The magical world of voodoo ‘economists’

The Washington Post ^ | 9/10/11 | Steven Pearlstein

[1010RD]

If you came up with a bumper sticker that pulls together the platform of this year’s crop of Republican presidential candidates, it would have to be:

Repeal the 20th century. Vote GOP.

It’s not just the 21st century they want to turn the clock back on — health-care reform, global warming and the financial regulations passed in the wake of the recent financial crises and accounting scandals.

These folks are actually talking about repealing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, created in 1970s.

SNIP

They reject as thoroughly discredited all of Keynesian economics, including the efficacy of fiscal stimulus, preferring the budget-balancing economic policies that turned the 1929 stock market crash into the Great Depression.

They also reject the efficacy of monetary stimulus to fight recession, and give the strong impression they wouldn’t mind abolishing the Federal Reserve and putting the country back on the gold standard.

SNIP

One of them is even talking about repealing the 16th and 17th amendments to the Constitution, allowing for a federal income tax and the direct election of senators — landmarks of the Progressive Era.

SNIP

Not every candidate embraces every one of these kooky ideas. But what’s striking is that when Rick Perry stands up and declares that “Keynesian policy and Keynesian theory is now done,” not one candidate is willing to speak up for the most important economic thinker of the 20th century...

[1010RD]

Neither did Robert Mundell’s.

Of course, ‘most important’ in this case is akin to an Oscar, Pulitzer or Nobel prize - more political than real.

[Rummyfan]

Hitler was an “idealist” and a “progressive”. He was also a socialist, an animal rights advocate, a vegetarian, a teatotaller, an antichristian who espoused a preverse, self-serving form of Christianity, a non-smoker, a drug abuser, a hypochondriac, an avid of follower of unconventional medicine, childishly sentimental, a dilettante and a sexual deviant.

Not to mention that he brought German unemployment down to zero too!

[Tribune7]

The late great Julian Simon use to like to dispaly a half-covered chart showing the a step drop in air pollution starting with the Clean Air Act.

Then he'd remove the cover and show the slope was unchanged going back to the beginning of the 20th century.

He was making the point that the Clean Air Act really didn't have that much to do with making our air cleaner. It was almost all due to technology.

If he have trouble getting your mind around that just remember just about all heating and cooking were done with wood and coal which are far more polluting than gas, oil and electricity (even though about half of it is generated from coal)

[1010RD]

Love Julian Simon. I’d love to see that chart. Liberals are famous for their single entry accounting. Why would farm children race for the dehumanizing, industrial jobs in cities? Because they were better than the farm lives they left.

Humanity, independent of our planners and elites, charts an individual course toward betterment. They don’t like not being needed, so they lie.

[Tribune7]

This article describes how he did it with the London Clean Air Act but him doing the same thing with the U.S. law sticks in my mind.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Fine arts, economics, sociology, history, English, language, wombmyn’s studies, ethnic studies. From my reading of Speer’s memoirs, I think der Führer would fit right in in the sociology department of a 3rd rate community college. Not polished enough for the prime time antisemites and assorted bigots in the Ivy League.

“Hitler vas, shore, a very badt mann, but at least he luft schildern undt docs.”