Megan McArdle writes,
Alex Tabarrok takes Eric Rauchway to the woodshed and spanks him so hard my butt hurts. As a general rule, it is a bad idea to title an exceptionally misleading and/or ignorant post “Stop lying”.
Here’s what Megan has missed:
Alex is wrong about describing the data he cites as “official” and mine as “alternative”. Therefore my post is neither “exceptionally misleading and/or ignorant”; those words might better apply to Megan’s.
Here’s a much more interesting point: why is it “lying” and not just a mistake or a difference in judgment? The op-ed says,
As late as 1938, after almost a decade of governmental “pump priming,” almost one out of five workers remained unemployed.
Let’s get rid of the dispute about which data to report. Let’s pretend the author wrote this sentence in 1976, when the only data available to him were Lebergott’s, and (unlike Michael Darby) he didn’t read the footnotes, he only looked at the numbers. Here’s what he’d see.
Here’s the thing: even with these data, the sentence is still dishonest.
What did he do? He looked at the highest unemployment rate over the entire New Deal—1938. OK, that’s just cherrypicking, and if he’d said,
In 1938, almost one out of five workers were unemployed
—that would only be misleading. Because he’s picking the peak year, but it’s narrowly true.
But he didn’t say that. He said,
As late as 1938 … almost one out of five workers remained unemployed
Now it’s dishonest. Because “As late as … remained” means that the unemployment rate stayed up. Which, as we’ve seen, it didn’t.
And it’s doubly dishonest, too. Because take out the ellipsis and consider the sentence again:
As late as 1938, after almost a decade of governmental “pump priming,” almost one out of five workers remained unemployed.
This phrase, “after almost a decade of governmental ‘pump priming,’” is a problem, too, because it means “after all this pump-priming”. But that’s not right. As E. Cary Brown long ago wrote, and as most economic historians know,
Fiscal policy, then, seems to have been an unsuccessful recovery device in the ’thirties—not because it did not work, but because it was not tried.
Which is to say, there was never enough spending to achieve the desired effect. People who know about the New Deal know this—know about Roosevelt’s reluctance to implement direct relief programs, know about the dissolution of CWA in 1934, know the WPA came only in 1935, know that Roosevelt cut it back in 1937-38, know that Keynes wrote Roosevelt in February of 1938 to criticize him for insufficient relief spending for this very reason.
People who don’t know these things are ignorant; people who know these things and say otherwise owing to constraints of space or audience are misleading; people who do so in an outright dishonest way that uses extra words to conceal the facts are lying.
I feel it would be inappropriate to express a hope that Megan’s butt feels better now.
118 comments
November 7, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Richard
I assure you, all that you wrote was known to Megan when she published her post. If she was unaware, the information appeared in her comment’s section immediately after the post was up.
Intellectual honesty is not her forte.
November 7, 2008 at 2:20 pm
eric
That’s a real shame, if true.
November 7, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Malaclypse
I’ve always liked Norbizness’s take on Megan: “a giant elf who likes discussing things.” http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/7055.html
November 7, 2008 at 2:33 pm
y81
I think Prof. Rauchway is distorting the meaning of the words “pump priming.” This was a New Deal phrase used to justify modest deficit spending, which it was hoped would start the economy on a path to recovery. Basically, this policy didn’t work. Keynes argued that Roosevelt’s modest deficit spending was woefully insufficient, and maybe he was right. But “pump priming” was what Roosevelt called his policy, and, after half a decade of this policy, unemployment was still very high, close to 20% by some measures, and had never gotten very low. That is what the WSJ editorialist said, and it is true.
Note, however, that I do not call Prof. Rauchway a “liar.” I think it cheapens public discourse to use the word “lie” for mildly slanted language, as when the WSJ writer used the word “remained” instead of my slightly more precise formulation in the preceding paragraph.
November 7, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Malaclypse
Basically, this policy didn’t work.
Even though GDP rose, and unemployment dropped?
November 7, 2008 at 2:39 pm
silbey
after half a decade of this policy, unemployment was still very high, close to 20% by some measures, and had never gotten very low. That is what the WSJ editorialist said, and it is true.
Oh good lord, did you even read the post?
November 7, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Q
I’d call a 10% drop notable. Again, “still very high” implies that there was no such significant drop, which is patently false.
November 7, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Rich Puchalsky
Dude, they’re never going to stop lying. They’re libertarians. If they ever let themselves admit that FSR was a success, they’d have to rethink their entire worldview — and they aren’t intellectually honest enough to do that.
November 7, 2008 at 2:43 pm
ari
by some measures
By some measures, Megan McCardle is qualified to weigh in on important historical debates that have present-day policy implications. And by some measures, my border collie is a pony. Seriously, the violence being done to the past and basic social science methods here is pretty astounding.
November 7, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Rich Puchalsky
Should be FDR instead of the typo FSR, of course.
November 7, 2008 at 2:44 pm
TF Smith
And last time I checked, “mildly slanted language” was not a journalistic goal – even in an op-ed.
November 7, 2008 at 2:53 pm
ben
Therefore my post is neither “exceptionally misleading and/or ignorant”; those words might better apply to Megan’s.
You don’t say!
November 7, 2008 at 2:56 pm
JPool
I didn’t know your border collie was a pony! I’m measuring my mom’s new one as some sort of fury sad-eyed lizard.
November 7, 2008 at 2:57 pm
urbino
And by some measures, my border collie is a pony.
Speaking of dogs, have you gotten that dachshund yet?
