Wednesday 6 April 2011

Pseudo-economics and earthquakes

Reading Dim Post this morning, I see that Danyl McLauchlan still believes that money can be plucked from the trees—that it would be “economic stupidity” to cut taxes and government spending to help New Zealanders faltering finances recover from the earthquake.

_Quote_Idiot The reality is [says Danyl] that government spending flows into the economy, so if you cut it you’re going to have basically the same impact as raising taxes.

In other words, it’s not important where money comes from to “subsidise” recovery, just as long as a stream of purchasing power emerges from somewhere. Anywhere. Even if that purchasing power must first be taken out of taxpayers’ pockets.

As if having folk in their role as taxpayers subsidise themselves as consumers somehow provides some sort of stimulus.

What Danyl forgets is is that subsidies are paid for by someone, and that no method has yet been discovered by which the community gets something for nothing.

And if  you think there has been, then I have a plastic waka to sell you.

33 comments:

Berend de Boer said...

Moreover, Danyl seems to believe ChristChurch won't be rebuilt unless the government does it.

Woe us.

Falafulu Fisi said...

One dumb ass economics' illiterate is Tapu Misa, see her article from the Herald yesterday.

"Cuts in public services won't stimulate economy to grow"

Who's argument is Tapu Misa is taking? Yep, she quoted enthusiastically Stiglitz. Misa should read more, because she's obviously hasn't read much about why stimulus packages doesn't work.

She would be better writing articles on how to weave Island baskets. That's where her expertise is. She's got a PhD is basket weavings.

Anonymous said...

"She's got a PhD is basket weavings."

What?

Is your definition of an "economics' (sic (oh the irony)) illiterate" someone who doesn't agree with you?

Jol Thang

twr said...

I guess if you don't have any coherent arguments to put forward, you can just point out typing mistakes in other people's posts and use that as your proof that they are wrong.

Anonymous said...

Or you can go further and criticise the pointing out of grammatical errors when criticising someone's literacy. That's really constructive.

Jol Thang

Falafulu Fisi said...

Jol Thang said...
Is your definition of an "economics' (sic (oh the irony)) illiterate" someone who doesn't agree with you?

No, my definition is not about disagreeing with me. Reality & existence are both independent of humans. Tapu Misa has shown that what's inside her head, reality must conform to it, which is the opposite of what's happening in the real world.

Stimulus has not worked and here she is, quoting 2 Keynesian economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. These are the same 2 who supported the first economic stimulus package which hasn't shown to work. If it doesn't work, that's reality. Reality is not going to oblige to the wishes of Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.

It is akin to some misguided religious idiots (and intelligent design supporters) who frequently quoted Einstein out of context saying that Einstein believed in God or something similar as somehow the great Physicist himself was tilted in his belief towards the existence of an omnipotent power, therefore reality simply must conform to Einstein views (according to the misguided idiots).

Tapu Misa should dig further outside from her comfortable reading of the New York Times to find out the reality of economics stimulus, where it has shown not to work (in the past & the present). What did she do? Yep, she just read Paul Krugman's New York Time's regular articles about his misguided views on how to stimulate the economy; therefore Krugman's words are somehow God's words.

She's too fuckn' lazy to say look at Dr Yaron Brook's commenting on economic stimulus or perhaps Peter Schiff's regular Youtube videos about financial markets.

A real reporter knows his/her stuff well. Basket weavers pretend to know what they write about, but when others read about what they write & published in the media, then it is obvious that she/he has no fuck'n clue about what she/he's writing about. That's the problem with basket weavers. They pretend to know about economics but that pretentious only exposes them as basket-weavers (in other words - dumbfuck).

Its about agreeing or disagreeing with reality and not about my views. Tapu Misa wrote a piece advocating for something that clearly disagrees with reality.

Falafulu Fisi said...

My previous comment disappeared into the thin air.

Anonymous said...

"Its (sic) about agreeing or disagreeing with reality and not about my views."

