ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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Bravo!
Bryan,
You've hit the nail on the head. Happy New Year!
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FORMER STALINIST
Please share this link with those who might be interested.
http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/mybook2.html
P.S. The book is waiting for a reviewer
Shortly after I read this post last night I noticed the latest Economist had shown up on my Kindle. One of the first things I turn to in The Economist is KAL's cartoon. His cartoon for this week is a similar kind of 'inventory' of current events being passed on from 2009 to 2010.
Apparently, according to KAL, there's nothing but horribly negative things happening. Yes, I understand the juxtaposition, but so what?
It made me think of this post. We really do have a lot to be grateful for.
Fear sells. So the hucksters push it. And people lose context.
Amen Bryan. These are the good old days.
From roughly 2003 through 2007, there was no climate of fear -- that's when everyone was on the rush of their lives. If people were truly afraid and angry about the response to Katrina, consider Kanye West's provocation on live TV about "George Bush doesn't care about black people" -- it failed to incite riots of any degree.
Imagine Snoop Dogg making a similar statement about Bush I after the Rodney King arrest. Hell, there was a conflagration of riots even without a famous rapper inciting people on live TV!
It's strange how the history of the decade is quickly being re-written as 9/11 plus the recession. What happened in between? Well, Katrina, the Iraq War, the tsunami, you know...
Erased is the euphoria that everyone was in, which set the stage for the recession. In the revisionist view, the recession looks like a black swan event like the tsunami. Pointing out the back-story of the bubble and euphoria would require us to admit that we actually had a lot of fun during the 2000s, and if anything had too little fear.
[Comment removed for supplying false email address and for rudeness. Email the webmaster@econlib.org to request restoring your comment privileges. A valid email address is required to post comments on EconLog.--Econlib Ed.]
We have certainly set ourselves up for very interesting times. At the beginning of the Great Depression we didn't have a mountain of debt and trillions in unfunded obligations waiting for us. Government intervention through the 30s kept the economy from righting itself. Bush made the same mistakes as Hoover and Obama is playing the role of FDR.
The mistakes of the 30s led to a world at war. Where will our mistakes lead? This will get really, really interesting.
So, what about the 1990s? How were they scarier than the aughts?