Summary: Economics is one of the central sciences of our time, especially about one of the frontier subjects: the macroeconomic effect of debt. Yesterday’s post centered on a graph from Ed Dolan. Today we have a rebuttal by Prof William K. Black. There are few aspects of economic theory more important today.Fabius Maximus
Prof Black blasts back at yesterday’s post about the US debt
Interesting discussion over there based on Roger's comments. Bill chimed and Fabius decided to promote it to a post.
3 comments:
Props to FM for putting together a very comprehensive post ... looks like it took substantial time and not only that but FM is doing ongoing updates...
In comments, looks like that Ed Dolan takes exception to Bill Black's characterization of him as a "conservative":
Dolan: "More importantly, to the extent the “associations” show anything, they would suggest that I am classical liberal or libertarian, not a conservative. Prof. Black evidently does not know the difference. I invite him to read Friedrich Hayek’s essay “Why I am Not a Conservative” (any search engine will take you to an on-line version). I cite that essay at every opportunity and agree with it passionately."
Here is the Hayek link (FD: Looooooooonnnnnnng)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/hayek1.html
This is revealing.
Perhaps we should provide some more attention to the y-axis of the political compass in trying to figure out which "side" people are coming from....
Ed Dolan self-identifies as a libertarian. My observation is that libertarians often simply have a hard time with the thought of "government" having the imbued authority of that in a nation operating under a system of state currency....
rsp,
FM said "crackpot"!!!
Most of FM's responses in the previous thread were appeals to Conventional Wisdom™.
There was no logic even attempted in any of his arguments other than the logic of "there is disagreement among professional economists on this" and "you bloggers are crackpots with no proof".
This is what we are up against. Credentialism trumps logic and reason.
Credentialism is code for co-opting of intellectual honesty for personal gain. There is no escape because if academics don't "go-along-to-get-along" they aren't allowed to participate in the "Game™".
FM did backtrack a little by featuring Prof. Blacks post but it was credentialism that sealed the deal. Fortunately, Prof. Blacks credentials were earned honestly.
Paul: agreed! I find the whole exercise lamentable. An amazing amount of stupid verbiage expressed intelligently. This is a common paradox in today's universe of discourse. A real tower of babel.
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