Jesus F. Christ, Barry, I defend Keynesianism up and down, I defend the New Deal up and down, here, and on EoftheAW, and on Brad Delong’s blog, but when I point out that correlation-is-causation is, by itself, a weak argument in favor of the New Deal, suddenly I’m a denialist. And when I ask you for just ONE example of how correlation-is-cause meets standards of proof in the social sciences, you come up with . . . nothing.

Also, somehow I’m supposed to know some definite meaning of “hardcore rightwing economist”. Look, Barry: Ben Stein gets to call himself an economist. (Bachelor’s in the subject, long ago.) Oh, look over there: Donald Luskin gets to call himself an economist. (Less than a year of college, IIRC.) Oh, don’t look back: Jude Wanniski gets to call himself an economist. (Don’t get me started.) The ranks of economists—not a card-carrying membership organization, last I checked.

You want some respect? Try some precision. In reading. In quoting. In defining your terms. In applying them. Nobody on this thread, or on any other thread regarding this New Deal revisionism, has interpreted what I’ve said as “denialist”.

You want some respect? Try some precision.

MT: “Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s main econ advisor, is on the faculty of U. of Chicago. But their econ dept could lose all its liberals, and would still not exemplify “hard-core right-wing politics”. In economics, that’s usually “end welfare”, “total laissez faire” and “go back to the gold standard.” Even Milton Friedman was in favor of a guaranteed national income, and was a monetarist, or “fiat money” heretic, to the gold bugs. I’m sure you can even find him guardedly endorsing certain interventions here and there.”

No, ‘go back to the gold standard’ is far beyond right-wing economics, into people who use ‘fiat currency’ as a curse, rather than as a technical term. It’s like equating ‘hard core leftwing professors’ with actual unreconstructed Khmer Rouge supporters. The presence of Goolsbee impresses me no more than the presence of Norm Ornstein (sp?) at AEI; I’ve come to call it the ‘Sodom and Gomorrah principle’ (keep one honest man around, so God don’t smite ya).

In terms of ‘hard-core rightwing economics’, perhaps I should clarify – do you expect to go into Chicago in 5 or 10 years, and find econ professors there praising the regulatory regime which (hopefully) the Obama administration will implement? Or will they be saying that it’s unnecessary, and too restrictive, and not needed in ‘these modern times’? [amazing, isn’t it, how ‘modern times’ call for changed measures, from people who read Adam Smith?]

However, if you’d like to continue having an actual debate, please tell me what would exceed ‘mere correlation’ when judging policy changes?

Yeah, but it’s obviously (I thought) implied in what I said that the theory you’re claiming is proven is not one of the very implausible ones (or one of the disproven ones). Obvious enough to me, anyway.

In any case, Barry, you still need to substantiate your claim that, in the standards of proof for the social sciences, mere correlation is enough. I’m not a sociologist, but I don’t see such looseness in the sociology I’ve looked at.

As for how I got the impression you thought the Great Depression might have killed millions, it was Chris’s “Ah, then I guess population change wasn’t a major factor”, which you quoted later in such a way that it looked to me like it was your response to Chris, not a quote from him. Sorry for the mistake, but you might consider cleaning up your quoting style if you don’t want to be misunderstood this way. Note how you quote me in #17, above: properly, the second paragraph you use should also lead off with a quote. Better yet: blockquote the whole thing, or put it in italics, the way others here do.

As long as I’m here:

And in terms of economics itself, we’ve in the middle of watching a Lesser Depression (if we’re very, very lucky), which sure as h*ll wasn’t predicted by the majority of Econ Nobels;

They weren’t predicting a Lesser Depression, and I don’t think any are saying that now. At worse, I’ve read that they expect a long, deep recession. Better policy responses, starting last summer, might have headed off even that prospect. Better policy responses even this summer might have made some difference. It’s very hard to predict a recession (Brad Delong maintains you can’t know for sure until you’re in one, which is hardly “predicting”, is it?), and it’s also hard to predict policy responses.

. . . the bulk of their predictions are probably now laughable.

Has it occurred to you to go look at the bulk of their predictions?

But do you really expect to walk into Chicago in ten years, and find anything other than hardcore right-wing politics taught there?

Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s main econ advisor, is on the faculty of U. of Chicago. But their econ dept could lose all its liberals, and would still not exemplify “hard-core right-wing politics”. In economics, that’s usually “end welfare”, “total laissez faire” and “go back to the gold standard.” Even Milton Friedman was in favor of a guaranteed national income, and was a monetarist, or “fiat money” heretic, to the gold bugs. I’m sure you can even find him guardedly endorsing certain interventions here and there.

You’re kind of overheating here, Barry. I repeat my suggestion: some background reading, first?

Oops! You’re right. So I have no idea why he thought you thought the Depression killed millions of americans.

Though the evidence that the population slowly increased doesn’t say that millions didn’t die quicker than they would have otherwise.

My father’s family though had fewer children. Of eight children in one generation the grandchildren went:

0 oldest
0 next oldest
1 third
0 forth
3 fifth
2 sixth
3 seventh
4 eighth

The second half had their peak repoductive years during and after WWII.

