{"items": [{"author": "Bryan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757961596762", "anchor": "fb-757961596762", "service": "fb", "text": "The main issue seems more to be the volatility than the change itself. People can handle predictable changes much better than sudden ones.", "timestamp": "1448162084"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757961596762&reply_comment_id=758028881922", "anchor": "fb-757961596762_758028881922", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I agree sudden surprising change is worse, and but people are predictable changes can be hard to handle too. In each of these examples you could slightly tweak it to make it clear that this change was a long time coming and it wouldn't be much different.
Or take the growing cost of college: it's a pretty smooth increase over decades, and the amount of debt people have needed to take on has risen similarly, but that doesn't do much to limit the impact of the change.", "timestamp": "1448201891"}, {"author": "Mathew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032", "anchor": "fb-757999885032", "service": "fb", "text": "In the abstract, I might agree, but at the very least, I don\u2019t think the quotes you provide are good examples. The inability of small farmers to make a dignified living, the increasing unaffordability of basic necessities in the developed world, the prohibitive growth of student debt, the human consequences of the latest real estate bubble, gentrification, and deindustrialization - I don\u2019t think these problems have been portrayed as worse than they are, and they generally have been getting more serious over time (i.e. neoliberalism).
Moreover, I doubt any \u201creflexive negativity\u201d even exists - and where it might appear to, I think this is a misinterpretation of coherent (and I would argue, correct) conceptual frameworks that consistently yield negative judgments of economic developments in the age of neoliberalism. Even if it does exist, however, I don\u2019t see how it could seriously be taken to have maintained harmful systems. (What would such \u201charmful\u201d systems even look like? Systems in which average people don\u2019t need to go into debt to feed their families?) If anything, these quotes consist of lonesome salvos in the face of an increasingly dominant and alien logic of organizing human life and activity. If they\u2019re commonly repeated in the media, it\u2019s only because similar changes are successfully made again and again, revealing just how impotent \u201cnegativity\u201d is.", "timestamp": "1448172345"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032&reply_comment_id=758031381912", "anchor": "fb-757999885032_758031381912", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"The inability of small farmers to make a dignified living, the increasing unaffordability of basic necessities in the developed world, the prohibitive growth of student debt, the human consequences of the latest real estate bubble, gentrification, and deindustrialization - I don\u2019t think these problems have been portrayed as worse than they are, and they generally have been getting more serious over time \"
I tried to make examples that show reactions to moving from A to B and also from B to A. In the first two A and B are \"low wheat prices\" and \"high wheat prices\", in the second two A and B are \"high real estate prices\" and \"low real estate prices\", and in the last two they are \"lots of jobs\" and \"few jobs\".
You might say that the problem is that I'm describing moving from one bad extreme to another bad extreme (+100 vs 0) when there's somewhere nice in the middle (+10) where people would mostly be happy. But there's no place where housing prices can sit where houses are affordable and where house-as-retirement-savings is valuable enough; those ranges don't actually overlap at all. [1]
\"Gentrification\" is what we call it when a neighborhood becomes more desirable, \"decay\" when it becomes less, \"stagnant\" when it stays the same. Negative all around.
\"I don\u2019t see how it could seriously be taken to have maintained harmful systems.\"
Journalists present basically all changes as negative even when they're positive on balance. If any way you might want to change things is seen as bad, then getting popular support for the ones that make people better off overall is much more difficult than it could be.
