|
Media Infiltrations: Obama's Social Security Fine Print  The Wall Street Journal June 25, 2008 Commodity-Prices Scapegoats The Wall Street Journal June 3, 2008
"What has been your worst blogging experience? "That's a guy who actually stalks me on the Web and once stalked me personally." "I'm saying this...guy's a jerk."
 A Bound Man Shelby Steele What I'm listening to:  Langley Schools Music Project What I'm watching:  There Will Be Blood What I'm playing:  Speed Racer Order these from Amazon.com at Amazon's normal low prices... and a fraction of your order goes to help support this site. Thanks!
Thanks to Irwin Chusid, public editor. Some of the sites
|
The Conspiracy Letters
Join the fray! Email us at letters@poorandstupid.com. We reserve the right to publish all letters with authors' names, unless specified as not for publication or for publication anonymously. Letters may be edited for clarity and brevity.
Saturday, April 26, 2003
THOUGHTS FROM A BROTHER ECONOMIST As another member of the econ brotherhood (micro, natural resources and energy matters), but one who cannot often get beyond the first sentence or two of Paul Krugman’s ill-humored and pedantic rants in the New York Times, I have a few thoughts. First, the whole cost-per-job thing ("Only Off by a Factor of 29" 4/22/2003) ought to be done in present value terms, since both the wage and the value of the tax-cut will change over time, as will the net tax yield per new job. Second, one can read Krugman ("Silence of the Wolves" 4/25/2003) to be advocating a tax rate approaching 100%, since apparently, we need to remove both medical care and education entirely from the domain of personal choice (except, I suppose, for highly placed public servants). Third, anyone who has to remind his audience at regular intervals of how much smarter he is than they may have a lot of training but not much understanding.Consider that the genius of postulates such as the Coase Theorem (either one) is that as soon as you hear it the meaning is obvious, you bang your forehead and ask yourself "why didn’t I think of that?" Krugman is in no danger of eliciting such a reaction.
Donald I. Hertzmark
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:20 PM | link
Friday, April 25, 2003
DOESN'T KRUGMAN KNOW? Re: "Silence of the Wolves" (4/25/2003). Doesn't Paul Krugman know you don't have to lose coverage now when you change or switch jobs?"The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), signed into law on August 21, 1996, offers new protections for millions of American workers that improve portability and continuity of health insurance coverage."
Steven Antler
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:46 PM | link
USE THE TAX-CUT TO BUY INSURANCE YOURSELF Excellent article ("Silence of the Wolves" 4/25/2003)! One thing that Paul Krugman forgot to think over is that a tax break of "less than $800" would give families more money to put towards their health care expenses, rather than waiting for some government red-tape depot to do it for them. Currently, I pay for my own health insurance, and a tax cut of "less than $800" would still cover six months of premiums for me
quite easily, with money left over. For all practical purposes, that cuts my annual health insurance bill in half.
I'm not so cold-hearted and miserly that I find pleasure in hearing about others being uninsured, but let's be reasonable here. Would it make much sense for me to worry about the health insurance of others before my own? I certainly don't vote that way for any other issues, and never have. Why start now, and for something I don't even support?
Brian Olexy
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:44 PM | link
ANOTHER VICTORY I forwarded your post "Only Off by a Factor of 29" (4/22/2003) to Jane Amari, the publisher of the Arizona Daily Star, whom I know casually, with the comment that she should not re-print Krugman's column "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs." He is normally in the paper a day or so after the twice weekly articles are in the New York Times. Unless I missed it, the article has not been in the paper. Another victory for The Truth Squad!
Anonymous
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:41 PM | link
MY MOTHER WARNED ME When caught making an obvious error ("Krugman Responds" 4/25/2003) -- or, worse, an outright lie -- Paul Krugman's response is, to paraphrase, "I'm not wrong; I just took for granted that the little people can comprehend the assumptions that I, a professional economist, must make." And, of course, he only digs himself a deeper hole ("No, I didn't forget to divide by 10"), which is exactly what my mother told me would happen when lies are compounded with more lies.
After reading most of his writings for the past three years, I have come to learn a lot about Paul Krugman the economist, Paul Krugman the writer, Paul Krugman the agitator. But now I'm learning a lot more about Paul Krugman the person. None of it is very pretty.
The fact that he felt compelled to post a response, lame as it is, on his web site proves that you are getting results, even though he is yet to acknowledge you in his writings. He says, "I've gotten a fair amount of e-mail," but we know your piece in NRO ("Krugman's Job-Robbing Calculus" 4/25/2003) and on your web site are the sources of those e-mails. He fears you.
