Crazy proposals about government

Most stories about this were comparisons with Rick Perry forgetting which government agencies he would close (including the NYTimes). But the real story is he wants to close the IRS, the Housing, Energy and Commerce departments (yes he doesn't know how to count to 5). So presumably there will be no income tax, or how in hell is that going to be managed? How is tax collection better managed without an agency dedicated to that? Glad he doesn't want to close the whole Treasury Department. It is as if he wanted to reduce crime by eliminating the police (and that would be a less crazy idea than the closing the IRS, although reforming the police might be a more reasonable one). The level of crazy in the GOP is out of control.

PS: If you close the Commerce Dept. what would happen to the BEA? Would it be closed too? So no more national accounts? In all fairness no macroeconomic data would help President Cruz avoid scrutiny for his crazy policies. And if you think he is not serious remember that Congressional Republicans have effectively closed the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank), whatever you think about that government agency.

CEPR: North Carolina Proves Cutting Unemployment Insurance Pushes People Out of the Labor Force

By John Quinterno and Dean Baker

Last year North Carolina undertook a radical overhaul of its unemployment insurance system. Among the changes, legislators sharply reduced the amount and length of regular unemployment insurance, cutting the maximum weekly insurance amount by 35 percent and reducing the maximum duration of compensation from 26 weeks to, currently, 17 weeks. By implementing the cuts in weekly benefit amounts in July, North Carolina forfeited  its ability to participate in the federally-funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, and consequently, an estimated 70,000 individuals immediately lost long-term unemployment insurance, while another 100,000 individuals who still would have been eligible through the fall saw their insurance lapse  sooner than would have happened.

According to the legislation’s elected supporters, the overhaul was a “difficult decision” needed to fix “a welfare-dependent program” and push unemployed workers to get serious about finding a job--any job.  

We’ve now had some time to test this view and the initial results do not look promising for proponents of the cuts. The statewide unemployment rate has in fact fallen sharply since the cuts were implemented, dropping from 8.8 percent in June to 6.9 percent in December.  

This drop, however, did not come about because people rushed out and found jobs. Employment as measured by the household survey used to determine the unemployment rate rose by 41,364 persons (1 percent) between June and December, far too little to explain the sharp drop in the unemployment rate. According to the household survey, only 13,414 more persons (0.3 percent) were at work in December 2013 compared to a year earlier.

Read rest here

Dean Baker on the corruption of the economics profession

By Dean Baker

Most of us are willing to believe the direct opposite of what we can see with our own eyes because we accept the analysis of the solar system developed by astronomers through many centuries of careful observation. The overwhelming majority of people will never go through the measurements and reproduce the calculations. Rather, our belief that the earth revolves around the sun depends on our confidence in the competence and integrity of astronomers. If they all tell us that the earth in fact orbits the sun, we are prepared to accept this view. Unfortunately the economics profession cannot claim to have a similar stature. This is both good and bad. It is good because it doesn’t deserve that stature. Economists too often work as hired guns for those with money and power. It is bad because the public needs expertise in economics, just as it needs expertise in medicine and other areas.

Read rest here.

PS: A post on why the current crisis has not undermined the mainstream can be seen here.

Lars P. Syll On Krugman's Fuddy Duddy Defense of Economic Orthodoxy

By Lars P. Syll

“Sorta-kinda New Keynesian” economist Paul Krugman now has learned from Francesco Saraceno — who links to yours truly — that “some people are attacking” him for “defending an economic orthodoxy that has failed.” Let me just start with an observation on Krugman’s allusion (“simple models”) to IS-LM. This, of course, comes as no surprise, since we who have followed Krugman’s writings over the years, know that he is very fond of referring to and defending the old and dear IS-LM model.

Read rest here.

Lars P. Syll: Krugman dismisses heterodox economics students

By Lars P. Syll

Paul Krugman today rides out — like his brother in arms, Simon Wren-Lewis — to defend mainstream economics. According to Krugman, yours truly and others of that ilk are wrong in blaming mainstream economics for not being relevant and not being able to foresee the crisis. To Krugman there is nothing wrong with “standard theory” and “economics textbooks.” If only policy makers and economists stick to “standard economic analysis” everything would be just fine. I’ll be dipped! If there’s anything the last five years have shown us, it is that economists have gone astray in their shed of tools. Krugman’s “standard theory” — neoclassical economics – has contributed to causing todays’s economic crisis rather than to solving it. [...] So now all you young economics students that want to see a real change in economics and the way it’s taught — now you know where you have Krugman & Co. If you really want something other than the same old neoclassical catechism, if you really don’t want to be force-fed with neoclassical mumbo jumbo, you have to look elsewhere.

Read the rest here.

Naming names

Krugman comments on the Ferguson gay-childless Keynes bashing affair, and gives a list of other recent members of the Lunatic Fringe. His list:

1.Robert Barro pointing to the decline in private spending during World War II as evidence that multipliers are small, somehow forgetting rationing and all that.
2.John Cochrane and Eugene Fama confusing accounting identities with causal relationships, and reinventing the Say’s Law fallacy.
3.Robert Lucas misunderstanding Ricardian equivalence.
4.Robert Samuelson and Olli Rehn asserting that Keynes wouldn’t have been a Keynesian given current debt levels, without checking actual British debt in the 1930s (which was much higher than debt now).
5.John Taylor equating Fed policy to hold down interest rates with a price ceiling on, say, apartment rents.

This list could be complemented with the one by Brad DeLong on other authors (which include Mankiw and Schumpeter) who have used similar arguments against Keynesian economics.

Was Keynes always right? A disclaimer

I don't really publish uninformed comments suggesting that the views in this blog are that whatever Keynes said is the word of God, and, hence by definition correct. It is a bit silly, to say the least, since anybody that has read the posts knows that actually the views taken here suggest that the General Theory, in spite of being a great book (for having effective demand) and being essential reading for economists, failed in making the point that effective demand stands in the long run.

The reason, again as noted extensively in the blog, is Keynes' acceptance of the marginalist theory of value and distribution, and its implications on the investment schedule. In other words, Keynes, even though he wanted to get rid of the natural rate, by accepting the inverse relation between investment and the rate of interest, ended up conceding that there would be a level of the rate of interest that would equilibrate it with full employment savings. In other words, a natural rate.

So the point is NOT that Keynes is always right, and everything he said is sacred. In fact, a good chunk of his theoretical framework must be dropped in order to say something coherent, from a logical point of view, and that fits the evidence. Something similar applies to the classical authors.