02 Aug 2010

Murphy Triple Play

Shameless Self-Promotion 3 Comments

Ah, a true triple play, when all three articles literally run on the same day. (Sometimes I merely blog them on the same day, but this is the real deal. Let us pause for a moment of silence.)

* At Mises.org I tackle James Galbraith’s glib defense of deficit spending.

* At MasterResource I show how the climate alarmists punt the IPCC whenever Jim Manzi quotes from it.

* At EconLib I have this month’s featured article, inspired by the Rand Paul witch hunt. A sample:

Our analysis leads us to conclude that people who oppose “discrimination” really have in mind employers who treat some job applicants differently based on irrelevant characteristics. For example, if an accounting agency didn’t hire a CPA because he was black, then most people would say this definitely does qualify as “bad” discrimination that should be punished by law. The difference between this case and our fanciful example of Will Smith reading for the role of Obi-Wan is that there’s no good reason a black person can’t be an accountant. If an employer thinks so, then he is acting on a baseless prejudice or stereotype, and that’s just the type of practice that anti-discrimination laws are designed to eliminate.

Yet, in a free market, it is precisely this kind of discrimination that is swiftly and automatically penalized. If an employer discriminates against a job applicant on the basis of factors that are truly irrelevant to job performance, then the employer necessarily incurs a financial penalty. Even better, the penalty is directly proportional to how much the employer’s decision was based on prejudice, rather than on merit.

3 Responses to “Murphy Triple Play”

  1. Leo says:

    Using current teen lingo. You’re a beast!

  2. Dilip says:
  3. Bob Roddis says:

    Chartalists attack Bob Murphy!!!!:

    It’s pretty clear, by the data supplied by Murphy, that Hoover, did, indeed, run deficits that were too small given the downturn in GDP (Hoover slashed deficit spending)) and the Fed, very, very clearly raised rates in 1931. Murphy’s claim that Krugman is re-writing history is false.

    Of course, if Murphy was a ‘real’ economist as the Prof. claims, then Murphy would have written about the true cause of the Great Depression: the public surpluses of the 20’s, which Murphy conveniently provides (and ignores) in his data.

    Historical fact: every significant downturn (depression) in the US was preceded by the federal government running a surplus.

    See:

    http://tinyurl.com/28azc2m

    I guess he told you, eh?