Friday, June 28, 2013

This just in, from Gene Callahan

"not every single thing that can be put in a ratio has empirical significance"

You may think I am bringing your attention to an obvious point. I am quite sure Gene agrees with you it's a relatively obvious point. Apparently it is one that does need to be belabored, and Gene is doing a valiant job at that.

To be fair, for me this obvious point was buried under a lot of other equations and sentences and ideas rendering it not immediately obvious (to me at least), so in that sense this is most definitely a public service.

Please click through - there's more than just this in there, including why the multiplier is a pro-market idea (I think we Keynesians forget that a lot of people have this odd idea that Keynesianism is not pro-market so we forget to highlight stuff like this because we don't usually think to juxtapose Keynesian ideas with pro-market ideas)

7 comments:

  1. Or, if you redefine the terms, you can make anyone look like an idiot.

    "Y = C + I + G + (X - M). If G = love making, then the more love making we do the higher our income!"

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  2. This isn't even a weak attempt. A weak attempt would at least get mass and weight right.
    Weight is Force, F.
    Pseudo-Rothbard would conclude you get HEAVIER as you age.
    And, more to the point, pseudoRothbard would be RIGHT if F=m*age were right.
    So Gene has not demonstrated any flaw in pseudo's reasoning, Gene has merely injected a false statement and asks us to boggle at its falsity.
    "If pseudoRothbard believed 3 = 4 then by his reasoning he'd conclude 4 = 3. What an idiot!!"

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    Replies
    1. Yes, Ken, moronic quibblings about the difference between mass and weight can save Rothbard here. Or not.

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    2. Cause You know, Ken, We human beings, living as we do on the surface of the earth, generally treat mass and weight as equivalent. So yes, I would have been more technically correct to say "Newton says we get more massive as we get older."

      And this would change the force of my example... Ah, in no way whatsoever! Nice attempt at distraction, Ken.

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    3. Of course I should've written "less massive" above

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  3. "Gene has merely injected a false statement and asks us to boggle at its falsity."

    Well, duh, Ken, that is exactly what Rothbard did. So thanks for making my point.

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    Replies
    1. Except Rothbard did not change the nature of the variables of the C+I+G equation, whereas you did change the nature of the F=ma variables.

      Rothbard just treated G's spending as an individual reader's spending, and exposed the reductio in the multiplier logic derived from the equation. That logic is not absent from Keynesian textbooks.

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