But you clearly think that your views are the ones which reflect reality. This is by no means certain. There's a substantial body of work purporting to show the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary stimulus in lifting economies out of recession and plenty of evidence to suggest that the most recent US stimulus prevented the economy from falling off a cliff. You guys furiously and angrily deny this is the case, but this denial is driven by the philosophical inconvenience of the facts rather than any dispassionate analysis. You do exactly the same thing with climate change. Thus it's you who may be denying reality, which is odd given that you claim to be rational.

Jol Thang

Falafulu Fisi said...

Jol Thang said...
There's a substantial body of work purporting to show the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary stimulus in lifting economies out of recession and plenty of evidence to suggest that the most recent US stimulus prevented the economy from falling off a cliff.

Dang! Don't try to tip-toe on my domain. I read economics peer review publications all the times. It is like my morning breakfast,lunch & dinner. I do this because I develop computational models for application in economics & financial markets analysis.

Ok, Mr/Mrs Thang cite your references here. Name those articles, including which journals they were published, including their authors and volume & issue #.

I'm looking forward to your list of body of work purporting to show the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary stimulus.

Anonymous said...

Are you implying they're not there? You can use Google I'm guessing. Go look.

Jol Thang

twr said...

FF, it's another incarnation of Judge Holden who will accuse you of exactly what it's doing, and then sit back and watch you tie yourself in knots trying to reply to a non-question with a real answer.

Don't play its game.

Falafulu Fisi said...

Look Thang, your previous post imply they exist. They either do exist or not.

You are the one who asserted that they exist. It is not my job to prove you that they exist. You are the one who has to show proof and not me. Don't fucking waste my time trying to prove something you asserted that exists. Show me your proofs , ie, the publications.

You sound like that guy Barry that I debated on Global Warming a year or 2 ago, then PC banned him for his debating style of keep repeating the points over & over and not attempting to refute the points I made.

Falafulu Fisi said...

Twr said...
FF, it's another incarnation of Judge Holden who will accuse you of exactly what it's doing.

That's what I suspected Twr. The debating style is very similar. I debated with Judge Holden at Nominister last year about the book The Spirit Level (TSL) which is used by leftists to push for more socialist policies.

I linked to the following article shown below to make my arguments that the TSL authors came up with a kindergarten type data-analysis type to reach their conclusion. My argument, is if society is to be forced to redistribute wealth, then after a while, the inequality will settle in again, because it is a natural process, regardless how much a government is trying to redistribute wealth. I also linked to the original paper (published in journal European Physica A) where the article was based on.

"Why it is hard to share the wealth"
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7107--why-it-is-hard-to-share-the-wealth.html

The fucker (Judge Holden) didn't try & read the original peer review paper to understand the analysis/model that the author proposed. I suspected that Holden had no clue to the math/equations in the paper, because he was evasive in addressing the points the authors made. He thought that the authors work were rubbish, without any refutation at all of which part of the author's model/formula derivation were rubbish. Just a blanket assertion that the paper was rubbish. I reached a conclusion then that Judge Holden is someone who argues from a position of ignorance and not waste time to responding to.

I'll link to that thread on Nominister later and let the readers here see what I mean. Thang/Holden is arguing from a position of ignorance.

Falafulu Fisi said...

PC, I had another post that disappeared into the thin air.

Anonymous said...

It's your domain guy. You said so. Are you telling me there is no evidence anywhere demonstrating the effectiveness of economic stimulus measures? Simple question.

Jol Thang

Falafulu Fisi said...

Thang, I can't find any.

So, show me the fucking articles you implied that exists.

Stop fucking waste my time.

Anonymous said...

Extraordinary. Stop wasting mine.

Jol Thang

Falafulu Fisi said...

How am I wasting your time, when you in fact the one who claimed that, there's a substantial body of work purporting to show the effectiveness of fiscal and monetary stimulus in lifting economies out of recession.

If you made an assertion then back it up. Or did you just consult Ken Ring.