November 7, 2008 at 2:58 pm
ari
I didn’t know your border collie was a pony!
Again, it really depends on the data you’re using.
November 7, 2008 at 2:59 pm
TF Smith
“Fury sad-eyed lizard” sounds like a badly-translated anime…
November 7, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Kieran
Hey, welcome to the club, Eric.
November 7, 2008 at 3:02 pm
ari
Kieran!
November 7, 2008 at 3:06 pm
eric
Hey, welcome to the club, Eric.
Does membership have its privileges?
November 7, 2008 at 3:08 pm
urbino
You get to go on Charlie Rose with Doris Kearns Goodwin?
November 7, 2008 at 3:10 pm
JPool
The dog (or lizard, depending on how you group the data) is a bit like badly translated anime.
Also, the dog is unemployed by almost every measure.
November 7, 2008 at 3:12 pm
grackle
Boy is this fun! I count it 3-0 for our team (you know, truth justice and the American way.) If I had not spent my entire life walking along WPA sidewalks, crossing WPA built bridges (which we can’t seem to find the resources to replace even when they are decrepit with age), noting that almost all National Parks have primarily WPA built facilities, not to mention the TVA, the mural projects, the writers projects, the vast and reliable atlases and tables of data compiled, etc etc. – all done by stamp-licking-make-workers!, I’d say these responses were well-meant ignorance, but as it is, I feel like I am being asked to excuse dishonest polemical bombast as merely a bit of enthusiasm. I guess I could have taken the same view of the Bush administration, as slightly misguided but gosh darn full of enthusiasm. Sorry, but that administration is so over, and its methods don’t any better with history.
November 7, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Kieran
Does membership have its privileges?
I think there’s an annual fee, payable in some quantum of frustration.
November 7, 2008 at 3:13 pm
ben
Sad-eyed fury of the lizards
That sad-eyed prophets lost their gizzards to
My anointed virgin, without a clue
Should I leave her by your gate?
For sad-eyed lizards to eviscerate?
November 7, 2008 at 3:16 pm
urbino
Does one play the bongos while reciting that, ben?
November 7, 2008 at 3:21 pm
ben
I’m sure I haven’t the slightest concern what one does, urbino. One may play the bongos or not. It is one to me.
November 7, 2008 at 3:23 pm
JPool
ben, I think you’re thinking of komodo dragons. My data indicates this fury sad-eyed lizard to be more geckoish in temperment.
November 7, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Steve Balboni
I’d caution someone with an MBA from wading half-cocked into a debate like this with a PhD, especially one with a PhD in the relevant subject matter. But then again McMegan also likes to pretend she’s an economist so I guess my cautionary statement would probably fall on deaf ears.
November 7, 2008 at 3:25 pm
RobinMarie
“Dude, they’re never going to stop lying. They’re libertarians. If they ever let themselves admit that FSR was a success, they’d have to rethink their entire worldview — and they aren’t intellectually honest enough to do that.”
I agree with this fully. People like this aren’t interested in data, they are interested in an ideology which gives their life meaning (and makes them feel oh-so smart); when confronted with data that disputes it, it is those who present the data that become the liars and spin masters.
Some people are extraordinarily good at believing their world views are objective when they are nothing of the sort. There is no talking to them.
November 7, 2008 at 3:29 pm
tim maguire
So a factually accurate statement is a lie, but if you tweak it a bit so that it is still factually accurate and says the same thing even though a few words are missing, then it is merely misleading.
You can accuse the WSJ of being unfair by not recognizing some positives in the period, but if you think you’ve caught them in a lie, I suggest you buy yourself a dictionary or take an English class. Perhaps a logic class, or, best of all, all three.
November 7, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Barbar
The libertarians basically think that every bad thing that happens is the result of government intervention. This makes it literally impossible to have a discussion with them, because their position can be held completely independently of the facts. If unemployment goes down, it would have gone down faster without government intervention. If unemployment goes up, it would not have gone up without government intervention. Factual knowledge is completely irrelevant, which is how an English-major MBA professional blogger can think of herself as a useful arbiter of this debate.
November 7, 2008 at 3:36 pm
silbey
You can accuse the WSJ of being unfair by not recognizing some positives in the period, but if you think you’ve caught them in a lie, I suggest you buy yourself a dictionary or take an English class.
And in a continuation of the “not having read the posts, but am still willing to make blanket statements” we have tim.
November 7, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Barry
Rich Puchalsky:
“Dude, they’re never going to stop lying. They’re libertarians. If they ever let themselves admit that FDR was a success, they’d have to rethink their entire worldview — and they aren’t intellectually honest enough to do that.”
The way that I put it is that FDR save capitalism and the USA, and the right has never forgiven him for it.
tim maguire:
“You can accuse the WSJ of being unfair by not recognizing some positives in the period, but if you think you’ve caught them in a lie, I suggest you buy yourself a dictionary or take an English class. Perhaps a logic class, or, best of all, all three.”
We *are* talking about the WSJ editorial page; if you think that they’re telling the truth you’re probably wrong.
Richard:
“I assure you, all that you wrote was known to Megan when she published her post. If she was unaware, the information appeared in her comment’s section immediately after the post was up.
Intellectual honesty is not her forte.”
A few weeks ago, Megan posted a snarky comment about why didn’t liberals just send in more money to the government, if they think that tax rates are so low.
Her own commenters *immediately* saw the (Grand Canyon-sized) hole in her logic, and directed her to a Wikipedia article on the ‘collective action problem’.
She did not correct herself, and posted a follow-up (still in error) a day or so later.
