But a prolonged period of widespread mass unemployment paired with a collapse in overall spending reflects something else. People haven’t decided they want fewer apples and more pears, they’ve decided they want fewer goods and services and more safe liquid financial instruments.Woody Mattchuck trying to wind his swollen tongue around economists' jargon is like watching a Star Trek episode in which everything has been edited out except the technobabble; it is a script composed entirely of reversing the polarity. He has less than no idea what he is talking about, which is bad enough, but he combines his own mental feedback loop with a psychopathic insouciance in the face of human suffering. Saying that "people" have decided they want "fewer goods and . . . more safe liquid financial instruments" is like saying that European Jewry decided it wanted a smaller and less geographically widespread population. It proposes that the perpetration of a colossal wrong upon innocent people is the result of some invisible collective will.
-Matty Woodchuck
On the plus side, I believe that it is not possible to write anything dumber than the above quotation. I believe that this is the stupidest thing Matthew Yglesias has ever written, possibly the stupidest thing any human being has ever written, and that not even he is capable of descending below the bottom of this pit.
42 comments:
Bravo, Maître!
Well not people people -- people in the collective abstract. Projected notional human collective forms have decided in some tertiary social manner that they prefer in some sense to not want to collectively desire to yearn to think to imagine wanting stuff.
Some pits are bottomless. Bank on it.
Naw, Yggie can do way dumber than that. Hell, all he's gotta do is cite his spirtual mentor, J.Bradford "Lemme throw up a differential equation here" DeLong.
Anyway, today the geniuses at the WaPo editorial board have come up with their scheme for "handling" Egypt. According to them, if we just ditch our man Mubarak right quick, that'll fix any unsavory memories people might have. I mean, if you wanna talk flaming moronitude, top that...
-- sglover
IOZ, you fucked up. You haven't thought this through...
What if the government created more safe liquid financial instruments?
Did you think of that?
More dollars, euros, more sovereign debt. (Are you with me?)
And then the PEOPLE WILL DECIDE they've had enough. They'll increase their demand for goods and services.
All better. We're all rich, bitch!!
Didn't think of that, did you?
I only quibble with "not even he is capable of descending below the bottom of this pit."
I believe you've underrated Yggles' numbskullery.
The Star Trek analogy, though, coughing-fit funny.
Soylent Green is made out of the peeeepl! THA PEEEPL!
"psychopathic insouciance in the face of human suffering. Saying that "people" have decided they want "fewer goods and . . . more safe liquid financial instruments" is like saying that European Jewry decided it wanted a smaller and less geographically widespread population. It proposes that the perpetration of a colossal wrong upon innocent people is the result of some invisible collective will."
You're talking about the founding of Israel, amirite?
Even on Star Trek, some pits are bottomless.
I think what Abrams wrote (that Bush is responsible for possible future democracy in Egypt) is stupider!
People have decided they want less filet mignon and more catfood.
I don't know, I think the guy's body of work has to contain stuff dumber than this. This style of dumbassery when it comes to econo-babbly is pretty common with him.
See also - this
Ioz, I am so glad you're a regular reader of Yglesias. That way I get the good bits without having to slog through his stuff myself.
I should read him, though. It's culpably negligent not to. His suety visage is the face of our time, his deranged smart-alec drivel the voice of meritocracy.
not even he is capable of descending below the bottom of this pit.
Give him time. He'll rise to the challenge.
I don't see why you find him so outrageous.
"Essentially the Marxist and the real business cycle theorist are united in the view that these things happen and mass unemployment and prolonged periods of immiseration are just what happens in a market economy."
Marx never wrote about economic contractions created by government intervention.
Rational choice theory gives us all the credit we deserve for taking all factors into account before making economic decisions. MY is actually complimenting us, acknowledging the intelligence we possess that allows us to make these well-informed decisions.
In fact, just now I was contemplating how govt debt will impact my future tax liabilities, then adjusting my monthly spending targets to account for this future drain on income.
Nothing to do with intelligence ("the stupidest thing..."), everything to do with emotions. Silber has covered this already, convincingly.
come on, people, don't be fatuous. ioz is simply trying some good ole reverse psychology here. he knows full well yggie can do better (worse). he's daring him to. in fact, he eagerly anticipates it. he's fiending for it. it's a form of voyeurism for him.
Indeed the pit is bottomless alas.
Safe liquid financial investments require adult diapers, which stimulates the... economy, that's it!
Well, the Jewish people did kind of decide it wanted a smaller and less geographically widespread population. Anti-semitism or the Holocaust wasn't the whole issue, it was kind of about colonialism and nation states too.
Mind you, totally agree about the stupidity of this particular quotation by Fat Boy, though yr hyperbole is kind of hyperbolic. Just don't think Zionism is a very good parallel here.
