I’ve just finished revising Zombie Economics for an Australian edition, to be published by Black Inc in May, with an all-new chapter on economic rationalism, the Australia form of Zombie econ. Keep a lookout!
Month: March 2012
Monday Message Board
It’s time for another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language. Lengthy side discussions to the sandpits, please.
Alesina, Ardagna, Austerity, Australia
A while ago I published a blog post, and later a Fin article, pointing out that the influential Alesina and Ardagna article, Tales of Fiscal Adjustment, that coined the term “expansionary austerity” was riddled with factual and analytical errors in its discussion of Australia. That piece has elicited a string of lengthy replies from the Catallaxy/CIS team, notable for the absence of any substantive content. Sinclair Davidson produced a mammoth post with multiple updates, entirely devoted to refuting a parenthetical snark on my part that the paper wasn’t peer reviewed. Now there’s another one from Steve Kates, who wants to quibble about the chronological relationship between Jean-Baptiste Say and the Mills, father and son.
So, an open challenge. In my original post, I give seven quotes from the Alesina and Ardagna article, all of which I say are wrong or at least misleading. Does anyone want to defend any of these? Special bonus points for anyone who can defend the opening sentence of their Australian section, which reads “In 1985, a single-party left-wing government took office and launched a stabilization plan to correct the internal and external imbalances (the current account deficit was 4.13% of GDP and the total deficit/GDP ratio was above 3% in 1984). ” (emphasis added).
UpdateKates has added a lengthy update to his post, without, AFAICT, defending the erroneous claims in A & A
All culture wars, all the time
I’ve been meaning for a while to write a post about the way in which all US political issues are viewed, particularly from the right, through the lens of the culture wars. The same is true for the large segments of the right in other English-speaking countries that take their lead from the US. I decided to get it done after reading this piece from Jonathan Haidt in the NYT, which makes quite a few of the points I had in mind, but treats political tribalism as an eternal reality (here evo-psych raises its inevitable head) rather than a factor that varies in importance at different times and places.
KBU
After long delays[1], GMU has come down with a self-contradictory whitewash on the plagiarism case against climate delusionist Edward Wegman. One committee conceded plagiarism on a paper that had already been retracted by the journal in question, and recommended a reprimand, while another cleared Wegman of all charges, against the judgement of every external expert who’s looked at the case, and in the face of copious evidence of direct cut-and-paste copying.
With this and the Cato takeover, I think those both on the left and parts of the right who have presented views extremely critical of the “Kochtopus” network can rest their case. Any institution that relies on Koch Brothers money, whether it presents itself as a university, a thinktank or a grassroots organization, has to be regarded as a propaganda outfit.
That’s true, even if, as in the case of Cato and GMU, some genuine and valuable research is produced. The use of genuine material as a cover for industry propaganda is now a well established technique – the most famous blogospheric example was that of Tech Central Station.
For people working at Koch-controlled organizations who value a capacity to undertake independent research and to maintain a credible claim to independence, this is a big problem. Not everyone is in a position to write a presignation letter like that of Julian Sanchez, but the alternative of staying on is not particularly attractive either.
fn1. Which I will claim as an excuse for posting this several weeks after the event
A win all round?
The news that both the Opposition and the Greens are to oppose the reduction in company tax proposed by the government (to be financed by the Minerals Resource Rent Tax) gives the Gillard government a golden political opportunity, if they are competent enough to take it. All they need to do is put the bill up once and, when it is rejected, announce that they will come back again next year. Meanwhile, they can bank the proceeds which will go a long way towards meeting their (ill-advised) commitment to return the budget to surplus in 2012-13. Then, next year they can do a deal with the Greens to make a cut for small business only. That will leave Abbott promising both to reverse the small business cut, and to impose a new levy on big business to pay for his parental leave scheme. This seems to me to work pretty well for both Labor and the Greens, and it gives Abbott the outcome he has chosen, so maybe it’s a win all round.
Meanwhile, and perhaps more significantly, some news on EU cabon prices, which have been the subject of numerous beatups to the effect that a low price will create budget problems for the government. The EU recognises that the low prices means they can make bigger cuts in emissions at low cost. A proposal to do that was vetoed by Poland at a recent ministerial meeting. But a similar proposal is going forward and will be the subject of qualified majority voting in the EU Parliament, probably in June. The most ambitious versions will require emissions cuts of 80-95 per cent by 2050, with milestones along the way.
Enough of these zombie ideas: let’s be bold
That’s the title of my last piece in the Fin (Thursday before last), which was about the zombie push for productivity (code for working harder) and the failure to pursue the genuine productivity gains that can be achieved through improvements in education, and particularly better education for kids from lower-income families. Ross Gittins made a similar argument, with some nice touches a few days later in the SMH. I particularly liked his point that the “productivity agenda” is essentially about making life easier for bosses.
What to do about Rupert?
There’s been a lot of discussion about the Finkelstein report on the media, nearly all of which (along with the report itself, from what I can infer, having not read it) misses the point. To start with, it’s clear that the central problem motivating the inquiry in the first place is that most Australian daily newspapers are owned by News Corporation, which routinely prints lies, uses its power to demand, and receive, politically favorable treatment and, at an international level, engages in systemic corruption including fraud, bribery of public officials, blackmail, and much more, not to mention the routine criminality of illegal spying on its targets.
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Monday Message Board
It’s time for another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language. Lengthy side discussions to the sandpits, please.
Mrs Beeton, the Voltaire of caffeine
Sighted at Port Arthur, Tasmania, this quote from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, by Isabella Beeton (emphasis added):
-It is true, says Liebig, that thousands have lived without a knowledge of tea and coffee; and daily experience teaches us that, under certain circumstances, they may be dispensed with without disadvantage to the merely animal functions; but it is an error, certainly, to conclude from this that they may be altogether dispensed with in reference to their effects; and it is a question whether, if we had no tea and no coffee, the popular instinct would not seek for and discover the means of replacing them. Science, which accuses us of so much in these respects, will have, in the first place, to ascertain whether it depends on sensual and sinful inclinations merely, that every people of the globe have appropriated some such means of acting on the nervous life, from the shore of the Pacific, where the Indian retires from life for days in order to enjoy the bliss of intoxication with koko, to the Arctic regions, where Kamtschatdales and Koriakes prepare an intoxicating beverage from a poisonous mushroom. We think it, on the contrary, highly probable, not to say certain, that the instinct of man, feeling certain blanks, certain wants of the intensified life of our times, which cannot be satisfied or filled up by mere quantity, has discovered, in these products of vegetable life the true means of giving to his food the desired and necessary quality.
John Quiggin 