I don’t know why Jill Abramson was fired as managing editor of the New York Times. I don’t know whether or not she was compensated fairly. I don’t know if a man in the same circumstances would have lost his job. But I do know that Megan McArdle said this:
Some reports said that she was fired after she complained that her predecessor, Bill Keller, had been paid more than she was — a contention that the New York Times disputes. As a good capitalist, I’m sympathetic to any boss who doesn’t want to pay his workers more than the minimum they’ll accept. Still, if you’ve ever met any people on your visit to our planet, you should be prepared for the possibility that this is going to come out — and that on that day, you’re going to have to sheepishly shrug your shoulders and up the pay packet.
Let that sink in for a while. Is there a better example of Stockholm Syndrome in journalism than this? Ms. McArdle is expressly endorsing the principle that capitalists should always offer the least compensation that prospective employees will accept. If they happen to know that women or minorities are prone to accept less compensation than white men for the same opportunity, they are totally justified in low-balling them. If this creates a shitstorm of negative publicity later on, that’s just the price of doing business the capitalist way, and they should be prepared to rectify matters in order to dull the sting of the ensuing bad public relations.
Megan McArdle isn’t a capitalist. She’s a journalist. If she belongs to a union it is the United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army .
Not a capitalist in the economic sense but a Capitalist by faith. A worshiper at the altar of the Invisible Hand and devotee of Our Lady of Perpetual Immiseration.
Blessed be the Market, the righteous Judge.
Baruch atah ha Shuk, dayan ha emet.
That’s a good way of putting it. And what I keep noticing is that Capitalists usually have no idea how capitalism works. Otherwise they wouldn’t insist that, for instance, the best way to grow a capitalist economy is to take capital out of it. That’s sort of like saying you can make your car go faster by draining the fuel tank. And it’s also why keeping everybody on starvation wages might be good Capitalism, but it’s terrible capitalism.
That’s brilliant.
If she’s a journalist she probably already belongs to the newspaper guild.
“Is there a better example of Stockholm Syndrome in journalism than this?”
Yes, many.
For one, look at Mika, at Cup o’ Schmoe’s morning new zoo review!!!
Most hostage-takers would have shot McArgle-bargle the moment she opened her stupid mouth!!!
I’m thinking that she oughta review her paycheck.
Yet another example of interpretive capitalism; follow big Tabacco lead that it’s better business to cheat up front and then pay the fine once you’re caught than to do it right the first round.
Whether it’s the NYT abuse today; GM’s poor quality and lack of timely recalls, punished by a minute fine (set by law); Duke Energy fiasco; all of them end up being defined as a public relations challenge rather than business models that skip over the human factor.
And the Roberts’ court will continue to back this model.
McArglebargle is “Wanker of the Day”?
Shouldn’t we just award the title for life and retire it?
Let’s get down to the real story, shall we?
Jill Abramson wasn’t fired because she’s a she and she wasn’t fired because she was a tough manager. How do we know? Because the way the firing was handled was so quick and clumsy. There would have been a lot better CYA stories if those stories were the real deal. It looks like they had to come up with something to distract and that was the best they could do on short notice.
The real reason makes so much more sense. She was about to hire Guardian editor-in-chief Janine Gibson, who had been working with Glenn Greenwald to expose the Snowden NSA papers. Now, who is Dean Baquet, the new editor replacing Jill Abramson at the NYT? He is someone who killed an earlier NSA story while at the LA Times. Mondoweiss has been covering the story here and here.
Real story? NYTimes covering up for Israeli and American deep state spying activities.
Bet on it!
There’s a big, big chance that you’re right. Pitiful.
Hmn, leaning on Mondoweis for media criticism….
Hmmmm, do you have a problem with real reporting? How about a reaction to the gist of the story?
If she was an even better capitalist she would endorse slavery. That way you don’t have the pay the workers at all.
Of course, you still have to feed the filthy ingrates. So you sheepishly shrug your shoulders and give them a pot of gruel. Even the best capitalists have to make some concessions.
The fact that anyone pays McArdle to write remains a constant source of amazement to me. She’s not an incisive, imaginative or original writer; she’s not someone who researches any topic in depth; she’s never shown any signs of being able to run a business effectively; she isn’t even an effective propagandist and is now an internet punch-line when anyone even notices her. What then can she possibly provide that makes her remotely worth paying?
Her unwavering enthusiasm for saying exactly what extremely wealthy people want said, combined with her enthusiasm, expressed here, for taking the lowest possible paycheck herself.
McArdle is not just an idiot but also a true believer. She worships capitalism the way Tom Friedman worships imaginary third world taxi drivers and Peggy Nooman worships a good martini.
I sort of agree with her, but think that’s why we need an equal rights amendment.
She’s actually correct in the limited context that she spoke on. If you have a business and need to hire a manager, how much do you pay them? The person that you want says they need $60,000 per year, but you know that other managers make $75,000 per year – do you pay them $15,000 more than they asked for?
How about we as the employers, ask every candidate for public office how much they need in salary and benefits to do the job? That way we could hire the cheapest that will do what we want. Why hire a teabagger that needs $160,000 plus health insurance for a large family and a huge retirement benefit when a billionaire will do the same job for nothing?
A Sherrod Brown as POTUS would be worth $400,000/year. Romney, McCain, Clinton, Bloomberg would offer to do it for room and board, but even at that would be much too expensive.
I’d be good with that – the primaries could even go in “Name That Tune” fashion:
“I’ll run for the seat for $1 per year!”
“Run that race!”
yes.
Companies that overpay for resources tend to get eaten or beaten by leaner companies – there are always exceptions, but that kind of thinking tends to cause companies in a competitive environments to lose to their competitors.
What’s more is that the price of labor, like the price of homes, does not always go up. If someone is willing to take $15K less than others then the next person applying for the job will have a lower pay ceiling. This is why unions are essential – they generally keep upward pressure on the price of labor.
Megan McArdle isn’t a capitalist. She’s a j̶o̶u̶r̶n̶a̶l̶i̶s̶t̶ propagandist.
There, fixed that for ya.
I don’t know how much McArdle would want to pay me to work for me, but that’s what it would take.
Wouldn’t the true test of being a capitalist be an article that measured what the NYT had accomplished under her tenure? The policies she fought for, the awards the NYT won, the way she moved debates forward? After that’s been unpacked, then it would be time to take her measure.