• Economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff write a scholarly paper purporting to show that high levels of government debt lead to slow economic growth. For the record, I have not read this paper.
• Krugman, while praising the authors’ previous work, asserts that this time, there’s no there there. Specifically, he says that most of the Reinhart-Rogoff evidence comes from four episodes. According to Krugman, none of these four episodes counts. One could certainly well imagine a reasoned argument along these lines.
• Krugman’s, however, is not that reasoned argument. Here is how he dismisses the episode labeled “Canada in the 90s”:

advocates of austerity have been using Canada in the mid-90s as an example of a success story; surely they can’t have it both ways.

The problem, of course, is that there is no “they” who are trying to have it both ways. Reinhart and Rogoff have made an argument about Canada in the 90’s. That argument stands or falls on its own. It is no refutation to observe that somebody else might have made some other (correct or incorrect) argument about Canada in the 90’s.

The fallacy here is to lump together all of the people with whom Krugman disagrees on matters of policy, assume they all agree on matters of theory, and hold them responsible for each others’ views, even to the point of accusing A of inconsistency because he disagrees with B. For the first time ever, I went ahead and left a comment on Krugman’s blog to this effect. But it’s exactly the same intellectual crime I’ve been objecting to here on The Big Questions for weeks.

Most recently, I objected this past Monday, which brings us to the beginning of our roundup. Tuesday, we talked about the ultimatum game, in which experimental results indicate that people are hesitant to steal money. I’m not sure what that tells us beyond what we already knew. Wednesday we had video from one of the most amazing plays in the history of baseball. And on Thursday and Friday, we had a quiz question and its solution to test your understanding of comparative advantage—one of the deepest and most fruitful insights in the history of economics.

I’ll be back on Monday.

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Riddles. We tackled some riddles: Why do guys with deep pockets take on risky ventures instead of selling them off to someone with nothing to lose? Why, when a plane headed for Atlanta is diverted to Greenville, does everyone else choose to stand for an hour at the ticket counter while I (and only I) saunter over to the Hertz counter and grab one of many available cars? And why does Jet Blue, after investing $800 million in its new terminal at JFK, choose to make that terminal so hellish a place that I for one will never travel through it again if I can possibly avoid it?

Paul Krugman. Yes, I know, I can’t seem to let this topic go. I was at it here, and then here, and here and finally here.

Let me summarize my complaint in a paragraph: Krugman has some policies he’d like to see enacted. Some people oppose those policies for silly reasons and others oppose them for sensible reasons. Krugman habitually ridicules the silly reasons and pretends that he has therefore dispensed with the sensible reasons.

More specifically, Krugman attacks “deficit hawks” but ignores the “spending hawks” who present a much stronger case for fiscal restraint. He’s right to attack the deficit hawks, who make the silly mistake of conflating spending (which is costly) with tax cuts (which are not)—but then he makes the same mistake himself when it suits his purposes.

Incidentally, my Toy Stories post contains a link to a toy model intended to highlight the key questions that Krugman willfully ignores. At the end of that post I added an addendum confessing to arithmetic errors in the model and inviting readers to correct them. On a second reading, I realized there are no arithmetic errors—just one typo in an equation. Because some comments refer to that typo, I’ve chosen not to correct it, but it’s explained in the current addendum to the original post.

Books. Our book posts covered everything from the ridiculous to the sublime to the magnificent.

Math. The music of the primes gives a glimpse of the glorious intricacy of arithmetic, and our post on Fermat’s Last Theorem gives a small taste of how to tackle a particularly vexing problem.

Videos We had videos on cruel and unusual punishment, on the end of racism, and on how to fix everything.

Miscellaneous. Can Mike Huckabee possibly believe the things he says about religion? Does anyone still subscribe to the superstition of dollar cost averaging? And why the disproportionate outrage about an oil spill in the Gulf when there’s so much more to be outraged about?

Okay, we’re more or less caught up now! See you Monday.

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On Wednesday we contemplated the prospect of Betelgeuse going supernova, and asked this question: If an explosion happens, by how much will various earthbound observers disagree about its timing? Answer: If the explosion becomes visible just as you’re standing on a streetcorner while a driver runs over your toe, heading in the direction of Betelgeuse at 70 miles per hour, then you’ll say it took place 600 years ago whereas the driver will say it took place 600 years plus half an hour ago. A small amount in the scheme of things, but here at The Big Questions, we worry about the details.