Your argument is no difference to God believers. They just asserted that God exists and when challenged to show proof, they in turn replied back that the opponents should disprove the existence of God.

So, stop arguing from a position of ignorance. Either admit that you mentioned it & hoped that I wouldn't have followed upon it. I did and I have exposed you as a liar. It means that you're a fucking time-wasting. You asserted something to have existed but then cry-baby when you're being challenged as somehow to avoid being seen as a fucking time-waster.

Save yourself & stop trying to reply, because I think you're wasting PCs bandwidth. Either reply with articles that proved what you said or STFU.

Anonymous said...

You said it was your domain and then said you couldn't find any articles at all attesting to the effectiveness of economic stimulus measures, implying there were none. That's an extraordinary claim for a so called expert given that economists have been analysing, researching and arguing over this for decades. You're either not an expert at all, or you're ignoring reality. Either way you're wasting my time.

Jol Thang

Anonymous said...

Cut Danyl a little slack today, he's also getting pounded by the closet-commies on Public Address over university education... imagine that!

Falafulu Fisi said...

Thang said...
You said it was your domain and then said you couldn't find any articles at all attesting to the effectiveness of economic stimulus measures, implying there were none.

That's exactly what I said. I didn't find any. This showed how dumb you are. In any field, whether economics, physics, chemistry or any, specialists would have not read all the peer review papers, because there are 100s of thousands of them. It doesn't mean that every expert have read all of them. Impossible.

What I challenged you is to back up your assertion and you failed. As I said, I read lots of economic papers, but that doesn't mean I have read all the millions of papers which are available in the literatures. So, if you have seen these so called papers then cite them here otherwise, STFU.

You're Barry in disguise aren't you? You evade, weasel, obfuscate, repetitive, in the hope that I will simply stop asking you to prove what you stated.

How on earth can you state something to exist then turned around and claim that it is my job to find them. Did you just made it up? I believe you did, for the reason that you can't cite a single peer review reference here.

Anonymous said...

Christ. For someone who says that this is your domain you're pretty clueless. Here, I'll give you some pointers:

http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/documents/Economic_Stimulus_House_Plan_012109.pdf

or

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/115xx/doc11525/05-25-ARRA.pdf

or

http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2008/el2008-20.html

or a heap...

http://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?q=effectiveness+of+keynesian+economics&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

Also see Krugman, Stiglitz, Galbraith and of course Keynes. Never seen any papers on the effectiveness of economic stimulus? pffft

Jol Thang

Falafulu Fisi said...

Mr Thang, I asked you to cite peer reviews and all you did was citing online opinions? Do you know the difference? Your references is more like someone pointing to the NZ Herald articles for proof.

Hehe, you're funny. Reading the opinions you cited, none of them confirmed that stimulus like the $700 billions over the last 2 years has worked. State which exactly the paragraphs in those articles that showed stimulus (printing money out of thin air) has worked?

I asked you for proof and you come with more obfuscations. Cite me some fucking studies which show stimulus money out of thin air has worked. Your the online opinions you cited didn't state that it worked.

Now, try a little bit harder. Find me some peer review articles and not online opinions.

Falafulu Fisi said...

Besides Mrs Thang, you cited the article with title from CBO (CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE):

"Estimated Impact of the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act on
Employment and Economic Output from
January 2010 Through March 2010"

The article is an estimate and not a proof. Do you know the difference? It is like Ken Ring estimating/predicting that there will be a big earthquake in Christchurch area with magnitude 7.1 between the 27th to 30th of April. See the difference?

Have you got any clue of what model that they use at CBO? Yep, they use the useless DSGE (Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium). I say it is useless because they've never got it correct. It is useless because it is based on a false assumption that the market is stable and always in equilibrium state. The market is never is an equilibrium state.

Anonymous said...

Kind of makes me wonder why NotPC has Beaker (i.e. Danyl) listed under "NZ Good People" in the blog roll? Especially when he's so keen to label more worthy bloggers as cheer leaders for big government ?

