96% of airline profits over the last decade went to buying up their own stocks to juice the price – not raising wages or other investments.”
Admittedly, Moran makes an inference, but it is not unjustified.
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Here are the numbers for nominal wage increases since the recession :
https://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/
I think AOC is on the money.
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@JTR
I guess what fries my butt is that regardless of whether Moran’s inference is justified or not, his narrative is built on the inference and NOT the fact.
In my opinion that is the type of weasel wording crap that makes alt “right” AND “left” so called journalistic sources a problem.
Kudos for seeing the mis-representation.
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RE: “Kudos for seeing the mis-representation.”
I don’t see the inference as a misrepresentation. It was clear to me when I first read the article that the inference was a casual, not a formal, one. Hence the next sentence: “More to the point, should airlines and other corporations have been ‘better prepared’ for a pandemic?”
That is the topic Moran explores, not AOC’s tomfoolery, which — as I stated in introducing it — is why I shared the piece.
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Sigh…
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Yet he tells me on another thread that he couldn’t clearly see the intent of my post. Un-freakin’-bolweavable. (Not really)
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@Roberts
It is a silly inference. Profits come after all costs are covered. It says nothing about those costs or how they might have changed. In other words you have linked to even more baloney.
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RE: “It is a silly inference.”
Its an inference from something stupid AOC said.
RE: “Profits come after all costs are covered.”
Yes, that’s the very point Moran makes: Profits and free cash flow are basically the same thing, a concept AOC and other socialists don’t seem to grasp.
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@Roberts
Spin. Spin. Spin.
This jackass put quotes around a statement that AOC did NOT make. That is dishonest. You try to justify this intellectual fraud as a valid inference. It is not. AOC made one true statement about one industry that is at the front of the line for a bailout. He fraudulently generalized it into a false statement about ALL companies for ten years. And you bought it.
One more good example why people who are serious about the truth do not turn to PJMedia for anything.
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There is no shortage of Democrats demanding to have things both ways.
They see no conflict between their demands for lower drug prices and a demand that our drugs exclusively be made in America.
They oppose Trump’s trade policies, but are angry that we don’t have more capacity for making ventilators here. (The European Union wrote their standards for ventilators specifically to exclude American made brands to give their brands a monopoly in Europe. No one before Trump has called them out on such trade abuses.)
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@Tabor
I would be interested to see your source for this claim that the EU set specs for ventilators to exclude American products. As far as I can find they allow ventilators that conform to the agreed international safety and efficiency standards – ISO 80601-2-12:2020
https://www.iso.org/standard/72069.html
Can we not manufacture to that standard? If not, why should they tolerate sub-standard products?
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No answer? Must be yet another one of the “alternative facts.” So useful!
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Tom Cotton already beat you to the punch about reliance on a China for med supplies and drugs. Of course he calls them our enemy. No really helpful. Highly competitive trading partner, perhaps.
“ “The Chinese Communist Party unleashed this plague on the world that turned what could have been a local health problem in Wuhan into a global pandemic,” Cotton told “Hannity.” Wednesday.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/sen-tom-cotton-medical-supply-chain-china
Yes, Tom, it makes sense to intimate a purposeful bio release by China since they have managed to infect all their customers. The delay in acknowledging the virus in China was a misguided attempt to hide the virus for political and economic reasons. Hmmm.
To me your premise is not versed in logic. We already have the highest prices for pharmaceuticals in the world. So if that comes from using cheaper overseas supplies, where would we be otherwise?
I know it’s all the FDA’s fault. That’s what Big Pharma says, anyway, with their creative accounting for the cost of R&D, testing etc. never mind we taxpayers foot the bill for a lot of basic research.
When did Trump complain about ventilator specs from the EU? If it wasn’t 3 years ago, it is moot.
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In answer to the original post, it appears the correct statement could be “Yes they could have”.
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