Archive for Economics

Is Social Security “Cashflow Negative” This Year? Yes and No

Yikes, there is a subtlety in the Social Security debate that just bit me in the buttocks. (Fortunately we all have health care now.) I am participating in another “Public Square” debate, like the one I did earlier on the New Deal. (The links to that earlier debate are dead; I don’t know what the [...]

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Hey Rich Guy, You Weren’t Going to Use That Money, Right?

I realize this is nothing new, but man I just can’t get over how little the pundits care about property rights. Did they miss a lesson on the schoolyard growing up? Here’s Krugman: …[I]t would be a terrible idea to make the high-end tax cuts permanent; that would be a huge drain on the public [...]

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Krugman’s “Call” Back in Early 2009

One of the great things about this piece (which I linked earlier) is that the guy, relying on comments at Krugman’s own blog, refreshes our memory on exactly what the Nobel laureate said back when the stimulus was being discussed. You see, if you had just been reading Krugman lately, you would have thought that [...]

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Krugman Krushed

I’m going to do two blog posts (this is the first), then I might be quiet for a while. I am still trying to catch up on various things… Von Pepe sends this great article explaining how Krugman was getting owned (I refuse to use the hip term) by his commenters. It got so bad [...]

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Brad DeLong’s Methodology

Yes, I am using that word correctly. I am here talking about DeLong’s views on method. So remember kids, if you’re giving a job market talk, don’t say, “In this paper my methodology was to regress unemployment against Glenn Beck’s ratings.” If I am on the hiring committee, you’re done for. (Of course, I won’t [...]

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Hayek on Firing Line

Bob Roddis came to the Night of Clarity earlier this month and hand-delivered some audio clips of Hayek. In this one he talks about Keynes with William F. Buckley. (It’s 4:44 long.) I think this clip made the rounds on the blogosphere before, but apparently the links are all dead. So Bob wanted me to [...]

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Believing Is Seeing: Brad DeLong on the Depression

I thought Brad DeLong’s reaction to a Greg Mankiw piece was so perfect, I used it in my talk today on the Great Depression at Mises University. Here’s DeLong (HT2 Krugman I think): Mankiw’s broader point is that since we have seen nothing like this before except for the Great Depression, we should be humble [...]

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Krugman vs. Sumner

It would be nice if at least one of them struck a fatal blow… I am at Mises U and they’ve got me working my tail off this year [.pdf]; I give a lecture every day except Saturday I think. And tomorrow morning’s 9am lecture is a brand new one for me (on banking), so [...]

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