HappySqurriel said:
Mentioning the Nobel Prize is an appeal to authority ... and not even a good apeal to authority. After all, Nobel prizes are given out for political reasons more than anything else, as can be seen by the Nobel Peace prize won by Obama. http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/paul_krugman_gives_up_1.html "..." "For example, Robert Barro, the distinguished Harvard economist, noted that Krugman "just says whatever is convenient for his political argument. He doesn't behave like an economist." The New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent observed that Paul Krugman has "the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults." James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal, after listing the falsities in Krugman's latest piece on climate last week, hazarded that perhaps "Krugman makes himself ridiculous merely to make our job easy."" "..." "For example, when Krugman a month ago drew one of his famous "trend lines" based on a single point, a blogger named rjh immediately responded, "These trend lines you are drawing all over the place. Pardon my French, they are complete garbage." And nearly half of Krugman's commenters joined to point out that Krugman was arguing junk. Krugman was forced to make two defensive replies; both were immediately refuted." "..."
"But things got worse for the professor. Matching Krugman's repeated claim that the "stimulus" was too small, Sean produced peer-reviewed economic science from Alesina, who examined 92 attempts at stimulus since 1970 in OECD countries and found that tax cuts, but not spending, stimulated. Krugman stammered a reply, but the damage was done; his acolytes had learned that economic science existed that contradicted Krugman's claim (central to Obama's "stimulus" legislation) that government's spending your money helps an economy." "..." "Krugman's blog commenters were especially relentless in pointing out his inconsistencies. In one post, Krugman admitted that "politicians will always find ways to shield the powerful." Posters piled on, pointing out that Krugman's universal policy prescription gave politicians more power under the assumption that they would defend "the proletariat." Krugman replied that he was "sure that there's a large literature" on government cronyism and corruption. Secure in his big-government ideology, he admitted that he had never read that literature. But like the ideologue that he is, Krugman then expressed his faith (the only word appropriate) that "bureaucracy will do a heckuva job" if it is not "downgraded and devalued." Bloggers responded by citing the latest economic science showing the impossibility of Krugman's "utopian dictatorship-by-bureaucracy."" "..." "Krugman had also had enough. On July 23, Krugman showed that he was clearly no longer "in love" with his commenters. Now he called them "ranters" and "trolls." On July 28, Krugman changed his comment moderation policy. Claiming that "ranters ... say the same thing every time," Krugman announced that he was going to throw away posts longer than "three inches." His thinking must have been thus: Three inches are sufficient to write "Krugman is brilliant," but not sufficient to present a documented and persuasive rebuttal to whichever of Krugman's standard arguments he was peddling that day. "Within 24 hours, those outside the Times had taken notice. Stephen Spruiell at the NRO noted the absurdity of Krugman's complaint that bloggers might use the same responses to rebut Krugman's repeated statements of the same ideology. Wrote Spruiell:
"This [is] from the guy who has spent the entire summer rewriting the same blog post", Spruiell went on to point out that "Krugman's sycophants ... also say the same thing every time." "Krugman's policy seems geared to limit comments to "Yay Dr. K!" "Way to go!" "Keynes was right!" etc."
"..."
Listening to Krugman on economics is kind of like listening to the Pope talk about religion. There is no doubt what he will say, and there is no amount of contradictory information that would ever get him to reconsider his beliefs.
|
Your argument is an conclusion. You keep saying he's been refuted. And whatever article you're referencing is blowing the commenting moderation way too much. You do know that it's annoying to hear the same libertarian commentors call for Gold Standards and completely ignore the main topic of the blog post every single time? You can agree that there are liberal trolls that'll continue to bring up the Iraq War or Bush, on a completely different article/blog post on Obama's policy right? And what should those comments get? The boot.
Look, if your argument is that he's been completely discredited and nobody takes him seriously, I'll just point to his huge blog visit numbers, how he's a professor at Princeton, his recent Gerald Loeb Award, etc.
But that's wayyyy off topic. I simply linked to him, since he gave a much better explanation. You can't fudge the facts and figures he posted on that blog.
So, what do you suggest we do right now? Interest rates are near zero, yes Businesses aren't investing yet. Consumers still aren't spending as much as they used to, and we have a lot of cash just sitting in banks. We've been under the Bush tax cuts for so long, yet we're still in a period of stagnation. We're essentially becoming Japan, and like Japan, we ended up doing half assed poorly executed stimuluses that don't really translate into job creation.
I mean, the fact is that we're out of options. We can keep the tax cuts for the rich, but that just simply keeps up where we are. Balancing the budget would cause more insecurity, rather than more business confidence (and we can see how the UK did after its attempt at austerity). I mean, the whole problem I have with Freshwater econ, is that it all sounds so mythical or the principles they go under are just way too unbelievable.
Once government gets smaller, people will sigh and start spending again. Businesses will start investing again (even though they can borrow money cheaply) because they know government is off their backs (even though investment is based on expectation of demand). Keep taxes for the rich, since we don't want crowding out (even though savings have gone up and the treasury pumped money in). Watch out for inflation (even though we even had a moment of deflation during the recession), maybe we should go back to the gold standard (Milton Friedman would roll in his grave).
Fuck, at least Milton Friedman was skeptic, which is always good and reasonable (skeptical at how the government can execute discretionary policy properly). Now the new conservatives are religiously fixed onto taxes and the budgets (ironically they're both conflicting things).
