Something Productive Like Journalism? Seriously?

Pseudo-polymath Ezra Klein passes judgment on that of which he knows nothing:

One of the common complaints about Wall Street is that it sucks up a lot of Ivy League talent that could be going toward more productive endeavors.

Like what, Ezra? Bluffing your way through current events for the Washington Post? You define a career in investment banking (which I'll lay money you don't understand in the least) as less economically (and socially) productive than a career in journalism?

Why? What's the rationale?

Ezra Klein is yet another partisan punk/hack in the mold of Matthew Yglesias and Josh Marshall. None of them have actually worked a day of their lives in either business or a profession (by any real measure, journalism is not a profession). And, consistent with their (uninformed) personal prejudices and cloistered existences, they can see no value in the work done by millions of citizens because it does not conform to their (uninformed) vision of what business activity should be.

You know, I've been working in a real profession longer than Ezra Klein has been alive. I've been a business owner for more than half of Ezra Klein's life. The idea that he has enough of an understanding of economics, business or life to pass judgment on the relative worth of investment banking is a bad joke. I don't know about you, but the fact that a 26 year-old still-wet-behind-the-ears punk like Klein could be doing anything other than covering school board meetings as a journalist tells me just about all I need to know about why newspapers are bleeding readers (and money).

Comments

[richard mcenroe]

There was a time when reporters could actually cover what they were reporting on because they might well have been cops, veterans, businessmen (or at least employees), etc.

Then the journalism major was invented...

[Randy Rager]

I wouldn't trust a Journalism Major to run a lemonade stand. Actually, I wouldn't trust a Business major to run a lemonade stand, either, but that's a story for another day.

[David]

Ezra Klein, playing Mr. McGuire, in the updated "The Graduate."

Mr. McGuire: I want to say two words to you. Just two words.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Community organizing.

David

[Dennis the Peasant]

Richard-

They had to find something to do with all the PolySci majors who realized by the end of their sophomore they didn't have a chance in Hell of getting into Law School.

[just passin by]

I'm crying , Dennis...MY major was government (UT's name for PolySci)...since I'm so offended, you should start a whole welfare industry around me...

[David]

And "Ivy League talent"...

Wasn't that what Elliot Spitzer did (yes, in that sense of the word) to while away those long hours in Albany?

David

[Coomanche Voter]

What the hell does little Ezra define as "more productive endeavours"?

[anon]

troll elliottg. comment removed.

[Randy Rager]

Troll!

I'ma love it and hug and hold it and pet it and call it GEORGE!

[jade]

Well, journalism school isn't completely useless. For example, they teach you about these things called dependent clauses.

[Progressive White Liberal with a Humanities Degree]

If those clauses are dependent, they will STILL be covered under Obamacare!

[E. K.]

Obviously, we need divestment bankers.

[Coomanche Voter]

Poor little Ezra doesn't understand that a lot of the most important work in this country gets done by guys, and gals, with engineering degrees from Georgia Tech or Michigan State or God Forbid petroleum engineers from Texas A&M--and places like that; or accounting majors from Bunbite State College etc. They don't have time to be all wee wee'd up like some little twinkie writing in New York; they've got real, productive work to do. Now if they could just get that dead load in the District of Columbia-Cambridge axis off their backs and out of their pockets, they could get on with doing the work that makes the country run.

[Gary Larry]

Yes, Coomanche Voter, the hicks go to B-grade state universities and you're so un"wee'd" up. Are you Harvard or Princeton elite and can we touch your hems?

[sparky the awful commie]

dude--misdirected ad hominems? seriously?

i mean, i even agree with some of what you said (and i don't like Ezra at all) here but you just implied something that's impossible to do from a supposed conversation. as he's a pretty soft target you can do better than that. not that you have to since it's your blog but your criticism is usually better (nothing wrong with nasty if it's accurate). this was like reading redstate.

incidentally IBankers are by and large useless these days as they are most assuredly not generating wealth unless you count financialization and the attendant reallocation of capital in the economy as a good in itself.

[Coomanche Voter]

Gary--top of my class at UC Berkeley Boalt Hall Law School. Hell I wrote something that was published in the law review, which is more than I can say for Obama. I think that I can reach the garment hems of my supposed masters.

[Scott]

The one sentence you highlighted perfectly illustrates what's going on in the country today in that socialist pukes like Ezra Klein have no clue how markets work.

In the market for Ivy League talent, Wall Street pays the most so obviously that's where more Ivy Leaguers will gravitate to. The day his imaginary "more productive" pursuits can afford to pay more than what those Ivy Leaguers can earn on Wall Street is the day fewer Ivy Leaguers head to Wall Street. History has proven over and over again that an economy's finite intellectual and physical resources are most efficiently allocated by markets. Allowing bureaucrats to intervene in markets and decide where Ivy League talent will be more productively used will only lead to distortions, imbalances and malinvestment. It's Econ 101.

You're right. Klien has no clue how markets work. The scary thing is, neither does Obama.

[jade]

It's Econ 101

Maybe you don't know this, but there's this new thing called Econ 201. Perhaps you should check it out.

[Tim Worstall]

Econ 201....and 301, 401 and they even start to give out prizes for the really top blokes. Like a Nobel....for, say, Hayek, who showed that the Econ 101 allocative efficiencey of markets is indeed true due to the knowledge problem that faces any planner. Or Buchanan who showed that politicians and bureaucrats do what is good for politicians and bureaucrats rather than the rest of us. Akerloff for showing that while there may be information asymettries (the market for lemons) markets still manage to work around them.

[Richard McEnroe]

Commanche Voter: If you MUST touch the hems of your betters, at least use a Zippo...

And you know the worst thing about Ivy League universities? The gates lock from the inside...