Economics

Archive for Economics

Bob Higgs Was an Optimist: No “Ratchet Effect” When It Comes to Federal Tax Receipts

[UPDATE in text.] I am working on a project for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, summarizing the U.S. government’s sorry fiscal situation. I worked up a chart showing the history of federal spending from FY 1930-2011, and it was just what I expected: big surge up through World War II, then a major pullback, and finally a […]

Murphy Twin Spin Krugman Kracking

Ah, the best birthday present a boy could hope for! As a pure coincidence, my independent critiques of Krugman run on the same day. In this piece at Mises.org, I take on Krugman’s recent thoughts on the Fed and employment data. An excerpt: Steve Horwitz does a good job explaining why Krugman’s understanding of US […]

I Can Take Back the Crazy Pills–I Wasn’t Straw-Manning the Keynesians

[UPDATE below.] In response to one of my posts on austerity, the magnanimous “Lord Keynes” quoted me and then responded like so: (3) Murphy shows himself incompetent in even understanding basic elements of Keynesian economics. He asserts: “First let’s consider the deficit as a % of GDP, which is how Keynesians typically evaluate stimulus in […]

Dog Bites Man! or, Another Klassic Krugman Kontradiction on Keynesianism

A few days ago I began to doubt myself and said that after my two Krugman pieces ran this week in different outlets (still forthcoming), I would move on to greener pastures. I had become weary of pointing out every time Krugman pulled a rhetorical sleight of hand (often while yelling at what a bunch […]

Lord Keynes Beautifully Illustrates Why We Get Nowhere in the Stimulus Debate

My son has off from school today and I have agreed to watch old episodes of X-Men with him in 9 minutes… (Hey, I make sacrifices for the next generation.) Therefore I have to be brief, and can’t paint the picture from scratch, but will instead just dive right into the weeds… In a previous […]

Potpourri

* I have been saving up posts on the alleged “austerity” over in the UK and Europe, but the news is moving fast and I’d better just send you to the relevant links. So first of all, here is Tyler Cowen showing an awesome graph from Veronique de Rugy detailing nominal government spending in various […]

At This Point Paul Krugman Is Just Playing With Us About Housing

OK so let’s refresh everyone’s memory. Back in 2002, Paul Krugman infamously wrote in a NYT article: The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn’t a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings […]

The Case for Energy Optimism

Rob Bradley has a really good essay at EconLib this month. He leads off with this amusing quote: “I’m sorry for you—coming to Texas [in 1915] to look for oil. Don’t you know there is no oil in Texas?!” —Wallace Pratt, Consultant. Then he drops some facts on us: Petroleum…is an example of an expanding […]