Chatterboxing

[Bloggingheads]

[harkin]

A nice counterpoint from Tim Kane on the Chait delusions:

"So why did Free exchange go after Amity Shlaes? For starters, it was echoing a long and current piece by Jonathan Chait in the New Republic, whose purpose is to paint modern Republicans as little Hoovers. Except for the little things like tax rates and free trade, which he ignores, choosing to selectively make a case about somebody else making a selective case. My theory is that this is part of a larger reckoning.

Chait wants his readers to think the Amity Shlaes is an outlier (and not the smart kind). But Chait -- perhaps because he also has no economics degree -- makes false claims about consensus in the profession, such as "the essential framework constructed by Keynes--that recessions are caused by a failure of demand, and that at the very least government should not respond to an economic slowdown by paring back its largesse--is no longer in dispute." This is just wrong."

[bjkeefe]

Great diavlog. Looking forward to reading Tim's series.

[Added] One new (to me) idea that I was fascinated by: the portrayal of the health insurance industry as a dying one, needing propping up by the government to maintain its current state, or an inevitable morphing into a niche industry.

[uncle ebeneezer]

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/182...1:56&out=02:06

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by uncle ebeneezer

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/182...1:56&out=02:06

I thought the "blah, blah, blah" sealed the deal.

[brucds]

For the record, Ralph Ellison lost most of the manuscript he'd been working on for his second novel in a house fire in 1967. He started over, leaving 2000 pages, some of which was edited and published after his death. Given the circumstances, not the world's greatest analogy.

[uncle ebeneezer]

As far as straight-man/dry humor, this is pretty awesome.

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/182...7:25&out=17:40

[pampl]

Originally Posted by harkin

A nice counterpoint from Tim Kane on the Chait delusions:

"So why did Free exchange go after Amity Shlaes? For starters, it was echoing a long and current piece by Jonathan Chait in the New Republic, whose purpose is to paint modern Republicans as little Hoovers. Except for the little things like tax rates and free trade, which he ignores, choosing to selectively make a case about somebody else making a selective case. My theory is that this is part of a larger reckoning.

That's not really a nice counterpoint. Chait doesn't actually ignore tax rates, and while Obama's been better on free trade than FDR I don't see how that helps his case much. He's just offering transparent wishful thinking to you neo-Hooverites.

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by harkin

A nice counterpoint from Tim Kane on the Chait delusions:

Shorter harkin:

I now quote a [added: former] Heritage Foundation employee so insignificant he doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page. Therefore, Jon Chait is deluded.

[Nate]

Bob's stock market rally optimism apparently was not as unfounded as he thought. (3 days of rally as of writing this)

[uncle ebeneezer]

I thought the "blah, blah, blah" sealed the deal.

That part might have been a direct quote;-)

Bob was definitely "on" in the comedy department, in this diavlog.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by uncle ebeneezer

Bob was definitely "on" in the comedy department, in this diavlog.

This was the best humor moment he had, I thought. Gotta love that dry Bob-humor.

[MikeDrew]

Man, everyone is avoiding the Freeman thing. I though for sure Bob would have something to say. Perhaps there is Kaus-Wright throwdown in the mix shortly.

[Jyminee]

Originally Posted by MikeDrew

Man, everyone is avoiding the Freeman thing.

"Everyone"? Not everyone on bloggingheads:

Brian Beutler and Conor Clarke spent an entire diavlog on it.

Pinkerton and Corn talked about it.

The Matts Yglesias and Welch talked about it.

[opposable_crumbs]

Timothy mentions the arrest of Aafia Siddiqui, along with her handbag full of secrets, in order to furnish one of the arguments of his essay. I'm not exactly sure how robust the charges made against Aafia Siddiqui are.

If Timothy is tempted not to become the Ellison of the Slate long-form essay, he could do worse that looking into her arrest and upcoming trial.

Great, if a little cosy, diavlog by the way.

[opposable_crumbs]

To be fair this Diavlog seemed to cover issues which Timothy had written about in his blog.

On a side note, if there is another intelligence failure (hopefully not) will the Chas Freeman issue resurface? I suspect not, but footballs can come in funny shapes.

[mmacklem]

Regarding your question here, Elizabeth Warren has spoken and written about this extensively, and the short-form is this: the primary problem with underwater mortgages is not the assumption that everyone with such a mortgage will give up and walk away from it, but instead that if someone has an underwater mortgage and _then_ suffers any additional financial setback (loss of job, decrease in hours, increase in health insurance premiums, etc.), then they will be very likely to walk away from the mortgage. This scenario has all sorts of secondary consequences, like decreased consumer spending due to an increased sense of lack of returned value in the equity in the house, which in turn pushes us into this "paradox of thrift" scenario. None of this requires the assumption that everyone affected will actually walk away from their mortgage, just that the loss of confidence leads to a negative feedback loop.