This could (perhaps unfairly) summarized as: ‘No matter what proof, there will be a set of people Who Just Won’t Accept It.’.

Thus the term “denialists” – it puts them in the same mental category as flat Earthers, creationists, and HIV denialists because they act so similar. They all hold a belief most people interpret as falsifiable, but then when it is falsified, try to defend it anyway, effectively making it nonfalsifiable through special pleading, evidentiary double standards, etc. In the meantime the rest of humanity has already discarded the idea as falsified and moved on.

P.S. Judging by your post, perhaps the font alteration bug is confined to preview? I find that inserting blank lines can sometimes make it look normal in preview, but if it is going to look normal in the final post anyway, maybe it doesn’t matter.

“To a hardcore New Deal Denialist, the graph would only “show” that the New Deal didn’t do enough economic damage to preclude some “natural” (laissez faire) rebound in employment. Then they move the argument on to (or back to) the old assertion that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression. Next thing you know, lunch is over. No mind has been changed.

And that’s how it goes with these folks. To a certain mentality, all free market failings not attributable to evil government intervention can be traced back to a loss of faith in the Magic of Markets. (Except for market failures like bubbles, which are held to have some actual benefits, and anyway should only be left to themselves to cure. Which they will. Cuz that’s how the Magic of Markets works, dummy! By magic!) In this view, government action is evil wherever it enables or encourages any such loss of faith.”

This could (perhaps unfairly) summarized as: ‘No matter what proof, there will be a set of people Who Just Won’t Accept It.’. For example, in the 150 years since ‘The Origin of Species’, science has produced a vast range of evidence supporing evolution, some of which would have been considered to be sheer magic to the scientists of Darwin’s age. But creationism just keeps plugging along (albeit not in science, where evolution has been proven
to the satisfaction of 99.9% of people involved). The disbelievers merely make up reason after reason, frequently recycling older, discredited reasons, once they’ve cooled a bit in obscurity. More evidence doesn’t persuade, and even proving that the ‘experts’ in creationism have to be lying doesn’t persuade – and that’s a commonsense approach, building on the layman’s experience that the proven liar shouldn’t be trusted.

And in terms of economics itself, we’ve in the middle of watching a Lesser Depression (if we’re very, very lucky), which sure as h*ll wasn’t predicted by the majority of Econ Nobels; the bulk of their predictions are probably now laughable. But do you really expect to walk into Chicago in ten years, and find anything other than hardcore right-wing politics taught there?

At some point, you’ve just got to call a crank a crank, and a liar a liar.

Note: CT did something perverse to my fonts; I’ve tried to fix them, but it’s hard to fix invisible things.

“Barry, earlier you appeared to be unaware that the Great Depression did not kill millions of Americans. (Note that WW II killed fewer than half a million Americans.) Are you sure you’ve done enough background reading to contribute productively and coherently to this discussion?”

Michael, where did I say anything which would lead you to that opinion?

Michael Turner: “What logical paradox? ”

Michael Turner, earlier: “Seemingly unnecessary caveat: when I say “proof” here, I mean it in the loose sense of “scientifically proven”, which should be understood as “all other plausible theories have been disproven or shown to be very implausible.”

If a plausible theory has been shown to be very implausible, it’s no longer plausible. This wasn’t a serious dig, but a gentle nudge at a logical flaw (and I’m not claiming to be above such errors on my own).

Michael Tuner: “We’re talking science here, not mathematics. As in mathematics, you can prove a scientific theory wrong with just one counterexample, (theory: no mammal lays eggs; disproof: the platypus), but you can’t prove a scientific theory right in the logical sense that you can prove a mathematical theorem right.”

Nudge nudge, again – if we’re talking about science, not mathematics, then the term ‘as in mathematics…’ is probably not appropriate. In mathematics, one is arguing both in a platonic world of ideals, and by conditioning on a set of conditions (axioms, other theorems). Outside that world, the only thing which is sure is that any set of preconditions is at best a good approximation of the world.

Second, in the world of science, you produce proof to meet an adequate standard of proof to that science. If one can’t do a randomized, controlled, double-blinded experiment, then one can’t honestly insist on that level of proof, unless one agrees to submit that level of proof for one’s own assertions. And I’ve never seen a right-winger who didn’t accept a decent regression as sufficient evidence, when arguing in favor of a right-wing economic theory.

J Thomas: “The way I read what he was saying, he saw somebody else imagining how things might have gone with a lazy fare approach, and they assumed things would turn up peaches. He wanted to imagine the same thing with a different slant. He supposed that millions of people would die from the failed economy, and then the question would be how we should count that in terms of unemployment. People who die don’t go on unemployment rolls afterward, but if you’re comparing outcomes maybe they ought to. Like, an economy where unemployed people are rounded up and killed would officially have an unemployment rate close to zero, but you wouldn’t quote their unemployment statistic like it was a good thing…..”

