Sandwichman wrote:
> You seem to want to argue for the sake of argument and you want to
> frame the argument in such a way that you don't have to work too hard
> to hold your own.
No. I don't "argue for the sake of argument" (or at least I try not to
-- nobody's perfect). Rather, as I've said before, what's left of the
left in the US and in a lot of other countries is messed up and I
think we need to think seriously about what we're saying, proposing,
etc.
Back in the 1970s, there were people who responded to every event in
the same way: "oh, the cat had kittens! we need to build the Party!"
That should be criticized; it should have been criticized more. Now,
I'm responding to what I interpret as a similar attitude from a quite
different segment of the lefts, that says "oh, the cat had kittens! we
need to restrict hours of work!" (Or as Eugene Coyle put it, "sharply
cutting working time in the USA is the only feasible way of dealing
with global warming and a necessary component of dealing with the
current economic crisis.")
BTW, I have a lot of other work to do, so I can't spend all my time
doing pen-related tasks. So if someone recommends an article to read,
I'd rather hear what they think it says and why they think it's true
rather than spending time reading it.
(On your recommendation, for example, I once read a pamphlet that an
anonymous author produced before Marx that had a lot of Marx's ideas
in it. It was interesting, but I don't really care who came up with
which ideas first. For all I care, Marx could have plagiarized (as
Adam Smith has been alleged to have done). What's important to me is
the totality of his theory and whether or not the theory makes sense
and works empirically, not its origins.)
> Look, here's the picture: my citation of the Great Man, Keynes, was
> contra Krugman's vulgar and narrow pseudo-Keynesianism of the "big
> fiscal stimulus." It doesn't matter to THAT argument whether Keynes
> was talking about secular stagnation or sensuous satanism. Are you
> defending "big fiscal stimulus" as the panacea? If so, be forthright
> about it. Don't go off onto tangents about the kinds of ideas you
> don't think it's worth reading about.
I don't understand where you got the idea I was defending Krugman
here. As far as I could tell, PK was presenting a little essay that
was "at the left wing of the politically possible" as defined by the
NY TIMES. His op-ed piece and his blog entries should be interpreted
as such, complete with its implied limitations. And what you did was
respond as if the cat had had kittens.
> Frankly, my argument for shorter working time isn't based on a
> Keynesian analysis. He just doesn't go into it too deeply. I only cite
> Keynes to people who think Keynes had the answer but who don't know
> that working less was part of the answer that Keynes himself thought
> he had.
There's "Keynesian analysis" and there's "Keynesian analysis." The
quote you provided seem to fit with his secular stagnation theory
(falling average propensity to consume over time) while there's also
the more general Keynesian theory (how a money-using market economy
can get stuck with high unemployment). As I said, I don't get why the
former Keynesian makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, the quote is
irrelevant except to those who really like the history of economic
ideas.
I had said:
>> why not argue that it's not based on a false premise?
Sandwichman's Shorter reply:
> is there a prize for the use of a triple negative in a Pen-l discussion?
it's definitely awkward, but it's better prose in context, i.e., in
contrast to the later sentence ("if it's based on a false premise").
In any event, it's not a triple negative because the first "not"
doesn't modify the same verb as the second one. What I meant to say
was "why not tell us why you think that JMK's assertion of secular
stagnation makes sense?" (and why didn't Keynes call for _paid_
holidays?)
that's it for pen-l today.
--
Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange
days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL.
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