Megan isn’t making mistakes – she’s quite deliberately lying.
November 7, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Vance
On the one hand, this lowers the spirits; on the other, it drives up traffic!
(I have a post coming that has nothing to do with economics or the Depression — but it won’t be ready till Sunday.)
November 7, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Ben Alpers
The only reason to respond to McMegan is for the lulz. There’s just no possibility of rational, informed discussion on that front. See, for example this. As has been noted before, we could achieve independence from fossil fuels if we could somehow harness the energy of Emerson, Longfellow and Lowell spinning in their graves at the thought of what’s become of The Atlantic.
November 7, 2008 at 3:55 pm
urbino
And Howells.
November 7, 2008 at 3:56 pm
silbey
There’s just no possibility of rational, informed discussion on that front.
Well, exactly. Her responsibility in the echo chamber is simply to cheer/boo/hiss/applaud. You can’t engage someone who is booing from the audience in reasonable discussion.
November 7, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Jason B
I feel like I’m watching a really exciting foreign film. I don’t know a damned thing about the subject, but it’s amusing anyway.
Much like Ms. McArdle, apparently.
November 7, 2008 at 4:20 pm
dana
So a factually accurate statement is a lie, but if you tweak it a bit so that it is still factually accurate and says the same thing even though a few words are missing, then it is merely misleading.
One often calls this ‘lying by omission.’ This is not an uncommon phrase or a terribly difficult concept.
November 7, 2008 at 4:22 pm
urbino
Sophist.
November 7, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Rich Puchalsky
It’s too easy to go after McArdle. Tabarrok is the one who should really get his act together. Has he bothered to correct his post?
Throughout the Bush years, there was a presumption that people like Tabarrok were reasonable because they were not batshit crazy. Well, it’s time to end the soft tyranny of lowered expectations. Bushism was the first casualty of the Bush years. Libertarianism should be the second. Certainly, non-ideological libertarians in the Western states can and should be part of a Democratic coalition, but the Cato types have been lying for so long that they could no longer tell the truth even if they wanted to.
November 7, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Stop lying about Roosevelt’s record. « The Edge of the American West
[…] « The Edge of the American West on About The Edge of the American WestRich Puchalsky on When is it lying?andrew on Deep thought about Hoover and Roosevelt.urbino on When is it lying?dana on When […]
November 7, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Sam-I-am
RP: Hear, hear! [Or is that here, here!?]
If there has been an electoral realignment, it is as much about the ideological failures of libertarianism (with its false cold-war duality of free-markets vs. socialism) as evidenced by the financial market crisis, as anything else.
Where’s my drunk texting filter? It’s Friday night, and Eric’s kicking @$$ and taking names!
November 7, 2008 at 6:12 pm
wgreen
You make a poor case for the author’s dishonesty.
November 7, 2008 at 6:17 pm
urbino
I’m not sure that false duality belongs entirely to libertarianism. Classic Bill Buckley conservatism partakes of a lot of that.
Both, it seems to me, reflect nothing particular to the content of those two philosophies, but rather a certain puritanical turn of mind. The same constant sense of impending doom, of a possible false step that leads to perdition, that caused Puritanism to descend into a neurotic, constant spiritual pulse-checking exercise, leads to this kind of dualistic approach to politics.
November 7, 2008 at 6:29 pm
washerdreyer
Ok, wgreen, let’s tell a story, I think you’ll like it:
The evil government comes over to me, kicks my ass and knocks me onto the ground.
Business men, acting out of their rational self-interest, know that I’ll be both a better producer and consumer if I’m not lying on my ass on the ground, so they help me up.
Time passes, things are going pretty well for me, much better than they were when I was lying on the ground after getting my ass kicked.
The evil government kicks my ass again, and I’m lying on the ground in nearly as bad a position as I was the first time.
Some hack writes an article criticizing the actions of the rational self-interested businessmen. In this article he writes that I “remain lying on the ground,” so obviously their actions weren’t helpful.
A helpful blogging professor criticizes the article which states that I remain lying on the ground, noting that what the businessmen did in fact helped me. The blogging professor also notes that the article makes numerous other false statements about the businessmen who helped me.
You, wgreen, defend the hack but give no explanation for why what the hack said wasn’t dishonest.
I’m still lying on the ground, but write a long pointless blog comment.
The End
November 7, 2008 at 6:42 pm
urbino
You type remarkably well for a person in your condition.
November 7, 2008 at 6:55 pm
David Wright
Color me unimpressed by this rebuttal.
Did the WSJ cherry-pick 1938 to because it was a local maximum? Undoubtedly. But that doesn’t change the truth of their core point, which your graph in fact supports: after a full decade of unprecedented government intervention, the unemployment rate had fallen from its ~25% peak only down to the ~15-20% range. When one compares that with the recovery times of other historical depressions, it is difficult to argue convincingly that the interventions can be definitively credited with any of the recovery.
The only way to get a really impressive drop down to the ~10% level is to “cook the books” by counting make-work as employment, which you did without calling out this rather significant manipulation in your original attack on the WSJ.
November 7, 2008 at 6:56 pm
wgreen
Given the graph you have posted, I just don’t see anything wrong with the way he worded his statement:
As late as 1938, after almost a decade of governmental “pump priming,” almost one out of five workers remained unemployed.
For one thing, the word “remained” may be relative to some earlier date, such as 1933, rather than implying a consistent and continued decline. Though it is perhaps imprecise, I would not call it doshonest.
