Sunday, January 8, 2012

Assault of Thoughts - 1/8/2012

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking" - JMK

- A record decline in government jobs under Obama (that's record percentage point decline, not just levels). I tell ya - Obama does a pretty crappy job at this socialism thing.

- Peter Klein complains about Yglesias on the Austrian school and economic journalism in general. I especially liked this: "I once heard a lecture by the sociologist Steven Goldberg about his work on male social dominance, expressed in his books The Inevitability of Patriarchy (1974) and Why Men Rule (1993). I remember him saying that whenever he presents his dominance thesis, someone invariably raises the objection, with a smug and self-satisfied expression, “What about Indira Gandhi?” or “What about Margaret Thatcher?” He went on (I’m paraphrasing): “Right. . . . Like I’m going to devote three years of my life to researching and writing a book called The Inevitability of Patriarchy, and someone’s going to say ‘What about Indira Gandhi,’ and I’m going to slap my forehead and say, ‘Oh, crap, why I didn’t think of that!’” Goldberg was a funny guy, with a great Brooklyn accent too. (His books point out that Gandhi-led India and Thatcher-led Britain were male-dominated societies, particularly in matters of state.)." Now that reminded me of a bunch of people on Keynesianism, but I won't name names here. I have a comment that does defend one grain of truth in Matt's post - about how Austrians moved away from their business cycle theories as the depression wore on. I imagine this is a reference to the move towards Haberler's explanations and therefore is not all that incorrect. Plus how many freaking times do we have to hear that Hayek apparently liked NGDP targeting - and yet now Yglesias is wrong to say that his position changed? Anyway - the rest of Yglesias is fairly bad, but there's a grain of truth there.

- Harry Holzer of Georgetown University (formerly of the Urban Institute) has an article on skills an a competitive grant program for job training in the new Issues in Science and Technology. And in a previous issues Diane Auer Jones has an article on apprenticeships.

3 comments:

  1. "A record decline in government jobs under Obama (that's record percentage point decline, not just levels). I tell ya - Obama does a pretty crappy job at this socialism thing."

    He should have stuck with basketball, academe, and other pointless pursuits; he's no good in the real world.

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  2. "A record decline in government jobs under Obama (that's record percentage point decline, not just levels). I tell ya - Obama does a pretty crappy job at this socialism thing."

    I suppose this is a decent point RE: Socialism, but is total spending or number of workers hired the only way we want to measure Obama in this area? Surely the indefinite detention bill and the like are items that might vastly increase the 'scope of government intrusion' without resulting in very many new government jobs?

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  3. brain freeze there.. the last sentence shouldn't have a question mark.

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