Death and Toxics: Krugman’s Botched Commentary on Mercury
Those who already think Krugman is slippery may nonetheless be astounded at what happened in this episode. To be clear, I don’t think Krugman consciously distorted anything here. As I said to my colleague on this, Krugman is usually pretty good at writing something totally misleading but technically defensible. Here, because he trusted a Grist writer, I believe Krugman ended up repeating a factoid that is as messed-up as anything he complains about from right-wing think tanks talking about Fannie Mae.
There’s no point in summarizing it. Just read my post, if you are interested.
That’s Gotta Hurt!, 2011 Edition
As the clock winds down, we’ve narrowed this year’s contest for “That’s Gotta Hurt!” blog responses to two individuals, David R. Henderson and Steve Landsburg. Let’s review their displays of rapier wit:
* On December 27 Henderson wrote a blog post complaining about an advocacy group’s false claim regarding Kim Kardashian’s taxes. The entire post was dedicated to Henderson showing, step by step, that no possible interpretation of the group’s claim could be correct. The first commenter, Sol, asked, “Could [their figure] be solely referring to percentage points of Cal. state income taxes?” Henderson replied, “@Sol, To get an answer to your question, read my post.” Ouch! That’s Gotta Hurt!
* On December 19 Landsburg criticized an op ed that (standup economist) Yoram Bauman had written for the NYT. In the comments, Bauman tried to defend himself. Landsburg replied: “Yoram: I do prefer to avoid vitriol (and as I think you know, there’s much about you that I admire). But it’s impossible for me to comment honestly on your piece without saying that I think it’s idiotic.” Yikes! Say it with me, everybody: That’s Gotta Hurt!
You need to submit your vote before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. Remember, you are voting for your favorite That’s Gotta Hurt! blog response. It doesn’t disqualify a contestant if you point out that his overall position is incorrect. Furthermore, we are not here considering comments left by others on a blog. No, this is a blog host responding to a comment. Please keep your categories straight.
Taking the Bible Seriously
In my last Sunday post (which occurred two weeks ago, because of the issues with my blog host), I said that Christians start running into trouble, if they try to pick and choose which Bible passages they will interpret literally and which metaphorically. In particular, if we try to “soften the edges” by substituting in doctrines that seem more reasonable than what a plain reading of the text suggests, then we end up contradicting ourselves.
The particular example I gave in that post was the doctrine of “age of accountability,” for which there is (apparently) no Biblical basis. (Some people in the comments suggested that Jesus talked of entering the kingdom of God with the faith of a child, so we can quibble on this point.) The problem is that if you say infants can’t go to hell because they never really had a chance to accept Jesus, then you should say that aborigines living in the jungle shouldn’t go to hell for the same reason. And in that case, the worst thing you could possibly do is spread the gospel of Christ, because you might thereby send somebody to hell.
In the comments of that post, Thomas Knapp had a good zinger that apparently showed the absurdity of the Bible. However, it also proved my point in the post. Here’s how his comment went:
[Bob Murphy:] “I don’t consider myself a Jew bound by the Mosaic Law. I consider myself a disciple of Jesus Christ.”
[Thomas Knapp:] Would that be the same Jesus Christ who said “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled?”
Or are we talking about some other Jesus Christ?
At the time, I didn’t have a good comeback except to say, “The same one, Tom.” I knew that was the correct answer from a Biblical Christian viewpoint, but I didn’t have a more satisfactory answer.
After considering it more, the answer (ironically) involves the advice I gave in the post itself. In order to make sense of this apparent contradiction–where Christ apparently frees us from the punishment of the Law, while claiming that He is its ultimate fulfillment–we have to draw on other principles laid out in the New Testament.
For example, Paul says in Romans 6: 3-5:
3 Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? 4 For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
5 Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was.
I have to confess, I never really liked this kind of stuff, in Paul’s epistles. It seemed too much to me that he was just speaking weird analogies or metaphors. But actually, the doctrines he lays out–if we take them literally–solve a lot of the problems in reconciling the “Old” and “New” Testaments.