In addition, if the “error” in the author’s interpretation of teh daat is due to ignorance of corrections based on emergency government employement, then I fail to see the problem. I do not see why goverment generated “emergency employment” should count as employment at all. Such government jobs simply represent a reallocation of employment, since the money must come from other employed people or businesses, which then have less money to put into the economy, thus reducing the rate of employment. And it is worse than that, because we cannot assume that the money was spent efficiently, or that the “employment” was productive.
Of course any government in a depression can simply hire everyone in order ot drive down unemployment rates, but that is hardly a solution to any real problem.
November 7, 2008 at 6:59 pm
dana
And it is worse than that, because we cannot assume that the money was spent efficiently, or that the “employment” was productive.
Of course. That’s why there are other measures of economic productivity, as Eric points out.
November 7, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Ben Alpers
Of course any government in a depression can simply hire everyone in order ot drive down unemployment rates, but that is hardly a solution to any real problem.
Especially if you don’t consider people not working, people starving to death, and the infrastructural needs addressed by the WPA to be real problems.
But I suppose, like the unemployment figures themselves, “reasonable people” can disagree about what constitutes a “real problem.”
(Note also the repetition of the untruths about “pump priming” as well as an apparent back-dating of the New Deal to 1928.)
November 7, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Greg Miller
As I recall, the spike in unemployment in 1938 was a result of the attempt to end “pump-priming,” wasn’t it? The Roosevelt Recession, and all that, as I recall.
Plus, when did five year (1933-1938) become “almost a decade?”
November 7, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Ben Alpers
Incidentally, color me impressed!
Neo-Liberty Leaguers seem to be even more aggressive in their parroting of reactionary talkingpoints than the Neo-Confederates who haunt the never-ending Slavery Did Too Cause the Civil War thread.
Is this because, with Obama’s election we’ve finally entered a post-racial paradise and the Neo-Confederates have given up?
Or is this just another sign that Roosevelt is actually the greater President than Lincoln?
November 7, 2008 at 7:15 pm
andrew
The government spent millions in the early 1940s supporting shipyards that built state-owned ships, many of which were destroyed within a few years. Such and similar wasteful spending surely contributed nothing to the economy. The war ended the depression and the government had nothing to do with it.
November 7, 2008 at 7:16 pm
andrew
the never-ending Slavery Did Too Cause the Civil War thread.
That thread shall rise again. (Unless someone closed the comments.)
November 7, 2008 at 7:19 pm
urbino
The war ended the depression and the government had nothing to do with it.
How could it, considering the rampant socialism of the wartime government? Government telling industrialists what to manufacture and in what amounts? Heavens!, I’ll have a spell.
November 7, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Ben Alpers
Incidentally, Jim Powell, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and “expert in the history of liberty” who has been cited by the Liberty Leaguers over on the Stop Lying About Roosevelt’s Record Thread, has also defended Ron Paul’s views on the Civil War and argued that the Civil War was bad for African Americans.
Now that’s the kind of expertise in the history of liberty that we can trust!
And perhaps I was too quick to give the Neo-Liberty Leaguers the win over the Neo-Confederates. They may be the same people!
November 7, 2008 at 8:08 pm
silbey
Did the WSJ cherry-pick 1938 to because it was a local maximum? Undoubtedly. But that doesn’t change the truth of their core point, which your graph in fact supports: after a full decade of unprecedented government intervention, the unemployment rate had fallen from its ~25% peak only down to the ~15-20% range
Wait, so your counterargument is, “Yes, the WSJ was lying, but blah blah blah blah?” That’s really not useful.
On a more focused and factual point (ie less snarkey), a reduction in the interest rate from 30% to 12.5 % (nice fudging on the number, by the way) strikes me as, to use a technical term, a fucking massive improvement. This is, again to use a technical term, especially fucking important for those in the 17.5 percentage points no longer unemployed.
P.S. I’m not sure why these threads bring out the sailor in me, but…
P.P.S. Quick, post something about Ron Paul.
November 7, 2008 at 8:27 pm
urbino
Ron Paul represents an unprecedented threat to our nation.
November 7, 2008 at 8:38 pm
David Wright
Urbino: Is cherry-picking 1938 lying? Then I presume cherry-picking 1937 and saying “the new deal reduced unemployment below 15%” is also lying. Both are factually correct statements that have been disinguously chosen to create a certain spin.
Given such statements, I prefer not to see which spinner can quibble the other’s statement to death, but instead to try to honestly characterize the broad trend in the data. The broad trend in the data is that unemployment was in the ~15-20% range in the late 30s.
As I said above, I don’t think that counts as a great success unequivicably ascribable to the new deal.
November 7, 2008 at 8:46 pm
urbino
Urbino: Is cherry-picking 1938 lying?
I think you meant that for silbey. Aside from the occasional smarmy comment, I’m sitting this one out, having done a quick cost-benefit analysis and found no ROI.
November 7, 2008 at 8:48 pm
ari
David, you’re an excellent third basemen. And you’re hott. But you could stand to read a bit more carefully. Perhaps you could start here and then go here.
November 7, 2008 at 9:24 pm
John
It’s a minor point but Rauchway is wrong about something else, the HSUS he cites, the millennial edition, is not an official publication of the Bureau of the Census – it’s a book published by Cambridge University Press. No doubt it is a good book but Tabarrok is correct that the series he cites is the official series
November 7, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Ben Alpers
John,
It’s not even a minor point. As the <a href=”HSUS Millenial Edition website explains: “Unlike previous editions that were published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Cambridge University Press publishes the Millennial Edition with permission from the Census Bureau. More than 80 scholars and 70 funding sources have contributed to this giant collaborative effort.”
