Krugman At Least Clarifies His Position on the Broken Window
Lots of people have been asking me to weigh in on Krugman’s discussion of the JPMorgan post on the iPhone5. (Fun fact: Michael Feroli, the author of the JPMorgan piece, was in my cohort at NYU. I’ve emailed him to see what he thinks of Krugman’s interpretation.) I’m seeing if it makes sense for me to write up my reaction for an outside source…
For now, look at this from Krugman:
In other words, if you believe that the iPhone really might give the economy a big boost, you have — whether you realize it or not — bought into a version of the “broken windows” theory, in which destroying some capital can actually be a good thing under depression conditions.
So right there, Krugman is being quite clear that it is hypothetically possible that it “can actually be a good thing” to destroy wealth. I bring this up, because Daniel Kuehn (and perhaps Karl Smith, don’t remember) were arguing within the last two years or so that Austro-libertarians were putting words into Krugman’s mouth. Kuehn et al. were arguing, “No no no, Krugman isn’t saying it would actually be good if there were a minor natural disaster that wrecked some buildings, he’s just saying the gross harm wouldn’t be as bad if it occurred during a period of involuntary unemployment.” (Obviously I’m paraphrasing; that’s not an exact quote from Kuehn.)
I’m pretty swamped with day job stuff right now, but if people want to put in links in the comments to our past discussions on this, that would be awesome. I know there was one post that I did that walked through something like 4 different possible views on what someone might think in the event of employment/wealth destruction, and whether to call it “good” for the economy.
Potpourri
==> David Gordon is teaching Part I (the “philosophy part”) of Human Action starting tomorrow at Mises Academy.
==> I was skeptical when Tom Woods told me he posted another video responding to Max Keiser, but after watching this I think its humor justifies giving the guy another 6 minutes of our attention.
==> Oh, you wan Chaos Theory in large print? Done.
==> If you buy a t-shirt from these guys in September, they pledge $5 to the Murphy-Krugman Debate.
==> I was on the “Decline to State” podcast recently.
The Buck Doesn’t Stop With Moses
In my nightly Bible reading I recently came across what I consider to be a hilarious aspect of the Old Testament. In Numbers 20 we see the Lord get angry at Moses for doubting His words:
20 Then the children of Israel, the whole congregation, came into the Wilderness of Zin…
2 Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and Aaron. 3 And the people contended with Moses and spoke, saying: “If only we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! 4 Why have you brought up the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die here? 5 And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this evil place? It is not a place of grain or figs or vines or pomegranates; nor is there any water to drink.” 6 So Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the door of the tabernacle of meeting, and they fell on their faces. And the glory of the Lord appeared to them.
7 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 8 “Take the rod; you and your brother Aaron gather the congregation together. Speak to the rock before their eyes, and it will yield its water; thus you shall bring water for them out of the rock, and give drink to the congregation and their animals.” 9 So Moses took the rod from before the Lord as He commanded him.
10 And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock?” 11 Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank.
12 Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”
It’s a little bit vague to me personally, but the conventional interpretation of the above story is that the Lord was angry that Moses struck the rock twice. (Sort of like, “Is this thing on?”) In any event, clearly God is mad at Moses.
Yet when Moses is recounting his punishment, he tells the Israelites (Dt 1):
26 “Nevertheless you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God; 27 and you complained in your tents, and said, ‘Because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. 28 Where can we go up? Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, “The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and fortified up to heaven; moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.”’
29 “Then I said to you, ‘Do not be terrified, or afraid of them. 30 The Lord your God, who goes before you, He will fight for you, according to all He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, 31 and in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, in all the way that you went until you came to this place.’ 32 Yet, for all that, you did not believe the Lord your God, 33 who went in the way before you to search out a place for you to pitch your tents, to show you the way you should go, in the fire by night and in the cloud by day.
34 “And the Lord heard the sound of your words, and was angry, and took an oath, saying, 35 ‘Surely not one of these men of this evil generation shall see that good land of which I swore to give to your fathers, 36 except Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and his children I am giving the land on which he walked, because he wholly followed the Lord.’ 37 The Lord was also angry with me for your sakes, saying, ‘Even you shall not go in there.
I guess that’s the prerogative when you write the story down…
Lying Politicians Outsourcing
OK kids, I want to make the point in a forthcoming paper that we should be wary of “revenue neutral tax reform,” and cite what happened with the federal income tax after it was introduced in 1913. At first the rates were really low, mostly on the rich. But by 1918 the rates had skyrocketed to pay for the war to end all wars.
So, I’d really like to get quotes from politicians / boosters at the time (leading up to the Amendment) telling everyone to chill out, that it would always be just a little nuisance, etc.
Please post links in the comments.
NOTE: I am lazy and on a time crunch. I don’t really need these until Wednesday of next week, but I can’t be running to the library etc. before then. So if you have, say, Charles Adams book on taxes, you can’t just give me the page number, because I don’t think I have that book handy right now. (I think I own it, but I don’t know where it is.) So clearly the Pareto optimal solution is for you to type in the exact quote with citation, and promise on your mother’s life that you did it right, OR you can scan it and email it to me or post it online. Please be considerate of my needs in this project.
But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?
I stumbled across this on YouTube. Walter Block says that this essay was one of the best intros to free-market anarchism he’s read (or something like that). And hey–he’s read a lot!
Anyway, the State is lucky I don’t have this guy’s voice:
Condi Rice a Stranger to Cost/Benefit Analysis
It’s funny, Steve Landsburg is gushing over Condoleeza Rice’s speech at the RNC (though he is careful to say he doesn’t endorse everything she said), whereas I had to turn it off when I caught it in the car. Why did I flip it off? Because I caught it on this part, which a lot of the Fox News analysts etc. tell me was a great line:
We can only know that there is no choice, because one of two things will happen if we don’t lead. Either no one will lead, and there will be chaos. Or, someone will fill the vacuum who does not share our values. My fellow Americans we do not have a choice. We cannot be reluctant to lead, and you cannot lead from behind!
On the video below, this excerpt starts around 1:44:
I can blow up her analysis pretty quickly: Just change the country name, and have every world leader say the exact same thing as above. Did I just “prove” that every single nation-state has no choice but to lead the rest of the world in foreign affairs?
Of course not, and it’s not even an issue of, “Some countries are run by bad guys, not like the noble United States!” Presumably if Rice herself were advising, say, the government of Belgium, she would recommend that they not try to lead from the front when it comes to geopolitics. She might not couch it in these terms, but her analysis would presumably come down to telling them: The impact you can have on world events is too small to justify devoting that much of your scarce resources to try such an arrogant project.
OK, so a lot of people would argue the same applies to the US. Yet the former Secretary of State hasn’t even hinted that she’s aware of the problem, let alone convinced me that she’s come up with the right answer.
The Austrian School in the Present Crisis
This was a talk Tom had given at Mises U this year. Boy he’s a dapper dresser!
Murphy Responds to Ezra Klein’s Crazy Fed Proposal
Steve Landsburg took a swing (and missed! But head up Steve no one bats a thousand) at Ezra Klein’s crazy Fed proposal when I was down at Mises U, just in time for me to incorporate it into my talk that day.
Thanks to Chad Parish for editing. Music by Kevin MacLeod.
Recent Comments