Potpourri
==> Ed Dolan replied to my recent IER post on Hayek. BTW, if you are knowledgeable and want to respond to Dolan, let me know and I can put you in touch with someone who might run it. I personally am moving on.
==> Somebody recently sent me this link, reminding me that some people think libertarians in the Rothbardian tradition appropriated not only “anarchist” but also “libertarian.” Just passing this along so those who consider themselves in this tradition are aware of the argument. (Just search the PDF for “Rothbard.”)
==> Phew! Scientists are testing a “vaccine” against “climate change denial.” And remember, these are the open-minded people.
==> The big news of course is that Trump pulled the plug on the Paris Agreement; Twitter obviously responded that he just doomed Earth itself. In this context, it’s interesting to note that Vox’s resident expert said in late April that not a single country on Earth was seriously taking steps to meet the target of limiting warming to 2C.
==> Also related, the progressives today are walking an interesting line: (A) Trump is dooming planet Earth. But also (B) The Paris agreement didn’t constrain US actions in any way, and so no reason for Trump to pull out.
==> Dean Baker corrects the NYT, and says that you can disagree with the numbers if you want, but that Trump is relying on standard economic modeling when he warns of job losses from limits of greenhouse gas emissions.
==> In “I’m kind of a big deal” news: I am quoted in this NYT obituary, and I just barely make this list of influential libertarians. (It’s fortunate they put married couples in the same slot.)
Choosing the Ceteris Depending on the Desired Paribus
Let me repeat for newcomers: I am friends with Don Boudreaux and have made sure (over email) that he knows my intentions are pure when I do posts like this. I’m not “blowing him up,” it’s just that I only read a few blogs and so if I talk about something here, it will often concern him.
Anyway, in this recent post Don is rightly criticizing Wilbur Ross on tariffs. Ross had claimed that “because American auto tariffs are so much lower than those of other countries, the only way U.S. trade negotiators can get trading partners to reduce their tariffs is by giving concessions against other U.S. industries. This, then, requires the government to pick winners and losers in our own economy.”
So Don didn’t think that was a good argument. He responded to Ross like this:
Uncle Sam’s picking of winners and losers occurs not when it reduces some tariffs but, instead, when it imposes tariffs in the first place. Each tariff creates government-picked visible winners whose booty comes at the larger expense of many unseen losers. Therefore, reducing or eliminating any tariff, contrary to Mr. Ross’s claim, gets government further out of the cronyist business of picking winners and losers. Put differently, criticizing reductions in a subset of tariffs as ‘picking winners and losers’ is akin to criticizing a thief’s decision to reduce the number of people he robs as ‘picking winners and losers.’
That’s great; I endorse both the economics and the morality behind Don’s response.
The only problem is, this is not how many libertarian economists reacted when Trump/Pence worked out the Carrier deal. Later on, it came out that there might have been sticks involved, but when the story first broke, it was construed as carrots of special tax breaks for Carrier. And at that time, lots of libertarians objected quite strenuously to this proposal, saying the government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers in doling out these tax breaks.
I was curious to see what Don’s take was. I didn’t see him using the phrase “picking winners and losers,” but he was definitely critical. He wrote:
I’m all for cutting taxes. But I oppose selective tax breaks given to a particular business in exchange for that business agreeing to act in ways that it would not otherwise. Such selective tax breaks are merely bribes to entice particular businesses to do the government’s bidding.
Such a bribe was negotiated by President-elect Donald Trump and Vice-President-elect Mike Pence (still governor of Indiana) to be paid by Indiana to Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies, in exchange for abandoning plans to move 1,000 jobs to Mexico.
Unsurprisingly, politicians and Carrier’s workers are delighted. But even The New York Times was favorably impressed. It reported that this deal “also signals that Mr. Trump is a different kind of Republican, willing to take on big business, at least in individual cases.” (I’ll bet lots of big businesses are salivating at the prospect of being “taken on” this way by President Trump!)
…
But there is no “win” or “good news” here for anyone but Trump (who scored political points) and United Technologies workers and shareholders (whose incomes now are subsidized by taxpayers).What this deal boils down to is Trump and other politicians spending other people’s money to bribe a corporation to continue to operate in an economically inefficient manner.
Now to be sure, there are some important differences between the two cases; I included a lot of the context to be fair to Don. But notice in particular that when it comes to tariff reductions, Don classifies that as restoring freedom to American consumers. But when it comes to corporate income (?) tax cuts on Carrier, Don doesn’t classify that as restoring freedom to Carrier’s shareholders and workers; instead he calls it subsidies provided by the taxpayer.