5000 years of beautiful history from moses to sandy koufax, you're god damn right i'm living in the past!
A Sandy Koufax reference? You guys are older than I imagined.
Obviously you're not a golfer
The DS9 remake of that episode is the bomb.
I see the concept of aggregate demand continues to stump many of the smart folks who comment here.
Pity, that.
The pit is a wormhole.
The pit is the celestial temple.
I agree with Matt (even the "even stupider" Yglesias links). Economics is not a morality play. And the remedy is indeed for the Federal Reserve to provide more cash, which is just what Greenspan (and even Volcker) did in previous recessions.
And the remedy is indeed for the Federal Reserve to provide more cash
The remedy is to increase demand, full stop. Despite the deficit crybabies, massive govt spending to create jobs, fill the holes in state budgets & subsidize non-oil energy development is the only solution. Anything else will fail or, as is happening now (stock prices are up!) will only help those who don't need help. Austerity will kill us all.
bovines don't make choices, they just eat.
The pit is the celestial temple.
Would that mean that Yglesias is Benjamin Sisko? or Kai Winn with questionable facial hair?
I'm not complete in line with John Taylor's views (I agree with Scott Sumner and the quasi-monetarists), but I think his intra-Keynesian critique of the aid-to-states portion of the stimulus was persuasive. He claims it was mostly offset by reductions in state borrowing. That's leaving aside the actual value of what the state governments spend on.
One proxy to look at to see whether a measure will be effective is inflation expectations. They've been below trend for a while and when speculators start thinking the economy will heat up (not necessarily when a measure comes into effect, but when it becomes expected that it will be done), we'll see it.
Scott Sumner is a nutter.
His naive quantity theory of money based ideas are wrong and won't work. His solution is still fundamentally just pushing on a string and would only result in increased bank reserves. Sumner's fix for that is to tax bank reserves, in the hopes that it will cause bankers to make loans that they don't want to make. It won't. The whole thing just stinks.
dah_sab is mostly right. Even if his is not necessarily the only solution, it's still better than Sumner's.
If it's gonna be cat food than it's Fancy-Feast for me. Only the best will do.
Sorta like Edroso's usual disclaimer re Jonah Goldbleg -- "the dumbest thing ever written, until Jonah Goldberg writes something else".
For some reason I flashed on the commercial for 127 Hours, James Franco falling down the crevice, getting pinned by the boulder. Except in this case, France is Teh Intartubez, and Teh Woodchuck is the immovable rock.
Really, blogging might be the least harmful outlet for his sort of, erm, intellect. Otherwise, he'd be just another loyal water-carrier for Goldman Sachs or Halliburton or Riggs Bank or Blackwater (now Xe, gesundheit), rationalizing whatever scumbaggery his insect overlords concocted.
At least where he's at he can just romp with his fellow free-range chickens, and not be given any access to actual levers of power.
I love that he knows what "people" have "decided". At some point, they may also decide to revisit the question of how the 'murkin economy has doubled since 1980, yet the median wage is about where it was in 1974. Perhaps "people" will "decide" to roll up a guillotine on Wall Street. See how he likes them apples, or pears, as the case may be.
If it's gonna be cat food than it's Fancy-Feast for me. Only the best will do.
That stuff'll kill you, just pure junk food, pig's lips & cheeks, a hoof or two thrown in for flavor. Though I guess when you're starving calories are all that matter.
Don't forget the ethical dimension of this one, the quality of which is right down there with the intellectual aspect of this howler among howlers.
Not only does MW obliterate classes with his Harvard-boy "people," but shit, man, even the mainstream press has repeatedly published stories admitting that the rich are hoarding cash.
This kid is a True Democrat, ain't he? What is the quadro-triticale to such puffs of nothing? Votes, I suppose.
Ah, the holocaust line... does it portend that I can once again start receiving the well written lines I that keep me sifting through the chaff of ideas here? I can only hope.
Likewise, the madness and obliviousity of this comment thread... hark... I see a return to the golden age of this here blog... Let's stick with the momentum, folks.
Ioz is really sleeping on the article Yggles linked to, where Benjamin fucking Kunkel writes like ten thousand words about Marx and the financial crisis, maybe because they couldn't get Chuck Liddell to do it.
It's not just the business cycle, but the whole circle of life thing - sunshine, water, minerals, food - and the fossil energy that keeps moving some of this stuff around - that's making it more evident that Malthus was right, in the long run, about how you can overdo the tribble thing, metaphorically speaking.
See also:
William R. Catton, Jr. (born January 15, 1926) is an American sociologist best known for his scholarly work in environmental sociology and human ecology. His intellectual approach is broad and interdisciplinary. Catton's repute extends beyond academic social science due primarily to his 1980 book, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change.
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