27
Nov
2015
Contra Krugman Episode 11
Tom and I take on Krugman’s absurd spinning of the horrible ObamaCare news that has come out this month.
Tom and I take on Krugman’s absurd spinning of the horrible ObamaCare news that has come out this month.
This one seems to be going around, links to ObamaCare news are presumably coincidental.
http://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=dre0605
Well, it’s not as if that pig was going to live forever anyway…
Holy cow is that Krugman column ever shameless. I lost track of the smuggled assumptions and special pleadings. I really liked the bit where he mocked the idea of a death spiral while he was listing exactly the things that cause one. Fewer participants, unhealthier ones too, leading to rate hikes and benefit cuts, then marginal participants are driven out, especially the relatively healthy ones who might risk doing without insurance, ….
Forgive the somewhat off-topic or feel free to kick this into the next potpourri…
http://www.neweconomics.org/projects/entry/weekly-economics-podcast
Scroll down to the bit about “Special series: A beginner’s guide to neoliberalism”. They give honourable mention to Austrian Economics, except apparently Mises never existed and the whole of Austrian Economics is just Hayek. The whole question of economic calculation just vanished without trace. The debate over the socialist knowledge problem… gone! They very quickly name “The Road to Serfdom” but other than the title don’t cover any of the contents of that book.
It’s the most outrageous and unbelievable hatchet job, a totally dishonest “introduction” that in fact provides no introduction a all.
Is it the Bob Roddis law? Or is it a curse?
Getting even more off topic, I was at a kind of work Xmas meetup and mentioned to some guy (just bumped into him, no close friend or anything) I had been reading a bit of Austrian Economics. He was pretty dismissive, “I’ve got an Economics decree and I never heard of any Austrian… we studied Keynes! “
I’m guessing decree wasn’t a typo
That Keynes fellow was smart enough to steer clear of addressing economic calculation too. Are they afraid of something?
From Demand, Supply, and Macroeconomic Models (Nov 28):
Ummm, why didn’t the people making the predictions take the trouble to word everything carefully? That would be the general idea of a prediction, right? Make sure you have it clear before the event, I would think so.
Not a whole lot of value in going back and worrying about careful wording after the fact… any bozo can get the benefit of hindsight.
Now, let’s start with one (and only one) completely crystal clear, never to be changed, definition of “austerity” … go!
“That would be the general idea of a prediction, right? Make sure you have it clear before the event, I would think so.”
Tell it to Nostrodamus.
1. As Scott Horton recently reminded us, you are required to testify to the WHOLE TRUTH and nothing but the truth. A partial story can be just as misleading and fraudulent as a direct and unambiguous lie. A claim of fraud can be supported by material omissions. Understand that, Krugman?
2. I fail to see the difference between Keynesian obfuscation (a universal phenomenon without exception) and the NYT failing to mention how Obama installed real Nazis in Ukraine or the joint Neocon, Israeli and Obama support for the Sunni rebels in Syria. The Republican candidates always fail to mention the fact that the Neocons, Israel and Obama are on the same side in the Syrian civil war (supporting Al Qaeda) and the press fails to mention and/or challenge this failure and thus endless distortions by the candidates. Similarly, Krugman is just a continuation of the usual NYT MSM M.O.
3. I continue to maintain that our opponents are scared to death of us. Otherwise, they would not be engaging in a posture of distorting or ignoring us 100% of the time. They would simply refute what it is we are saying. We should be calling them on this. Every day. On every issue.
4. Speaking of distortions, my recording of Hayek on “Meet the Press” in 1975 was probably the first time I heard and understood the Austrian critique of Keynesianism and the artificial, misleading and unsustainable nature of Keynesian stimulus (No hipsters were Keynesians back then. They were all Khmer Rouge).
Hayek [anticipating the MMTers]: “The unemployment of which you speak, which is the initial cause, is due to labor being temporarily directed into places or activities or industries where they cannot be maintained without further inflation. Therefore you can only cure that by achieving a new redistribution of labor between employments. Adaptation to a condition in which aggregate demand need not progressively increase to maintain that employment.”
https://mises.org/library/hayek-meets-press-1975
Because I have now pointed this out, I will expect Krugman in the future to fully acknowledge this as a fundamental basis of our analysis instead of his continuous sneering at alleged hyper-inflation predictions.