Economics interests me. Recently I found a surprisingly wise discussion. Y’all might be interested.
Lets start with my favorite part; they call bullshit on what is clearly bullshit. I don’t see that very often and salute the article just on that alone.
For example, I incessantly bitch about Paul Krugman’s economic ineptitude*. It’s not that I personally hate the man. I just hate when something is clearly false. He’s a popular bird in a lockstep flock of wrong. Society, for no logical reason, continues to roll with it. Why? There’s evidence that his ideas are smoke and mirrors; so why isn’t he pushing a broom in Poughkeepsie instead of oozing through the news cycles? Krugman is just so extremely wrong that it bothers me. I grok the wrongness and it is all encompassing.
How can such extreme levels of incorrect continue walking the same earth as mine? In my world the sun rises in the east and gravity follows Newton’s laws. His world has the sun rising in “stimulus” and gravity following “racism”. Yet he seems to pull paid gigs and gravitas from the environment by osmosis. How? He’s the human equivalent of the AMC Gremlin; so very incorrect. We should be able to glance at his statements and quickly dismiss them. Like this:
Kool aid drinker: “Noble Prizewinner Paul Krugman said X.”
Human Being Of At Least Average Intelligence: “Nobel or not, he’s never right. Short sell X!”
It seems there’s no penalty for just being plain wrong. He’s a popular man saying popular things and the press steps over his limitless failed predictions to embrace his newest idea that’ll eventually be wrong too. The faithful lap it up; almost religiously devout in their supplication to his mastery. This confuses me. Perhaps I’m not alone. This quote seemed to explain it:
“Mainstream economists nowadays might not be particularly good at predicting financial crashes, facilitating general prosperity, or coming up with models for preventing climate change, but when it comes to establishing themselves in positions of intellectual authority, unaffected by such failings, their success is unparalleled.”
Note: the article where I found this goes into the weeds. There’s a lot of good stuff but a bit of space cadet level abstraction too. Some of it grates my “down to earth” sensibilities. Bring a compass if you take the trip. Here are a couple snippets to let you know what you’re in for: “this comes down to a choice between what are called exogenous and endogenous theories of money” and “[t]he patterns had, as philosophers of science would put it, ’emergent properties’.”
Uh huh… I get where they’re going and it has merit. Then again I built a boat and it floats. What have they done? That said, they begin with the very true recognition that at some level “economists” are to “the economy” as “witch doctors” are to “malaria”. For that I thank them.
If you’re the sort that likes such ruminations, by all means check out the link.
Or you could build a boat.
A.C.
* “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.” (Paul Krugman, reflecting on the effects of electing the Orange Menace.) Fun facts: The DOW Jones index bottomed on 11/4/16 just before Trump’s forever disputed election victory. It was 17,833. It opened yesterday at 27,811. So far, Trumps death march of misery has us sitting at 156% of Krugman’s lost paradise of Obama’s reign.
Krugman as an individual is as wrong as the ACLU, the NYT and WaPo, the SPLC, as PETA is, as the global warmists are, as MSNBC and CNN, as the DNC, as Snopes is, etc. Notice a pattern here. The left seems to be immersed in feelings, emotion, and dogma, and lean on facts, logic and reality. It’s a largely delusional world where Krugman is right and the facts on the grond are wrong. Show, me where real socialism works, yet most of the DNC field are spouting that, or perhaps just gratuitous patronizing handouts.
I’m just overjoyed to see the word GROK used correctly in a blog post
Thanks for noticing! Your comment is a huge win for me!