[1] One thing you can do is allow people to build more on existing lots. This would make the cost of living space go down while increasing the cost of lots, which would make both groups mostly happy.", "timestamp": "1448204086"}, {"author": "Chris", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032&reply_comment_id=758047873862", "anchor": "fb-757999885032_758047873862", "service": "fb", "text": "→ There are so many examples of negativity leading to a damaging status quo. How we pay for health care in the us is the first one that springs to mind. The \"war on drugs\" and its ridiculous prison complex is the next. Lack of a basic income is on this list in my opinion.", "timestamp": "1448211361"}, {"author": "Mathew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032&reply_comment_id=758079086312", "anchor": "fb-757999885032_758079086312", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman Gotcha, I missed the connection between each of the quotes you had in mind. I don\u2019t think that makes me much more sympathetic, however. It\u2019s not as if small farmers have been benefitting from higher retail prices of their goods post-processing - and therefore ought not be overshadowed because of some bias toward negativity. Conversely, it\u2019s not as if consumers enjoying lower food prices comes at the expense of small farmers. An example of where this wouldn\u2019t be the case is where farming firms consolidate, pricing smaller firms and individuals out of business, while using the leverage they gain to put the screws to retailers as well. Further, the same thing happens at the level of retailers, pricing out smaller ones, using the leverage they gain to put the screws to producers or distributors (cutting into their profits) and consumers alike. This is what we\u2019ve seen throughout the history of capitalism and it\u2019s become more pronounced in the age of neoliberalism, but it\u2019s simply not a zero-sum-game between first-line-producers and end-product-consumers.
Where there are negative reactions to transitions from \u201cjobs\u201d to \u201cno jobs\u201d and vice versa, there are way too many separate issues at stake to just chalk those reactions up to necessary negative consequences of that transition per se. On the other hand, I buy real-estate prices as a good example of what you have in mind. I have my own axe to grind on this front, of course, but I\u2019ll save that for another day.
Regarding \u201cgentrification\u201d, you are right to note the negative ways in which we talk about the state of neighborhoods, but this is just an example of terminology used to aid an agenda. I don\u2019t know of any non-developers (or non-neoliberals) who use the words \u201cdecaying\u201d or \u201cstagnant\u201d to describe neighborhoods. Similarly, it\u2019s only people looking to stop certain kinds of development who call \u201crevitalization\u201d \u201cgentrification\u201d. Negative terminology abounds to promote agendas, but so does positive terminology (pro-life/pro-choice, right-to-work/pro-labor, etc.). In fact, positive terminology seems positively worse to me, insofar as Orwellian doublespeak disturbs me.
I really disagree with the empirical claim that journalists present basically all changes as negative even when those changes are positive on balance. I think it\u2019s pretty easy to disprove, and not only because \u201cbasically all\u201d sets a high bar. I don\u2019t doubt that there are often dissenting voices presented, but this is obviously different than presenting change negatively. I could cite any number of instances of progressive or conservative outlets and writers towing the party line with respect to changes proposed or passed, focusing on how much better off people will be overall (e.g. the Affordable Care Act and any non-right-wing-outlet). No doubt, negativity can be used as a tool to maintain the status quo, even where this would be a bad thing, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s part and parcel of journalism - certainly not to the extent that it would inhibit popular support for changes that would make people better off. It\u2019s a tool to be used when it suits your side. The problem isn\u2019t the tool or its overuse but the numerous misguided sides using it.", "timestamp": "1448231220"}, {"author": "Mathew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032&reply_comment_id=758079221042", "anchor": "fb-757999885032_758079221042", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Chris I didn't mean to be denying that negativity can strengthen a problematic status quo, just that the negativity expressed in any of the quotes Jeff shared really were such.", "timestamp": "1448231331"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032&reply_comment_id=758151800592", "anchor": "fb-757999885032_758151800592", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"I buy real-estate prices as a good example of what you have in mind\"
That was the motivating example here, and I think is one where the claim is strongest. The sellers and buyers in that case are \"homeowners\" and \"proto-homeowners\", two groups that the media cares about and wants us to sympathize with. (Unlike, say, renters and landlords where the media mostly ignores the first group and dislikes the last group.)
\"I really disagree with the empirical claim that journalists present basically all changes as negative even when those changes are positive on balance.\"
Yes, this is an empirical claim, and in this post I'm making it based on my impression of the media. Which is not so reliable. How can we get a better sense here? One way would be to look for news stories about changes that have winners and losers and see which they were focusing on more? But the media also tends to cover bad things happening, which means seeing articles that focus on people being harmed could just be choice of what events to cover. Is there a class of article that we have a good reason to think is mostly about events that are neutral on balance?
