31 Aug 2011

The Early Blogger Gets the Worm

Economics, Krugman 9 Comments

In this case, the blogger being Steve Landsburg (and the worm being…).

Recently Krugman wrote a post ripping Eric Cantor, which purported to show that standard economic reasoning rejected Cantor’s calls to pay for disaster spending with budget cuts elsewhere. What jumped out at me right away was that Krugman’s blog post relied on an assumption that two weeks ago, government spending and taxing policies were optimal. That was a pretty funny assumption for Krugman of all people to be making.

I was going to wait for unexpectedly good economic news (there are 8 such stories per day on CNBC, along with 8 such stories of unexpectedly bad economic news), link to the story, and then write up a fake Krugman post where he claims that now we can reduce unemployment benefits and other transfer programs, in order to reduce the deficit. This is because the day before the unexpectedly good news, the marginal benefits and costs of government policies were just right, and so after the good news the marginal costs of deficit spending were higher than the marginal benefits, etc. Thus basic economics, according to Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, demanded fiscal austerity on the margin.

But, no need to do all that now. Steve Landsburg beat me to the punch.

9 Responses to “The Early Blogger Gets the Worm”

  1. Major_Freedom says:

    Oh, you and Landsburg just want to see babies starving and unemployment lines growing longer than they are at the DMV.. That’s what this is really about. Don’t try to deny it.

    You should let Krugman make blatant errors and contradictions because in the end, unlike you horrible heartless demagogues, he’s trying to help people, and the productive WILL pay for it because Krugman is morally righteous.

    After all, his consciousness is able, via psychohistory, to tap into the collective minds of people, and his goal is to promote anyone else who wants to plan for everyone, since the thought of people having economic freedom is “total tyranny, even worse than state tyrannies.”

  2. Bob Roddis says:

    But the second mouse gets the cheese.

    Did anyone notice the swarm of folks who are splitting hairs with Landsburg? Our opponents are always thinkin’ too much about minutiae but reject and avoid basic, self evident concepts. Let ’em blab.

    • Joseph Fetz says:

      Bob R,

      You mean like how some people will attack a particular sentence in an article, one that it typically of small importance to the argument, and they then proceed to discount the entire concept of the piece without having ever refuted the basis of the original argument? You mean those trivial details?

      • Bob Roddis says:

        Like this thread from the great librarian LK?

        http://tinyurl.com/3v2nerf

        • Bala says:

          That chronicler is best left alone in his echo chamber. I wonder why MF wastes so much of his precious time (not that I do not enjoy MF’s posts) on LK’s cesspool…. oops….. blog. LK is like that only (as we say in India). When everything he has to say has been destroyed, he begins right where it all started. MF is just giving LK the appearance of respectability he just doesn’t deserve.

  3. Joseph Fetz says:

    Yikes!

    Yes, just like that!!!!

  4. Bob Roddis says:

    The issue we Austrians are going to have to face is that our opponents are complete freakin’ idiots. And they are shameless. I suspected this for 38 years but with these internet “debates”, nothing is more clear.

    I always find the most amazingly ignorant comments on the Yglesias blog. Wouldn’t you think that if you challenged someone by telling them they know nothing about Austrian theory that at least they would deny your claim and take a stab at refuting you? Never happens. It’s like the Martians have stuck a electrode in their brains. Follow this interesting thread on expensive houses.

    http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/31/309043/expensive-houses-are-a-bad-thing/

  5. Bob Roddis says:

    I never can follow the usual science fiction references you guys make. Star Wars, The Matrix??

    This is what I used to see at the Saturday matinee:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkuyB4wglQw

    • MamMoTh says:

      And you are still against a huge fiscal stimulus to prevent an alien invasion?

      I guess this at least means you were born soon after the invention of cinema.