Friday, April 29, 2011

Econ 101 in tha house, fools! 2011 style, suckaz!

It appears that the other Keynes v. Hayek video was, in fact, actually round two. Here's round one:



(H/T to Les.)

7 comments:

Tony Muhlenkamp said...

If you like these videos, you might appreciate "Cafe Hayek" by GMU economist Don Boudreaux

Ken said...

Second Tony Muhlenkamp's recommendation. Russ Roberts is a co-blogger there.

Drang said...

EconStories TV produced both videos.
http://econstories.tv/

Brian said...

I am just flabbergasted that you missed that one when it first came out. That is one internet demerit for you!

The Old Man said...

Saw it the first time around. Both make sense to me. Still couldn't be a Keynesian at gunpoint.
Guess my logic circuits are wired different than 52% of the electorate...

Standard Mischief said...

I remember arguing with a Keynesian online. I kept on insisting we never scrimped and saved during the boom years to pay down the last recession. He pointed out the Clinton years.

I told him the debt never went down. He insisted that it did.

I told him that you can't simultaneously save the Social Security surplus and also at the same time spend the exact same dollars to pay down the debt.

He reluctantly agreed, but insisted that the numbers went down anyway. All you had to do was adjust for inflation.

This is true. adjust for inflation and we just barely paid down the debt in inflation adjusted dollars. Barely.

And that was enough for him. Go negative in some strange voodoo microscopic way and that somehow validates Keynesian theory.

Ken said...

In the post on the new video, someone mentioned that even Keynes wouldn't be a Keynesian today. The individual was right, but Keynes equally wouldn't recognize most of the people calling themselves Keynesians these days.

As an Austrian myself, I wouldn't defend Keynes, but even he advocated running an honest-to-Pete surplus in the boom years in order to afford the "pump priming" when cometh the bust. The bit about the war ending the Depression sounds like Krugman (just you wait).

Today's lot are better called by the name Denninger gave 'em: the Free S**t Army.