This is dramatically updated and improved from the last edition that was published in 1975 (see if you can find a single review that suggests otherwise). The statistics come from the same official sources. The different publisher reflects the Census Bureau’s decision in 1995 to stop publishing HSUS itself and instead allow private publication.
I hope someone else caught the irony of the Liberty Leaguers arguing that the earlier edition is better because it was actually published by the government!
One would think that the libertarians would be praising this decision to outsource the work. Instead of a make-work government publication, it’s now a truly productive, privately produced five-volume work, whose value added to the economy is reflected in its $1225 asking price!
November 7, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Ben Alpers
Whoops…sorry about that stray beginning of an HTML tag.
You’ll find the website here.
November 7, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Q
David, just because someone goes from 99% certain of exploding after meeting yourself in a perfect storm of illogic to only 75% certain does not mean that their chances of living have not improved precipitously.
A 10% drop in unemployment is ridiculously relevant, even if the overall unemployment rate remained unfavorable. This. is. really. freaking. obvious. Even to someone who knows nothing about the subject like me.
Not to mention the fact that the WSJ’s article’s point that the New Deal accomplished little to nothing was also really. freaking. obvious. No matter how various people try to claim their words really meant X.
November 7, 2008 at 10:12 pm
dana
I imagine soon they’ll be advancing arguments about the kerning in the Cambridge publication.
November 7, 2008 at 10:12 pm
silbey
As I said above, I don’t think that counts as a great success…
You’re right. Putting 1/10 of the entire American population back to work is not a success. That would only be several million people. I’m sure their families didn’t need to eat, or anything.
November 8, 2008 at 1:04 am
Walt
This is like an outbreak of mass psychosis. Eric takes on an incredibly narrow point — that a single Wall Street Journal editorial is deliberately misleading — and half the internet’s libertarians show up to argue that there is a possible alternative editorial in which it all makes sense, and that Eric is clearly saying that because one person misused a piece of data that Eric clearly thinks that data has no legitimate uses. Did the world’s libertarians take some sort of blood oath to defend every word that appears in the Wall Street Journal?
November 8, 2008 at 1:38 am
Michael Turner
Inappropriate? Don’t you mean misleading, if not dishonest? Admit it, you fibber.
wgreen wrote, in part:
What part of “Depression” didn’t wgreen understand? People with money weren’t putting that money into the economy. That was the problem. That’s what made it a depression. That’s what the defin– [brain explodes with almost no warning, sorry if you got splattered].
wgreen did, however, contribute a useful term to econ blog discourse in the above post: “teh daat”. No, really. Go look. I’m not making this up.
I hereby move that from now on, whenever someone really screws up big-time in citing and interpreting statistics, tables and/or graphs, we respond with “Ooh, that was Teh Daat!”
This can also be our secret nickname for Donald Luskin.
November 8, 2008 at 2:05 am
arthur
Well Halloween’s over, but people are still keeping their economist costumes on…
But seriously, I do wonder why you guys died on this particular hill. Most of your commenters are “economists” who think they know economics because they’ve read Marginal Revolution for 6 months. They have no idea how economic statistics work, how to evaluate bad research from good, and they most likely can’t transpose a 2 by 2 matrix correctly if you gave them 4 tries. Perhaps you academics are used to proper debate, but I do think you guys can be more aggressive. I have arrived a bit late to counter troll, but from my experience with dealing with creationists, the point is not to win the over with reasoned debate, but to expose their ignorance for the spectators. So in future, keep going on the offensive, and let them be the one to supply new info or new arguments.
Example:
Pushmedia1: “I’m guessing the WSJ has a much lower weight on the “don’t let people starve” norm, whereas you have a lower weight on the efficiency norm. Its not obvious what the correct weights should be”
WRONG REPLY: “In the middle of a depression, with 30%+ employment, I think that (without taking it to the extremes you just posited) we can worry about the starving people on the streets and be less concerned with maximizing the abolute efficiency of it all.”
CORRECT REPLY: “Listen mate, when we come up with real world policies we deal with real world problems. If you don’t know the policy options then, you don’t know what the tradeoffs are now, so you have no business telling me off about tradeoffs. And since you want to be like the big boys and play public choice analyst, you come up with a policy package where 10% of the population starve, and we’ll see whether any sane person will take the specific efficiency gains you’ve made over our non-starving people. Until then, don’t pretend that the WSJ weights are as reasonable as the American people’s. Capiche?”
My reply essentially makes the same point, but you get to let your opponent do the hard work, and most of them will just leave rather than think up a reply. If push comes to shove, he decides to debate on the policy options, you guys can leverage your knowledge as experts on the great depression and fight on your own ground. Better luck next time, guys.
November 8, 2008 at 5:10 am
Malaclypse
Or is this just another sign that Roosevelt is actually the greater President than Lincoln?
Wingnuts hate FDR more. By simply applying the axiom “Bill Kristol is always wrong”, we see that FDR > Lincoln.
November 8, 2008 at 6:12 am
AWC
I’m late to this party. Sufficed to say I agree with Eric on all points. But I must add one thing.
Given that New Deal remains in place today, it seems rather ungenerous for libertarians to focus on 1938 or the 1930s as a whole. During the ensuing 75 years, the nation managed to avoid the miserable depressions that had routinely characterized the comparatively libertarian period that preceded it. This is fact.
In other words, how does the halting effectiveness of the early experimental New Deal state de-legitimize the functioning system that emerged from WWII? And would it have been possible to construct our present system without a bit of failure?
