Emily Oster on COVID policy; Freddie deBoer disses young leftists; Daniel Gordis says Israeli students are not snowflakes; Megan McArdle sees elite snobbery; Bari Weiss picks John Cochrane over me
Indeed, as written John's words make nonsense. The only way to make sense of them would be to presume he wanted to say "save and stock up you as much consumption goods as possible" --even knowing that most households' capacity to stock up is quite limited.
I was surprised to read this John's line: "The Federal Reserve failed at its most basic job: to figure out how much the economy can produce, and to bring demand up to, but not beyond, that supply." In 60 years of dealing with central-bank economists in several countries, I have never found one that could figure that out but in their defense, I should say that they never thought that it was their job. Indeed, they could "extrapolate" GDP series but nobody would take that as a proxy for "how much the economy can produce". I laugh at the idea that those economists could bring the demand up to, but not beyond, the "extrapolated" supply by playing games with central banks' instruments.
I didn’t quite understand why Cochrane was suggesting that, either. If there are Black Friday sales (perhaps a big if?) with lower prices, and you expect prices to go up due to the value of money dropping, then you should go out and do all the buying you can now. Unless you have an investment that looks to earn better than the rate of inflation, which is what, 5-10% ? Or really high interest debt.
I can only assume Cochrane believes the inflation is due to wholly temporary effects and so if we mostly hold our breath it will taper off. I think the spending and borrowing at all levels of government are going to keep increasing, possibly at an increasing rate, and so inflation isn’t going down for a while no matter what.
"we have armies of people who insist they’re willing to take part in meaningless street combat with whatever right-wing losers show up, and take photos for social media the entire time, but we have far fewer who will actually show up week after week to do the slow and laborious work of canvassing, phone banking, tabling, handing out leaflets, and otherwise slowly changing minds. If it doesn’t feel cool, today’s left [won't] do it. The only politics they desire is the politics of catharsis."
I read this difference as somewhat more planned than deBoer seems to. The left's strategy seems to be not to allow the Right to demonstrate peacefully or even campaign at all. If we go out and ring doorbells, Antifa/BLM will attack. If Ted Cruz gives a speech, Antifa will book all the seats so we can't attend. If Trump holds a rally, Antifa will go to the parking lot and burn our cars. If we hold a peaceful march in DC, Antifa and FBI will infiltrate and commit violence, and the lying media will make sure we get all the blame. In short, we (by which I mean the Right) are being forcibly prevented from holding campaign events of any kind, in what amounts to a Denial of Service attack on the real world!
Does anyone have suggestions of debate tactics that would actually win against these acts of war, instead of getting us successfully smeared as a result of them?
If the choice is between buying a luxury exercise bike, now or choosing a less expensive alternative or delaying the purchase altogether and saving / investing the difference, I side with Cochrane.
Now if the choice is buying bacon today or hoping to buy it for less later than I'm going to hedge and buy some now and buy some later. What I will not do is buy a lot of bacon today at what I perceive to be high prices with the expectation that bacon will be more expensive in six months.
Put another way, do I do not believe bacon is a better storage of value than the Total Market Index. For the past 12 months, I think the price of bacon has beat the market. But since April 2020 the bacon index has underperformed, despite an 80% increase!
Indeed, as written John's words make nonsense. The only way to make sense of them would be to presume he wanted to say "save and stock up you as much consumption goods as possible" --even knowing that most households' capacity to stock up is quite limited.
I was surprised to read this John's line: "The Federal Reserve failed at its most basic job: to figure out how much the economy can produce, and to bring demand up to, but not beyond, that supply." In 60 years of dealing with central-bank economists in several countries, I have never found one that could figure that out but in their defense, I should say that they never thought that it was their job. Indeed, they could "extrapolate" GDP series but nobody would take that as a proxy for "how much the economy can produce". I laugh at the idea that those economists could bring the demand up to, but not beyond, the "extrapolated" supply by playing games with central banks' instruments.
I didn’t quite understand why Cochrane was suggesting that, either. If there are Black Friday sales (perhaps a big if?) with lower prices, and you expect prices to go up due to the value of money dropping, then you should go out and do all the buying you can now. Unless you have an investment that looks to earn better than the rate of inflation, which is what, 5-10% ? Or really high interest debt.
I can only assume Cochrane believes the inflation is due to wholly temporary effects and so if we mostly hold our breath it will taper off. I think the spending and borrowing at all levels of government are going to keep increasing, possibly at an increasing rate, and so inflation isn’t going down for a while no matter what.
"we have armies of people who insist they’re willing to take part in meaningless street combat with whatever right-wing losers show up, and take photos for social media the entire time, but we have far fewer who will actually show up week after week to do the slow and laborious work of canvassing, phone banking, tabling, handing out leaflets, and otherwise slowly changing minds. If it doesn’t feel cool, today’s left [won't] do it. The only politics they desire is the politics of catharsis."
I read this difference as somewhat more planned than deBoer seems to. The left's strategy seems to be not to allow the Right to demonstrate peacefully or even campaign at all. If we go out and ring doorbells, Antifa/BLM will attack. If Ted Cruz gives a speech, Antifa will book all the seats so we can't attend. If Trump holds a rally, Antifa will go to the parking lot and burn our cars. If we hold a peaceful march in DC, Antifa and FBI will infiltrate and commit violence, and the lying media will make sure we get all the blame. In short, we (by which I mean the Right) are being forcibly prevented from holding campaign events of any kind, in what amounts to a Denial of Service attack on the real world!
Does anyone have suggestions of debate tactics that would actually win against these acts of war, instead of getting us successfully smeared as a result of them?
If the choice is between buying a luxury exercise bike, now or choosing a less expensive alternative or delaying the purchase altogether and saving / investing the difference, I side with Cochrane.
Now if the choice is buying bacon today or hoping to buy it for less later than I'm going to hedge and buy some now and buy some later. What I will not do is buy a lot of bacon today at what I perceive to be high prices with the expectation that bacon will be more expensive in six months.
Put another way, do I do not believe bacon is a better storage of value than the Total Market Index. For the past 12 months, I think the price of bacon has beat the market. But since April 2020 the bacon index has underperformed, despite an 80% increase!