26
Mar
2015
Tom Woods and I Talk About Krugman and Keynesianism
It’s all here… BTW in the interview I implied that the tradition of explaining business cycles as due to purely real factors (as opposed to monetary) is centered in Chicago, but actually I think it’s more nuanced than that. (In contrast, the Efficient Markets Hypothesis is definitely associated with Chicago.)
Do you guys have a date for the beginning of your weekly podcast yet?
Aby, that podcast has been cancelled. Tom realized that he was far too overwhelmed and decided to spend more time with his family. It’s sort of bittersweet, because while I wanted to listen to the podcast, I also am far more concerned about Tom spending time and being with his family.
It hasn’t been canceled, it’s just been postponed.
I know Krugman’s commentary and “analysis” typically obfuscates the subject at hand, is marked by various acerbic and snarky remarks, and carries a strong sense of smug condescension, self-aggrandizement, and even a little bit of megalomania – so I’m used to wading through plenty of garbage in trying to be fair and take a look at the “other side’s” POV rather than just inhabit an echo chamber – but one of his recent numbers on air conditioning in the South just about did it for me. I know it’s almost cliché at this point for someone in Austrian/libertarian circles to say Krugman “can’t be taken seriously anymore,” so I’m definitely adding nothing new in that regard, but I’m at least officially there and willing to state it publicly.
Come on, that air conditioning post was hardly the most ridiculous thing Krugman has written in the past month.
Also, Republicanism is best explained by Steve Sailer’s Affordable Family Formation thesis. The Black population is also a factor in the South.
+50 for David K. Levine using M. C. Escher’s endless waterfall driving the wheel of Keynesian economics.
Perfect. Wish I had thought of that.
Hmmm, that’s strange, I thought that “the phone guy” would be able to make his own personal choices. Krugman thinks this guy’s labour is a fact of nature, like sun or water or a harvest failure.
Maybe we are getting to the crux of the issue here.
It’s interesting. If for some reason he had decided he doesn’t like tattoos but built a phone anyway (Why?) it would be considered a demand shock. So the real question here is why would you continue to make something if you don’t want to acquire something else? Keynesians don’t really address this question and just prefer to treat it as a given that such a thing happens, apparently for no reason.
Depends on what stage he changed his mind abut the tattoo I suppose. Maybe before he built the phone, maybe after.
That would mean the rising unemployment statistic is considered demand shock (people are available for work but no one is buying) but when the same people get discouraged, stop looking for work and the statistic moves over to falling employment participation, that must be supply shock, right? Totally different and unrelated.
Yeah, what you are saying is they don’t address the fundamental question of why we have an economy at all… voluntary exchange.
Krugman, like all of the other Keynesians, does not understand even basic Austrian concepts and has no interest in learning them. Why should we ever take any of them seriously?