Economics qoute game / Economist Word Fight

[nirgrahamUK]

how about a thread of posts of various economists making fun of / tearing into each other.

for example.

@von Weiser

on Ricardo :>

If Ricardo’s idea were correct, and
commodities were, in the strict sense of the word, of no importance to
us, except that the possession of them saved us labour, which we
should otherwise have to apply elsewhere, then the difference between
rich and poor would perforce be quite other than what it unfortunately
is. The rich man’s privileges would consist only in possessing those
things which the poor man will also possess, but which he must first
give himself the trouble of acquiring; his prerogative would lie, not
in greater enjoyment or a more secure existence, but in greater ease.
What nation would not eagerly exchange the facts of life for this
Utopia!

[MatthewWilliam]

I enjoyed J Bradford Delong’s “criticisms” of Mises’ Theory of Money and Credit:

@"[Brad

(http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/12/when-reactionar.html)"]

My view is that Money and Credit is very readable–compulsively readable, in fact: I have just spent two and a half hours telling myself “it’s OK; I will just read one more page…”. But it is only readable in a rhetorical-excess-train-wreck mode, for it is also totally bats— insane.

[nirgrahamUK]

ok, perhaps we should narrow the field , so that we would generally ‘agree’ with the statement as qouted…

i want to read of economists getting 0wned, rather than slandered [:P]

[MatthewWilliam]

Hmm…this book is full of ownage

Keynes’s book is not well organized. Therefore my criticism, like the book itself, will not follow the most logical order and will be sometimes repetitive.

When Keynes speaks, therefore, as he does here and elsewhere, of “equilibrium” with underemployment, he is talking nonsense. This is a contradiction in terms, like talking of an orderly chaos or a triangular circle. When Keynes speaks, in short, of an “equilibrium” with unemployment, he is not really speaking of a position of equilibrium at all, but of something quite different. He is speaking of a frozen situation, a frozen disequilibrium, a situation in which some price, interest rate, or wage-rate, or many prices, interest rates, and wage-rates, are prevented, either by contract, labor-union resistance, or government intervention, from adjusting to an equilibrium level.

This flagrant misuse of terms is one of the central fallacies of the whole Keynesian system. When this misuse is recognized, his whole system collapses.

[nirgrahamUK]

@MatthewWilliam

Keynes’s book is not well organized. Therefore my criticism, like the book itself, will not follow the most logical order and will be sometimes repetitive.

i wasnt on guard and this made me laugh. thanks!