Checking news.google.com the subject matter seems to be mostly things that are clearly negative on balance: paris bombings, brussels under lockdown, teen arrested for rape+murder, nola shooting, airstrikes against isis. There's also argentine election results (not informed enough to know if this is negative) and a tax-avoiding corporate merger (probably negative?).", "timestamp": "1448288542"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032&reply_comment_id=758159899362", "anchor": "fb-757999885032_758159899362", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Maybe the bias results (in part) from bad stuff happening in a more concentrated way than good stuff (and thus being more \"newsworthy\").", "timestamp": "1448293162"}, {"author": "Mathew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=757999885032&reply_comment_id=758356759852", "anchor": "fb-757999885032_758356759852", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I\u2019m willing to grant that most news might be generally negative, but I would chalk this up to news generally being about things that are negative on balance - like all the things you mentioned, e.g. local and international violence. As a non-act-utilitarian, I\u2019m glad that we don\u2019t even consider that things like a local shooting might be positive on balance. I take it that your claim would only be corroborated by things that *are* or *might be* positive on balance that are portrayed negatively. Having distinguished between coverage that includes dissenting voices from coverage that\u2019s negative on balance, I take nearly all *reporting* (except for explicitly partisan sources) to fall into the former category where, despite dissenting voices, the piece as a whole has an ambiguous/ambivalent tenor. You see this sort of coverage of basically all local issues - new speed bumps in a neighborhood, Wal-Mart moving into town, job loss, etc. - but most social issues as well - legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage, minimum wage laws, etc.
Opinion pieces quite often fall into the latter, but whether these regard (potentially) net-positive things negatively depends entirely on the political views of the journalist and critic. As evidenced by my issues with the examples you used (and there are some with the real-estate example I didn\u2019t mention: lower-than-anticipated real-estate prices due to a bursting bubble is consistent with too-high prices post-bubble-bursting, especially for those with novel financial burdens), I actually take all of the changes you used as examples to be negative on balance - because they\u2019re often not zero-sum changes but also because most-positive relative to alternatives aren\u2019t positive on balance where the range of alternatives presupposes something problematic (i.e. capital).", "timestamp": "1448382849"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758090508422", "anchor": "fb-758090508422", "service": "fb", "text": "Mathew, you really think there's an \"increasing unaffordability of basic necessities in the developed world\"?", "timestamp": "1448240423"}, {"author": "Mathew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758090508422&reply_comment_id=758093367692", "anchor": "fb-758090508422_758093367692", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I consider things like food, shelter, medical care, and education to be basic necessities. The rising cost of medical care over the past few decades has been well-documented. It\u2019s still going on today - Martin Shkreli is not an outlier. It\u2019s often said that a college degree is the new high school degree and more or less a pre-requisite (yet nowhere near sufficient) to secure, decently-compensated employment. The increasing cost of college and the growth in student debt that it's precipitated is also well-documented. It doesn\u2019t start with higher education, though. The ties between wealth and educational attainment are well-documented. For those who can\u2019t afford to attend prestigious private schools, access to a quality education is tied to housing. This, in large part (and in combination with easier credit and the rise of two-income families, itself motivated in large part by competition for scarce resources tied to safety and education), fueled the real-estate bubble that burst in 2007. The same general dynamics are at play today and, for significant segments of the population, result in dispossession and new forms of redlining. Those who are lucky enough not to be subject to this have their mortgages and rents. Rises in these are also well-documented, at least where there\u2019s demand for them (i.e. place where there are employers who will pay for labor). I haven\u2019t looked at much data regarding the cost of food, but my impression is that it has gone up a significant amount and, with well-documented stagnant real-wages and the resulting credit economy (with all the negative consequences it portends) I don\u2019t think it\u2019s unfair to characterize basic necessities in the developed world as increasingly unaffordable. Maybe what you have in mind is the rising cost of these things doesn't entail that the bare necessities are unaffordable, just that nicer versions of