Mitch Daniels for God-King

Live from the Windy City, Jonah returns to the Remnant driver’s seat. He’s joined by ...

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Live from the Windy City, Jonah returns to the Remnant driver’s seat. He’s joined by Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, who has plenty of thoughts on America’s strange plague of mobocratic thinking and workplace safetyism. The pair also explore Jonah’s distaste for public sector unions, Megan’s opposition to student loan forgiveness, and the circumstances in which populism can be put to good use. Plus, for all you bingo cardholders, there’s plenty of dingo discussion and kvetching about primaries mixed in.

Show Notes:

– Megan’s page at the Washington Post

– Megan: “It’s time for major institutions to make their employees get off of Twitter”

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  1. Frank Furman

    Two quibbles I need to get off my chest....
    1) Making election days a federal holiday so "everyone can vote"...yes this was Megan's point, but it's a very DC-centric view that people get off for federal holidays. Federal employees get off for federal holidays, and while that trickles down to plenty of other businesses, most businesses in the real world, like, still operate on federal holidays. It might be a fine policy choice, but it should always be noted that it doesn't solve any issues.
    2) Discharging student debt through government employment: This one's on Jonah...the fact that we subsidize government employment even further by allowing people to discharge student debt is wild and merits steady pushback. It worsens many issues (growth of government, cost of higher education, government debt, skewing of capital markets for student debt) for the concentrated benefits of the few....it's just a specific case of student debt forgiveness.

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  2. Andrew C.

    Yes there was a government student loan forgiveness but it’s a joke. In order to qualify you have to make 10 years of income-based payments locked in at a loan of about 7%, more than twice the rate you’d get if you bundled it into a private loan. I have $168k loans after grad school alone after 10 years I’d pay 260k I believe. The grand total would be 400something k so yeah, a lot is forgiven, but that’s just because they drive the costs so high with super high interest rates.

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    1. Frank Furman

      But why forgive student loans for government employment at all? It distorts both the capital markets and the higher education market.

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      1. Andrew C.

        Oh I don’t think we should forgive student loans writ large. I think that may actually increase cost. The reason for student loan forgiveness is to attract people to less desirable and often lower paying work. So, for example, if you are trying to get more doctors into poor areas with few doctors (under city and rural typically) you do 10 years in this area with usually less earnings but theoretically offset by loan forgiveness. In reality, almost all hospitals are non profit and most primary care clinics are now owned by huge non profit companies so I don’t think it incentivizes as well as it should and as per my original post, the forgiveness is a joke.

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        1. Frank Furman

          Fair enough! I get the theory and agree with you about why it doesn't work in practice. Kind of reminds me of the "either-way-ism" you see in a lot of government postings, e.g. "this role needs a COLA bump, because it's desirable to live in DC so it's expensive there", and "this role needs a hardship pay bump, because people don't want to live there"

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    Tracie

    "Tweeting does not equal caring."
    -Megan McArdle

    Good to know. Sounds like it should be a section heading on a social media course. I remember my 8th grade "reading" teacher, taught a module on critical consumption of propaganda and advertising approaches that's stayed with me forever. Kids (and adults) now need to be taught about how social media can affect our brains and relationships way more than they need to learn about institutional racism or gender options. Those latter things are based in specific ideologies. Social media is an inescapable technological phenomenon that suddenly affects almost every area of our lives.

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  4. Steven Vandzura

    Jonah, I know you have have a limited time to speak and think during the podcast but I have to interject some context. When you say that some with debt have graduate degrees and it could be due to poor planning. (Not exactly how you said it), i have to state that my daughter excelled at the flute and was planning on playing professionally - even played a few times with the New York Phil. Anyway she was on her way and then Covid hit in 2020 and every door or opportunity that she had closed. She got thru the undergraduate degree with little debt but had to go to the Manhattan School of Music to continue her path and now has a least $80,000 in loans and thats when all paths to achieve her goals were eliminated. Which means she is responsible for that thru no fault of her own so it was not due to poor planning but due to circumstances wqy beyond her control. Thank you for your podcasts by the way, sometimes they are the most enjoyable part of my week

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    Jack

    Congrats Jonah, your podcast is now sponsored by Arkansas.

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    Xaveria

    Even if that laptop is totally legit -- and, as I have maybe said before, I would need to be seriously persuaded about that -- it didn't tell us anything about Hunter Biden that we didn't already know! No one thought he got that job at Burisma because of his energy sector expertise or his savvy business sense.

    People who had been paying attention during the first impeachment already knew that, and their minds were made up one way or the other. People who hadn't been paying attention *wouldn't have cared.* As far as I could tell, nothing "revealed" in those emails even rose to the level of corporate finger-wagging, much less illegality. As far as I can tell, they represented business deals AFTER Biden left the White House as Vice President and BEFORE he entered as President. When Biden was a private citizen. A private citizen is allowed to do as much business abroad as they want.

    At worst, Hunter was selling access to someone who might soon have executive power, which, yes, worth an eyebrow raise and some good old-fashioned increased Deep State scrutiny. People who care about strict ethical boundaries between private business and government could raise a little concern. But such people would never, ever, ever, ever, EVER vote for Trump.

    I mean -- have you seen the number of foreign diplomats who stayed at Trump hotels? Didn't we hear the US ambassador admit that he was told to pressure the UK government into moving the British Open to a Trump property? An accusation repeated by his UK counterparts? Did I imagine him shilling for his daughter's business after having appointed her and her husband to important positions for which they were totally unqualified? I'm pretty sure I didn't see the President of the United States with his thumbs up over cans of Goya beans on the Resolute Desk after an endorsement by that company. That couldn't have happened, that must have been a fever dream.

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  7. Deanjens

    I'm a bigger fan of student loan discharge (or cram down) in chapter 13 bankruptcy than in chapter 7.

    This is the only place on the internet where I expect anyone else to care about this distinction.

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    Sully

    As a Purdue graduate and 2008 Obama - Daniels voter. God-king is way insufficient for Mitch.

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  9. Zack Frank

    Great guest, thanks

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    Surely there is a bunk and footlocker somewhere on the Dispatch's pirate fleet with Ms. McArdle's name on it. Searching back through my own blog's mentions of her, I am reminded that in 2007 I described her as someone "marvelously asymmetrical" who struck me as both sensible and appealing. I have no addition or amendment to that, and I encourage Mr. Goldberg and his colleagues to bring her onto your webpages and into your podcasts as regularly as you can manage.

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