Few experts in our society could pull off saying: Emergency!!! We will suffer terribly if you don’t spend a trillion dollars right now overpaying for stuff from our friends! No, you don’t have time to study the problem, nor will we present an analysis for your review. No, other experts in our field cannot actually see this problem, and there will never be data showing the problem really existed. You just have to trust us and give us the trillion right now!!
I was going to suggest the same change when the post went up, but then I checked dictionary.com and discovered that "exasperate" is listed (occasionally as "archaic usage") essentially as a synonym of "exacerbate".
I think you want the word "exacerbated", not "exasperated" in the fifth paragraph. Well, anyway, _I_ want that word there, because it is more correct.
"Exasperated" means "made more angry or annoyed", while "exacerbated" means "made more severe or intense". They're similar in both sound and meaning, thus easily conflated.
Certain groups were eager to accept the claims of the experts as it lowered the status of groups they don't like, ie republicans, wall street bankers, "fat cats", etc.
Certain groups were eager to accept the claims because they get a whole lot of money.
Robin: A thought occurred to me about medical spending. There exists a classic economic model that would be consistent with medical spending being completely uncorrelated from health outcomes - that of a monopoly with the ability to implement price discrimination. (In other words, it's exactly what you'd expect if people paid widely varying amounts of money for the same average quality of treatment.)
Krugman is a professor of economics at Princeton University and got the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for work published in 1979, 1980, and 1991. He may be most famous for his op-ed column in The New York Times, but he is a serious academic economist.
Paulson holds a poltical position and is from Wall Street. But Bernanke is an academicwith a "nonpolitical" job. If the Fed had used open market operations and let FDIC wind up failed banks, with the "bailout" being a bailout of FDIC, would this make itless likely that Bernanke would be reappointed? Assuming recovery starts before 2010,he would certainly be respected among academics if he wasn't reappointed due topressure from... failed Wall Street firms (how much pressure could they impose?)
Do you think he is looking foward to a high paying job at a money center bank?
I just don't get the "Bernanke is bailing out his friends" story.
Peter McCluskey,I believe that the news media and (less confidently) the government treat Bernanke & Paulson interchangeably, which somewhat addresses your point. Moreover, it's not just about raw power, but about areas of expertise. If Paulson came out against rent control, would that matter any more than that economists claim a consensus? (Actually, I don't think it's that politicians reject economists' opinions on rent-control as being out of their expertise, so much as politicians don't notice that economists have any opinions outside what politicians recognize as their expertise. Obama is striking in noticing how economists view themselves.)
Mainly, I wonder if "experts" is a just a completely wrong choice of category, though I have nothing better to suggest.
Why do you call Paulson an economist? Wikipedia describes him as an investment banker with degrees in English and Business Administration. It doesn't seem surprising that an investment banker has more influence than economists.
Until recently, the nice thing about American democracy was that it was hard for policy to rapidly get worse. What happened? Robin Hanson points to the amazing epidemic of deference to doom-saying economists. Is that the real story?&n...
The whole point of democracy is to slow down decision making, to use criticism to reduce the odds of really major mistakes. And here we have one of the biggest decisions in a while and the President himself urged it to be passed much discussion.
I don't know whether it was corruption or not, but I do know it's not the way they are supposed to make decisions.
What Eliezer said. Also, how much more in taxes should a typical person expect to pay in their lifetime as a result of this?
Scope insensitivity surely plays a role here. Reading one more zero on the end of a number doesn't have ten times the emotional impact.
Mr. Language Person,
I was going to suggest the same change when the post went up, but then I checked dictionary.com and discovered that "exasperate" is listed (occasionally as "archaic usage") essentially as a synonym of "exacerbate".
Mr. L, made the change you suggest.
Josh, you all can lower my status for lots less than a trillion; heck I might go as low a billion.
I think you want the word "exacerbated", not "exasperated" in the fifth paragraph. Well, anyway, _I_ want that word there, because it is more correct.
"Exasperated" means "made more angry or annoyed", while "exacerbated" means "made more severe or intense". They're similar in both sound and meaning, thus easily conflated.
Certain groups were eager to accept the claims of the experts as it lowered the status of groups they don't like, ie republicans, wall street bankers, "fat cats", etc.
Certain groups were eager to accept the claims because they get a whole lot of money.
Robin: A thought occurred to me about medical spending. There exists a classic economic model that would be consistent with medical spending being completely uncorrelated from health outcomes - that of a monopoly with the ability to implement price discrimination. (In other words, it's exactly what you'd expect if people paid widely varying amounts of money for the same average quality of treatment.)
Krugman is a professor of economics at Princeton University and got the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for work published in 1979, 1980, and 1991. He may be most famous for his op-ed column in The New York Times, but he is a serious academic economist.
Andrew, I wasn't trying at all to dis global warming scientists.
Peter, I'm talking about public perceptions, which may not distinguish finance from economics.
nazgulnarsil, cute comic.
bill, Krugman is far more than a journalist.
If Krugman, who is really nothing but a journalist, can win the Nobel Prize for economics, then is there really much to economics in the first place?
Paulson holds a poltical position and is from Wall Street. But Bernanke is an academicwith a "nonpolitical" job. If the Fed had used open market operations and let FDIC wind up failed banks, with the "bailout" being a bailout of FDIC, would this make itless likely that Bernanke would be reappointed? Assuming recovery starts before 2010,he would certainly be respected among academics if he wasn't reappointed due topressure from... failed Wall Street firms (how much pressure could they impose?)
Do you think he is looking foward to a high paying job at a money center bank?
I just don't get the "Bernanke is bailing out his friends" story.
Peter McCluskey,I believe that the news media and (less confidently) the government treat Bernanke & Paulson interchangeably, which somewhat addresses your point. Moreover, it's not just about raw power, but about areas of expertise. If Paulson came out against rent control, would that matter any more than that economists claim a consensus? (Actually, I don't think it's that politicians reject economists' opinions on rent-control as being out of their expertise, so much as politicians don't notice that economists have any opinions outside what politicians recognize as their expertise. Obama is striking in noticing how economists view themselves.)
Mainly, I wonder if "experts" is a just a completely wrong choice of category, though I have nothing better to suggest.
trust me, super dangerous!http://wondermark.com/447/
Why do you call Paulson an economist? Wikipedia describes him as an investment banker with degrees in English and Business Administration. It doesn't seem surprising that an investment banker has more influence than economists.
Whatever Happened to Gridlock?
Until recently, the nice thing about American democracy was that it was hard for policy to rapidly get worse. What happened? Robin Hanson points to the amazing epidemic of deference to doom-saying economists. Is that the real story?&n...
The whole point of democracy is to slow down decision making, to use criticism to reduce the odds of really major mistakes. And here we have one of the biggest decisions in a while and the President himself urged it to be passed much discussion.
I don't know whether it was corruption or not, but I do know it's not the way they are supposed to make decisions.