Jay Dillon
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:38 PM | link
Wednesday, April 23, 2003
KRUGMAN IN THE FLESH While I have been aware of Paul Krugman as an economist whose wrong-headedness has been for many years unsurpassed -- at least to my knowledge -- I was unaware until last Sunday of what he looks and sounds like. I was overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance as I watched his performance on ABC's "This Week." He looks relatively young, giggles like a schoolboy, and sounds flip and shallow. I may have been projecting, but I thought George Will, whose disdain for Krugman was palpable, was going to reach across the table and punch him. And this is a Princeton professor?Dick Thalheimer
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:21 PM | link
SOLACE: KRUGMAN IS IGNORED I am a loyal reader, and wish to thank you for exposing the lies and frauds perpetrated by Professor Krugman. It scares me that Krugman can publish these egregious
lies and misrepresentations with impunity. It's even scarier that the only potential Republicans at Princeton are most likely econ majors, and Krugman is going to warp them so badly.
I take solace in the notion that his op-eds -- especially ones with a largely economic focus -- are largely ignored by many who read the New York Times. My girlfriend, a liberal Northwestern student, could not be any less interested in economics, taxes, etc. Liberals in my experience care about "the human condition." They are really interested in improving the end-result of the American system, but freely admit to understanding nothing about the workings and mechanics of the actual system. They care about people, not processes, and one thing they do know is that if the government would just spend more money on programs, every person born to disadvantageous circumstances would be that much better off. And the government cannot spend money on these people if it's always trying to cut the taxes of "the rich."
Scott J. Emrich
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:20 PM | link
HIDDEN VALUE Re: your article "Krugman's Job-Robbing Calculus" (National Review Online, 4/23/2003): Here's the biggest thing he left out: the tax cut won't just create jobs, it will increase the value of all jobs -- so that $40,000 per year will grow faster than otherwise.
Michael Kellman
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:15 PM | link
LEAVE PRINCETON OUT OF IT! While you might be doing the country a great service with your debunking of Paul Krugman, I have to say the seeming pot-shots at Princeton have to stop. Sure, our president's a man-eater, we hire monsters like Singer, charlatans like West, and asses like Krugman (and then proceed to venerate each one like golden calves within some of the more liberal sets on campus). But at the end of the day, we're still the most sensible, conservative, and temperate (ideologically, of course) of the ivies. For every fatuous ideologue we have in our econ department, we have a few econometricists, who have little choice but to speak up for the quantitative truths of the field. The ratio of idiocy to reason tends to be reversed and amplified in our more humanistic departments, but even there we hold our own much better than most anyone else in the league. So trash Krugman all you like -- maybe even trash our feminazi administration for putting up with the jerk -- but leave the ancient and blue-blooded institution, whose traditions his leftism desecrates, alone.
Mike Fragoso
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:12 PM | link
FOUR MORE YEARS Is it really true that that this nation is facing four more years of Sir Alan Greenspan’s fine-tuning of the economy? I was hoping for some economic growth and perhaps nice bull market, but the maestro will surely nip both of these calamities in the bud. Osama, Saddam, and now this. What did we do to deserve it?
Katherine Kudrycki
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:10 PM | link
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
FOUNDING FATHERS ON THE SUPPLY-SIDE I read your recent National Review Online article ("New York State of Mind?" 4/22/2003) with interest. Not many realize that the first allusions to supply-side economics were made during the Federalist/Anti-Federalist debates over two hundred years ago. This is not a modern invention or recent revelation -- it's just common sense with which the founding fathers were well acquainted. Now, if we could only persuade modern politicians to adopt a consumption-based system of taxation...hope springs eternal.Alexander Hamilton said in Federalist No. 21: "It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit; which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end proposed--that is an extension of revenue. When applied to this object, the saying is as just as it is witty, that 'In political arithmetic, two and two do not always make four.' If duties are too high they lessen the consumption -- the collection is eluded; and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens, by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them." Elizabeth A. Male
Second year law student at Duquesne University
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:25 AM | link
Sunday, April 20, 2003
INDEBTED TO DEBT I've just started reading Niall Ferguson's Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, and one of the first things noted is that the British acquired the Dutch's financial institutional knowledge (when they called William of Orange to be their king), the most important of which was the concept of the government borrowing from the public -- public debt. Ferguson says this institution was the basis of the British empire. Such credit enables a government to wage war successfully. He says it is what made it possible for Britain to defeat France in the Seven Year War (essentially the first world war). France had no such financial institutions and was reduced to begging and stealing -- much as it does today!Margaret Whitcomb
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 2:28 PM | link