You need a telephone to get a job

Atrios points to this response from the Center for Economic and Policy Research to Robert J. Samuelson's Washington Post column in which he argues that America's poor are lucky duckies because, among other things, they have microwaves and cellphones.

Samuelson regards cellphones as a luxury item.

Which is to say, in 2010, that Robert J. Samuelson regards having a telephone as a luxury item.

Here, for Mr. Samuelson's benefit, is a screencap from McDonald's online application for a crew member opening at a local restaurant — the burger-flipping job that Samuelson imagines the poor are too lazy to go out and get, even though such jobs currently have more than five applicants competing for every opening:

The line for "phone number" has an asterisk because this information is required.

You can't get a job at McDonald's without a phone number.

You can, however, get a job at the Washington Post posing as an expert on economics when you can't be bothered to understand the job market, or posing as an expert on poverty when you don't know or care what poor people's lives are really like, or even posing as a credible writer about cellphones when your understanding of them was apparently shaped and frozen in time in 1985.

But set aside that Samuelson doesn't seem to understand cellphones or microwaves (one gets the sense that he thinks they cost hundreds or thousands of dollars), and set aside that Samuelson is simply inaccurate and wrong on the economics and the numbers. That's all sad and/or laughable, but not despicable.

What's despicable is that Robert J. Samuelson — the Malvolio of the op-ed pages — has, yet again, set out to write a column to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Why on earth would any respectable newspaper want such a person working for them?