As a society, we are pretty good at transferring money to political pundits, but we’re not very good at nurturing the human capital they would need to correct their own mistakes.

Paul Alper points us to this from New York Times columnist David Brooks:

As a society, we are pretty good at transferring money to the poor, but we’re not very good at nurturing the human capital they would need to get out of poverty.

That’s funny, because that’s my impression about how our society deals with political pundits! We’re pretty good at transferring money to them (with Brooks being an excellent example of such a recipient) but we’re not very good at nurturing the human capital they would need to correct their own mistakes.

We discussed this issue a few years ago under the heading, Never back down: The culture of poverty and the culture of journalism.

Also from this same Brooks column:

The social sciences are great. I use them all the time. But when overly quantitative, they can misrepresent reality. They see only what can be quantified. They see only masses of people whose data can be tabulated, not unique individuals.

All right, then, you’re the expert, right, David? I’d take you more seriously if you could accurately report the price of a dinner at the Red Lobster, among other things.