Scott Sumner

Archive for Scott Sumner

Contra Krugman AND Sumner on Nominal Wage Growth

My latest at Mises.org. It’s too long to summarize, except don’t miss my analogy: [S]uppose a father sees his 25-year-old son lounging on the couch watching reruns. The father exclaims, “Jimmy, this has got to stop! All through your teenage years you kept getting raises and better jobs. But after your messy breakup last year, […]

Fun With Graphs! Murphy vs. Erdmann

I don’t want to put too much stock in this post. My main point is to demonstrate that you can tell just about any story you want, if you play with FRED long enough. This is why Russ Roberts asks people when they present their slides showing p-values: “How many regressions did you run before […]

Potpourri

==> The latest Contra Krugman tackles Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). ==> Wendy McElroy writes about privacy and the (modern) connection to cryptocurrencies. ==> A few people on Twitter were giving me a high-five for my old article on trade deficits and fiat currency. I re-read it and thought, “I agree. That *was* a good article.” […]

Scott Sumner Slips

Long-time readers know that I am not a fan of Scott Sumner’s signature idea, namely that the Great Recession was caused by Ben Bernanke’s tight monetary policy. However, if you’re really an expert on my writings, you’ll know that I’ve said Sumner would be a very formidable debating opponent–much more than Krugman. Indeed, when I […]

“That’s the Story of the Hurricane”

I am always happy to read a defense of the person receiving a Two Minute Hate, even if it’s a Fed official who seemed to subscribe to the Broken Window Fallacy. In that spirit, here is David R. Henderson defending William Dudley’s remarks about the hurricane. (Also notice Scott Sumner’s caveat in the comments.) To […]

If Nobody Gets My Analogies, Whose Fault Is It?

This post is really only directed at those of you who are faithful readers of Scott Sumner. If you don’t follow him, obviously you can feel free to chime in, but I don’t expect you to get the point here. Anyway, Scott recently criticized David Glasner’s definition of “currency manipulation” because it relied on the […]

The American Public Only Thinks It Likes Motherhood and Apple Pie

After all, in a big enough apple pie, you would drown. Scott Sumner has a curious post at EconLog, titled, “The public only thinks it likes low inflation.” He says that such a view is reasoning from a price change, and that low inflation is actually really undesirable–even from the public’s own viewpoint–when it’s caused […]

Understanding the Economic Commentary on the Border Tax/Subsidy

I was so happy with Scott Sumner’s post that tried to explain the border tax/subsidy issue, that I spent 45 minutes on an episode of the Lara-Murphy Show walking through its logic. Scott’s post made it click for me, and I did my best to convey that extra comprehension to all of you folks too. […]