The Curmudgeonly Professor

The Curmudgeonly Professor's Platform When He Runs for Political Office

Other than being elected sophomore class president at Powell High School in Powell WY 100 years ago, the only other elected office I ever sought was when I ran for the school board in Laramie WY and got soundly, severely, defeated.  But just in case I do decide to run for an important political office, here is my well-thought-out platform and array of political promises:

• I will balance the budget.  Boy howdy, this old chestnut has gotten zillions of people elected but has only happened maybe a couple of times and then only because the economy was in an up-cycle and the interim president didn't declare any wars.
• I will throw the bums out of Washington.  Bums being members of the opposite political party.
• No more earmarks.  Line up your sacred cows and shoo them off the streets, they will have to find a new grazing pasture.  But I'll figure out how to get a new bridge for Podunk County some way or other, you can count on it, so you won't have to wade the river any longer to get to work.
• We will pass new ethics legislation to keep corruption out of Washington.  Just like Noah finally found dry land and then when people repopulated the earth, did they all then behave themselves because they didn't get drowned?
• We will have full employment two weeks after the election.
• We will reduce the deficit with a new set of ingenious accounting rules.
• We will cut spending on everyone else's boondoggle pet projects but up the ante on our own more important stuff.
• Free iPads for everyone.
• No more required economics classes. We all know economics is boring with a bunch of charts and graphs and equations and that nobody pays any attention to economists anyway.

This agenda is only the beginning.  Balance the budget, cut spending, stop corruption, stop inflation, jobs for everyone, cut the deficit, better roads, better airports, better police protection, better health care, better schools, filet mignon for everyone.  How can anyone vote against me?   Oh phooey, I just woke up from my long nap and interrupted my euphoric dream . . . .

 

Op-Ed Columnist - The Bloody Crossroads - NYTimes.com

In 1965, Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Daniel Bell started a magazine called The Public Interest. Their idea was that the great ideological clashes between socialism and capitalism were in the past. In the age of consensus what was needed was a policy journal that would pragmatically weigh costs and benefits.

via www.nytimes.com

New Quarterly National Affairs seeks to bridge gap between issues of social science, public policy, and issues of morality, culture, and virtue. May be worth a look.

Get This: War is Now Defined as Overseas Contingency Operation

Pay attention dear readers:  Apparently a memo has gone out from on high announcing that hereafter the term war no longer exists, and that we are to refer to hostilities, conflagrations, people shooting each other and bombing each other as "Overseas Contingency Operations."  Make a note of this change.  Memorize it.  We no longer have the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or the war with the insurrectionists or the terrorists.  What we have is overseas contingency operations. 

Economists are good at inventing technical jargon, presumably to make their models, calculations, and reasoning more precise and scientifically accurate.  The real reason for inventing economic jargon, however, is so that economists can charge high fees for consulting to explain to people what their technical jargon means.  Another reason is to make economics classes more difficult and provide fodder for multiple choice and true-false exams.

For instance, if I give you an extra thousand dollars and you spend 70% of it, your marginal propensity to consume is 70%.  Also, it follows that your marginal propensity to save is 30%.  If I ask you if you enjoyed your third trip to a restaurant as much as you did your first trip there, and you told me, "No, I didn't like it nearly as much.  The steak was tough, the potatos were mushy (Dan Quayle, how do you spell potatoe?) and the waiter was crabby."  Then, your economist consultant would tell you that you were experiencing diminishing marginal utility.  My students always failed to define this term on exams, thus diminishing their chances for entry into the accounting program, finding a BYU bride who wouuld be impressed with their brains, or entry into medical or law school.  I told them, as you have no doubt read in my scientific writings heretofore, to just remember that if you eat too many bananas, eventually you will barf.  When I see former students around the country, invariably they tell me "I hated economics and don't remember anything about it, but I do remember the banana story."

The fact is that the number and complexity of technical economic terms is endless, thus necessitating my spending four years in grad school, plus my four years of undergrad work, plus 40 plus years of teaching to try and memorize and understand all of the definitions, terminology, calculations, equations, etc., that are required to explain why stuff goes up and down, but confessing that we rarely have a clue about just when or where or under what circumstances stuff may actually go up or down.  Plus, the true economic doctrine afficionados tend to change their views of the true path to the top of the mountain of economic truth from time to time, thus necessitating that one flush old and out-of-fashion economic terminology, theories, etc., down the plumbing and adopt the new and more fashionable view of how economic stuff is assumed to work.  Half of learning economics is picking the correct path to economic truth; the other half is making up stuff to assume so that no one can question your results because you are an expert.

However, it always seemed to economists that social "sciences" like political science or sociology were a little wimpy because anyone could recite the definition of terms like society, war, Congress, vote, and stuff like that.  Now, the political scientists and historians are crowding in on our territory with terms like overseas contingency operations, which opens itself up to an infinite number of true-false, multiple choice, and essay questions on examinations.  Welcome to the world of euphemistic jargon and obfuscation of reality.  Hallelujah.  The market for political consultants has just boomed, thus providing unintended benefits for stimulating the economic stimulus and providing something else to criticize and vote no on.  Bad word to end a sentence, but I don't have time to rewrite it, as I must move on to other more critical topics.  Have a nice day.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Sums Up The News of the Day: January 30 2009

Here's what you need to know today:

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell at an annual rate of 3.8% in IVQ (fourth quarter) 2008, the worst drop in 26 years.  Would have been worse if inventory investment hadn't been strong, since inventory investment counts as plus GDP. Problem is, how long will inventories just sit there and molder? 
• Consumer spending, no surprise, dropped 3.5% in IVQ 08, a bit smaller than the 3.8% drop in IIIQ 08. 
• Salon.com suggests that if President Obama appoints a Republican such as Senator Judd Gregg as Secretary of Commerce, the way is paved to achieve a 60-seat filibuster majority.  Query:  Why would a Republican want to work for the perpetrators of the worst piece of economic legislation in one hundred years? Just wondered.