Obsessive compulsive atheism perhaps ??

Falafulu Fisi said...

The United States Congress hosted hearings on macroeconomic modeling methods on July 20, 2010, to investigate why macro-economists failed to foresee the Financial crisis of 2007-2010. Robert Solow blasted DSGE (Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) models currently in use: from Wikipedia.

Robert Solow quoted:
--------------------
I do not think that the currently popular DSGE models pass the smell test. They take it for granted that the whole economy can be thought about as if it were a single, consistent person or dynasty carrying out a rationally designed, long-term plan, occasionally disturbed by unexpected shocks, but adapting to them in a rational, consistent way... The protagonists of this idea make a claim to respectability by asserting that it is founded on what we know about microeconomic behavior, but I think that this claim is generally phony. The advocates no doubt believe what they say, but they seem to have stopped sniffing or to have lost their sense of smell altogether.

House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight

Anonymous said...

"Cite me some fucking studies which show stimulus money out of thin air has worked."

It's your "fucking" domain. I shouldn't have to spoon feed you. I gave you some help to get you started, now educate yourself. Bye now.

Jol Thang

Falafulu Fisi said...

A quote from the following article (see link):

In today’s high-tech age, one naturally assumes that US President Barack Obama’s economic team and its international counterparts are using sophisticated quantitative computer models to guide us out of the current economic crisis. They are not.

The best models they have are of two types, both with fatal flaws. Type one is econometric: empirical statistical models that are fitted to past data. These successfully forecast a few quarters ahead as long as things stay more or less the same, but fail in the face of great change. Type two goes by the name of ‘dynamic stochastic general equilibrium’. These models assume a perfect world, and by their very nature rule out crises of the type we are experiencing now.

As a result, economic policy-makers
are basing their decisions on common sense, and on anecdotal analogies to previous crises such as Japan’s ‘lost decade’ or the Great Depression (see Nature 457, 957; 2009). The leaders of the world are flying the economy by the
seat of their pants.

...
...


The economy needs agent based modelling, appeared in Nature 460, 685-686 (6 August 2009).

I have a copy of the full article if anyone is interested. Those who can't get access to Nature.

Krugman & Stiglitz are firm believers in this bullshit DSGE (Dynamic stochastic general equilibrium). The question to ask anyone with a brain out there, is why people should listen to economists like those mentioned above who believe in bullshit model? WHY, WHY, WHY Tapu Misa, Thang, Holden?

Falafulu Fisi said...

Mrs Thang said...
It's your "fucking" domain. I shouldn't have to spoon feed you.

You didn't spoon fed me. Spoon feeding as if you cited what you were asked to back up your claim. The opinions you cited were not proof at all. So, show proof here or STFU.

Shane Pleasance said...

Seems like this is an issue of belief that statist intervention (in this instance in the form of economic stimulus) MUST be the right thing to do, and that the reason it has had an adverse effect is unknown, but not proof that the stimulus did not work.

"Mainstream" thinking cannot be wrong regardless of evidence.

The smart & wealthy know this fallacy and are acting rationally. Witness gold price even in the face of powerful moves by governments to depress it's price for fear of devaluation of US$.

FF, to use my sons online gaming analogy, you owned and teabagged JT.

Anonymous said...

"FF, to use my sons online gaming analogy, you owned and teabagged JT."

ROFL. I should watch what you're son's actually doing on the internet guy.

For someone who claims economics is her "domain" Miss Fisi has a very narrow reading list, which I've attempted to expand so that she can get a better handle on her "domain".

Jol Thang

Falafulu Fisi said...

Thang said...
I should watch what you're son's actually doing on the internet guy

Yep, watch this 10 year old.

http://www.youtube.com/user/enthusiastmathkid#g/u

He's gonna take your precious daughter, man (or woman). Watch out for your wife too, because entusiastmathkid is going to get her as well.

Anonymous said...

Shit you're weird. Seriously.

Jol Thang