Krugman on Obama National Security State: “He’s Normal”
For an episode of Contra Krugman I want to remind our listeners of Krugman’s assessment of the Obama presidency in Rolling Stone in late 2014. Here’s the one time I heard Krugman address Obama on foreign policy / civil liberties (he never stops talking about the war crimes of the George W. Bush years), and here’s what Krugman said:
So far, i’ve been talking about Obama’s positive achievements, which have been much bigger than his critics understand. I do, however, need to address one area that has left some early Obama supporters bitterly disappointed: his record on national security policy. Let’s face it – many of his original enthusiasts favored him so strongly over Hillary Clinton because she supported the Iraq War and he didn’t. They hoped he would hold the people who took us to war on false pretenses accountable, that he would transform American foreign policy, and that he would drastically curb the reach of the national security state.
None of that happened. Obama’s team, as far as we can tell, never even considered going after the deceptions that took us to Baghdad, perhaps because they believed that this would play very badly at a time of financial crisis. On overall foreign policy, Obama has been essentially a normal post-Vietnam president, reluctant to commit U.S. ground troops and eager to extract them from ongoing commitments, but quite willing to bomb people considered threatening to U.S. interests. And he has defended the prerogatives of the NSA and the surveillance state in general.
Could and should he have been different? The truth is that I have no special expertise here; as an ordinary concerned citizen, I worry about the precedent of allowing what amount to war crimes to go not just unpunished but uninvestigated, even while appreciating that a modern version of the 1970s Church committee hearings on CIA abuses might well have been a political disaster, and undermined the policy achievements I’ve tried to highlight. What I would say is that even if Obama is just an ordinary president on national security issues, that’s a huge improvement over what came before and what we would have had if John McCain or Mitt Romney had won. It’s hard to get excited about a policy of not going to war gratuitously, but it’s a big deal compared with the alternative. [Bold added.]
Potpourri
==> Tom Woods has had a bunch of interesting episodes lately at his podcast. You know, the one that has 50% fewer hosts and is 50% as cool.
==> Second only to his posts that transformed my understanding of government debt burdens, this is my favorite work by Nick Rowe.
==> Cliff Asness is really interesting; read his interview with Tyler Cowen.
==> Josiah Neeley linked me to this analysis, which (if correct) shows that actually the men have nothing to do with it: apparently the death rate is up for non-Hispanic white women younger than 52. Note that I have no idea if this guy is right, but he seems competent and honest.
==> Von Pepe sent me this panel discussion about the Chicago School.
==> Remember that time when RBC theorists said the Great Depression was caused by shocks to total factor productivity, and the Keynesians laughed at their “Great Vacation” explanation? Awwwwkward.
==> Gene Callahan is developing into an absolutely perfect crotchety old man.
Go Forth and Multiply, Murphy vs. Cowen Edition
My latest at FEE reacts to Tyler’s discussion of China’s one-child policy.
Go Forth and Multiply Bask
Hey, can someone locate an “authoritative” forecast on per capita global real GDP growth for the long term? I just need a ballpark figure, like, “The IMF / World Bank / Magic 8 Ball says that per capita real GDP will grow an average of 1.5% annually through 2060…”
The actual figure is not important, I just want something to cite for an argument I’m making. I did a quick google and couldn’t find anything beyond forecasts for the next few years.
Two New Blog Posts on Economic Freedom
Connected with my book Choice, I will have recurring blog posts at the Independent Institute. Here are the first two:
In the Long Run, We’re All Earthlings
In a recent post on the economics of immigration, Nick Rowe engages in the most astonishing example of “use the Cobb-Douglas model to assume away the very problem under discussion and don’t even realize you did it” that I’ve ever seen. Here’s Nick:
When economists disagree with public opinion, I normally agree with the economists. But we ought to think twice when this happens. Maybe, just maybe, public opinion is based not on ignorance but on something that our models leave out. When it comes to immigration policy, I think it is correct to say that elite opinion (which includes economists) in rich countries that are attractive to immigrants is generally more favourable to immigration than is public opinion. The elite finds public opinion a bit embarrassing, and tries to ignore it. They remind me of parents trying to get their kids to eat broccoli: “It’s good for you, and you will like it once you get used to it”.
The basic economics of immigration are quite simple. If we assume constant returns to scale, with output a function of labour and capital, and realise that increased labour creates increased capital (either immediately through capital inflows or slowly through immigrants’ saving), everything expands in proportion. Both supply and demand for labour expand, leaving real wages, per capita income, and the unemployment rate, all unchanged. [Bold added.]
Do you see that?! Marvel at its beauty. If people show up in a capital-rich country with nothing but their bare hands and work ethic, we can treat it the same as if they showed up with 8 tractors.
Later on, Nick starts relaxing assumptions, but he never says, “Oh yeah, it might take a generation or two for people from Africa to reach the level of per capita wealth that the US currently has, so that could depress wages and enrich capitalists only for 60 years tops. Maybe some people who work for wages don’t want to see a drop in their standard of living for 60 years–but they watch ‘Matlock’ too, the rubes.”
Also, I don’t think Nick even uses this approach consistently. Later in his post he writes: “So immigration probably doesn’t matter much for natives; but for immigrants it can sometimes matter a lot.”
But why would it? Wherever the home country of the immigrant is, they have the same Y=F(K,L) CRS production function. And Nick has told us that in the long run, K/L is mean-reverting. So real wages, per capita income, and the unemployment rate should be basically the same all over Earth, give or take. Why would any worker want to move to the US or Canada?
Contra Krugman on Despair
A serious subject matter but goofy analysis from Krugman. Plus the bird is the word. (I can hear the bird in the first third of the podcast. Can you?)
A Twist on Genesis
I’m going through Genesis with my Bible study partner, and it occurred to me that the feminist complaint about the temptation in the Garden can be flipped on its head. To refresh your memory:
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
So I’ve heard feminist criticism of this account, for the (obvious) reason that it blames everything on the woman.
But look, I can give the story the opposite spin. The Devil had to attack the woman head-on. Once he tricked her, it was a piece of cake to get the husband to go along.
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