Nobody Listens To Paul Krugman

Grizzly said:

It's funny. Paul Krugman is an economist. And not a very aggressive person. And he has been urging people (and the government) to act in a certain way to benefit the economy - and no one really listens to him. So its kinda funny to think of Krugman going around blowing up cars.

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I appreciate the response. Yeah, I know who Krugman is and the type of economics he espouses - which if you ask me is very likely why no one is listening to him; they don't work. I still don't get the humor though... Oh well... not that big of a deal.

KarateCowboy said:

That is one bizarre 'study'. It reminds me of one physicists 'proof' that Hell is endothermic. Thank you for sharing, though. I am grateful because recently I was thinking about what it would be like to apply rigorous, rigid logical and scientific principles to things in daily life which are common but exceedingly complex and not made for scientific scrutiny.

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A prognosticator makes a predictions, and a group of students analyze whether the predictions did or did not come true. How does relate in any way, shape or form to a someone's opinion of hell? It doesn't take rigorous and rigid scientific principles, or scrutiny to reach the conclusions in the study.

Niemander said:

I appreciate the response. Yeah, I know who Krugman is and the type of economics he espouses - which if you ask me is very likely why no one is listening to him; they don't work.

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Not if they're not implemented.

I still don't get the humor though... Oh well... not that big of a deal.

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Even after it was explained? Humor is like that, I guess.

Ton80 said:

A prognosticator makes a predictions, and a group of students analyze whether the predictions did or did not come true. How does relate in any way, shape or form to a someone's opinion of hell? It doesn't take rigorous and rigid scientific principles, or scrutiny to reach the conclusions in the study.

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I think if you read their methodology, as I did, that you and I will be in agreement.

DaisyDay said:

Not if they're not implemented.

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Well look around you. Do you see it working?

DaisyDay said:

Even after it was explained? Humor is like that, I guess.

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Hey, I didn't get the joke and I didn't get the explanation. Perhaps it's just that I'm not an insider when it comes to Keynesian humor...

Niemander said:

Well look around you. Do you see it working?

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Look around you. Was it fully implemented per Krugman?

Hey, I didn't get the joke and I didn't get the explanation. Perhaps it's just that I'm not an insider when it comes to Keynesian humor...

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It's ordinary humor of absurd juxtaposition of a mild mannered man and action movie violence. How would that be considered Keynesian?

Krugman or Reich?

DaisyDay said:

Look around you. Was it fully implemented per Krugman?

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No, and thank goodness; for what has been implemented has been enough to do near irreparable harm to this country. One can only imagine the permanent damage were it implemented fully.

DaisyDay said:

It's ordinary humor of absurd juxtaposition of a mild mannered man and action movie violence. How would that be considered Keynesian?

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Just responding to those explanations that included his economic philosophy.

Niemander said:

Well look around you. Do you see it working?

Hey, I didn't get the joke and I didn't get the explanation. Perhaps it's just that I'm not an insider when it comes to Keynesian humor...

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Well, Krugman continually complains that the stimulus is not enough. He believes we should've fired up the stimulus in one giant package and thrown it off rather than a series of successive smaller packages. And last I checked, he wanted it concentrated less on banks and more on infrastructure.

Actually, the question of whether an economic stimulus will work depends to a large degree on the perception that Keynesian economics works. The point of government as the "spender of last resort" is that the investments in the flagging economy offset the negative feedback loop inherent to recessions that perpetuate a vicious cycle, often culminating in depressions. The best example is Christmas time when the economy is doing poorly: people are less likely to buy as many gifts, or any gifts at all, even though it's precisely this lack of buying that perpetuates the bad economy. The less people buy and invest, the less they want to buy and invest, and before you know it there's economic ruin until a war or some other grand something-or-other boosts us out of the rubble pit. A stimulus uses government investment to create momentary jobs, which in turn leads to more money for otherwise out-of-work (or under-worked) individuals, which leads to increased aggregate demand through the buying of commodities and services.

Of course, if it's about defeating a negative feedback loop, which is based to a large degree on perceptions, then any, I don't know, massive ideological following against anything other than letting markets fail on their own has the potential to change what would otherwise be a positive perception toward Keynesian economics, and therefore would cause more pressure toward having a stimulus fail. We know of a few: right-wing radio and Fox News. If people are conceptually bludgeoned into believing that a stimulus won't work, then they won't be as inclined to follow the rest of the pack when government jobs open up and people have more money in their pockets that could lead to a recovery. They'll be the ones who are more inclined to save up whatever money they may have if they were government workers who got a momentary life vest and have more money during Christmas time.

It's a terrible example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The beauty for the nay-sayers is that they can think their anti-Keynesian standing proven even though their own negative attitude may have contributed significantly to the failure of the Keynesian intervention. So much for the idea that economics and psychology are separate...

This also underscores the point that this recession has been particularly terrible and longstanding for the exact same reason the Great Depression was terrible and longstanding: lack of aggregate demand. People are making less money these days, pushed against by high costs of healthcare, education, and cost of living, and are therefore naturally unable to pull themselves out of a recession because they simply never had any money to begin with. At least in less severe recession times (after the Great Depression and before our recession) the job have-nots influenced most by their recession were boosted out by the haves, who had more spending power to pick up the slack for their unemployed neighbors.