Has Matthew Yglesias caught the stupid?

[GeorgeGist]

Fire Deaths Are On The Decline



Therefore according to Matt

... residential fires are (as you can see above) a problem that's on the decline. It's genuinely plausible to argue that fire-fighting services are less socially valuable than they were ten or forty years ago

And for that non sequitur Matt loves him some Romney.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/09/fire_deaths_are_on_the_decline.html

[KamaAina]

1. I hear polio is on the decline, too

so why are we wasting all that money on vaccinations?

[kestrel91316]

4. [phone]

[LAGC]

2. That's got to be the dumbest reason ever to vote for a certain politician.

Hope his house never catches on fire, or he's paid his volunteer fire department dues...

[cthulu2016]

5. Almost as dumb as thinking that Matthew Yglesias thinks you should vote for Romney

He doesn't.

[CreekDog]

3. Even so, firefighters are often first responders for all sorts of medical issues

since they are the closest.

so it's not like they are just fighting fires.

[cthulu2016]

6. The tone of the OP is bullshit. Yglesias does not "love him some Romney"

Matthew Yglesias is manifestly not stupid, and he will most assuredly not be voting for Romney nor counseling anyone else to vote for Romney.

It is not, to my knowledge, an obligatory article of faith the we need more firefighters. It is a policy question. The kind of policy question that Liberalism was invented to assess rationally, in light of evidence, and draw conclusions there-by.

Yglesias it talking about something in a rational way, and couches his conclusion as "maybe" and "perhaps," suggesting that he sees the question as one not rigorously answered, but not disposable merely through campaign rhetoric.

If we are going to smear some of the best thinkers on our side merely for thinking then what's the point in anything?

[Exultant Democracy]

11. He was shilling for the banks over the weekend at netroots, a lot of progressives saw the mask slip.

Once he started trotting out right wing talking points I was done.

[renegade000]

7. isn't this a totally wrong metric to draw such a conclusion?

Shouldn't it be the rate of fires/car accidents/etc?

That the number of fire deaths has decreased only indicates that people getting better smoke detectors (or are being safer with their cigarettes/stoves/etc) and/or fire fighters are doing a better job...

non sequitur indeed.

[cthulu2016]

8. True

For instance, a reduction in deaths could be due to having relatively more fight-fighters per fire, since preventing death is their main job.

On the other hand, it is not fantastic to consider whether modern building materials, modern fabrics, modern space heaters and ovens, modern gas cans, all of which are more fire-prevention conscious than they were fifty years ago, could have an effect on the relative need for fire-fighting.

And since fire-fighting and paramedic/rescue chores are bundled together in practice, mere building fired are not everything.

But whatever the conclusion, the least acceptable conclusion is the OP's, which is that anything that is counter to broad political sloganeering must be incorrect as policy.

On some RW hate site there is doubtless some conservative economist who said he likes fire-fighters being pilloried as and idiot by some freepers.

Policy is complex, nuanced stuff and the idea that all public discussion of policy must stop every two years or every four years because of elections is offensive.

[Boxcar Willie]

9. Yes

he had it ever since he grew a beard and got fat and joined Slate

[marmar]

10. Fire DEATHS are on the decline, but what about fires? ...............

....... They still need to be put out, even when they don't kill anyone. I'm not quite sure what his point is.

[sabrina 1]

12. No, he has always been an apologist for the DLC wing of the party, the center right.