In other words, the reason Thomas Knapp thought he had a great zinger, was that he was assuming something like, “Jesus is a distinct being from all of us, so that when He died on the Christ, that had nothing to do with our own deaths.” But who said? If God wants to become incarnate, and enter the world through the womb of a virgin, I don’t see why He can’t also declare, “By the way, when I said you would die for your sins, there’s a sense in which that is perfectly true–Jesus and you will become one from a certain vantage point, and you will in fact die. But there’s another sense in which Jesus the man bears the brunt of it.”
Incidentally, this is difficult for me because I’ve never liked Paul personally. In fact I can’t stand him. To give you a sense of what I mean: If Peter pulled me aside and said, “Hey Brother Bob, just to let you know, I think you drink too much. I mean, we drank wine with the Lord when He walked among us, but we didn’t get smashed,” I’d say, “OK yeah I’ve been thinking that myself.” But if Paul wrote me a letter telling me he was disappointed in the reports he’d heard (in prison) about my habits, I would bristle.
I think the reason for this is clear: Peter is a “normal guy” who can relate to everybody (and vice versa), who isn’t haughty and “lording it over” everybody. In contrast, Saul was a zealous Pharisee, who was so sure of his doctrinal convictions that he actually oversaw the execution of heretics. So it makes sense that (given my libertarian views) I can’t stand Paul even after his conversion.
And yet, I now am forcing myself to appreciate him. After all, the Lord Himself claimed Paul as His own. Peter (and the other apostles) were necessary to win thousands of converts for the early Church. But they were fishermen. Paul, in contrast, had been well-trained in the Mosaic Law. So he had the ability to reconcile Jesus’ teachings with the Law, and to show why Jesus fulfilled it, rather than contradicting it. Also, note that Paul probably wouldn’t have been able to write such important, foundational documents had he never been locked in prison for his beliefs. There wasn’t much for him to do, except reflect on Jesus and the early Church at that point. Had he been a successful businessman who threw wild parties every week, those epistles never would have been written.
God has a plan, and He doesn’t contradict Himself. If you think He has, it’s because you assumed something that is wrong. Perhaps your assumption would be perfectly innocuous in the context of man, but not when it comes to an omnipotent Being.
A Savior Is Born!
I will do a higher-brow post later today, but for now Merry Christmas! I am not a fan of Celine Dion in general, but she really crushes this song.
Pouring Eggnog on Landsburg’s Christmas Carol
[UPDATE below.]
In my interactions with Scott Sumner, I picture myself as Luke Skywalker fending off Darth Vader. In contrast, when it comes to Steve Landsburg, I picture myself as Maverick to his Iceman: we’re on the same side, but I want to upstage him. (And yes I’m always the star in my daydreams. If you feel left out, get your own blog.)
Anyway, Landsburg recently reprinted his classic Christmas tribute to Ebenezer Scrooge, that went like this:
Here’s what I like about Ebenezer Scrooge: His meager lodgings were dark because darkness is cheap, and barely heated because coal is not free. His dinner was gruel, which he prepared himself. Scrooge paid no man to wait on him.
Scrooge has been called ungenerous. I say that’s a bum rap. What could be more generous than keeping your lamps unlit and your plate unfilled, leaving more fuel for others to burn and more food for others to eat? Who is a more benevolent neighbor than the man who employs no servants, freeing them to wait on someone else?
…
In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser—the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.If you build a house and refuse to buy a house, the rest of the world is one house richer. If you earn a dollar and refuse to spend a dollar, the rest of the world is one dollar richer—because you produced a dollar’s worth of goods and didn’t consume them.
Who exactly gets those goods? That depends on how you save. Put a dollar in the bank and you’ll bid down the interest rate by just enough so someone somewhere can afford an extra dollar’s worth of vacation or home improvement. Put a dollar in your mattress and (by effectively reducing the money supply) you’ll drive down prices by just enough so someone somewhere can have an extra dollar’s worth of coffee with his dinner….
If Christmas is the season of selflessness, then surely one of the great symbols of Christmas should be Ebenezer Scrooge—the old Scrooge, not the reformed one.
Now this is delicious in all the ways in which right-wing economists delight. But something about it has been bothering me, and it has to do with Landsburg’s static treatment of cash balances. (I can’t find the link now, but I think this was what bothered me a few months ago when Landsburg said he was using standard Milton Friedman analysis to talk about externalities with hoarding and a potential problem for Keynesians.)
