The Wisdom of Major Tom Friedman

Three times Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman has a question for the Boston Marathon bombers: if you were upset with the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why didn’t you go out and build a school?

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  • alex_the_tired
    May 3, 2013 7:05 AM

    I seriously think Friedman has lost his mind. His column on 401(k)s reads like something out of “Atlas Shrugged” with a big-ass dollop of prosperity gospel groupthink.

    1. “We now live in a 401(k) world — a world of defined contributions, not defined benefits — where everyone needs to pass the bar exam and no one can escape the most e-mailed list.”

    2. “What’s exciting is that this platform empowers individuals to access learning, retrain, engage in commerce, seek or advertise a job, invent, invest and crowd source — all online. But this huge expansion in an individual’s ability to do all these things comes with one big difference: more now rests on you.”

    3. “If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you’re not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say ‘it is a 401(k) world.’ “Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it.”

    The comments are witheringly mordant, and at least one post mentions that 401(k)s eat away 60% of the investor’s assets in fees.

    What happens when the 401(k) bubble pops? Seriously.

  • Aggie_Dude
    May 3, 2013 8:33 PM

    I prefer “Uncle Tom” as more appropriate given what Friedman says about . .well.. . .just about everything. He’s a master at eloquently expressing the conventional wisdom of 10 years ago.

  • YES! I never read Friedman because he’s such a smug condescending dumbass but I had to check out this column and I read the 401k one as well but good ol’ Alex has already gotten to pointing out how inane it is! And I can always count on Alex to teach me new words (mordant). 401k’s are horrible investments designed to give Wall Street a nice slush fund all while freeing companies of the responsibility for their employees. Tom says we’ll have to do our own investment research now. Yeah, that’s been for decades and the first thing to do after your research is to have nothing to do with 401ks. 401ks do it for you. lol What do you need to know? You can’t invest intelligently in them.

    I don’t remember the subject, but a while back Ted pointed out that Uncle Tom wrote about something years old as if he had just discovered it and deigned to clue us in. LIke this 401k article. Really, Tom? The world’s hyperconnected now? Fascinating. Tell me more.

    The worst part is the declaration of freedom! We have less freedom than in decades. We have fewer opportunities. But the internet must make us freer, right? Common morons love to be able to cite some successful pundit or writer for their arguments and boy do they have support in Tom. Does he ever write about anything challenging, controversial, perceptive, clever, or TRUE? A man to be jealous of indeed, Ted.

    And how do companies not have time or money to train employees? They’ve got more money than ever!

    I had to see for sure if he really said the bombers could have affected change by building a school or being math teachers. Unbelievable. This guy can’t be for real.

    Here’s the worst part for me. He claims the victims had nothing to do with the wars. WE LIVE IN A “DEMOCRACY.” THOSE WARS ARE BOTH FOUGHT IN THEIR AND OUR NAMES. They see all Americans as responsible not innocent.

    Along with less freedom we have less power and he has the gall to claim we are masters of our own destinies and the world now “can measure precisely who is contributing and who is not.” What delusion. You aren’t contributing and you’re at the top. The leeches are recasting themselves as the ‘makers.’ John Galt. Almost no one is getting what he deserves EITHER way.

  • In the same article Ted references, Tom assumes all Muslims care about all Muslims…Shiite and Sunni? Then he goes on to say Muslims are killing each other in the Syrian civil war which is relevant, how? And makes what we do OK, how?

    “Your youth believes that every American military action in the Middle East is intolerable and justifies a violent response, and everything Muslim extremists do to other Muslims is ignorable and calls for mostly silence? ”

    He just keeps topping himself! Yes, how crazy to believe that MILITARY action justifies VIOLENT response! HAHAHAHA Last time I checked, many moderate Muslims hate the extremists for the murders and how bad they make them all look as well as their failure to change things for the better.

  • “[The internet] offers so much information that has never been touched by an editor, a censor or a libel lawyer.”

    How terrible. I wish Tom could clean up the internet so I would just get the truth.

  • The Pulitzer Prize seems to be the local equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize….

    Henri

  • @mhenriday: exactly. For both: once and while someone deserving wins, and there are usually some deserving individuals among the runners up each time, but most of the time the winners are …

  • Also I love the Uncle Tom rendition Ted did in panel one. It is so recognizably a parody of that hugely pretentious picture he has up everywhere on the Times and elsewhere – except his “trying too hard to look philosophical” folded hands have been replaced with a hilarious giant Gordian knot of fleshy worms – its truly excellent.

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