RedState On Intellectual Laziness

by hilzoy

I know I said, after the election, that I wasn't going to pay attention to conservatives being silly. What can I say: I'm weak -- too weak, at any rate, to resist when something so deliciously surreal swims into my ken. Here (h/t) is Pejman Yousefzadeh at RedState, in a post called 'Poseurs':

"Jon Henke (...) points out that even Paul Krugman -- no right-winger, he! -- has stated that monetary policy, not Keynesian spending sprees, will be the tool with which the economy can best get out of its slump.

I look forward, of course, to members of the "reality-based community" condemning Krugman as a dumb or unpatriotic conservative. They won't, of course. Instead, they will just ignore evidence and statements that go against their cherished, preconceived notions.

That's the intellectually lazy way to deal with inconvenient arguments. And the "reality-based community" has intellectual laziness down to a (dismal) science."

If someone were intellectually lazy, he might write a post like this without bothering to check Krugman's actual views, which are, as it happens, pretty easy to find, since the NYT has helpfully provided a link to all his columns. In it, just four down from the top, one can find a link to a column called 'Depression Economics Returns', with this little blurb:

"The United States economy has entered a state of affairs in which the usual tools of economic policy have lost all traction."

Hmm, the non-intellectually lazy writer might think: what are those "usual tools"? From Krugman's column:

"We are already, however, well into the realm of what I call depression economics. By that I mean a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy -- above all, the Federal Reserve's ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates -- have lost all traction. (...)"

"On both of these earlier occasions [the recessions of 1990-1 and 2001] the standard policy response to a weak economy -- a cut in the federal funds rate, the interest rate most directly affected by Fed policy -- was still available. Today, it isn't: the effective federal funds rate (as opposed to the official target, which for technical reasons has become meaningless) has averaged less than 0.3 percent in recent days. Basically, there's nothing left to cut.

And with no possibility of further interest rate cuts, there's nothing to stop the economy's downward momentum. Rising unemployment will lead to further cuts in consumer spending, which Best Buy warned this week has already suffered a "seismic" decline. Weak consumer spending will lead to cutbacks in business investment plans. And the weakening economy will lead to more job cuts, provoking a further cycle of contraction.

To pull us out of this downward spiral, the federal government will have to provide economic stimulus in the form of higher spending and greater aid to those in distress — and the stimulus plan won’t come soon enough or be strong enough unless politicians and economic officials are able to transcend several conventional prejudices."

A non-intellectually lazy writer might also check Krugman's blog. There he would find a post called 'The Keynesian Moment', in which Krugman states his own view quite clearly: normally, monetary tools can deal with recessions; however, "there were situations in which monetary policy could do no more"; we are in such a situation today.

At this point, a non-intellectually lazy writer might think: hmm, I wonder what's up with those quotes Jon Henke came up with, in which Krugman says that monetary policy is best? A hypothesis might occur to him: if Krugman thinks that monetary policy is normally adequate, and was adequate in the last two recessions, but that we find ourselves today in one of those abnormal situations in which it is not, perhaps those quotes come from articles written during one of the last two recessions -- say, in 2001. Regrettably, Henke doesn't seem to provide links, but since our imaginary author is not lazy, he would google them and discover that, in fact, they are from 2001. (1, 2, 3.)

That's what a non-intellectually lazy writer would have done. It's also what a writer with any sense of self-respect, or one capable of entertaining the idea that he might possibly be wrong, or one with any sense of irony would have done, before writing an article accusing other people of being intellectually lazy poseurs.

RedState should think about hiring such a writer, just for the sake of contrast. It would spare them a lot of embarrassment.

***

UPDATE: I should note that Jon Henke notes that "there are also good economic arguments for fiscal stimulus - even massive fiscal stimulus - as "in the face of deep and persistent slumps" and when "the economy is near a liquidity trap" (both of which are possible)." He didn't get it wrong; Yousefzadeh did.