them are? Surely one could live in a less-nice home, send his/her kids to a worse school, get less comprehensive medical coverage, etc. This is obviously true for a certain subset of people, but equally obviously not all or even an overwhelming majority of people. This is what happens when you subject basic necessities and human well-being to capitalist market logic - in the developed and developing world alike.", "timestamp": "1448242828"}, {"author": "Mathew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758090508422&reply_comment_id=758356979412", "anchor": "fb-758090508422_758356979412", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Another way of framing this response: basic necessities are increasingly unaffordable for a growing number of people in developed countries like the U.S. Furthermore, I take basic necessities to include necessary conditions for gainful employment that make basic necessities affordable. This multiplies the number of people for whom basic necessities are increasingly unaffordable.", "timestamp": "1448383053"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758090508422&reply_comment_id=758376335622", "anchor": "fb-758090508422_758376335622", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Maybe it's a problem that we've been ambiguous about the time scale. I wouldn't claim things have gotten a lot better over the last decade or two. But it seems to me very clear that e.g. food in the US is much more affordable than it was in e.g. 1950:
In real (not nominal) terms, all quintiles of family income have more than doubled since then [1], and median individual incomes have almost doubled [2]. It's still possible that food specifically became less affordable if the price of food had increased much faster than the overall price level, but from [3] it looks like that's not at all the case.
That 1950-->now improvement seems to be part of a larger trend of improvement over the last few hundred years, a trend which does seem like it may be stalling out in the developed world.
I chose food because it seems easier to talk about than housing, healthcare, and education. (All of those have some confusing complexities.)
[1] http://www.webcitation.org/query...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/.../Personal_income_in_the...
[3] http://www.usnews.com/.../charts-the-fast-growing-costs...", "timestamp": "1448394541"}, {"author": "Mathew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758090508422&reply_comment_id=910808799742", "anchor": "fb-758090508422_910808799742", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Whoops, I didn\u2019t realize I didn\u2019t respond to this. I agree that getting clear on our time scale is important. I think starting at 1950 might stack the deck a bit. Basically all the income increases you cite occurred from 1950 to the mid 70s. I think those increases are explained by unionization, welfare programs, and fiscal policy targeting full employment - not the types of things that would exonerate capitalism. Wages have more or less stagnated since then (I think as a result of a concerted effort to dismantle precisely the things I think led to higher wages). You\u2019re right that food per se hasn\u2019t become less affordable, but that\u2019s why it\u2019s important that I\u2019m construing basic necessities quite broadly. Prices of housing, healthcare (250%), and higher education (600%) really have risen since the 1970s and, without correspondingly higher wages, really have become less affordable - and increasingly financed by debt which erodes the affordability of goods across the board.", "timestamp": "1510804636"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758364474392", "anchor": "fb-758364474392", "service": "fb", "text": "That seems a bit like double counting? Or, at least, it matters whether the problem is rising costs or unemployment.", "timestamp": "1448388295"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758477482922", "anchor": "fb-758477482922", "service": "fb", "text": "Confirmation bias of individuals certainly contributes to this, as journalists compete to produce the most confirming narratives possible. I like Bryan Caplan's \"betting norm\" as a way to cut through the hyperbole. If more people had money (or acted as if they had) on their beliefs about the world, then that would create incentives to create less biased sources of information. Robust predictive markets would reward unbiased journalism", "timestamp": "1448463010"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758477482922&reply_comment_id=758487028792", "anchor": "fb-758477482922_758487028792", "service": "fb", "text": "→ A lot of what we're talking about is qualitative journalism. We can have nice unbiased information on what prices houses are selling at, but it's qualitative journalism that tells us how to feel about it.", "timestamp": "1448467648"}, {"author": "Ben", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758477482922&reply_comment_id=758503121542", "anchor": "fb-758477482922_758503121542", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It's an issue especially for things like free trade and offshoring jobs where the people who are clearly worse off (local members