lbo-talk-digest V1 #3629

Barry Rene DeCicco bdecicco at umich.edu
Mon Nov 13 06:31:56 PST 2000



> Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 03:14:37 GMT
> From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Summary of Nader analysis
>
> Well of course if Bush is anointed or elected or whatever, we will not have
> a Gore presidency as a comparison point, and vice versa. But I think as I
> have said before that we Nader supports and third party supporters generally
> should not be afraid to grant that therea re significant differences between
> the two parties, particularly in things that do not affect globalization and
> foreign policy (although the Repugs are often somewhat better there), and
> that the Dems are often better.

I thought that Nader said otherwise - before Bush (probably) won. And there won't be a true comparison point, but there rarely is in social things.


> Date: Mon, 13 Nov 2000 03:17:19 GMT
> From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Nader cost himself federal funds (Re: election demographics)
>
> >And in the case of GOP economic policies, not only do the Democrats not
> >offer a strong counter, but the GOP has a whole propaganda industry doing
> >nothing buth churning out lies: Heritage, Hoover, AEI, CEI, Manhattan,
> >Cato, Hudson, Olin, Chicago, Harvard, ....
> >
>
> Harvard? I guess you don't spend much time in Cambridge, Mass. I don't think
> there are any Republicans there; it's not allowed. They allow Nozick to play
> a libertarian, but he's the token person on the right in town.

I was referrinbg to Feldstein, the supply-sider and long-time advocate of Social Security destruction ^H^H^^H^H^H^H^^H privatization.

My main bitch with Harvard and Chicago is simply that we are getting a s**tload of really bad advice from the elite of the economics professoriate (supply-side, shock therapy for Russia, SS destruction) and I really have a case of the B*tchies for the field for that reason. Maybe we aren't getting advice as bad as in 1929-30's, but it's not for lack of them trying.

So far they've cost us $3 trillion of federal debt + whatever effects that debt had (such as choking social spending) + the destruction of the economy of most of a continent (Russia, with whatever long-term effects that will have) + several trillion more in SS destruction.

I'd love to collect from them.


> From: Michael Perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu>
> Subject: Re: Nader cost himself federal funds (Re: election demographics)


> In economics, Harvard has its share of the right. Martin Feldstein, Robert
> Barro ...., although they also have some liberals as well.

I forgot about Barro. I think that it comes down to the fact that in economics, Brad DeLong is at the left end of the allowable spectrum, Michael Jim are probably only still in the field because the people who run it haven't gotten around to 'free marketing' them yet (using the Friedman-Pinochet definition of 'free market').

Krugman has a lovely article on his web site where he exonerates the economics profession from any involvement in supply-side economics - it's all the fault of the WSJ and Jude Wanniski. He doesn't mention the fact that many of those columns in the WSJ were written by the 'elite' of the economics professoriate.

Barry



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