November 8, 2008 at 6:17 am
Rich Puchalsky
Good point, Malaclypse, but are you sure that this isn’t an observational effect? Libertarians hate Lincoln quite a bit, but they try to keep that among themselves because they’ve noticed that hating Lincoln is associated with racism for some reason — they can’t really figure out why. But read libertarians and you’ll run into amazing screeds about Lincoln and how he socialized the private property that people had in slaves.
Here’s the first Google hit: An American Lenin. Well-rounded nuttery there. But even the sainted Henley puts in an apologetic word for how his brethren and sistren have been driven a little crazy by contemplation of Lincoln’s security measures, which undoubtedly weighed heavily on all of those libertarians who spent the Bush years cheering on the torture state. Lincoln-hatred is just as integral to libertarianism as FDR-hatred; it’s just less respectable.
November 8, 2008 at 9:19 am
Michael Turner
You made my day, Rich. You almost didn’t, because L. Neil Smith’s “An American Lenin” left me so depressed about having once been a Libertarian that I almost stopped browsing. Then I found the one-star Amazon reviews for his The Probability Broach, where a Libertarian who says he generally agrees with L. Neil Smith nevertheless found the novel “irredeemably awful.” Then I found the author’s promo page for Lever Action, a book of essays that includes “An American Lenin”. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Can we make an exception in this case, please?
November 8, 2008 at 11:06 am
David Wright
Love all those comments on the mental faculties of libertarians!
To those pointing out that new deal make-work employing 10% of the labor pool should count as a success in getting people fed and occupied, you are absolutely right. But that is a completely unrelated to the narrower technical question of whether it should count as a success in revitalizing the private economy, which is the question the WSJ editorial addresses. Given the slow pace of the recovery compared to other depressions, there seems to be little reason to believe that the new deal programs did much to revitalize the private economy any faster than would have happened naturally. Again, that doesn’t mean that the new deal programs didn’t do other good (and bad) stuff.
The Pulchalsky comment above essentially gives this point away, when he says “okay, so the economic recovery of the 30s wasn’t so hot, but the postwar period realy rocked”. Keynsian-style fiscal stimulus generally isn’t supposed to have a 15-year lag time. And we didn’t really get anything remotely resembling Keynsian-style fiscal stimulus again until the 1960s.
November 8, 2008 at 12:21 pm
tf smith
Is there a libertarian, anywhere, who actually physically works for a living under their “preferred” economic system, or are they all just parlor pinks when it comes to rugged self-reliance?
I mean, writing for the Atlantic – or George Mason – is not exactly carving a homestead out of the Antarctic wilderness…
November 8, 2008 at 12:52 pm
bitchphd
Megan’s butt may hurt, but my sphincter is tightening with embarrassment for her.
November 8, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Vance
whether it should count as a success in revitalizing the private economy
Why do we care whether what was revived was “private”? It’s the economy, period, that actually affects us. There are reasons to believe that an all-“public” economy is not the best choice, of course, but that’s not what’s at stake in this discussion. (Indeed, perhaps what is at stake, though I haven’t seen it spelled out, is the idea that an all-“private” economy is the best.)
November 8, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Sifu Tweety Fish
Megan’s butt may hurt, but my sphincter is tightening with embarrassment for her
If this happens every time she makes a fool of herself you should probably see a doctor.
November 8, 2008 at 2:30 pm
silbey
I think that having a Nobel laureate agree with you (and cite you) is probably an advantage:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/08/new-deal-economics/
November 8, 2008 at 2:39 pm
AWC
Wow! Beloved by both David Kennedy and Paul Krugman. Is there anything Rauchway can’t do?
November 8, 2008 at 2:41 pm
kid bitzer
yeah, m.m. would feel really stupid about having krugman so publicly say that she’s full of shit.
if, that is, she could understand the rebuttal that he just posted. but it uses a lot of graphs and stuff, as well as complicated concepts that they didn’t cover in her m.b.a. program.
November 8, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Woodshed? Spanked? Sez you. « The Edge of the American West
[…] in history and current events | by dana Well, now, isn’t this interesting. Not that Eric really needed the […]
November 8, 2008 at 3:39 pm
David Wright
Why do we care whether what was revived was “private”?
Surely you can see a distinction between placing half your unemployed on the dole and calling it their “job”, and placing half your unemployed in private employment fufilling consumer demands. The fact that both scenarios do good by keeping those people fed doesn’t mean that both scenarios are equally good.
Amusingly, Paul Krugman and Alex Tabarrok appear to agree that the new deal didn’t succeed in erasing the output and employment gaps in the 1930s. Krugman seems to think that’s because the new deal wasn’t Keynsian enough, and Tabarrok and the WSJ presumably think that’s because Keynsian stimulus doesn’t work; the data before us simply can’t resolve that debate.
Also amusingly, what Krugman and Tabarrok agree on is precisely what Rauchway didn’t believe in his first response to the WSJ. In that post (before he decided his quibble with the WSJ all turned on the use of the word “remained”), he appeared to argue that the new deal did in fact succeed in entirely erasing the employment gap by the end of the 1930s.
November 8, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Vance
on the dole
This is not what we’re talking about.
November 8, 2008 at 3:56 pm
silbey
In that post (before he decided his quibble with the WSJ all turned on the use of the word “remained”), he appeared to argue that the new deal did in fact succeed in entirely erasing the employment gap by the end of the 1930s.
Uh, I don’t see that argument in Eric’s post. Perhaps you could point it out?