of the working-class) are inherently sympathetic, and the people who are immediately better off (corporate management) seem greedy and undeserving. It's a hard challenge to articulate why we think some bad things ought to happen for some greater purpose", "timestamp": "1448477549"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=758477482922&reply_comment_id=758505551672", "anchor": "fb-758477482922_758505551672", "service": "fb", "text": "→ With free trade and off-shoring you also want to be counting the workers in other countries.", "timestamp": "1448479193"}, {"author": "Avi", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=759937102832", "anchor": "fb-759937102832", "service": "fb", "text": "One of my personal agendas has been to try to convince my friends and colleagues that, despite the impression they get from the news, the world has been becoming a much better place.", "timestamp": "1449238074"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=808728484512", "anchor": "fb-808728484512", "service": "fb", "text": "Another example: it's possible there's been enough construction in Brooklyn to start lowering rents, which would be awesome on balance, and the NYT writes http://mobile.nytimes.com/.../the-market-is-saturated...", "timestamp": "1472676591"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=910798650082", "anchor": "fb-910798650082", "service": "fb", "text": "And another example: a 3% drop in housing prices in sweeden as a bad thing: https://www.bloomberg.com/.../sweden-s-housing-shock-hits...", "timestamp": "1510800053"}, {"author": "Christopher", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=910805566222", "anchor": "fb-910805566222", "service": "fb", "text": "One thing I have noticed is the trend to spin positive things negatively. This is most true in political pieces -- less of \"my candidate/issue is amazing\" and more of \"the opposing candidate/issue is the devil\". It is particularly interesting because there really is a choice in how to frame the arguments, and it seems that more often than not folks choose the negative framing. I think it has to do with fear and outrage being better motivators than enthusiasm and hope. We are more likely to act to prevent a feared outcome than to achieve a hoped-for one.", "timestamp": "1510802816"}, {"author": "Dennis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=910817153002", "anchor": "fb-910817153002", "service": "fb", "text": "Pronoia, by Rob Brezsny starts out with about 10 pages talking about all that's going well. It's a really fun read. Ex. pointing out the psychological depth of today's TV compared to say the 1950s, how much more aware that makes us. But it's a book. Not news. I think newspapers are very much aware of the types of stories that keep readers reading. They're not the feel good stories. I was with a friend of mine who was studying journalism when we both heard that Kennedy had been shot. His comment: \"That will sell a lot of papers.\"", "timestamp": "1510807661"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=912928247352", "anchor": "fb-912928247352", "service": "fb", "text": "Here's one about popularity of a product increasing due to more people getting interested in it and being able to afford it: https://www.theguardian.com/.../spaniards-face-ham...", "timestamp": "1511792092"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=912930842152", "anchor": "fb-912930842152", "service": "fb", "text": "On the other hand, some reporters could afford to be a bit more negative when writing about your friendly neighborhood nazi.
The piece closes with:
\"They spoke about their future \u2014 about moving to a bigger place, about their honeymoon, about having kids.\"
https://www.nytimes.com/.../ohio-hovater-white...", "timestamp": "1511793477"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=912930842152&reply_comment_id=912932548732", "anchor": "fb-912930842152_912932548732", "service": "fb", "text": "→ That's a strange piece. It has aspects I like, primarily the trying to show how people can have horrible views but otherwise live much like people you're close to. Lots of writing about the alt-right looks only at their views and so gives the impression that they're much more different from general society than they actually are. If you want to change minds and make progress you need to understand your opponents. For understanding how they're thinking, \"was worried about Antifa bashing up the ceremony\" is actually a good line.
But the overall tone goes past \"here's how they think\" and into \"how they think is ok\", by sympathizing with them too much. The author takes their perspective without first grounding themself and explaining what they're doing and why.", "timestamp": "1511794390"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/757956995982?comment_id=912930842152&reply_comment_id=912934050722", "anchor": "fb-912930842152_912934050722", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Yeah. It's gotten a lot of pushback. (My Twitter feed is full of people upset at the NYT for this.) My favorite was this satire from the Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/.../a-nazi-cooks-pasta/546737/", "timestamp": "1511795036"}]}