[Simon Willard]

Originally Posted by uncle ebeneezer

Bob was definitely "on" in the comedy department.

I guess he doesn't worry about keeping his day job.

[MikeDrew]

Originally Posted by Jyminee

"Everyone"? Not everyone on bloggingheads:

Brian Beutler and Conor Clarke spent an entire diavlog on it.

Pinkerton and Corn talked about it.

The Matts Yglesias and Welch talked about it.

I meant everyone I expected to hear about it from in the broader media. That's changed somewhat since I wrote that, however. Much of what has been said on Bloggingheads about it has been utter tripe, however, with Conor Clarke in particular making a complete fool of himself. (He owned to it nicely, though.) So I'd like to hear Bob on the matter, and Mickey too, if he'd show. It's not looking too good for this week, though.

[MikeDrew]

Originally Posted by opposable_crumbs

To be fair this Diavlog seemed to cover issues which Timothy had written about in his blog.

On a side note, if there is another intelligence failure (hopefully not) will the Chas Freeman issue resurface? I suspect not, but footballs can come in funny shapes.

That's a curious metaphor. Freeman will not resurface. Even I, who am fairly exercised about it at the moment, would think I sounded like a crank if I were still going on about it any time after next week, even. That's why I am going kinda apeshit at the press' inattention this week. But again, they took notice yesterday after it popped, so I guess that's fine. The Post opinion section was quite a spectacle, wasn't it, what with all the columnists on one side and the board on the other. Whatever, another one for the Lobby -- not much news there, really. Certainly nothing to dwell on.

[popcorn_karate]

Come on!!!

how is it that we live in a world where the one president that allows a major terrorist attack on our soil should be honored for "keeping us safe"?

Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. (Georgie didn't stop the terrorists, therefore Georgie kept me safe from the terrorists)

[bkjazfan]

Many people are probably like Bob and think Ralph Ellsion wrote more than one book. That novel though "The Invisible Man" would be a hard one to top with another. I haven't checked out "Juneteenth" which was mentioned by the diavlogger. Similarly and I am guessing here some writers have written great first novels and their subsequenty ones were not as good. For example, I think Norman Mailer's "Naked And The Dead" was his first and it was in my opinion a classic. His later ones I am not so sure. Now, in the Modern Library Asscociations top 100 novels in English for the 20th Century Ellison's is #19 and the one I mentioned by Mailer is #51.

John

... cause we weren't attacked after it happened and while we were in open war with them. Not to mention the attack was planned out during the Clinton administration.

[mumi]

Just a quibble here.
Timothy Noah said "we brought terrorism to Iraq." That is not strictly true. We brought _non-state_ terrorism to Iraq. One of the few things that Bush got right is that Saddam's regime was a terrorist regime. He ruled the country with terror, for a minority population.

I'm not defending the indefensible Iraq War. But a distinction should be made between the international terrorism that was visited upon Iraq post 2003 and the all-too-real state terrorism of Saddam Hussein.

[themightypuck]

Listening to Bob and friends talking about finance is painful. I love Bob and wish he would talk about the cool stuff he generally writes about.

[themightypuck]

I'm pretty sure I read something by Rothbard or ilk 10 years ago (probably written 30) that pretty much says what Shlaes says.

[themightypuck]

20 minutes in it gets good. 44 minutes in they are reading entrails. Garrrr.

[themightypuck]

62 minutes. The rape of epistemology and induction.

[claymisher]

I've been a fan of Tim Noah for ages. For me he really strikes the right balance between good humor and actual insight and reporting. Also, this piece he wrote about editing his wife's book has really stuck with me ("... unchecked by the little daily corrections and surprises of her actuality ...").

He wasn't as entertaining here with Bob as his columns are, but it was his first time, and I'd be happy to have him back again.

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by claymisher

I've been a fan of Tim Noah for ages. For me he really strikes the right balance between good humor and actual insight and reporting. Also, this piece he wrote about editing his wife's book has really stuck with me ("... unchecked by the little daily corrections and surprises of her actuality ...").

He wasn't as entertaining here with Bob as his columns are, but it was his first time, and I'd be happy to have him back again.

I had forgotten about that. Thanks for the reminder. That piece was definitely worth re-reading.

Second the nomination for a return visit.

[graz]

Clay,

Here he is in an earlier dv with Rosa Brooks:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/13719

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by MikeDrew

Much of what has been said on Bloggingheads about it [the Freeman issue --bjk] has been utter tripe ...