November 8, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Q
@ David Wright
*Boggle*
November 8, 2008 at 4:04 pm
silbey
(before he decided his quibble with the WSJ all turned on the use of the word “remained”),
By the way, nice to see that you’re giving up on your defense of the WSJ on this point, however you try to slide it by the audience.
November 8, 2008 at 4:08 pm
David Wright
silbey: By “Rauchway’s original post” I mean “Stop Lying About Roosevelt’s Record”. In that post, he doesn’t argue about the word “remained” or the cherry-picking of 1938. He does link to an unemployment series and show a graph indicating that, by the end of the 30s, unemployment was back down to the ~10% level, which was about the NARU level before the 20s boom and bust. He doesn’t mention that there are unemployment rate series under which the WSJ’s 20% claim is true, or address the make-work distinction between different series. That central claim of that post appears to be that unemployment was not ~20% in 1938, but rather only ~10%, and that claim is what Tabarrok jumped on.
November 8, 2008 at 4:10 pm
David Wright
silby: I never posted a single comment anywhere in which I weighed in on whether the word “remained” was acceptable. Others have debated that, but I always regarded it as a pointless quibble.
November 8, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Mike
I was with you tf smith, right up until that dig at George Mason. The astrologers in the Econ department do not speak for all of us.
November 8, 2008 at 4:31 pm
tf smith
Mike –
Sincere apologies to all George Masoners (Masonites? Masonians?) other than Prof. T; he was the target…
It seems there is always at least one “challenge” at every university, even those en-faculated by stamp-lickin’ public parasites; the world’s youngest hoplite was at CSU Fresno for a long time, after all, and there was a neo-nazi, IIRC, at CSULB (of all places)…
I wonder if VDH turned down tenure on philosophical grounds…
November 8, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Mike
tf –
My honor is restored! Seriously though, I think we call ourselves the George Mason “Privatizers.” And, in all fairness, our “challenges” extend well beyond Prof. T. We like to think their presence gives the rest of us cover–but I’ve said too much.
November 8, 2008 at 4:58 pm
silbey
Woops: Moving the goal posts foul.
In the post I responded to, you said “he appeared to argue that the new deal did in fact succeed in entirely erasing the employment gap by the end of the 1930s.”
That was not, in fact, what Eric had argued in either the post he referred to, or the earlier post Eric linked to. What Eric did say in the earlier posts was the there was “significant improvement under the New Deal”
I’m not sure if you realized that when you went to reply, but in any case, you changed your argument to the following:
In that post, he doesn’t argue about the word “remained” or the cherry-picking of 1938. He does link to an unemployment series and show a graph indicating that, by the end of the 30s, unemployment was back down to the ~10% level, which was about the NARU level before the 20s boom and bust.
The problem, of course, is that Eric’s charts start in 1929, with the unemployment rate at 5%, not 10% and there’s nothing in there from earlier.
You’ve shifted your argument between the two posts to try and strengthen it. Which is interesting all by itself.
He doesn’t mention that there are unemployment rate series under which the WSJ’s 20% claim is true, or address the make-work distinction between different series
If by ‘doesn’t mention’ you mean “links to an 800 word post in which he tries to deal with the unemployment series and why it’s problematic” then you’ve got him. Otherwise, the remark is just silly.
Others have debated that, but I always regarded it as a pointless quibble.
Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to withdraw the points then. Pity, that, I was hoping to credit you with *something*
November 8, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Robert Waldmann
wgreen you argue as if “remained” and “was” are synonyms. They are not. To defend Tabarrok’s honesty, you must explain how the plain difference in meaning between the two words is not relevant in this case.
I don’t think anyone here would argue that the statement “As late as 1938, after almost a decade of governmental “pump priming,” almost one out of five workers was unemployed.” is false, let alone a lie. Obviously if you change the words that Tabarrok wrote, you can generate a statement that isn’t a lie.
Consider another hypothetical sentence. I think you will agree that if someone with Tabarrok’s knowledge (that is access to the outdated HSUS) had written “the unemployment rate staid greater than or equal to 20% until after 1938” that person would have lied. If you are willing to argue that Tabarrok’s claim is meaningfully different from they hypothetical statement in quotation marks, please do so.
November 8, 2008 at 5:58 pm
David Wright
Waldman: Just for your own illumination, no one regards the pre-crash unemployment rate as NAIRU. It’s very clear that ~5% unemployment was a product of the boom. You might be able to quibble that NAIRU then was 8%, not 10%, but basically, if the non-makework unemployment really had fallen to ~10% by the end of the 1930s, then one could reasonably say that the employment gap had been eliminated. After all this discussion and even Krugman weighing in, we now all know it hadn’t.
November 8, 2008 at 6:03 pm
silbey
It’s very clear that ~5% unemployment was a product of the boom. You might be able to quibble that NAIRU then was 8%, not 10%,
The rough translation of this is “I’m allowed to adjust the numbers to support my point, but if anyone else does it…DOOM”
Another rough translation would be: “Eric didn’t actually argue the following, but if I interpolate to what he *really* meant, then he’s wrong.”
November 8, 2008 at 7:06 pm
tf smith
David –
I think your honor was intact; my attempts at snark are not as keen as some of the locals.
I shall avoid it in future.
Ad Astra Per Alia Porci
November 8, 2008 at 7:07 pm
David Wright
Hey, silbey, I was going to debate more, but then I realized that you, I, Krugman, Tabarrok, and Rauchway now all appear to agree! (1) Contrary to what the graph in Rauchway’s original post appears to show, unemployment in 1938 was ~20%. (2) Setting aside whatever welfare function the new deal programs had (and which was never under debate), they hadn’t healed the employment and output gaps by the end of the 1930s. We all agree! Why debate more? Who would have thought that, reading Rauchway’s original post?
