Stupidity alert

Now come the parallels between India and the US after Indian Vajpayee lost the election to the fourth entry from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. In India, the economy is booming (that'll stop now that the socialistic Sonia Gandhi aided by the 40+ Communists in India's Parliament put the brakes on the economy) at a rate of more than 8% per year. In the US, the economy is growing at more than 4% (much better rate than in the Clinton years). The worst, Dagen McDowell's awful report on FOX News and noting that "some in the US think the same [result] will happen here" because the two countries are having rapid growth with "many" who claim they don't feel it.

Now Dagen McDowell is absolutely awful in general -- she provides no information, she has some sort of Ozarks-with-vocal-touch-ups accent, she's simply not smart -- but her report takes the prize for journalistic idiocy.

The differences between India and the US are so enormous that any economic parallel is inherently invalid. India is a "developing nation", the US is the MOST developed in the world. India has a fecund population that is largely impoverished and agrarian. The average person in poverty in the US has a color TV, VCR, microwave, car and can make rent/mortgage payments. The Indian economy is agricultural with some commerce and industry; the US economy has been post-agricultural for two generations. And the US does not have an enormous undereducated, underemployed and underfed underclass like India.

So stop the stupid parallels.


BONUS UPDATE: I thought it and I got it virtually right. From FOX News' bio of Dagen McDowell: "McDowell began her career as a financial journalist at the Institutional Investor's Newsletter Division. A native of Virginia, McDowell graduated from Wake Forest University with a degree in Art History."

That would be southwest Virginia from her accent, right smack near the mountain folk . . .