The Day That Died: The Worst of Business Journalism

It’s a sad statement about business journalism that in just a single day we found five articles that were too idiotic to ignore. Here they are:

1. Inc Magazine: The Only Way to Get Really, Really Rich

Yet your downside is always unlimited because getting fired or laid off can make your income disappear overnight–and with it the considerable investments you’ve made in time, effort, dedication, and sacrifice.

Extremely limited upside. Unlimited downside.

That’s a terrible investment.

This is the worst article I have ever read. When you get fired you KEEP all the money you made until then plus whatever exit package you may get (and this can be huge for some positions because companies will sometimes pay inordinate amounts of money to force ppl to leave). Unlimited downside means you lose what money you put in. Technically an employee puts only his time and effort, not money.

2. vox.com: Inequality doesn’t help the economy grow

Matthew Yglesias is confusing cause and effect. Inequality is a byproduct of any advanced, growing economy. We discuss this in more detail here. He says “the present highly inegalitarian distribution of economic resources is highly inefficient and makes it inordinately difficult to solve serious problems”, but be never offers any actual empirical evidence that it’s actually inefficient or defines efficiency. He just assumes the reader will take his word on it. He mentions “misallocation” but ignores surging entitlement spending. If anything, we’re allocating too many resources, not too few.

3. Do They Owe Us A Living? 7 Reasons The Universal Basic Income Is Worth Fighting For

This analysis of the universal basic icome (UBI) ignores the obvious pitfalls.

  1. what about the millions of people that go to work? Are they all failing? How does replacing wages with a UBI fix wages if the UBI provides less income than wages?

    Maybe the UBI could supplement wages is what he meant.

  2. Agree, but that isn’t necessarily an endorsement for a UBI. It’s just an economic truism.
  3. Tautological. That’s why it’s called a UBI.
  4. Depends on how big it is. Entitlements are at historic highs adjusted for inflation. A UBI combined with existing entitlements would balloon the deficit.
  5. No it isn’t. No country has enacted it, but the surge in entitlement is almost like having a UBI
  6. Until existing entitlements are addressed, a UBI isn’t remotely feasible. We discuss in further detail.

4. Confronting the U.S. economic slump

Mohamed El-Erian a.k.a. Jar-Jar Binks, upon being fired from Pimco, is now writing for Bloomberg. What slump? Has Jar-Jar actually checked the numbers or is he just making shit up again? Let’s see… record high profits and earnings for five years and a row. Record high consumer spending and exports. GDP growth that has returned to pre-2008 levels. Is it any surprise he got fired for writing garbage like his? Back to Naboo for you.

5. Silicon Valley firms accused of hiring conspiracy

This is not so much as an indictment on the article, but on allegations of collusion. The hiring conspiracy has no merit in court. How do you define a ‘talented employee’ versus an employee like, say, the janitor and how do you prove his income opportunities were limited by collusion? You cannot.