Grade Inflation, Swedish Style

Let me go, you befuddled Keynesian!  I'm a Rothbardian cat!The man who wrote this –

[T]he terror attack could even do some economic good. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings. … Rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending. (New York Times, September 14, 2001)

– thereby flunking the most basic lesson in economics, has just been awarded the Nobel prize in economics.

(Unsurprisingly, Krugman doesn’t understand Austrian business cycle theory either.)

What’s next – a Nobel prize in biology to a creationist?

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18 Responses to Grade Inflation, Swedish Style

  1. Anon73 October 13, 2008 at 4:33 pm #

    Maybe Krugman will yet propose the economy should be Intelligently Designed….

  2. Rorshak (1313) October 13, 2008 at 6:25 pm #

    “What’s next – a Nobel prize in biology to a creationist? ”

    Ha! Ironically someone over on the Mises forum said the exact same thing.

  3. Johan Ridenfeldt October 13, 2008 at 6:31 pm #

    “What’s next – a Nobel prize in biology to a creationist?”

    I imagine that Lysenko would be given Nobelable priority …

  4. Darian W October 13, 2008 at 7:27 pm #

    Keynesian cat is seen. Rothbardian cat is unseen.

  5. Josh A. October 13, 2008 at 8:53 pm #

    And they dump on American Literature(!) Ugh.
    The Nobel Prize has been a joke for a very long time now; at least they’re admitting it to themselves now.

  6. Matt October 13, 2008 at 10:29 pm #

    Keynesian LoLcats
    “Iz in ur economy, mizunderstanding ur bizness cycle”

  7. Darian W October 13, 2008 at 10:49 pm #

    LOLconomics

  8. Robert Hutchinson October 14, 2008 at 1:33 am #

    It’s weird, watching people who are happy about this for no discernible reason other than that they know who Krugman is.

  9. Geoffrey Allan Plauche October 14, 2008 at 1:47 am #

    Somebody needs to make a LOLcatz picture out of that Krugman picture and Matt’s ““Iz in ur economy, mizunderstanding ur bizness cycle.” It would be hilarious.

  10. John Delano October 14, 2008 at 4:14 am #

    “He will receive his Nobel gold medal and diploma along with 10 million Swedish kronor (1.42 million dollars, 1.02 million euros) at a formal prize ceremony in Stockholm on December 10. ”

    Why don’t they just give this fool a paper certificate and forget the gold medal?

  11. Sergio Méndez October 14, 2008 at 9:07 am #

    Well, I have to say that anyways the comparison with creationism is not accurate in a sense. Even if Austrian economic theory is true, the fact is that is not accepted by most economists as the ruling paradigm. I also think we don´t even know if Austrian theory is true, since we haven´t tested it (since there is no society in history that trully experienced a free market)

  12. Administrator October 14, 2008 at 10:18 am #

    Well, I have to say that anyways the comparison with creationism is not accurate in a sense. Even if Austrian economic theory is true, the fact is that is not accepted by most economists as the ruling paradigm.

    But my comparison with creationism was not for Krugman’s misunderstanding the Austrian theory of the business cycle (after all, I put the latter in parentheses), it was for the broken-window business, which one surely doesn’t need to be an Austrian to understand. Certainly lots of neoclassicals understand and even cite the broken-window argument. (Admittedly Keynesians don’t understand it, but they’re not the mainstream any more.)

    I also think we don´t even know if Austrian theory is true, since we haven´t tested it (since there is no society in history that trully experienced a free market)

    a) As a praxeologist I don’t think we need to (or even can) test it, since it’s a priori like logic or mathematics. But b) even if it were an empirical theory and did require testing, I don’t see why we would need a purely free market in order to test whether the Austrian explanation of business cycles is true. Imagine a population where everyone is sickly. I feed arsenic to a bunch of these sickly people, and they die, while the ones I didn’t give arsenic to don’t die, they just remain sickly. So I take this as empirical evidence that arsenic is poisonous and is responsible for the deaths of those who died. Would it be a good objection to my conclusion to say, “well, everyone in this society is sickly so we’ve never experienced a genuinely healthy population, so we can’t test your theories of health and sickness, so we can’t know what killed those people”?

  13. Mike Gogulski October 14, 2008 at 12:05 pm #

    Rothbardian cat sees you when you miscalculate…

  14. David Gordon October 14, 2008 at 8:11 pm #

    Would it be a good objection to my conclusion to say, “well, everyone in this society is sickly so we’ve never experienced a genuinely healthy population, so we can’t test your theories of health and sickness, so we can’t know what killed those people”?

    Is this a rhetorical question, or do you really want to know?

  15. Administrator October 14, 2008 at 11:53 pm #

    Is this a rhetorical question, or do you really want to know?

    Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really want to know?

  16. Mike Gogulski October 15, 2008 at 6:50 am #

    You know what I really hate?
    .
    .
    .
    .

    Rhetorical questions.

  17. Mike October 20, 2008 at 11:58 am #

    “What’s next – a Nobel prize in biology to a creationist? ”

    Ok to be fair, this is not a real “Nobel Prize”, but a named alike knock-off – its not given out by the Nobel Prize committee responsible for the Peace Prize, Science or Literature Prizes.

    So, not likely a creationist will every win, the real Nobel people do real science – the facke Nobel People do fake science (in this case economics).

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