03 Sep 2018

Contra Krugman, the Book

Contra Krugman 20 Comments

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20 Responses to “Contra Krugman, the Book”

  1. Keshav Srinivasan says:

    Bob, does Krugman know about your podcast? If not, I think the book is sure to catch his attention, and is likely to provoke a tweet at least, if not a blog post.

    • baconbacon says:

      The Keynesian method is to ignore contrary evidence, then deride it, then in several years to claim you knew it all along but knew and understood it deeper than the critics did and that their conclusions are still bunk.

      • baconbacon says:

        For the truly advanced later you claim to have changed your views due to the changing evidence.

        • Tel says:

          When the facts change I get very suspicious about where these so called facts might be coming from.

          What do you do sir?

          • Bob Murphy says:

            You crack me up Tel. Is there any video of you talking online? I need to put a voice to these words.

            • Tel says:

              The podcast is on the way. I have a microphone and I know how to use it… getting a good story together that people want to could be an important next step. I’ll keep you posted.

              • Tel says:

                Got distracted in the middle of writing that, so you can see the problem, Friday afternoon, long week. Trying to maintain half an hour of unbroken coherence is going to take a bit of additional practice for me.

              • Patrick Szar says:

                Who said you need to put together a half hour? I’m a big fan of Mises weekends and the old Lew Rockwell Show, which are/were frequently in the 15-23 minute range.

              • Tel says:

                Lew Rockwell has the magic voice.

                My voice is OK, probably better than average but Rockwell is one of the 1% ers when it comes to accent and richness of tone. I would put Rockwell up there with Tom Baker and Vincent Price.

      • Bob Roddis says:

        The Keynesians have no starting point for gathering their alleged evidence. They can never find that very specific magic moment in history when the market failed and revealed that it required external government “stimulus” or it would collapse or slow down. Just ask them to identify that moment. They can’t locate it. Ask again. They will call you names.

        • Charles DuBois says:

          How about early 2009 in the U.S., etc.?

          • Tel says:

            There’s a reasonably strong case that the stimulus program of 2009 made the recovery worse than it would have otherwise been.

            https://mises.org/library/empirical-case-against-government-stimulus

            • Harold says:

              It wasn’t big enough!

          • Tel says:

            This one shows the stimulus results on the one hand vs the sequester on the other hand and why Keynesian predictions were wrong on both counts.

            https://www.mises.ca/keynesians-wrong-on-sequester-just-like-stimulus/

            The sequester was ridiculously small in the scheme of things but the Keynesian government propaganda tactic is to whip up fear, uncertainty and doubt around the slightest possibility of a cut in government spending. It is therefore very necessary for Austrians to rub their noses in their mistakes over and over, basically forever.

            Anyway, the demonstrated outcome is that the spending boost didn’t help the economy and the spending cuts didn’t hurt the economy.

          • baconbacon says:

            “How about early 2009 in the U.S., etc.?”

            Keneysians were calling for, and got, stimulus in early 2008. Bush signed a 150 billion dollar spending bill in February and the Federal Reserve was cutting rates from July 2007 through mid 2008. These actions only seem small and trivial now because of far more massive programs that came later and the recession turned into something far, far bigger than they ever expected.

          • Bob Roddis says:

            How could anyone seriously claim that the inevitable end of a Keynesian bubble (which was relentlessly promoted as the right thing to do by Krugman) might be labeled “market failure”?

  2. guest says:

    Contra Krugman, The Flamethrower.
    😀

    • Matt M says:

      The kids love it!

      • guest says:

        Also, on Episode #1235 of the Tom Woods show (just past the 35:00 mark) Tom says that this book will make me a master debater.

        Yeah, baby.

        Yeah.

  3. major_freedom says:

    Pretty cool that you got Ron Paul to write the forward.

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