For those who don't know, a googlewhack is what happens when you only get one entry in your search. It used to be fairly easy but these days I've wondered if they are even possible.
Anyways, I just got an unintentional googlewhack for the first time in my life. And it was with a pretty cool search term: +"median productivity" ezra klein. The background is that I've been browsing the responses on the Chait-Manzi debate and since Ezra Klein was involved at one point, I wanted to see if he came in with arguments about median productivity. Or failing that, if he'd ever weighed in on median productivity comparisons between the United States and Europe. (Actually I was going through for a whole bunch of people; I only got the googlewhack with Ezra).
The upshot is that I think progressives are not forcefully advancing one of their best possible pro-Europe arguments: Sure, hourly productivity is higher in the US, but it is pulled up by rich people. Europe might have a higher median hourly productivity. If true that would be a good argument that needs to be made vigorously. My take: I think it may be true, or at least, a lot closer. But the US has a larger minority population between blacks and higher rates of immigration. That goes back to the social norms argument that Manzi made quite forcefully in his original piece, and which went, as far as I know, unchallenged by the left. The necessary bourgeois values are not being broadly instilled by our current generation of (progressive) cultural gate-keepers.
2 comments:
By making this post you have assured that no one else can get this googlewhack!
If a googlewhack happens in public and people are there to see it, is it really a googlewhack?
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