The Country Thinker

Thoughts on Economics

Which one is sup­posed to go first?

Last week I pub­lished a piece work­ing off of Pro­fes­sor Barro’s Wall Street Jour­nal edi­to­r­ial Stim­u­lus Spend­ing Keeps Fail­ing. Unsur­pris­ingly, there were some excel­lent Let­ters to the Edi­tor in response to Barro’s piece; I have said before that Jour­nal read­ers often write with greater clar­ity and insight than many famous and well-​​paid pundits.

Of par­tic­u­lar note was a let­ter from Kevin E. Cahill of Boise, Idaho. He observes that the modern-​​day Key­ne­sian eco­nomic school so pop­u­lar among aca­d­e­mics is in real­ity cart-​​before-​​the-​​horse eco­nom­ics, in which facts are tai­lored to pro­duce polit­i­cally desirous conclusions.

Here is his let­ter, and after I will add two fur­ther com­ments, namely that this think­ing has infected our polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment, as well as our media:

Prof. Barro’s com­ment that the Key­ne­sian view­point is “dan­ger­ously unsta­ble” is actu­ally a com­mon con­clu­sion among first-​​year eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate stu­dents. con­tinue reading