November 8, 2008 at 7:25 pm
silbey
I was going to debate more, but then I realized that you, I, Krugman, Tabarrok, and Rauchway now all appear to agree!
Ah, excellent; the debating strategy of simply making up what your opponent’s argument is and claiming that he really agrees with you. It’s a desperate move, but, I agree, you didn’t have many alternatives.
November 8, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Michael Turner
It’s over, people. After much violent agreement, as of 7:07 pm on Nov 8, David Wright remained in agreement with Eric Rauchway. To maintain otherwise would be pointless quibbling.
So, if all of you don’t lay off David, starting right now, I’ll post a video on YouTube entitled “LEAVE DAVID ALONE!”
I’m putting on my makeup right now. Don’t mess with me. I’m not playin’.
November 8, 2008 at 9:57 pm
urbino
Our long national nightmare is over.
I feel like putting on my sailor suit (don’t ask) and going to Times Square to kiss nurses.
November 8, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Michael Turner
Krugman seems to think that’s because the new deal wasn’t Keynsian enough…
It’s a desperately isolated, wacko fringe position in economics, I know. Hardly worthy of Krugman, or of any respectable economist for that matter.
But it might amaze you to learn that there was another famous economist who also believed this nonsense, and whose last name also began with a K. He even wrote a letter to FDR, complaining about the New Deal, to some such effect.
Damned if I can remember the exact name, though. His first name was “John”, I’m pretty sure. His middle name began with an ‘M’ … “Maycroft”? “Major”? “Mayor”? Wait … “John Mayfield Kaine”? No, that’s not quite right.
Shit. It’s right on the tip of my tongue. Don’t you hate it when that happens?
November 9, 2008 at 7:12 am
Ed
With respect to the rise in unemployment during 1937-1938, the FDR critics need to keep in mind that the Federal Reserve increased reserve requirements 3 times from August 1936 to May 1937 in an attempt to mop up “idle reserves.” Money growth slowed in 1936 and even declined in 1937. This played a significant role in causing the contraction of 1937-1938.
November 11, 2008 at 2:17 am
Etl World News | Understanding Fiscal Policy During the Great Depression
[…] the government didn’t spend enough during the thirties (Rauchway, who also cites Cary Brown, says directly "there was never enough spending to achieve the desired effect.") Yet […]
November 11, 2008 at 7:43 am
Grande debates da Blogosfera: O New Deal | Na Prática a Teoria é Outra
[…] Eric Rauchway: Megan, o mané neoliberalzaço é um cascateiro miserável, pelo seguinte: 1) ele foi sacana de pegar o ano de 1938 para comentar o New Deal. Mesmo se você usar os dados dele (que não são mais considerados oficiais, não), você vê que o desemprego caiu pra cacete durante o New Deal, mas subiu de novo em 38, quando o Roosevelt deu uma de muiézinha e reverteu algumas de suas políticas. Nesse ano, o Keynes escreveu para o Roosevelt mandando ele virar macho e injetar mais dinheiro na economia. […]
November 11, 2008 at 11:51 am
Vance
NPTO’s post trackbacked above is quite entertaining.
(Had he really done that, it would have been amusing but unfair.)
The automatic translation fills in only some of what one can’t guess from English.
November 11, 2008 at 2:56 pm
grackle
He’s got Taylor Cowen pegged:”Tyler Cowen (CONT): ’emu, emu, emu,…’ ”
I mean, isn’t that what he always says?
November 11, 2008 at 3:38 pm
dana
Oh, holy shit, Vance, that’s hysterically funny. Surra?
November 11, 2008 at 4:51 pm
urbino
My favorite part is, “we see that reversed what the Depression was a monetary parade.”
I love a monetary parade.
November 11, 2008 at 5:01 pm
andrew
Like this?
November 11, 2008 at 5:04 pm
andrew
Or maybe the second photo here.
November 11, 2008 at 5:30 pm
eric
The best part is, “OOOOHHHH !!!!! Keynes!!!!! Keynes !!!!! Fodãããããooo!!!! Fodãããããooo!!”
November 11, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Jason B
I haven’t heard that in so long . . .
November 11, 2008 at 5:40 pm
urbino
Something like that second photo, andrew, yes. Only less regimented and with more money.
November 23, 2008 at 11:33 am
With Tyler against the strawmen and conservatives. « The Edge of the American West
[…] was explaining, what Krugman argues, and what has been the understanding of the subject since E. Cary Brown’s work back in the 1950s: the lesson of New Deal fiscal policy is that Roosevelt was too conservative about its […]
May 15, 2009 at 8:13 am
Greg Simmons
It amuses me to observe the semantic and intellectual contortions Statists will engage in to justify their lust for control over other peoples’ lives. Never mind that Austrian Business Cycle Theory gets vindicated over and over again. Never mind that the economic crash of 1920-21 (which was caused by the Fed’s irresponsible monetary policy) ended quickly because government stayed out of the way, while Hoover and FDR’s depression dragged on for a decade. Never mind that (again) irresponsible monetary policy coupled with social engineering programs in the housing market created the largest asset bubble in the history of the world. The intellectual and philosophical bankruptcy of Statist/Keynesian economics can be revealed in many ways, but none moreso than in the claim that the waste and destruction of war is/was “good for the economy”.