(The geometry is here. To forestall confusion, the steeper red line is not the driver’s worldline; it is parallel to the driver’s worldline. His worldline crosses the vertical axis at the time when light from the explosion arrives, about 600 years above the illustrated line.)

On Thursday, we lamented the politicization of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, which, as our commenter Uncle Maury observed, began under the first President Bush, but has been carried to new depths by the current administration. It is sad indeed that Council Chair Christy Romer allowed herself to be dragged into this muck.

And on Tuesday and Friday, we had a little light refereshment.

I’ll see you next week.

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On Wednesday, we had some biting words about math education from my colleague Ralph Raimi, whose web page I continue to recommend for amusement and edification.

And on Thursday and Friday, we took on current events, lamenting the President’s misleading suggestion that tax increases can be a cure, or even a palliative, for excessive spending, and lamenting the general lack of perspective that leads to more gnashing of teeth over a $10 billion oil spill than a $300 deadweight loss due to taxation.

Several commentators noted that with this last post, we’d come full circle right back to Bastiat, author of timeless That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen. In the words of commenter Seth, “A duck caked in oil is seen. The deadweight loss is unseen.” (ScottN and others made the same point.) Yes, that’s probably the explanation. How sad that after 200 years, Bastiat’s lesson (that the unseen is as important as the seen) has yet to sink in.

See you Monday.

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Commenters also had a lot to say about the puzzle of the absent-minded driver. It seems to me that some of the analyses falter by being less than crystal clear about their assumptions: How much can the driver remember (e.g., if he updates his strategy at the first intersection and then arrives at the second, does he remember his original strategy or his updated strategy?), how much he can commit to (e.g. if he updates his strategy at the first intersection, can he commit to sticking to the new strategy at the second? can he commit to the method of updating he’ll use at the second?), how much he can anticipate (e.g. what does he believe about his future updates?), how smart he is (can he use his knowledge of his current strategy to figure out whether he’s already updated and hence what intersection he’s at?) and how sneaky he is (e.g. might he purposely adopt a bad strategy in order to trick his future self into updating to a good one?). I have what I think is a useful way of forcing puzzlers to be explicit about their assumptions, and had planned to post it on Monday, but I keep revising it, so it might be a few more days.

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I’ll be on the road this weekend so I’m taking Monday off. See you Tuesday!

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On Tuesday, we talked about beautiful folk songs; thanks to those who pointed me in new directions.

On Wednesday, we asked why job growth has been so sluggish compared to previous recessions.

On Thursday, I linked to a remarkably thoughtful and literate Fox News clip on immigration policy, featuring the fiery Don Boudreaux.

And on Friday, we lamented the economic illiteracy of local television reporters.

I’ll be back on Monday with more.

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When I announced last week that I’d be taking a couple of days off, readers took the occasion to raise some issues in the foundations of mathematics. This inspired me to write a long-intended post correcting some elementary errors that frequently come up in these discussions. At least one very confused and feisty commenter jumped to the conclusion that I was saying something controversial and that is was his duty to disagree, loudly and repeatedly.

Thursday’s post was about the magic of the past and the technology of the present, which seem roughly equivalent. And on Friday we took on Arizona’s new immigration law and one of its more fatuous defenders.

With no life-changing events scheduled for the coming weekend, I expect to be back, as usual, on Monday.

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Although I agreed with Krugman on some points and disagreed on others, there were two places where I not only disagreed but thought he had the economics wrong. First, he is wrong when he suggests that if we’re more risk averse, it follows that we should spend more on climate control. The reason is that risk averse people don’t like income inequality (because it boosts the risk of being born poor), and spending more on climate control exacerbates income inequality across generations. Therefore risk aversion cuts both ways on this issue. Second, Krugman is wrong when he gives (some) credence to James Hansen’s economically illiterate belief that altruism is somehow less effective under a cap-and-trade regime than under an emissions tax.

To round out the week, we had two posts about shameless hucksters trying to gull the public. Those posts are here and here.

As always, I’ll be back on Monday.

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