Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • Saw this and thought of you. Maps that show ethno-diversity, feelings of love, e

    Saw this and thought of you. Maps that show ethno-diversity, feelings of love, emotionality, and many other anthropological/tribal values across the globe.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-19 14:14:00 UTC

  • WE NEED MORE PEOPLE? Are children an economic good? No. They are a necessity, pr

    http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/08/does-the-world-need-more-people-posner.htmlDO WE NEED MORE PEOPLE?

    Are children an economic good? No. They are a necessity, preference, or luxury.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-19 03:36:00 UTC

  • know its painful to accept, but politics like all other human behavior is bounde

    http://crookedtimber.org/2013/08/18/krugman-keynes-kalecki-konczal1/comment-page-1/#commentsI know its painful to accept, but politics like all other human behavior is bounded by morality more so than ignorance.

    There is too much search for cognitive error in this thread, and too little understanding of morality.

    Austerity worked in Europe. It is working in America. Because it

    is accomplishing moral ends – according to the moral criteria of citizens.

    Humans will suffer greatly to punish the immoral. And that is what they are doing.

    It may be difficult to grasp but morality in the political context is as important as prices and incentives. If people do not think the world is moral, they will not act morally. And they hate the idea that the world might be immoral. Morality and norms are the original human currency. People are masters of its accountancy

    Conservatives place higher value on norms than consumption. And their view is that empowering the government is rewarding immorality. Conservatives understand morality. They speak in moral language and they win moral arguments. And the control the public discourse with moral arguments.

    I have been arguing since ’08 that the only way to push spending through would be to limit it to moral channels. And the progressive argument is always the same: morality doesn’t matter and its all nonsense.

    But its not. Its as necessary as law. More so.

    If you had told me this as a student I would have laughed. But there it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-19 03:30:00 UTC

  • insight: “I’m here to bat for the economics discipline. Although John Q is clear

    http://crookedtimber.org/2013/08/18/krugman-keynes-kalecki-konczal1/comment-page-1/#comment-478854Anonymous insight:

    “I’m here to bat for the economics discipline. Although John Q is clearly a card-carrying member, I doubt he’d dispute that he is far in the tail of the distribution of economists’ opinions. I don’t attribute this to anything underhanded on his part, but rather to reasonable disagreement. (I hope he’ll extend the same courtesy to me.)

    Endorsement of Kalecki’s argument (which he got via Konczal) that “hatred for Keynesian economics has less to do with the notion that unemployment isn’t a proper subject of policy than about the notion of shifting power over the economy’s destiny away from big business and toward elected officials.”

    The “hatred” with Keynesianism among economists I know isn’t anything to do with political bias. Consider the simple multiplier idea, that people spend some fraction (the marginal propensity to consume, MPC, e.g. 0.8) of their income each year. Taken literally, this implies that lottery winners will spend 80% of their winnings within the next 12 months. On a more general (and relevant) note, the Keynesian approach does match the empirical evidence on consumption patterns at all. Friedman’s Permanent Income Hypothesis is far more in line with the data, albeit that the perfectly rational expectations idea is clearly much too strong. So you try and mix the two, and you get something like New Keynesian or behavioral macro. That’s where 90% of macro has gone for the past twenty years. There is no hatred of Keynes, and no politics in that.

    Abandonment of the idea that the economics profession is engaged in honest intellectual debate, in favor of the conclusion that the rightwing of the profession, including leading economists, is characterized by denialism and bad faith.

    Krugman’s portrayal of the economics profession as malevolent political hacks (be it claiming that the move from Keynesianism was politically motivated, or the outrageous suggestion that Reinhart and Rogoff actively behaved dishonestly with their data) is the clearest example of bad faith that I can see.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-19 03:10:00 UTC

  • Somewhere. Out there. In the urban wilderness. Is a part of my right brain. Its

    Somewhere.

    Out there.

    In the urban wilderness.

    Is a part of my right brain.

    Its taken a day’s vacation. ‘Maybe getting some sun.

    And it didn’t bring a cell phone.

    Because no matter how many times I call, it doesn’t answer.

    And so my mental puzzle pieces are… Lets just say, hmmm… not falling into order.

    And I keep having to find a whisk broom to sweep up missing nouns. ….