Either approach is defensible in isolation. But I’m not sure there is a principled reason to use one framing in the Carrier case, and the opposite framing in the tariff negotiation case, except that the Trump Administration officials on the other side of the policy position are using bogus logic to defend their view.
P.S. I’m not posting this so much because “Hey another Trump post!” but rather as an example of using different assumptions in an economic argument. I think we economists do it all the time; I’m only singling out Don because I just read this and it popped into my head. For another example, Noah Smith once brought up (back when I still read him) the idea that libertarian economists will immediately cite the tax incidence analysis when a politician proposes a new tax on businesses. But when it comes to the income tax, libertarian economists seem to think that pre-tax wages and salaries are what they are, and a high marginal tax rate will be totally absorbed by the worker (instead of partially “passed on” to the employer by pushing up pre-tax wages and salaries). Whether this is empirically important, I don’t know, but Noah was right that it never once occurred to me to use the tax incidence analysis when it came to taxing labor income.
Potpourri
==> I push back against Ed Dolan’s claim that Hayek would probably have supported a carbon tax.
==> I had seen some people linking to this CNN story about the “Trump leaked sensitive information to the Russians” stuff. It is really unusual. I encourage you to click the link and read the story. It sounds remarkably close to, “Senior WH officials told CNN that President Trump committed a serious breach of national security when he leaked intelligence to Russian visitors that Administration officials had leaked to CNN back in March. The information we are now reporting to the world should not have been mentioned by Trump to these Russians behind closed doors. In fact, it was so sensitive that we at CNN did not report it to the world back in March, the way we are reporting it to the world right now.”
Yes, of course I’m exaggerating…but barely.
Potpourri
==> Bryan Caplan explains how it can be that the “anti-denier” crowd thinks uncertainty about climate change is reason for government action, whereas the “skeptic” crowd thinks uncertainty about climate change obviously weakens the case for government action.
==> Daniel McCarthy talking about Trump’s leakers.
==> Speaking of Trump and anonymous sources for major media outlets, I continue my valiant efforts (here and here) to troll Scott Sumner.
==> Trump used to be far more articulate. So is the current stuff an act, or a deterioration of his faculties?
==> Oren Cass talks about climate change and catastrophe.
==> An interesting Tom Woods episode featuring an FBI hostage negotiator.
Listen to My Voice
Alma Cook had me on her unique podcast VOICES. We spent a lot of time in the beginning talking about Contra Krugman (it’s how we “met” when she confronted me initially over our snarkiness) but then transition into general observations on using your voice (singing, speaking in public, giving radio interviews, etc.).
3:50 I explain how Alma lectured us on Contra Krugman being too snarky.
6:20 I give an outrageously over the top compliment to Tom Woods.
7:40 I explain the background of Contra Krugman.
12:05 I get very jealous of Russ Roberts.
16:55 How do we pick Krugman’s column each week?
26:00 Alma admits she confronted me.
28:00 I call Krugman a bully.
30:25 Alma talks about standing up to bullies without violence.
37:40 My thoughts on speaking events.
40:15 Hard to just do one song?
42:30 Studying other speakers.
“So There I Was, Helping to Spread Fake News…”
Now to be clear, I’m not saying every single moment of footage on cable TV at this point is dictated by 4 bankers in a dark room smoking cigars. I’m just pointing out that what “everybody knows” about Trump/Russia/obstruction etc. rests on a weaker foundation than what everybody knows.
For example, check out Brian Williams talking to the NYT reporter who broke (I think?) the story about Comey’s memo(s) concerning Trump asking him to drop the Flynn investigation. Listen to the whole clip, but pay particular attention around 0:20 when the NYT reporter admits that he actually never saw a memo, and was just relying on the details that someone else had recounted to him.
Keep in mind, it’s not as if we’re talking about the schematics to the new Air Force bomber, or a list of undercover CIA operatives working in Kabul. We’re talking about a memo that Comey supposedly wrote up after Trump asked him to drop the investigation of Flynn. What would be in that memo besides the very thing that is being reported already? If there were sources couldn’t they just be redacted in a photocopy of the memo given to the NYT? Or wouldn’t the NYT just withhold that sensitive stuff, the way the WaPo did with the alleged story about Trump giving sensitive info to the Russians?
Here’s more background information that some of you may have forgotten/never known:
==> This meeting in which Trump allegedly asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation happened the day after Flynn resigned. So it’s not like Trump was trying to nip things in the bud before the world caught on. Flynn was already disgraced and would go down in history (fairly or unfairly) as a Russian interloper.
==> At the time, Comey was the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Martha Stewart.