Comments

[bobbyp]

I feel Red State should give the guy a raise. Money well spent, if you ask me.

bobbyp
agent provocateur

[Jay C]

So here's Hilzoy, taking a little walk through the blogosphere for light exercise after her operation (how are you feeling, btw?), and comes across an amusing sight: a large gun, on a rack above a small barrel, containing a rather large and lethargic fish.
With a handy link to RedState on the outside.

Heh.

No real criticism intended here: though I'll just observe that using the terms "embarrassment" and "RedState" in juxtaposition like this is something of an oxymoron: they really don't have any.

Oh, and minor point: Pejman's surname is spelled Yousefzadheh. The poseur!

[Platypus]

If you think Henke is bad, you should check out his erstwhile companions at QandO. Or perhaps not. They descended so far into self-parody and spitting hatred that I concluded nobody worth anything would take them seriously, so I stopped feeling the need to correct their BS ages ago. "Vicious capitalism" is their tagline, but they never get to the "capitalism" part.

[Davebo]

I see no evidence to suggest the front pagers at Red State are capable of embarrassment.

Nor Henke for that matter.

[Jay C]

Oops!

Yousefzadeh, of course.

[publius]

well done -- i actually give you most credit for reading RedState

[hilzoy]

Jay : Eek! Fixt!

[Alex Russell]

Damn glad you're back. :o)

[DrDick]

"A non-intellectually lazy writer" would not be at RedState, which is as Jay C noted the go to source for "fish in the barrel." It is an absolute job requirement that you have to be pig ignorant and dumber than a stump to post there.

[Bernard Yomtov]

You give Henke too much credit. His quote from Cowen is grossly out of context, for example.

He also did in fact get it wrong when he described the arguments for fiscal stimulus this way:

Like an alcoholic taking another drink to ease the pain, though, those arguments amount to doubling down to get relief from the symptoms.

[cleek]

intellect is irrelevant at RedState. they exist to lead the cheer, not to analyze the game.

[MikeF]

His quote from Cowen is grossly out of context, for example.

I don't think it's out of context at all, and I'm curious why you do. But the stuff about Krugman was just dumb; he is probably the most enthusiastic booster of Keynesian stimulus in the whole damn country.

[Bernard Yomtov]

His quote from Cowen is grossly out of context, for example.

I don't think it's out of context at all, and I'm curious why you do.

I think Henke is trying to suggest that Cowen thinks the Keynesian multiplier is just as silly as self-financing tax cuts. But that wasn't Cowen's point at all, at least as I read it. He was criticizing a post by Dani Rodrik, to the effect that the multiplier could be increased by protectionist policies. If you follow the exchange it turns out that Rodrik does not advocate this policy but is pointing out a potential problem, and the desirability of having other countries engage in fiscal stimlus as well.

Cowen apparently interpreted Rodrik as favoring protectionist policies, using the multiplier increase as the basis of his case, and thought that particular argument was foolish.

[MikeF]

Sure, but Cowen's point about left leaning economists over-relying on the Keynesian multiplier wasn't just targeting Rodrik. Cowen has been very cool on Obama's stimulus proposals, for example. Cowen certainly doesn't reject fiscal stimulus, but he's been pretty consistently cautionary about its limits and pitfalls in implementing it. I believe his recent post on measured GDP & fiscal policy illustrates this.

[asterisk]

I've never understood the snarky, supercilious style of blogging. Eventually, you're going to make mistakes, and the fact that you were snotty is just going to make you look worse.

I'm not sure why Pejman would talk down to the entire "reality-based community" as a group. That seems beyond intellectually lazy to me. My brother tells me he's a truly nice guy, though. Maybe it's a bravado sort of thing.

[Eric Martin]

pejwned.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Mike F.,

Fair enough. I'd say Cowen is cautious about fiscal stimulus, but hardly opposed to it. Henke, to my mind, tries to make it sound as though Cowen's concerns are greater than they are.

Maybe that's unfair of me. I don't think so, but I'll concede that the word "grossly" in my description is an overstatement.