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From a Nobel prize winner. > In other words, those dire warnings we used to hear (and will soon be hearing again) that America faces imminent disaster once gov

by neolog 6y ago

From a Nobel prize winner. > In other words, those dire warnings we used to hear (and will soon be hearing again) that America faces imminent disaster once government debt crosses some red line were always misguided. We weren’t and aren’t anywhere close to that kind of crisis, and probably never will be. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/opinion/biden-republicans-debt.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/opinion/biden-republicans...

anm89 6y ago
Paul Krugman is an idealogue and has a history of making wildly innacurate statements, poor predictions, and failing to understand Econ 101 level concepts. From the same Nobel Prize Winner >“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” He also said > [America] needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.” So I guess having a nobel prize isn't an argument in itself. Of course in both cases he "wasn't being serious" as clearly noted years after it was very obvious that these things were ridiculous things to say and people were constantly calling him out on them, yet he said them.
- addicted 6y ago
  1 -> He has already accepted he was mistaken. Yet, it’s not so obvious he was wrong, because his argument wasn’t that the internet wasn’t gonna have a huge impact as much as the fact that the fax machine had a huge impact as a communication device and the internet would have a similar impact as a communication technology. He clearly didn’t understand how the internet could go beyond the communication aspect but that has nothing to do with being wrong about the logic but more so not understanding the internet. Something most people didn’t, including people like Bill Gates. 2 -> I’m not sure what was wrong here because this is exactly what happened. Greenspan created a housing bubble to offset the fact that a dot com bubble had just popped. His “needs to create” wasn’t an endorsement of this strategy. It was a prediction of what a conservative governement would need to do, which is exactly what they did. But even setting aside these nuances, even if you think he was wildly wrong(I’m still not sure what he was wrong about #2), it’s not a misunderstanding of Econ 101 or Econ of any level by any measure. At worst it’s a bad prediction of stuff that was basically unpredictable.
BuyMyBitcoins 6y ago
Paul Krugman is a partisan writer for the New York Times, so take his words with a grain of salt. There are plenty of other economists who are worried about the national debt. Only time will tell who was right.

by neolog 6y ago

anm89 6y ago

Paul Krugman is an idealogue and has a history of making wildly innacurate statements, poor predictions, and failing to understand Econ 101 level concepts. From the same Nobel Prize Winner >“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” He also said > [America] needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.” So I guess having a nobel prize isn't an argument in itself. Of course in both cases he "wasn't being serious" as clearly noted years after it was very obvious that these things were ridiculous things to say and people were constantly calling him out on them, yet he said them.

addicted 6y ago
1 -> He has already accepted he was mistaken. Yet, it’s not so obvious he was wrong, because his argument wasn’t that the internet wasn’t gonna have a huge impact as much as the fact that the fax machine had a huge impact as a communication device and the internet would have a similar impact as a communication technology. He clearly didn’t understand how the internet could go beyond the communication aspect but that has nothing to do with being wrong about the logic but more so not understanding the internet. Something most people didn’t, including people like Bill Gates. 2 -> I’m not sure what was wrong here because this is exactly what happened. Greenspan created a housing bubble to offset the fact that a dot com bubble had just popped. His “needs to create” wasn’t an endorsement of this strategy. It was a prediction of what a conservative governement would need to do, which is exactly what they did. But even setting aside these nuances, even if you think he was wildly wrong(I’m still not sure what he was wrong about #2), it’s not a misunderstanding of Econ 101 or Econ of any level by any measure. At worst it’s a bad prediction of stuff that was basically unpredictable.

BuyMyBitcoins 6y ago

Paul Krugman is a partisan writer for the New York Times, so take his words with a grain of salt. There are plenty of other economists who are worried about the national debt. Only time will tell who was right.