So what we had here was a, what was essentially an academic exercise that produced a result that was highly favorable to the Sanders position, and showed that if you did an ambitious program you would get a strong growth response. It's reasonable, certainly, for the first three or four years that that would transpire in practice. And what happened was that people who didn't like that result politically jumped on it in a way which was, frankly speaking, professionally irresponsible, in my view. It was designed to convey the impression, which it succeeded in doing for a brief while through the broad media, that this was not a reputable exercise, and that there were responsible people on one side of the debate, and irresponsible people on the other.
And that was, again, something that--an impression that could be conveyed through the mass media, but would not withstand scrutiny, and didn't withstand scrutiny, once a few of us stood up and started saying, okay, where's your evidence, on what are you basing this argument? And revealed the point, which the Romers implicitly conceded, and I give them credit for that, that in order to criticize a fellow economist you need to do some work.
"Stop Sanders." "Stop Trump."
Same Establishment voice.
And the people know it.
Galbraith: Attack on Sander's Economic Plan By Former Chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors Irresponsible
Sharmini Peries interviews James K. Galbraith
Well in Bernie's case it may be they want the Dems to win and if Bernie's plan includes trillions in new taxes they know that won't fly with voters in a General so they will say anything to discredit him....
ReplyDeleteFor orthodoxy, Bernie means the end. It is very unlikely he would appoint their ilk. They would quickly be discredited as their favorite voodoo dolls like natural rates of employment, productive capacity of economies, efficient markets and other of their favorite non-measured, but often estimated totemic parameters that get plugged into models are marginalized as quackery.
ReplyDeleteInstead of a fantastical world and cohesive, elegant theory of how they imagine the world should work based on confidence, animal spirits, and laughable ideas like friction, we'd have bureaucrats that reduce unemployment to boost employment. We'd have money spent in the economy to increase inflation and money taxed out of the economy and fiscal spending decreases to slow the economy. We'd have a banking system that lends to promote real economic activity instead of wringing out inefficiencies from arcane financial derivatives markets. Central banks would set rates to ensure the banking system is sound and money is affordable rather than playing the wizard of oz to the economy.
Of course orthodoxy is alarmed. The jig is up.