Call Ripley
Self-identified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics
Liberals don't understand economics! Film at eleven!
No surprise here, of course. Liberalism is a moral position, a matter of correct feelings, not of empirical fact. To have the right feelings, it's not necessary to actually know anything; in fact, the less you know, the easier it is. Marx's system of economics was such a mess he gave up writing the third volume of Das Kapital, unable to make it work. (His "labor theory of value" -- which he got from Ricardo -- was wrong, and so was his theory of the "declining rate of profit.") Others, unfortunately, tried it anyway, at enormous cost in human suffering. About all that survives of Marx is his moral critique of child labor in 19th-century British textile mills and some lefty T-shirts.
The answer to that fiasco was supposed to be the creation of a new-and-improved "leftist economics." The idea was to build a coherent theoretical system that would encompass everything from the Soviet-style command economy to Yugoslav worker-managed factories (a sentimental favorite on the left) to Keynesian pump-priming. In fact, the Soviet system was a monumental disaster on every level, worker management schemes all failed miserably, and we now see Obama's attempt at Keynesianism (stimulus!) falling on its face. (Maybe Obama will try worker management next.) If you want to understand why all this junk fails, the answers are to be found in real economics. The kind the left doesn't know much of anything about.
If Obama had cut taxes to stimulate aggregate demand, we'd be well on our way out of this recession by now. Instead, it's only a question of how much deeper we're going. Worst president ever.
Byron
Liberals don't understand economics! Film at eleven!
No surprise here, of course. Liberalism is a moral position, a matter of correct feelings, not of empirical fact. To have the right feelings, it's not necessary to actually know anything; in fact, the less you know, the easier it is. Marx's system of economics was such a mess he gave up writing the third volume of Das Kapital, unable to make it work. (His "labor theory of value" -- which he got from Ricardo -- was wrong, and so was his theory of the "declining rate of profit.") Others, unfortunately, tried it anyway, at enormous cost in human suffering. About all that survives of Marx is his moral critique of child labor in 19th-century British textile mills and some lefty T-shirts.
The answer to that fiasco was supposed to be the creation of a new-and-improved "leftist economics." The idea was to build a coherent theoretical system that would encompass everything from the Soviet-style command economy to Yugoslav worker-managed factories (a sentimental favorite on the left) to Keynesian pump-priming. In fact, the Soviet system was a monumental disaster on every level, worker management schemes all failed miserably, and we now see Obama's attempt at Keynesianism (stimulus!) falling on its face. (Maybe Obama will try worker management next.) If you want to understand why all this junk fails, the answers are to be found in real economics. The kind the left doesn't know much of anything about.
If Obama had cut taxes to stimulate aggregate demand, we'd be well on our way out of this recession by now. Instead, it's only a question of how much deeper we're going. Worst president ever.
Byron
posted by Byron | Tuesday, June 08, 2010
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home