Brad DeLong: When smart people get lazy

Brad DeLong has a long post up at his website, entitled “Is American Democracy Broken?”, expressing his frustration with the state of these United States. I share many of his sentiments, but near the end, he provides a list of bullets summing up “the things that make me mad” (my phrase, not his) and I found his next-to-last bullet to be a particular disappointment. It reads as follows:

First of all, referring to modern electronic devices as “cheap toys” is, to my mind, pretty cheap. What’s wrong with “cheap” things if they’re good? Is Brad mad because a blu-ray disc player or an iPad will retail for hundreds of dollars rather than thousands? Would he be happier if such devices were hand-made by Old World craftsmen and were only available to the rich?

There seems to be a Puritanical aversion to admitting that material objects can make our lives “better” in any meaningful way. Everyone acknowledges that the printing press was an epochal invention because it made the great learning of the ages available to everyone. Why not admit that modern electronics do the same thing with great music, great operas, great plays, great movies, and even great television? Not to mention that, in a few years, you’ll be able to carry a library around in your pocket. As I’ve complained before, liberals like Brad and Paul Krugman insist that money, rather than possessions, are the measure of wealth. But, unless we’re misers, we want money because we can buy things. It’s the things, not the cash, that gratify our desires, and the things, to Brad’s confusion, keep getting better.

And then there’s the supposed downside to living in 2012 instead of 1992: “more congestion, longer commutes, and more expensive houses.” As for “more congestion,” that simply means more people, which doesn’t strike me as much of a problem. “Longer commutes”? After five minutes of “research” on the Internet, I found that twenty years ago the average commute was 22 minutes. Now it’s up to 25. Not really horrendous, particularly since you can do a hell of a lot more in your car than you could twenty years ago, thanks to all our cheap electronic toys. As for “more expensive houses,” they’re more expensive largely because they’re larger, more luxurious, and, if you’re lucky, located in an area that’s increasingly desirable to live in.

So it comes down to this: life is pretty much hell these days because of those extra three minutes in traffic (of course, if you’re riding on Brad’s beloved public transportation, your commute is twice as long. Ouch!)

Oh, and one more thing: “For the top 5% things are better. For the rest of us, it looks as though they are not.” Well, if you make over $100,000, you’re in the top 5% for individual income. If you have a household income of around $175,000, you’re in the top 5% for that category. Brad’s a professor at Berkeley, he’s coauthor of a textbook, and his wife Ann Marie is a research fellow at Pacific McGeorge’s Capital Center for Government Law and Policy. Is he in both 5% categories? I think he is.

Afterwords
It would also be nice if Brad would say one word about what strikes me as easily the worst thing about life in these United States: our bloodthirsty “War on Terror,” which is little more now than a desperate search for someone—anyone, really—whom we can kill, regardless of how flimsy the justification. We don’t even have to know who they are! They just have to look funny, and blam!