This sums up the GOP's woes

Originally posted by stevemcc
Sometimes people cite 'every' economist in the world and its hard to tell that they're joking. What - the wars were paid for! Who knew!. What - the bankers didn't gamble (and lose) us all the way to the brink. Who knew!
I don't dismiss the baby boomer challenge to the medicare program as nothing, but compared to the fiscal crisis of 2008, most economists that I read think it quite manageable.
And his first name is Paul.

Paul, Jack...whatever. He's to the left of Hugo Chavez. You don't read my posts. Yeah, Bush made mistakes and there was a banking crisis in addition to a housing crisis. I'll say it again: time to stop talking about the lousy job Bush did, and time to start talking about the horrendous job Obama is doing.

Originally posted by stevemcc
Sometimes people cite 'every' economist in the world and its hard to tell that they're joking. What - the wars were paid for! Who knew!. What - the bankers didn't gamble (and lose) us all the way to the brink. Who knew!
I don't dismiss the baby boomer challenge to the medicare program as nothing, but compared to the fiscal crisis of 2008, most economists that I read think it quite manageable.
And his first name is Paul.

Saw this in another forum and thought it was worth reposting, for you libboes:

"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation." (Thomas B. Reed, 1886); "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." (P.J. O'Rourke); "The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." (Tacitus)

Originally posted by sasquatch672
Paul, Jack...whatever. He's to the left of Hugo Chavez. You don't read my posts. Yeah, Bush made mistakes and there was a banking crisis in addition to a housing crisis. I'll say it again: time to stop talking about the lousy job Bush did, and time to start talking about the horrendous job Obama is doing.

Actually I do read your posts. I'm a Vietnam vet and there are things we might agree on. The remark that Krugman is to the left of Chavez is either silly or ignorant.

Originally posted by stevemcc
Actually I do read your posts. I'm a Vietnam vet and there are things we might agree on. The remark that Krugman is to the left of Chavez is either silly or ignorant.

Well thanks for your service brother.

Krugman is an angry liberal. You won't deny that, will you?

Originally posted by sasquatch672
Well thanks for your service brother.

Krugman is an angry liberal. You won't deny that, will you?

and thank you for yours.
I would deny that Krugman is angry. He is a Keynesian economist who believes that government must supply the demand that accelerates the velocity of money being circulated through the economy in times of stagnation. It was Keynes's theory that broke the back of the great depression (together with the military demand for the war) which was a central part of the theory. In our current situation where the imbalance between labor and capital is as unbalanced as, perhaps, it has ever been, it seems difficult to argue with Krugman.
Time will tell. In my opinion, he is right.

Originally posted by stevemcc
and thank you for yours.
I would deny that Krugman is angry. He is a Keynesian economist who believes that government must supply the demand that accelerates the velocity of money being circulated through the economy in times of stagnation. It was Keynes's theory that broke the back of the great depression (together with the military demand for the war) wh ...[text shortened]... er been, it seems difficult to argue with Krugman.
Time will tell. In my opinion, he is right.

Try reading Hazlitt's "Failure of the New Economics". It is a blow by blow, chapter by chapter refutation of Keynes "General Theory".

Keynes seems to want above all to blame depression unemployment on anything other than the real cause, and in addition wants to blanket discredit "classical" economics, while borrowing from preclassicals extensively, but laying it all out as his own "innovations".

One of Krugman's cited beliefs is that disasters are good for economies. This was exploded by a simple analogy by Bastiate in the middle of the 19th century. If disasters were good economic medicine we would celebrate them, but most in the Northeast aren't celebrating Sandy, just as those in New Orleans still aren't celebrating Katrina.

Bastiate's broken window fallacy shows that the disaster or accident doesn't create new money, or economic advantage, but transfers money which would have been spend to restoration of the window, instead of new goods for the storekeeper.

Originally posted by normbenign
[b]Try reading Hazlitt's "Failure of the New Economics". It is a blow by blow, chapter by chapter refutation of Keynes "General Theory".


One of Krugman's cited beliefs is that disasters are good for economies. This was exploded by a simple analogy by Bastiate in the middle of the 19th century. If disasters were good economic medicine we would celebrat ...[text shortened]... ast aren't celebrating Sandy, just as those in New Orleans still aren't celebrating Katrina.

Since the end of WW1, there have been many who have 'refuted' Keynes. I'm not familiar with Hazlitt, so I can't comment.
The argument about disasters is a little simple-minded, it seems to me. WW2 was hardly celebrated, but I don't know anyone who thinks it was bad for the economy. The correlation between what we celebrate and what is good for the economy is a non-starter.

Originally posted by stevemcc
Since the end of WW1, there have been many who have 'refuted' Keynes. I'm not familiar with Hazlitt, so I can't comment.
The argument about disasters is a little simple-minded, it seems to me. WW2 was hardly celebrated, but I don't know anyone who thinks it was bad for the economy. The correlation between what we celebrate and what is good for the economy is a non-starter.

Millions of men die, and are no longer in the labor force, immediately curing unemployment. Bastiate's broken window fallacy argued that the glazer and window maker benefit by a careless child breaking a storekeeper's window.

However, what the laborers who repair the window gain, the shoemaker may lose because the shopkeeper has to repair the window instead of buying his wife a new pair of shoes, or make it any other consumer goods of combination of them. The simplicity of the argument is its strength.

WWII did not create new wealth, new prosperity. In fact it wreaked havoc on most of Europe. Decades would pass before cleanup and rebuilding was near complete. Peacetime does have its economic benefits, mainly that the spending on munitions and killing stopped. The death and destruction can't be shown to be an economic stimulus or good by any stretch of the imagination.

There is a short view in disasters like Katrina, where lots of unemployed contractors descend on the disaster area and earn a lot of money, and spend some in the local economy. But visiting the area will tell a different story, that of thousands of homes destroyed, which will never be rebuilt, losses which can't be counted, families that left the state, supported by welfare or charity, for long periods of time. Only a purely superficial view of such economic "benefits" of disasters is in harmony with Keynesian or Krugman economics.

This is a moral argument. People make them, even when the topic is economics. Go figure...