    Sigh.

    Either the scotch or the chocolate mousse. Not sure which. :).

    Isn’t life awesome? lol

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-18 08:48:00 UTC

  • BECOMES A REACTIONARY Politics is determined by morality not economics. People w

    http://crookedtimber.org/2013/08/18/krugman-keynes-kalecki-konczal1/comment-page-1/#commentsKRUGMAN BECOMES A REACTIONARY

    Politics is determined by morality not economics. People will universally endure hardship to punish immorality. The majority may like democratic candidates, but they prefer conservative morality. The conservatives understand this which is why they hold power.

    I stopped posting thus mantra on left economic blogs in 2012, trying to persuade them to strike a bargain with conservatives on education reform. Which they would have bought. But the left us just as fanatical in their devotion as the right. So its not one sided.

    You might also put Krugman in context: austerity worked. It worked in both Europe and the states. It achieved moral ends. And it taught lessons: the lessons the productive people wanted taught.

    Communism failed. Socialism failed. And much of democratic redistibutive socialism is failing.

    When socialism failed the left in academia created and promoted Postmodernism: anti-rationalism. Now that their only hope is failing. They will resort to reactionary tactics that are even less rational than Postmodern irrationalities : diversity and equality.

    Humans all demonstrate the moral principle of proportionality. But proportionality is dependent upon your moral code, and your moral code on your family structure and social class. (Reproductive desirability.)

    Democracy cannot work across heterogeneous family structures. In particular not across single mother, serial marriage and nuclear or extended family structures. Bucause the morality if property rights differs irresolvably between them.

    Economic reality, political data, and scientific research dismantling the progressive and postmodern religious beliefs are combining to accomplish what a universe of conservative and libertarian think tanks could not.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-18 08:29:00 UTC

  • I DIDNT UNDERSTAND THAT THE FAMILY AND TRIBE WERE MORE IMPORTANT THAN NATION AND

    I DIDNT UNDERSTAND THAT THE FAMILY AND TRIBE WERE MORE IMPORTANT THAN NATION AND STATE.

    I actually am … Shocked.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-18 08:03:00 UTC

  • FIRST PROGRESSIVE WHITE FLAG We conservatives and libertarians spent 30 years tr

    http://theumlaut.com/2013/07/09/age-of-negation/THE FIRST PROGRESSIVE WHITE FLAG

    We conservatives and libertarians spent 30 years trying to destroy the progressive fantasy, first economically, second intellectually, third morally, and finally with media. We were slow. But we were willing to lose everything to stop communism, socialism and its successor ideological postmodernism.

    Morality is a mirror of family structure. And family structure a mirror of production structure. Without a common family structure, we have no common morality. Without a common morality we cannot democratically select priorities, and instead are stuck in perpetual conflict.

    The northern universalist fantasy was developed in ignorance of our own homogeneity as an outbred extended family. The rest of the world finds this anti-kinship ethic horrifying and immoral. Neither they nor we understood that our la k of corruption was a byproduct of our small states and extended tribalism. As such its impossible elsewhere – where trust is impossible at our level.

    The historical fact that the proletariat never leads anything, and cannot, was not enough. The falsehoods of the labor theory of value, the necessity of prices and incentives, the fact that capitalism produces mass consumer goods cheaply was not enough. The failures of socialism and communism were not enough. The success of converting communist countries to consumer capitalism wasn’t enough. The economic crisis wasn’t enough. But the result of diversity combined with the degeneration of the family, and the loss of our privileged status of the only technologically advanced society was enough.

    But we cannot undo the damage from destroying the nuclear family, intergenerational saving and lending, and the rule of common law, the constitution, or the homogeneously moral society.

    Pending a dramatic reversal driven by economic necessity the progressive movement will succeed as did the french revolution, the Bolshevik And Maoist revolutions, albeit more slowly: the reduction of the competitive norms of the people and setting them back for centuries.

    The left didnt kill capitalism. Just our civilizations prosperity. And maybe our status as a people forever.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-18 08:01:00 UTC

  • Curt Doolittle shared a photo

    Curt Doolittle shared a photo.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-18 07:17:00 UTC

  • Curt Doolittle shared a photo

    Curt Doolittle shared a photo.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-18 07:14:00 UTC