On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 3:44 PM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 2:13 PM, David B. Shemano <[email protected]> wrote: >> PK seems certain that the present debt level is too low. That is a claim to >> knowledge, is it not? So if he knows the present level is too low, he >> should be able to tell us what level would be too high. The latter follows >> from the prior, does it not? I think my ability to judge and understand if >> PK is right about the debt level being too low is dependent in great part >> upon my understanding of what PK believes would be too high. Doesn't seem >> like alot to ask. >> > > > That also is easy. We can safely say that a debt/GDP of 10% is way too > low and a ratio of 10000% is probably too high for the US right now. > You may say that that leaves such an enormous range for the "right > level of debt" as to be almost useless in practice and you would be > exactly right. > > The question you are asking simply does not lend itself to a more > precise answer. That means that it is a poorly formulated question.
I think another example of such a poorly formulated question may be helpful. Can you tell what is the right amount of food a person should consume in a day (in calories)? Trying to answer a question like that is silly without knowing all kinds of other information such as the person's age, medical condition, occupation, type of food providing the calories etc etc. However, we can also safely say that 10 calories a day is far too less for anyone under any circumstances and 100000 calories is far too much. Beyond that we simply cannot say. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
