Slate Economics Writer: You Can’t Complaint about Debt if You Don’t Compain about Mortgages, or Something
Matthew Yglesias is the business and economics correspondent for Slate Magazine. He is also a fierce partisan progressive who has worked for the far-left new media outlets Think Progress and Talking Points Memo. Which Matthew Yglesias do you suppose tweeted this today, the professional economics writer or the partisan hack?
How many of the people who think debt is irresponsible per se have mortgages? Do they know what mortgages are?
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 18, 2013
Here’s why I ask. Yglesias dropped a subtext into his tweet large enough to choke a bull elephant; namely that the “people who think debt is irresponsible” are conservatives who believe a $16 trillion national debt and, more importantly, no plan to rein in that debt ever is tantamount to madness. He can’t be talking about an actual group of people who are entirely anti-debt, because no such group exists large enough to merit a Tweet from Yglesias. Not even generally debt-averse financial advisers like Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman are opposed to mortgages per se. Any reasonable competent business and economics correspondent wouldn’t say otherwise any more than a reasonably competent cartographer would make a map of the Earth with an edge beyond which is a yawning abyss full of dragons.
A partisan hack, on the other hand, would write anything. Why not? If your political foe says the Earth is round, draw up that flat-Earth map and ask them why they want everyone to sail into the mouths of hungry dragons. Or, to use the news of the day, ask why your political opponent wants schoolrooms soaked in the blood of murdered children. You won’t suffer any real consequences.
But, you know, maybe there should be consequences for such ridiculous hat-switching. I don’t see why anyone should one minute play themselves off as a serious economics writer and the other as a bomb-throwing partisan without some penalty, do you? Be one or the other. Be honest.
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- Let Us Look Back at the Calm, Rational Rhetoric of the Debt Ceiling Circus
Category: Progressives, The Economy and Your Money
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@jimmiebjr And this clown is an economics writer? Ha!
Matt Yglesias seems to have forgotten that responsible mortgage-holders pay off those mortgages; they don’t go deeper into debt every year.
We are still reeling from a period where Americans got over their heads into debt. Now, Mr. Yglesias seems to think it is OK for the federal government to do the same.