For one thing, I don’t think it’s correct to throw intentions out of the analysis. Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it’s also true that for most people the very definition of a crime involves intent. For example, to know if I murdered somebody, we have to get inside my mind and guess at my intentions. It’s not enough to establish that I ended the person’s life.
But put that aside, and focus just on the economics. Even here, I think Landsburg is leaving out a huge portion of the analysis. (You can follow the link to make sure I didn’t cut it unfairly.) I have to be brief, since it’s late on Christmas Eve and my son will probably be up and at them at the crack of dawn, so let me try it this way:
(A) Let’s say Ed Smith works 8 hours in exchange for a non-refundable, non-transferable front row seat to Carnegie Hall for tonight’s performance. Was E.S. an altruist? Of course not.
(B) Let’s say E.S. works 8 hours in exchange for three tickets to front row seats at Carnegie Hall, for a concert that occurs in 10 years. E.S. holds the tickets for the full decade and goes to the show. At any point in that time, do we call him an altruist? I don’t think so. (Assume he’s taking his buddies to the show, and we’re not talking about the “altruism” of taking his friends. If that’s tripping you up, then change it so the guy goes by himself to the show three nights in a row, starting 10 years from now.)
(C) Let’s say E.S. works 8 hours in exchange for two tickets to front row seats for a concert that occurs in 10 years, where the tickets are not tied to his specific name and he can sell them on the secondary market. Whether E.S. goes to the concert, or sells the tickets beforehand (and uses the proceeds to buy himself other consumption goods, let’s say), has he been an altruist? I don’t think so.
(D) Let’s say E.S. works 8 hours in exchange for a transferable ticket that can be used for any concert. At the moment E.S. is still holding on to the ticket. Has he been an altruist? At this point I feel boxed in. It would seem weird to me to say he is being altruistic until he sells or exercises, at which point he would become selfish.
(E) Let’s say E.S. works 8 hours in exchange for $160 in cash, which happens to be the price of a refundable ticket good for entry into any concert, now or in the future. If E.S. buys the ticket, has he been an altruist? What if he sits on the cash instead?
Does Landsburg really want to say that not only is E.S. being an altruist in (E), but that he is being a far better altruist than someone who donated the $160 to feed kids in Africa? If so, did Landsburg really want to be a quantum physicist when he grew up, and this is his compromise with the world?
UPDATE: Something else that is possibly relevant: Landsburg’s entire analysis crucially rests on the assumption that there is fiat money. But the fictitious Ebenezer Scrooge actually was embedded in a world where the pound was tied to gold (right?), so even on his own terms, Landsburg’s analysis doesn’t work. Take the “best case” scenario for Landsburg, where Scrooge gets a bunch of money and swims in it, then passes it on to his heirs who swim in it, etc. If that money happens to be $100 bills that aren’t backed by anything, OK we get where Landsburg is coming from. (I still think it’s a lot more complicated, because the misers are holding that cash presumably because they derive utility from the option of buying stuff with it.) Yet if they are swimming in gold coins, then how is that different from Scrooge buying gold watches and admiring himself in the mirror wearing them? Clearly buying gold jewelry, and passing it down to his heirs, wouldn’t qualify as altruism on Scrooge’s part.
The Rumors of Irish Austerity Are Greatly Exaggerated
A certain Nobel laureate has been pounding the drums lately (e.g. here), pointing out that the awful euro economies prove just how bad fiscal austerity is. In particular, the case of Ireland shows that–as our Keynesian friends like to put it–“contractionary policy is contractionary.”
Now in fairness, for all I know maybe lots of people have been pointing to Ireland as a shining success story. I don’t know of any Austrians who have done so, but maybe George Will or somebody has. (I come back to this in the Appendix below.)