Um, J Thomas, perhaps you’re referring to the NDTRC as mentioned by Michael Turner in comment 19, referring to this comment by Michael Turner in a previous thread:

http://crookedtimber.org/2008/11/10/amity-shlaes-a-public-service-reminder/#comment-258419
(sorry, but I couldn’t get the link to work).

Part of science is about what happens. For that part you have to actually look and see what happens. And part of science is about what you call things. Definitions. That part is somewhat arbitrary but not completely arbitrary, and it’s more like mathematics. If you say that livebearing is one of the things that mammals have to do, part of the definition, then you’ll say that platypuses are not mammals. You might wind up with a new name for it. But if you decide that it’s a mammal then you’ll accept the egg thing.

It’s a definitional choice, not a proof.

In math you start with choosing axioms and then you find out what results from those axioms. In biology you start with what happens and you keep looking for definitions that better classify it, and also you look for axioms that might fit.

Barry, earlier you appeared to be unaware that the Great Depression did not kill millions of Americans. (Note that WW II killed fewer than half a million Americans.)

The way I read what he was saying, he saw somebody else imagining how things might have gone with a lazy fare approach, and they assumed things would turn up peaches. He wanted to imagine the same thing with a different slant. He supposed that millions of people would die from the failed economy, and then the question would be how we should count that in terms of unemployment. People who die don’t go on unemployment rolls afterward, but if you’re comparing outcomes maybe they ought to. Like, an economy where unemployed people are rounded up and killed would officially have an unemployment rate close to zero, but you wouldn’t quote their unemployment statistic like it was a good thing…..

Not just clear, but realistic and sensible. You’d think that goes without saying, but if I were you, I’d say it over and over, and back it up. Because some people don’t get it.

I was browsing around in Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man, and noticed she slams the New Deal for, among other things, delaying by decades the return of the Dow to its 1929 level. As with much of what she writes, I found myself collecting my jaw off the floor. If anything, a rapid return to that bubble level (regardless of how achieved) would have been a harbinger for a repeat of the same disaster. In real terms, IIRC, the 1929 market valuation was about the same as the market’s level at the end of the bubbly 60s, when the U.S. economy was much larger. This would make the late 20s a huge bubble period. Maybe, if you express it in terms of real stock market valuation per capita, it was bigger by that measure than the two most recent peaks, ridiculous as those were. But I haven’t worked that one out yet.

Somehow, such valuations are, for her, an indicator of economic health, not of batshit craziness. Something tells me her favorite economist must be Kevin Hassett. (From more browsing around, it appears she believes there is no reasonable upper limit on the rate of economic growth. This is beyond voodoo economics, and well into doodoo economics.)

What logical paradox? We’re talking science here, not mathematics. As in mathematics, you can prove a scientific theory wrong with just one counterexample, (theory: no mammal lays eggs; disproof: the platypus), but you can’t prove a scientific theory right in the logical sense that you can prove a mathematical theorem right.

Science is a process that deals only in falsifiable statements, and results only in an accumulation of falsifiable statements that have successfully resisted attempts to disprove them. Very often there’s a proposed mechanism, but not always. If you tell an astronomer, “the heliocentric theory only looks correct, because God (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster) arranges the universe to look that way to us,” an astronomer will shrug and say, “science can’t prove you wrong; on the other hand, nobody can. We’re scientists, we don’t play that game.”

Barry, earlier you appeared to be unaware that the Great Depression did not kill millions of Americans. (Note that WW II killed fewer than half a million Americans.) Are you sure you’ve done enough background reading to contribute productively and coherently to this discussion?

Aside from the logical paradox you’ve stated, one isn’t going to disprove or show implausible all other theories. The denialists have theirs, Keynesians have theirs, and the Keynesians fit the data much better.

The denialists have spent 60 f*cking years lying and bullsh*tting; I no more expect them to stop than I expect creationists to stop (note that Paleyism was resurrected as Intelligent Design, despite being the immediate predecesser to evolution, and having been discredited for a century and a half). At this point, after the CT and ‘Edge of the West’ threads, it’s pretty clear to me that FDR/New Deal Denialists are either (a) liars or (b) stone ignorant (note that a plot such as starts this post is not the sort of thing that FDRNND’s point to much, because it’s such overwhelming evidence against them).

No, it wouldn’t be hopelessly naive; I’d just say “temporarily suspended” rather than abandoned.

As to the larger question – I think the way to tell if it’s working is to set a clear set of macroeconomic guideposts that you’re trying to hit as a way to focus Keynesian economic planning on a set of key variables. Just thinking off the top of my head, but they might have been something like unemployment at 3% or below (Beveridge’s estimate of full employment), growth of 5% or better, inflation below 3%, or something along those lines.

The important thing is to ratchet down spending at a slower pace than the economy is improving – FDR’s problem wasn’t that there wasn’t economic recovery going on, but that it was too fragile to absorb a sudden 100% cutoff of stimulus. Had he decided to cut back at a slower rate, it might have worked. (Probably not, given that the unemployment rate was still high at 9%)