As always: I DO NOT KNOW IF TRUMP OR HIS INNER CIRCLE DID ANYTHING UNUSUALLY DIRTY FOR A PRESIDENTIAL TEAM. I am simply pointing out that people are stating certain things as public fact when we actually can’t be sure of that yet.
Scott Adams’ Post Is Like Rain on Your Wedding Day
Scott Adams has a neat post explaining “How to Know You Won a Political Debate on the Internet.” For example, if your opponent “recasts your opinion to include an ‘absolute’ word, such as every, always, never, all, completely, universally, and the like, you are seeing cognitive dissonance.”
So I liked Adams’ post at this point. I have personally had such a realization, for example when a hostile emailer told me today that I cry over defenseless rich people (because I had opposed the emailer’s call to reduce income inequality) I knew I had won our short-lived argument. He had to attribute a ridiculous view to me rather than deal with my actual argument.
But then I was troubled by Adams’ next example:
Analogy
Analogies are good for explaining concepts for the first time. But they have no value in debate. Analogies are not logic, and they are not relevant facts. An analogy is literally just two things that remind you of each other on at least one dimension. When I see a cauliflower, it reminds me of a human brain, but that doesn’t mean you should eat brains in your salad. When your debate opponents retreat to analogies, it is because they have no rational arguments. You won.
There’s a reason your plumber never describes the source of your leak with an analogy. He just points to the problem and says it needs to be repaired or replaced. No one needs an analogy when facts and reason can do the job.
Yikes! This had me worried, because I use analogies all the time. And what really made me squirm was Adams’ talking about the plumber example. I had to admit, he was totally right: If a plumber starting using an analogy with me, I’d get suspicious that he didn’t know what he was doing.
But I soon relaxed, and realized I had won my (implicit) debate with Adams, over the fairness and relevance of analogies in online debate. After all, we had been talking about political arguments, and he goes and brings up plumbers.
With Loyalists Like These…
Scott Sumner surveys a lot of anti-Trump stuff, and he says this recent piece by Erick Erickson “might be the single most negative report on Trump that I’ve ever read.” Similarly, Ross Douthat has been pushed to call for Trump’s removal (using the 25th Amendment) in part because:
It is not squishy New York Times conservatives who regard the president as a child, an intellectual void, a hopeless case, a threat to national security; it is people who are self-selected loyalists, who supported him in the campaign, who daily go to work for him. And all this, in the fourth month of his administration.
And in that excerpt from Douthat, the link on “self-selected loyalists” also goes to the Erick Erickson piece.
Wow! What bombshell does this piece contain?
Not a single thing, except that Erickson personally vouches for one of the anonymous sources who is saying Trump shared classified information with the Russians, and says that this guy started out as a fan of Trump. (In case you doubt my assessment, the actual title of Erickson’s post is: “I Know One of the Sources.”)
Here’s the relevant passage:
What sets this story apart for me, at least, is that I know one of the sources. And the source is solidly supportive of President Trump, or at least has been and was during Campaign 2016. But the President will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack.
So notice that Erickson isn’t giving us a name. This is still a totally anonymous source.
Also, Erickson isn’t giving us a literal quotation. He is just establishing that he knows one of the leakers, and then Erickson goes on to talk about all this other dirt he heard about Trump. Strictly speaking, we don’t even know if the “Trump loyalist” is the one saying all of the things about Trump’s character that Scott Sumner thought was the most damning critique he has yet read.
In this context, then, I think it’s worth pointing out that:
==> Erickson famously disinvited Trump to a debate during the primaries, following the Megyn Kelly comment. Apparently Trump fans then went nuts on Erickson, trolling him online, sending death threats, etc.
==> Erickson is not exactly known for his sober deliberation before posting things online. A brief sample:
In a 2008 blog post, he dubbed Michelle Obama a “Marxist harpy.” In a 2009 tweet, he called the retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter “a goat fucking child molester.” Later that year, Erickson argued that President Obama won the Nobel Prize because of an “affirmative action quota.” The 2014 Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Texas, Wendy Davis, was, in due time, “Abortion Barbie.”
I have no idea whether Trump did something really scandalous when he met with the Russians last week. The people who are telling me he did, have completely burned their credibility by either outright lying/deliberately misleading many times before, and/or by linking breathlessly to such people without a moment of introspection.
Here’s a quick test: If in January you were certain that Comey was a slippery serpent who abused his power to throw the election to Trump…but then when he starts talking about what illegal things Trump said to him only after Trump fired him, you are now certain that Comey is 100% telling the truth with no political motivation… Well you need to Ctrl-Alt-Delete your news reading.
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