arthur cordell wrote,
>Krugman needs a dose of humility. Here's one thought. Imagine his reaction
>if the budget for MIT were halved and traditional economic theory was
>suddenly found to be imperfect and so flawed that it was no longer
>acceptable for teaching. Hmmm. What options might be open to him and
>others that promote perfect this and seamless that!!
What do you mean "suddenly found to be imperfect and so flawed . . .?" That
is precisely what makes it acceptable for teaching. Here's a teaser of the
expose I'm working on. Just the tip of the iceberg . . .
Michael Perelman wrote,
>Jim, Good question. Only to be able to make sense of what the bogus economists
>are saying.
>
>Jim Devine wrote:
>
-- snip --
>>
>> Michael, why do you care about total factor productivity? it's a concept
>> based on bogus assumptions.
Whoa! Hold on a minute there. Are these references to "bogus economists"
just a casual release of steam or is there a programmatic critique of the
bogusity being breached? I'm not particularly concerned about ideologically
driven nincompoops who make preposterous assumptions and mine the data that
suits there fancy. I'm talking about blatant propaganda forgeries that are
then passed off as theoretical legal tender by slimy academic fences with
connections in high places.
As a case in point, I'd like to refer to the handywork of one William
Collinson, propagandist for the National Free Labour Association, an
organization established in Britain in 1893 "primarily for one purpose: to
supply employers with workmen in place of locked-out or striking trade
unionists." By his account -- as told to Paul Mantoux and Maurice Alfassa,
authors of La Crise du Trade-Unionisme -- "It was me who wrote these
articles, or more exactly, I provided the information for them to a regular
writer in The Times, Edwin A. Pratt. It was necessary to act in such a way
in order to give the campaign an impartial character. All the facts
published by The Times are scrupulously correct, but there could have been
charges of exaggeration if I had signed those articles."
"And just what articles are those?" you may ask. "The Crisis in British
Industry", which ran in a series of 12 installments from November 18, 1901
to January 16, 1902. Articles, on the theme of an insidious socialistic
conspiracy to undermine British industry, which caused "a great deal of
controversy" and on which there was a "very full correspondence".
It was in this series of articles that that ancient complaint of
"restriction of output" was fused with opposition to the reduction of the
working day. Here's how Pratt/Collinson summed up labour's struggle for the
eight-hours day: "The general adoption of the eight hours system was to
bring in a certain proportion of the unemployed; if there were still too
many left the eight hours sytem was to be followed by a six hours sytem;
while if, within the six, or eight, or any other term of hours, every one
took things easy and did as little work as he conveniently could, still more
openings would be found for the remaining unemployed, and still better would
be the chances for the Socialist propaganda."
But what does this ancient history have to do with bogus economics in 1999?
I present in evidence, a line by Lawrence F. Katz, in a January 1998
Brookings Institute commentary "In what has been labeled the lump of output
fallacy, most advocates of worksharing implicitly assume that output is held
constant in response to a policy effort to reduce hours per worker, so that
total hours of work to be done each week are unchanged." Where did Katz get
his lump of output fallacy? From Layard, Nickell and Jackman, _Unemployment:
macro economic performance and the Labour Market_, Chapter 10, section 7
(pp. 502-508).
Layard, reported to be a leading economic advisor to the Tony Blair's New
Labour government and to Boris Yeltsin, was co-author along with the former
Moscow correspondent from the Economist of _The Coming Boom in Russia_. To
give Layard the benefit of the doubt, he probably doesn't know scratch about
the seemy history of the "fallacy" he circulates with such condescension. In
other words, his only alibi is that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
regards,
Tom Walker
