Monday, January 19, 2015

The Pay Cut You Take to Work for Mercatus

On news that he will join the Mercatus Center, Scott Sumner writes:
Through a very generous donation of Kenneth Duda (a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who is supportive of market monetarism), the Mercatus Center has created a new program on monetary policy, and appointed me as director...

 As you might expect from someone who has donated money to both MoveOn.org and Mercatus, Ken Duda is not a strongly partisan or ideological person.  He has told me that he’s basically a pragmatist, who became very frustrated by the condition of the US economy after 2008 and thought that my monetary policy ideas made sense...
 My contract with Mercatus runs through mid-2018.  I won’t discuss the monetary details, other than to say I’ll make roughly as much doing this project over the next 3 and 1/2 years as I would have made teaching at Bentley over the next 2 and 1/2 years. 
The economic perspective of Ken Duda:
I don't see why a rational investor would care if US federal debt is 50%, 100%, or 200% of GDP.

3 comments:

  1. That's just about the dumbest statement I've ever read. If deficits don't matter, why should anyone pay taxes, Mr. Sumner? 200%? 500%? 10000%? Doesn't matter! Brilliant.

    Imagine how stimulative it would be if we closed down the IRS and you kept everything you earned while the government borrowed every cent it spent on its wonderful "services"! And those lending us the money to go on buying sprees will blindly do so indefinitely!

    Mr. Sumner needs to have his head examined. He's clearly suffered brain trauma.

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    Replies
    1. I believe that is called "Modern Monetary Theory". I thought it was a joke at first, but they are serious, they have PhD's and they run university econ departments.

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  2. I don't see why a rational investor would listen to a word Ken Duda says if he's advocating the devaluation of their investments and saying that there is nothing wrong with that.

    Either he's getting paid to tow that barge of sophistry, or he truly doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

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