If so, then said austerians were being sloppy, because Ireland at best is only relatively engaging in austerity. Here are the figures for its government budget surplus/deficit as a share of GDP:
2004…..0%
2005…..(0.3%)
2006…..1.3%
2007…..(0.9%)
2008…..(7.0%)
2009…..(14.8%)
2010…..(12.0%)
2011…..(10.8%)
So let’s review, to make sure you know how to understand how a Keynesian uses these types of labels. Herbert Hoover engaged in liquidationism, with his last budget deficit of 4.5% of GDP plunging the economy into the worst single-year performance in US history. In the following years, thank goodness FDR (though far too cautious at the time) allowed deficits that averaged 5.1% of GDP, which propelled the economy to its fastest expansion in history, an expansion that was unfortunately aborted when FDR chickened out in 1937 and tried to trim the deficit. When the Obama Administration ran a deficit of 10% of GDP in 2009, Krugman declared that “Big Government” (his words, not mine) had spared the US from another Depression. And now, when the Irish government runs deficits of 12% and 10.8%, this is a period demonstrating the utter failure of fiscal austerity. Everyone got that?
Incidentally, one might argue that it’s unfair for me to look at deficits. After all, the Keynesian argument is that cutting spending will hurt the economy, in turn making tax revenues fall–thus aggravating the original problem.
Sure, then let’s just look at government spending in absolute terms for the Irish government (billions of euros):
2003…..35.4
2004…..37.5
2005…..41.3
2006…..45.8
2007…..50.9
2008…..55.7
2009…..60.0
2010…..55.0
2011…..51.9
So when we are talking about the massive textbook fiscal austerity plans of the Irish government, note that they haven’t even cut spending back to 2007 levels, at the peak of the global boom. It’s true, the Irish government has actually cut the absolute amount of its spending the last two years, and admittedly that’s pretty amazing as far as governments go. But all it really means is that they are (just about) unwinding the huge increases in spending that no Austrian endorsed.
So for the final summary, it goes like this: In response to the global financial crash, the Irish government engaged in a massive bailout of its banks–a bailout that Krugman patted himself on the back for opposing, because Krugman said it was too expensive for Irish taxpayers to bear. Now that the Irish government is (over the course of two agonizing years) returning its spending to levels prevailing before this massive bailout that he opposed, Krugman is saying that the reckless Irish budget cuts prove that once again, people should have listened to his policy advice.
It is true that before the global crash, free-market types were pointing to Ireland as a success story. I have no problem with that, and I think they would have continued to showcase the virtues of fiscal austerity had they not done stupid things like guaranteeing all of their bankers and running up ginormous budget deficits.
It is also true that more recently, people have been pointing to Ireland as a counterexample to Krugman (citing him by name). I am not responsible for what those people are saying. Nobody should point to Ireland in the last few years as a great example of austerity, except in the relative sense that it’s been more austere than what Krugman would have wanted. Also, no Austrian thinks raising taxes in the middle of a global recession is a great way to help the economy or taxpayers. That’s a cure worse than the disease. So the last two years have hardly been an experiment in fiscal austerity, as far as Austrians are concerned.
Finally: This is NOT me doing a Krugman move a la the Obama stimulus. I am NOT saying, “The Irish situation would have worked out, if only they had cut even more.” (I happen to believe that, if you also say they didn’t raise tax rates, but that’s not my point in the present post.) No, my point here is that under any reasonable criterion, the Irish government has been running massive budget deficits for the last 3 years, during the time it was supposedly engaging in harsh contractionary fiscal policy.
In contrast, by any reasonable criterion, the Obama Administration ran a large budget deficit and hence expansionary fiscal policy in 2009. If Krugman wants to say it wasn’t big enough, OK fine. But it is entirely fair for me to say that a (watered down) version of Krugman’s solution was tried and failed in 2009 in the US, whereas nothing at all like my solution was tried in Ireland. How can say that? Because the Irish “austerity” involved bigger deficits than the Obama “expansion.”
(Incidentally, here is a great post by David R. Henderson demonstrating some more of Krugman’s truthiness when it comes to this stuff. When Krugman makes a claim that seems to be based on objective numbers, you have to realize that he is using his Keynesian models to interpret those numbers. He thinks he’s just following the facts, when those “facts” are dependent on his theory of the world.)
Beware the Portly Bovine
OK as some of you may have noticed, over the past month or so there were a few periods where my blog was down. Let me give the quick summary of what happened with Fatcow, the previous host of my blog. (The following consists not of actual quotes, of course, but my condensed paraphrase. However, I am not exaggerating for comedic effect. This is really a summary of what they told me.)
* When I was traveling I got an email from Fatcow saying something that, “You have been making too many SQL database queries and are in violation of your Terms of Service. Resolve this problem immediately or your account may be suspended.”
