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He says: "the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times..... once it is debunked... takes away ONE of the bulwarks...."
He is stating the typical 'deficit dove' position imo. Same thing as Krugman says today all the time; "in the long run", etc... nothing revolutionary here imo.
These people still think (including Samuelson here imo) that over the long term the "budget has to be balanced"; which is false.
Agreed, Matt. Deficit dove all the way. The significance, for me, is the basic admission that the orthodoxy has few qualms about misleading the public and that intellectual honesty is given low priority in the economics discipline. This reminds me of the anecdote of Paul Krugman asking Bernard Lietaer whether he hadn't been warned to stay away from the monetary system. I'm not suggesting they have bad intentions. But it gives a small insight into the gap between what these guys know and what they can safely admit in public if they want to remain in the club, so to speak.
Joan Robinson, for one, showed Samuelson that his neoclassical synthesis was flawed and he admitted it, at least in the case of aggregating capital. But she skewered his mathematical approach on other things as well, showing it to be unrealistic and his model non-representational.
Even though Samuelson admitted that Robinson had bested him, he did not change his tune and kept pushing the same nonsense.
That was the significance for me as well. I know he said that it needn't be balanced at all times and I definitely knew where he was coming from (i.e. his neoclassical synthesis) however, it's all a big lie and he admitted it.
Mike this is just like your Walker thing where Walker said "I meant over the long term, blah, blah... not the short term...blah, blah..."
So these people have some sort of mental block with "the long term"...
And I don't think they are 'lying' they just dont have the correct brain function/cognitive ability to project the short term reality onto the long term empirically and they are instead believing false things that they tell each other via language/linguistics...
They are just not qualified mentally for their positions imo...
Samuelson's problem was that he was overqualified mentally. He was an MIT mathematician that specialized in econometrics. He was a rationalist that had little awareness of institutionalism and less regard for it. So his models didn't model reality. That apparently did not concern him.
8 comments:
Who needs jobs when Jesus is coming?
Great stuff, Mike. Short and to the point. The more people who see this, the better.
Nebs,
Then what is taking Him so long?!?!?!
Peter,
He says: "the superstition that the budget must be balanced at all times..... once it is debunked... takes away ONE of the bulwarks...."
He is stating the typical 'deficit dove' position imo. Same thing as Krugman says today all the time; "in the long run", etc... nothing revolutionary here imo.
These people still think (including Samuelson here imo) that over the long term the "budget has to be balanced"; which is false.
Agreed, Matt. Deficit dove all the way. The significance, for me, is the basic admission that the orthodoxy has few qualms about misleading the public and that intellectual honesty is given low priority in the economics discipline. This reminds me of the anecdote of Paul Krugman asking Bernard Lietaer whether he hadn't been warned to stay away from the monetary system. I'm not suggesting they have bad intentions. But it gives a small insight into the gap between what these guys know and what they can safely admit in public if they want to remain in the club, so to speak.
Joan Robinson, for one, showed Samuelson that his neoclassical synthesis was flawed and he admitted it, at least in the case of aggregating capital. But she skewered his mathematical approach on other things as well, showing it to be unrealistic and his model non-representational.
Even though Samuelson admitted that Robinson had bested him, he did not change his tune and kept pushing the same nonsense.
@Peterc
That was the significance for me as well. I know he said that it needn't be balanced at all times and I definitely knew where he was coming from (i.e. his neoclassical synthesis) however, it's all a big lie and he admitted it.
Mike this is just like your Walker
thing where Walker said "I meant over the long term, blah, blah... not the short term...blah, blah..."
So these people have some sort of mental block with "the long term"...
And I don't think they are 'lying' they just dont have the correct brain function/cognitive ability to project the short term reality onto the long term empirically and they are instead believing false things that they tell each other via language/linguistics...
They are just not qualified mentally for their positions imo...
rsp,
Samuelson's problem was that he was overqualified mentally. He was an MIT mathematician that specialized in econometrics. He was a rationalist that had little awareness of institutionalism and less regard for it. So his models didn't model reality. That apparently did not concern him.
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