Keynesian Magic and Wizardry
- Thread starter Tsing Tao
- Start date
rotflmao, mish nails it and all you can do is insist on keeping your blinders on(pretending if you don't look at reality, the consequences will be averted).
classic
It's the pretty standard MO with Ricter. He knows that he does not possess the knowledge necessary to debate the subject so he hits the "pass" button.
Some folks, when they don't have all the facts, want to learn when you present to them. Others, as you say, bury their head in the sand and pretend they never heard it.
Incidentally, I do not agree with every single thing Mish stated. But on the whole, I think he's bang on.
Reminds me of the phrase I coined called "Ghetto Matadors" in the hood.
I'm sure everyone has observed the phenomena to one extent or another.
They blithely walk out into the street making sure they don't make eye contact with drivers, somehow coming to the assumption that if they don't look at the car it can't hit them.
All I can say is "don't bet your life on it".
Right, it's called academic sleight of hand based upon appeal to authority.
The fact that it boils down to complete nonsensical horse shit is kinda a touchy sore point for true believers.
Hence "voodoo" is more palatable than frank observation.
1. This belongs in Economics. Why'd you put it here?
2. Keynes understood risk. The others only understand 1+1=2 (well, Friedman understood 2*2 = 4, at least. But he got into deep water at Statistics 101). But a large economy, like a suspension bridge over a big bay, has problems a wee little bridge over a babbling brook will never have. Like having to take into account, say, the curvature of the Earth, which the engineers of the Verazzano Narrows Bridge had to do.
3. It's easy for the engineers of the wee little bridge over the babbling brook to criticize the engineers of the Verazzano Narrows. No one in his right mind would trust them to build a large suspension bridge over a big bay, though.
You might or might not know Keynes was a statistician of probabilities who wrote about this subject before he wrote about economics. What he understood, at a deep level, was that you can't actually use the assumptions of statistics to model an economy.
Unfortunately, his followers didn't quite understand this. Just as unfortunately, neither do the people who think they're against him.
The funny thing is that Krugman came out today and basically doubled down on Obamas quote that what we really need to do to fix the economy is hire more public sector workers. In this video he claims, If we just hired back the 1.4 million public sector jobs lost during the recession, that would increase job growth in the public sector.
Keeping with the theme of the thread, I suppose that Krugman believes that the money to pay public sector workers comes from Pixie dust, and not from the private sector......
I guess in fairness to Krugman, as a devout Keynesian, he had no intention of actually paying for the 1.4 million additional people who he wants hired on, just keep stacking it on to the debt until we cant do that anymore, at which point he will probably tell us the answer is to get rid of the inefficient private sector altogether......
<embed src="http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" background="#333333" width="425" height="279" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" FlashVars="si=254&contentValue=50126087&shareUrl=http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7411276n" />
Keeping with the theme of the thread, I suppose that Krugman believes that the money to pay public sector workers comes from Pixie dust, and not from the private sector......
I guess in fairness to Krugman, as a devout Keynesian, he had no intention of actually paying for the 1.4 million additional people who he wants hired on, just keep stacking it on to the debt until we cant do that anymore, at which point he will probably tell us the answer is to get rid of the inefficient private sector altogether......
<embed src="http://cnettv.cnet.com/av/video/cbsnews/atlantis2/cbsnews_player_embed.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" background="#333333" width="425" height="279" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" FlashVars="si=254&contentValue=50126087&shareUrl=http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7411276n" />