Having problems discriminating between fiction and reality?

[thewayne]

"Rich people prominently featured and they're generous; they're nice people, they create jobs, for heaven's sake; they're classy; they've got style and we love 'em...That show is wildly popular, which poses a threat to the Left, doesn't it?"
—Fox Business host Stuart Varney on Downton Abbey

I think it poses a threat to anyone who looks to television or sports for role models.

I guess we're supposed to embrace a period-set soap opera as a model for our country and economy? I don't think so. I guess he didn't look past the fact that if the servants left, they wouldn't be able to dress or feed themselves.

I listened to a podcast of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me that featured Hugh Bonneville, it was quite amusing listening to them discuss the program. Myself, I haven't seen it. Maybe someday, too much other stuff to watch that I know that I enjoy.

Comments

[silveradept]

Mmm. I wonder if he thinks that liberals have no idea about the difference between aristocratic wealth and its uses and soul-crushing, job-killing, life-destroying wealth used just for the purpose of making the CEO have more millions. If Mitt were more like the aristocracy in Downton, I think we'd like him more for employing people and contributing to the economy.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I had a discussion with my mom last week when I was in Phoenix. I told her about Romney and Bain Capital and how Bain would saddle a target with debt, take their cut, and get out. By one definition of success, Bain is successful: they provide returns for their investors and their board makes a lot of money. My question is whether they are truly a success if the debt that the company is saddled with makes it fail, and jobs are lost?

Bain embraced the attitude of "success = dividends" while providing foreign tax shelters to their partners. I don't consider that a success.

Some flavors of conservatives embrace the trickle-down matra of "a rising tide lifts all boats". The inverse is certainly true if you look at it from the perspective of the auto bailouts: if GM failed, LOTS of smaller companies would fail. GM lives, smaller companies live.

Classic recent example: the failure of Hostess. Everyone in the company had to take salary cuts, EXCEPT the CEO who was brought in on a contract.

We need more companies like Ben & Jerry's, who actually create jobs and really help their employees and local communities (though I don't know how much they've changed since the founders sold out), as opposed to vulture capitalist companies like Bain and their mind-set ilk.

[silveradept]

Yeah. I think most of us would consider the Baen success model to be unsuccessful, assuming we actually knew about it instead of just reading our investment statements.

Yet, a certainly seem to lionize having more money than Trump, because it allows for freedom unavailable to people who have to work for a living.