* Naturally, I ignored the email hoping the problem would resolve itself. It didn’t. When my site was first suspended, I called up Fatcow. Here’s how that exchange went:
Bob: Yeah my account is suspended, I guess because there were too many database queries. I don’t know what that means. Is the traffic too high? Do I need to upgrade to a more expensive package with you guys?
FC: No, it looks like the main violation is the pornographic content in the comments.
Bob: Huh?! Are you talking about sites that are spamming old posts and I don’t know about it? Or do you mean, like, if people are arguing in the comments and refer to each other as body parts?
FC: I don’t know sir. But you’ll have to remove the pornographic comments before we can restore your site.
Bob: OK well where are the comments?
FC: I don’t know sir, all I can do is read the emails that our compliance department sent you. Just go through and remove all the offending comments and we can restore your site.
Bob: Well there are literally thousands of comments. It would take me days to go through them all. You haven’t even told me specifically what I’m looking for. Look, you obviously have some system that flagged the comments. So can you tell me where they are–like at least the month?
FC: No sir, I’m just the customer service division. All I have access to are the emails our compliance department sent you.
Bob: OK well can you transfer me to someone from that department?
FC: No sir, I’m not set up to communicate with them. But you can reply to the email they sent you, and ask them for clarification. I’ll put in a note to restore your account in the meantime.
* So I replied to the email asking for more specificity, and that day my site was back up. I never got a reply to that email, and forgot about it.
* A couple of weeks later my site was suspended again. Here was the conversation this time:
Bob: Hi, a couple weeks ago you guys suspended my site because of allegedly pornographic comments on my blog, I asked for a little help in locating them so I could remove them, and the customer service guy said I should reply to the original email from your compliance department. He restored my site, and I never heard back, so I assumed everything was OK. But, now you suspended my site again.
FC: Hmm, I’m not sure what you mean. I’m seeing here that your site was suspended for too many SQL database queries per month. You see, that taxes our limited network resources and slows things down for everybody else…
Bob: Right, that’s actually the email I got. But the last guy said that was a minor issue, the important thing was allegedly pornographic comments…
FC: Oh okay, yeah I see that in here too. Right, you see, you are in violation of our Terms of Service. You’ll have to remove those comments before…
Bob: Right I know. Look I don’t know if he made notes about it in my file, but I already had this exact conversation two weeks ago with somebody else from your department. So how do I prevent this from happening again? I did exactly what the last guy told me, and your compliance department never answered.
FC: Actually I’m seeing here that they replied the next day at 10:45am.
Bob: Well it’s not in my inbox or my spam folder. Can you resend that email?
FC: Oh, it wasn’t an email. They replied in your Notices at your Fatcow control panel.
Bob: So I was supposed to know that I needed to log in to my Fatcow control panel to see their response to my response to their original email to me?
FC: Yes.
Bob: OK well I’m trying to look at my control panel right now. I know I’m logged in, because the Fatcow log-in page now calls me “BobM”. But when I click “Control Panel” it keeps taking me to the log-in screen. So I can’t look at whatever message they sent me.
FC: Hmm, I can’t log in to your control panel from my end either. I’ll add this to your trouble ticket.
* So that customer service person restored my blog again, which lasted for a few days before they suspended it. At that point I asked Tom Woods for his professional web guy and just paid for him to move everything over to Hostgator. In theory I now have a ton of dedicated server space, able to handle the blog traffic even in the near future when the rest of the world catches on to how awesome I am in my mind.
* In conclusion, a few of you were emailing me, speculating that The Man shut down my site. I don’t think so. You can’t fake incompetence like that. I think the only real lesson we can draw from this episode is, Don’t use Fatcow to host your blog, if you have lots of comments.
2 Legit, 2 Legit 2 Quit
OK I don’t want to jinx it by saying so, but I think the blog migration has been successful and we should no longer get a free–oh wait, I paid for it–ad for Fatcow anymore. I’m dealing with some “day job” stuff right now, but I’ll post on the sordid affair later today.
In the meantime, you can watch me debate theology in the comments of a Brad DeLong post. Sort of like watching musical stars try to do comedy on Saturday Night Live.
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