Letter to the Observer here.
All the usual tosh from all the usual suspects.
Just about the entire economics department from SOAS. Prem Sikka (yes, they are counting an accountant as an economist), R. Murphy (ditto), the bird who writes Gaian Economics, various nef-ites, Gregor Gall (professor of industrial relations I think, not an economist?).
Essentially, a list of those who have or do write for The Guardian plus those who would like to.
Increase benefits and pay for it through an FTT (even the EU has said that an FTT will shrink the economy).
Green Quantitative Easing. Print money to spend on windmills in effect. They’re incapable of understanding the difference between quantitative easing (printing money to bring down long term interest rates) and printing money to spend.
Oh, and the Government should direct investment through a national investment bank. As if it’s not been tried before and doesn’t work?
15 responses so far ↓
1 PeteB // Oct 30, 2011 at 10:05 am
sort of tangentially related – have you seen this
http://www.aosc.umd.edu/~ekalnay/Population-Kalnay.ppt.pdf
“Per dollar spent,
family planning reduces four
times as much carbon over
the next 40 years as
adopting low-carbon
technologies”
“Family planning is
cost effective and should be
a primary method to reduce
emissions”
“Copenhagen: no discussion on
population or family
planning: it is a taboo subject”
2 Davinder Kohli // Oct 30, 2011 at 11:11 am
Isn’t it interesting that Tim claims to have a licence to comment on anything but when people of different persuasion write he claims that they are not qualified. Why does the same not apply to you or is it a case of envy?
Tim adds: We all have the right to comment on whatever we want. It’s known as “free speech”.
We do not all have the right to claim to be something we’re not. That is known as “lying”.
They are exercising their right to free speech when they comment, just as I am when I comment upon their free speech.
Their claiming to be economists is lying.
3 Falco // Oct 30, 2011 at 11:23 am
Davinder – you did notice I take it that the group of usual idiots are claiming to be economists? Not merely a Tim style enthusiastic and slightly obsessive amateur but actual, presumably qualified and employed as such economists.
That what they’re saying is not even internally consistent doesn’t help their case either.
4 x // Oct 30, 2011 at 11:37 am
I just read similar filth
“100 leading economists tell George Osborne: we must turn to Plan B
• A financial transaction tax to raise funds from the City to pay for investment in transport, energy and house building”
Seriously screwed up people.
5 Jim // Oct 30, 2011 at 11:55 am
Right. Projected FTT revenue is €57bn (EU figures). UK is 65m population out of EU population of c. 500m, or 13%. Assuming we get 13% of the FTT revenue (ignoring the fact that probably 50% of it would come out of London in the first place) we would get another €7.4bn, or just over £6bn.
This is going to transform the UK economy is it? A sum of less than 1% of current UK government expenditure?
It’s an accounting error when the government spends over £700bn, and GDP is c. £1.45Tn.
6 Chris // Oct 30, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Davinder, in the immortal words of Pat Moynihan, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.
7 Andrew K // Oct 30, 2011 at 2:05 pm
From the nef website on one of the signatories
“James joined nef in November 2010. He works principally on the modelling of a just and sustainable macroeconomy as part of The Great Transition initiative.
James previously worked as a policy advisor at HM Treasury . . . ”
That would account for a lot.
http://www.neweconomics.org/about/james-meadway
8 Frances Coppola // Oct 30, 2011 at 2:38 pm
The Green QE paper did the rounds a while ago and I seem to remember Tim fisking it then. I had a go at it more recently: http://bit.ly/pglqEQ and http://bit.ly/pzLcme. There were so many basic errors that I had to split the post in two because it was too long for Blogger! How anybody can take this garbage seriously is beyond me.
Richard Murphy describes himself on his blog and on his Twitter profile as a “political economist”. Political, yes – but economist?
9 Earnest // Oct 30, 2011 at 7:37 pm
I know it’s already been pointed out that they double-counted some people, but I’ve created an Excel tutorial on how to quickly find the duplicates on lists like this.
http://nobleinreason.blogspot.com/2011/10/counting-economists-excel-tutorial.html
10 Rob // Oct 30, 2011 at 7:40 pm
“the Great Transistion Initiative”. What the fuck is that? Is it like Mao’s Great Leap Forward?
11 Rob // Oct 30, 2011 at 7:41 pm
^^ transition
12 Arnald // Oct 30, 2011 at 7:56 pm
So what does the blackboard say we should do?
Tested, is it?
Of course all economics is political, it’s a fucking social science. You can’t have pure maths controlling life.
You can’t have private enterprise controlling my life.
Call yourselves libertarians?
What plan have you lot got?
Prove it works other than your onanism.
When was the last time worstall ever got involved at the dirty end of your meaningless contrivances.
At least this is something to think about.
Is libertarianism merely a front for dickheads?
Oh yeah, UKIP. Not politically, nor anything to worry about.
Honestly, Worstall, it’s one thing being a pedant, but it’s quite another thing pretending you know about social sciences.
here we go
what are social sciences?
twats. you’re talking about it now. like tunnel visioned flat earthers.
13 Rob // Oct 30, 2011 at 9:27 pm
Blah
14 Frances Coppola // Oct 30, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Ooh lovely, Arnald has commented!
Arnald, I’m not an economist but I know a darn sight more economics than Richard Murphy does, it seems. Regarding that Green QE thing, I’ve never seen so many howlers in one paper. Why on earth should having left-wing political views excuse someone from doing basic research and getting their facts right?
15 JustAnotherTaxpayer // Oct 31, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Frances, great stuff. The point about inflation is absolutely key to this debate, because our macro policy delegates management of the level of demand to the Bank of England. So the whole argument about “fiscal stimulus” is mostly meaningless. It is up to the BOE to manage the level of aggregate demand in the economy. End of Story.
The government *cannot* use fiscal policy to move the level of demand, under the current regime. If it did want a different level of demand, it could simply change the BOE mandate, and they would use monetary policy to move demand. No fiscal spending changes required.
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