The Great Depression: Did FDR Really Fix it?

“Our Greatest Generation president, FDR, drove unemployment down from 25% to 15% [!] during the ‘30s using this recipe [government spending on infrastructure, etc.]. Some make the point that WW2 ended the Great Depression…That’s true, but only because the war required the government to raise money to build the infrastructure for war…” (Frank Hyman, p 1A Raleigh News & Observer, December 2011)

This is a common view of the cause and cure of the Great Depression, but it needs a little unpacking. First, the reduction in unemployment from 25% to 15% during FDR’s tenure still leaves it at ludicrously high levels. If FDR prescribed a cure, it was only slightly better than the disease. WW2 did the job, though...Read more at... Home

On B. F. Skinner and a Technology of Behavior

"I have read the first 3 pages of Beyond Freedom and Dignity to my students for 17 years. It is an amazing passage that justifies the need for a technology of behavior. I read this passage 10 days after Sept 11th. It was relevant and moving. Dr. Skinner was then and continues to be right on the money!" (TBA list 12/30/2011)

Wendy Williams is right to draw attention to the first few pages of Beyond Freedom and Dignity, but not entirely for the reasons she implies. Skinner’s advocacy of a technology of behavior is a brilliant piece of rhetoric. But it relies on two assumptions, neither entirely correct. First, that we know much more than our predecessors about how to change people’s behavior. And, second, that we are pretty much certain about our ultimate aims. Read more at more

What we have here is a failure to replicate!

There are thousands of published research studies every year purporting to show a curative effect of some new drug. In a WSJ article (12/02/11) entitled “Scientists’ Elusive Goal: Reproducing Study Results” Gautam Naik lists a slew of such ‘breakthroughs,’ reported in prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals like Nature, Science and The Lancet, that cannot be replicated by others, particularly by pharmaceutical companies that would like to profit from them.

Zombie Columnist

It’s time to dump NYT columnist Paul Krugman. He writes reasonably well, but he is so predictable, so partisan, so slyly dishonest.

Everything that Donald Trump does is either wrong, or, if right, right by mistake or from a bad motive. Mr. K also omits relevant facts and makes stuff up — and context? What is that?

His March 28 column, a plug for his new book, Arguing with Zombies, is exemplary. Krugman “summarizes” the “Trump administration/right-wing media” position: Coronavirus is “ a hoax”? Only if you are a dishonest Democratic PAC . “Besides, trying to do anything about it would destroy the economy.” Well, Trump is doing something is and the economy is being hurt. So?

And, “it’s China’s fault, which is why we [says Trump] should call it the ‘Chinese virus’.” Er, how about Spanish flu, Lyme disease — Wuhan virus? Mr. T is a counterpuncher; he’s reacting to the Krugmans of the world who criticize him for absolutely anything he does. He’s slammed for naming the virus for its place of origin, so he doubles down. Not very presidential, but neither racist nor risking lives.

Apparently, uncritical acceptance of anthropogenic climate change (AGW) is the new dogma; and “denialism” — “the Trump/right-wing line [some stereotyping here?] on climate change” — is the new heresy. The late, great Freeman Dyson, not either an idiot or a right-wing flack, was skeptical. And he is not the only one. Many of my friends, engineers and physicists, none in thrall to “big energy”, are skeptics. Mr K’s “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” call-outs to the likeminded are lazy and dishonest.

“[C]limate scientists … have faced constant harassment for decades” claims Mr. K. Really? I recently wrote an article trying to explain to myself and other non-experts the evidence for AGW. I sent it to a climate-science colleague asking for comments and got a diatribe, amounting to “stay in your lane, non-climate-scientist!” (Other climate scientists I asked were much more polite, but my colleague’s reaction is all too common.)

Writer Mark Steyn, the National Review and others are being sued by climate scientist Michael Mann because they published or re-published something nasty someone said about Mann’s work. The Washington Post, neither a haven for conservatives nor an AGW denier, commented: “If the comments at issue in this case are potentially actionable defamation, then so too are all manner of hyperbolic charges hurled against climate skeptics by environmentalist activists, including accusations that skeptics are corporate shills or paid for their positions. Indeed, Mann himself has made comments over the years that might themselves be actionable.” Critics have taken much more of a beating than AGW proponents (“How dare you….you are failing us…we will not let you get away with this” rants Ms. Thunberg to the UN). To imply the opposite, as Krugman does, is downright dishonest.

Apparently, the right, especially if religious, doesn’t believe or even actively hates science. And the evidence? None. Or is any criticism of the “consensus view” (i.e., what PK and his bien pensant friends believe) adequate proof of science hatred?

For Krugman, only he and his friends are sincere. For the rest, cui bono explains all: “The force that usually keeps zombie ideas shambling along is naked financial self-interest.” I am not a Freudian but, hey, projection anyone?

Mr. Krugman’s Nobel Prize doesn’t justify his editorial perch. Most people are skeptical of the Peace Nobel, because the odd list of awardees: Yasser Arafat? Barack Obama? Al Gore? Not to mention the European Union. But at least all these folks professed a commitment to peace. The Economics Nobel lacks even that much consistency. In 2013, for example, not long after the 2008 crash, the prize was awarded to two people with diametrically opposed views on efficient market theory. Perhaps Mr. K should recover his expertise and take a look at the Shiller-Fama debate? Perhaps he can shed some light on it instead of promoting partisanship as predictable as the President’s hairstyle. No, better to write a potential best-seller on zombie ideas: more “naked financial self-interest” in that?

‘Possum’