Paul Krugman gave up being an honest economist a long time ago - shortly after he learned that the cool crowd gave him more attention when he conjured up economic-like arguments to support the left's irrational view of the world.
His most recent piece of propaganda claims that increased national debt causes economic growth. He supports his claim by looking at 5 countries and showing that the countries with higher debt levels grew faster over the last 3 months. Thousands of Krugman zombies must have been elated to finally see hard evidence that the 1% aren't any smarter or harder working: All you have to do is take on a lot of credit card debt.But an economic Jedi -- an undergraduate from the University of Illinois -- uncovered the subtle flaw in Krugman's logic: The earth has more than 5 countries, and the world wasn't created 3 months ago. The student used a graph posted on his Facebook page to show that if you look at the 21 largest countries over the past year, you see a strong, clear relationship: Economies with higher debt grow less. (By the way, the IMF agrees with the undergrad.)
Krugman's analysis does offer one important value: It's an excellent example of what statisticians refer to as "strangling the data" to get it to say whatever the left wants to hear.James Eaves is a Professor of Management at Laval University and blogs at JellyFields.com
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Krugman Zombies Partying Like It's New Years Eve
But only because Krugman, himself, strangled some data. James Eaves explains (via American Thinker):
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Face it, Krugman gave up being a serious economist a long time ago. There are some left of center economists that are still quite serious, b ut Krugman is not one of the. Someone like a Dean Baker at least largely sticks to economics and doesn't try to act like a celebrity.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but do they call him on it or just go along so as not to rock the boat after all he's one of them?
Delete"An unsophisticated forecaster uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts - for support rather than for illumination"
ReplyDelete"Also, he is liable to piss all over them"
DeleteIt's clear from inspection that the regression relationship presented here is driven by two observations.
ReplyDeleteI read through a couple page of comments on one of his articles once. That was enough for me. Anyone listening to him won't be swayed by inconvenient things like facts.
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to revoke his nobel prize. Some of those left of center economists need to call Krugman out before he destroys the reputation of the entire profession.
ReplyDeleteNot sure about taking his Nobel prize - he was a good economist when he won it. But as for other serious left of center economists, that's a great point, why don't they call him out?? Probably worried about their own careers!
DeleteI'm shocked that Krugman would resort to such measures...
ReplyDeleteLol.
DeleteProtip- if creating a table showing Debts effect on GDP, debt goes on the X axis, not the Y axis, otherwise your graphing gets broken. (as your correlation line will only go through each X point once, but could cross one Y point multiple times.) For instance, if you use basically the same data, even that random 21st country of Greece he used to really drop the average of GDP/Debt, a polynomial trendline would show that with high debt you will EITHER have tiny growth OR HUGE GROWTH.
ReplyDeleteIt may JUST be possible that the nobel prize winner knows stats a bit better than a 21 year old. And the 21 year old did nothing to help his case by not knowing math I learned in high school.
In the graph shown, the X axis is "National Debt as % of GDP". The Y axis is "Annual GDP Growth (2011)". Apparently, debt IS on the X axis, not that it matters anyway, since this is a scatter-shot graph and the trendline would show the same results if the axes were reversed; it would just slope in a different direction.
DeleteAs much as the IMF I'm sure.
DeletePaul Krugman is not an economist.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the Ancel Keys 7 Countries Study from the 1950's- Ancel Keys had data on saturated fat intake vs. heart disease rates from 22 countries but only reported the data on the seven countries that would prove his hypothesis that increased saturated fat consumption causes heart disease.
ReplyDeleteWhen all the data is plotted out increased saturated fat consumption appears to be protective of heart disease!
Not only do we get Keynesian spending nonsense, but Krugman even throws a little broken window fallacy into his post...
ReplyDelete