The voodoo science of stimulus
Posted on | March 4, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
Most social “science”, and macroeconomic modeling in particular, suffers from serious epistemological and methodological problems. In a recent article for Reason Peter Suderman discusses the questionable models that are used to evaluate the effects of the stimulus:
According to the CBO’s estimates, depending on how the money is spent, one dollar of government spending can produce total economic activity of up to $2.50…. The CBO’s multipliers are estimated from sources similar to those used by the Council of Economic Advisers when it first projected what the stimulus’ effects on job creation would be. So for all practical purposes, the same multipliers that were used to predict how many jobs would be created are being used to estimate how many jobs have been created.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) admits that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.” It is telling about the practice of politics that politicians do have such strong opinions about this issue.
As discussed with great sophistication in the works of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, humans are quite averse to saying “I don’t know.” It is hard to predict how public policy would look like if there was more epistemological modesty among politicians but it is not unreasonable to believe that there would be less collective decision making by “experts.”
Tags: CBO > Congressional Budget Office > Macroeconomics > Nassim Nicholas Taleb > Social Science > Stimulus
Ruthless authoritarianism
Posted on | March 1, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
As evidenced by the 2010 Health Care Summit, the governing philosophy of the current Administration is one of paternalistic authoritarianism. After giving the semblance of listening to different perspectives, [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Authoritarianism > Barack Obama > Big Government > Health Care > Modern Liberalism > Nancy Pelosi > Paternalism > Progressives
Scientific consensus
Posted on | February 16, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
Scientific consensus seems a reasonable concept. If a great number of individual scientists arrive at a similar opinion this is generally a sufficient reason to have confidence in those [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Cryonics > Nature versus Nurture > Politicized Science > Robert Higgs > Scientific Consensus
Competition vs coordination
Posted on | February 8, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
If there is one consistent theme in the fallout of the financial meltdown it is the demand for more policy “coordination.” In the case of the sovereign debt problems [...] Continue Reading…
Ayn Rand: Russian fanatic
Posted on | February 3, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
In some respects, Rand is almost Soviet. Her habit of remaking the past in accordance with her wishes or needs of the present is most striking… Allied to this [...] Continue Reading…
Peter Sloterdijk on the predatory German welfare state
Posted on | January 27, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
As the United States makes rapid progress to become just another European-style welfare state, one of Germany’s most controversial intellectuals, Peter Sloterdijk, initiates a public debate with an offensive [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Frankfurter Schule > Peter Sloterdijk > Philosophy > Welfare State
Barack Obama: Authoritarian
Posted on | January 26, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
The surprising defeat of the Democrats in the recent Massachusetts elections has unleashed a great number of opinion pieces about the mistakes of the Obama administration. A common theme [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Anarchism > Anti-Capitalism > Barack Obama > Individual Mandate > Michael Bakunin > Progressives > Social Democracy
A satire of the weather
Posted on | January 18, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
The useless Constitution
Posted on | January 18, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
Lysander Spooner expert and legal scholar Randy Barnett argues that Obamacare is unconstitutional. It does not seem likely that such an argument will prevail. Over the course of American [...] Continue Reading…
Tags: Anthony de Jasay > Constitution > Individual Mandate > Lysander Spooner > Obamacare > Randy Barnett
The ruling class
Posted on | January 16, 2010 | by Aschwin de Wolf
In an engaging piece about the lack of ideological diversity in American theater Harry Stein makes the following perceptive observation:
Like liberals everywhere, its creators imagine they’re speaking truth to [...] Continue Reading…
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