David R. Henderson

Archive for David R. Henderson

Henderson/Murphy Tag Team the Keynesian Champ

I know I’m mixing wrestling and boxing metaphors. But there are few rules at Free Advice. David R. Henderson has a good critique of Krugman’s latest post about “unprecedented austerity” (Krugman’s term). For example, Krugman labels a sharp reduction in the rate of growth of spending as a “collapse in spending.” That’s simply not correct. […]

A Note on GDP Calculations

David R. Henderson has an interesting post on the problems with using GDP as a criterion of economic goodness. Now let me be clear (as Obama would say): I fully agree with the general theme of his post, especially the examples of cheap or even free things offered on the Internet and hence not showing […]

Chris Koresko Wins the Internet on ObamaCare/Katrina Comparison

David R. Henderson, like me, was surprised to see Matt Yglesias suggest that the failure of ObamaCare would result in zero deaths. (In contrast, Yglesias argued, President Bush’s failure under Katrina did result in deaths.) But look at Chris Koresko’s take on the ObamaCare/Katrina analogy: Actually the whole Bush/Katrina Obama/ACA comparison looks pretty shaky. If […]

Clarifying Michael Cohen’s Outrageous Apology for Obama

David R. Henderson links to a simply astonishing piece by Michael Cohen, trying to do damage control for Obama. Some excerpts: In selling the health-care plan that bears his name, President Obama has, according to the fact-checking website Politifact, said at least 34 times that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep […]

Is the International Status of the Dollar a Big Deal?

David R. Henderson has a thoughtful post that (among other things) endorses Paul Krugman’s recent thoughts on the significance (or lack thereof) of the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. As David puts it, the role of seigniorage is relatively unimportant in its impact on Americans. In the comments I pushed back on David’s […]

Potpourri

==> David R. Henderson on the Nobel. ==> When reading posts like this from Bryan, I wonder if he hands out the syllabus on the first day of class that just says “YOU WILL GET NOTHING FROM THIS CLASS” at the top. ==> MoveOn.org starts a petition to arrest Republicans in Congress for sedition. I’m […]

Potpourri

==> I think President Obama should read from this website in celebration of Columbus Day, in order to win over Sean Hannity. ==> My favoriet go-to guy for climate science is Chip Knappenberger. Here’s his archive at Cato. In particular, y’all should be aware of the skullduggery in the latest IPCC report (AR5), in which […]

I’ll Take Their Flying Cars, Then

Apparently David R. Henderson is at least intrigued by Joshua Gans, who writes: We should question the premise of whether we want flying cars. We would like quicker and less constrained options from getting from A to B but flying around in a car, while it may be a representation of the future with such […]