Yeah, too bad we didn't have on a responsible journalist like Michael Goldfarb.

(via)

[Unit]

Tim Noah should try and read Bastiat's "What's seen and what is not seen"

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html

(if he hasn't already): when a bureaucrat hires 4 million workers, he hasn't really "created" 4 million jobs. That's what's seen. What's much much harder to quantify is what's not seen, i.e., the opportunities that get destroyed because of the actions of said bureaucrat.

[claymisher]

Originally Posted by Unit

Tim Noah should try and read Bastiat's "What's seen and what is not seen"

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html

(if he hasn't already): when a bureaucrat hires 4 million workers, he hasn't really "created" 4 million jobs. That's what's seen. What's much much harder to quantify is what's not seen, i.e., the opportunities that get destroyed because of the actions of said bureaucrat.

That seems like the kind of thing people cite but don't actually read. Did you read it?

[petty boozswha]

I'm surprised you mentioned the 1993 WTC attack - most on the left have shoved that incident down the memory hole due to the inconvenient part about Iraq giving refuge to the bail jumpers.

Also, it would have been helpful if you elaborated [in your WPA Four Million Jobs artical] on the origin of the word "boondoggle" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boondoggle_(project) and how, after a few months of enthusiasm, WPA was said to stand for We Poke Around.

[bjkeefe]

Originally Posted by petty boozswha

I'm surprised you mentioned the 1993 WTC attack - most on the left have shoved that incident down the memory hole due to the inconvenient part about Iraq giving refuge to the bail jumpers.

I'm surprised you mentioned the 1993 WTC attack - most on the right have shoved that incident down the memory hole due to the inconvenient part about a Democratic administration being in power while the perpetrators were caught, tried in a court of law, and sent to jail, all in accordance with the Constitution, and without torture or secret prisons.

[Unit]

Originally Posted by claymisher

That seems like the kind of thing people cite but don't actually read. Did you read it?

Sure, many times. Both in English and in French. Did you read it? What do you think?

[claymisher]

Originally Posted by Unit

Sure, many times. Both in English and in French. Did you read it? What do you think?

I read a lot of it (to its credit it's written in the style that begs to be skimmed). There's a lot to agree with. He hits the "public spending isn't costless" theme pretty hard. There's the famous broken windows fallacy. I too think public investments in Algerian colonies are wasteful. There's more thing in it to agree with:

There is an article in the Constitution which states:
"Society assists and encourages the development of labor.... through the establishment by the state, the departments, and the municipalities, of appropriate public works to employ idle hands."

As a temporary measure in a time of crisis, during a severe winter, this intervention on the part of the taxpayer could have good effects. It acts in the same way as insurance.

Remember what Noah was talking about? In 1933 unemployment was at an all-time high, over 20%. The Civil Works Administration employed four million people during the winter of 1934 (Maybe Roosevelt read Bastiat too). Also remember what Bob Wright said about his dad's parents and half his siblings dying. Their lives not lived should count as the "unseen" too.

[Unit]

Originally Posted by claymisher

I read a lot of it (to its credit it's written in the style that begs to be skimmed). There's a lot to agree with. He hits the "public spending isn't costless" theme pretty hard. There's the famous broken windows fallacy. I too think public investments in Algerian colonies are wasteful. There's more thing in it to agree with:

" There is an article in the Constitution which states:
"Society assists and encourages the development of labor.... through the establishment by the state, the departments, and the municipalities, of appropriate public works to employ idle hands."
As a temporary measure in a time of crisis, during a severe winter, this intervention on the part of the taxpayer could have good effects. It acts in the same way as insurance. "

Remember what Noah was talking about? In 1933 unemployment was at an all-time high, over 20%. The Civil Works Administration employed four million people during the winter of 1934 (Maybe Roosevelt read Bastiat too). Also remember what Bob Wright said about his dad's parents and half his siblings dying. Their lives not lived should count as the "unseen" too.

You're right. But he also goes on to say that "It adds nothing to the number of jobs nor to total wages, but it takes labor and wages from ordinary times and doles them out, at a loss it is true, in difficult times." So he gets there differently than via the Keynesian argument.

To me it's amazing how modern Bastiat sounds, even though he was writing in the first half of the nineteenth century. My favorite in this chapter is the section on "the middleman". Russ Roberts discusses this passage in quite a bit of detail in this Econtalk episode:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/200..._on_middl.html

[Markos]

Doesn't Murdoch's purchase of the Journal reduce its credibility to a level comparable to that of Fox News?