>> ^artician:

Sometimes I wish aliens would invade. Evil aliens. With appropriately similar mechanical and technical knowledge. Like Macross!


Or if it was like an alien invasion like in Robotech it'd be much cooler!

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^blankfist:
>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^blankfist:
Oh, I get it. Krugman says something Orwellian and now we're all the wingnuts.

Who else would be paranoid enough to think it's something anyone would actually try, and not just a silly, nerdy way to make a point?

No one thinks Krugman is entertaining this idea seriously. It's that he thinks it would be a good idea to manufacture a catastrophe with potentially huge life-loss that makes us wonder why people like you think he's the best thing since sliced bread.

Why would an entirely hypothetical, fake alien invasion lead to life-loss?
Like I said, it's a silly, nerdy way to make a point. Why are you pretending it's something worth getting even slightly upset about?
Is it any worse than Perry talking about Texans roughing up Ben Bernanke or accusing him of treason for doing the job the previous Governor of Texas appointed him to do?


Krugman thinks wars are excellent ways to stimulate the economy (even jovially alludes to it with his comment about WWII). The bigger the war, the bigger the stimulus. He's kidding about aliens invading, but follow his logic here. What's bigger than a war against another nation? Answer: a war against another planet.

Krugman doesn't care about the casualties, it's about the numbers. To him war is good because it creates jobs and stimulates the economy. Peace is bad.

This is why Keynesian economics is such bullshit.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^blankfist:
Oh, I get it. Krugman says something Orwellian and now we're all the wingnuts.

Who else would be paranoid enough to think it's something anyone would actually try, and not just a silly, nerdy way to make a point?

No one thinks Krugman is entertaining this idea seriously. It's that he thinks it would be a good idea to manufacture a catastrophe with potentially huge life-loss that makes us wonder why people like you think he's the best thing since sliced bread.


Why would an entirely hypothetical, fake alien invasion lead to life-loss?

Like I said, it's a silly, nerdy way to make a point. Why are you pretending it's something worth getting even slightly upset about?

Is it any worse than Perry talking about Texans roughing up Ben Bernanke or accusing him of treason for doing the job the previous Governor of Texas appointed him to do?

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^hpqp:
Ha, this is the first thing I thought of as well.
>> ^blankfist:
Krugman is Ozymandias from Watchmen. A central planner.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/15/watchmen-paul-krugman-a
lien-invasion/
[thanks to @gwiz665 for the link]


That's actually the whole reason I sifted this clip.
I didn't really expect people to come and talk about the actual economics, I expected people to blather on about Ozzy and Watchmen and the NWO and Agenda 21 and the NAFTA Superhighway...


Oh, I get it. Krugman says something Orwellian and now we're all the wingnuts.

>> ^hpqp:

Ha, this is the first thing I thought of as well.
>> ^blankfist:
Krugman is Ozymandias from Watchmen. A central planner.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/15/watchmen-paul-krugman-a
lien-invasion/
[thanks to @gwiz665 for the link]



That's actually the whole reason I sifted this clip.

I didn't really expect people to come and talk about the actual economics, I expected people to blather on about Ozzy and Watchmen and the NWO and Agenda 21 and the NAFTA Superhighway...

Ha, this is the first thing I thought of as well.

>> ^blankfist:

Krugman is Ozymandias from Watchmen. A central planner.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/15/watchmen-paul-krugman-a
lien-invasion/
[thanks to @gwiz665 for the link]

Krugman is Ozymandias from Watchmen. A central planner.

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/15/watchmen-paul-krugman-alien-invasion/

[thanks to @gwiz665 for the link]

Go nuts.
In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Wow. I never thought a douche like Krugman would just come out and say something so on the nose like that. Veidt is a central planner. I've had debates with DFT over it (though DFT & NR claim Veidt is some right wing corporatist.).

Exhibit A: http://videosift.com/video/Look-How-D
angerous-These-School-Teachers-Nurses-Are?loadcomm=1#comment-1158288

You posting this? I love the Watchmen for its political significance. If you don't, I'll post it.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/15/watchmen-paul-krugman-a
lien-invasion/

Wow. I never thought a douche like Krugman would just come out and say something so on the nose like that. Veidt is a central planner. I've had debates with DFT over it (though DFT & NR claim Veidt is some right wing corporatist.).

Exhibit A: http://videosift.com/video/Look-How-Dangerous-These-School-Teachers-Nurses-Are?loadcomm=1#comment-1158288

You posting this? I love the Watchmen for its political significance. If you don't, I'll post it.



In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/15/watchmen-paul-krugman-a
lien-invasion/

http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/08/15/watchmen-paul-krugman-alien-invasion/

>> ^marinara:

1. WWII is a bad example b/c USA had no economic competition after WWII.

Nations aren't businesses. Most of what's produced in the US is sold in the US, always has been, and likely always will be. Exports alone don't account for the rise in prosperity post-WWII. A lot of it was that we'd build up a huge industrial infrastructure that pivoted from making bombers and tanks to making refrigerators and cars.

>> ^marinara:
2. Are you assuming some level of debt after the 'space alien boost'?
I think you are. Or maybe you assume inflation doesn't hurt or something.

I think you're assuming all debt leads to inflation. Have you looked at the stats on debt and inflation recently? Debt's going up fast, but inflation has stayed flat and long-term bond interest rates have fallen, even after S&P tried their best to make them spike by downgrading our credit rating.

>> ^marinara:
Iceland politicians took on their banks, we didn't and now they're recovering while we aren't.


Incidentally, Iceland followed textbook Keynesian macroeconomic policy. Now they're better off than the countries who just tried to stick to austerity and tight money (the former by choice, the latter not).

>> ^marinara:

I doubt that any amount of spending could 'fix' the economy. Instead, you'd have to borrow-spend continuously, like pumping air into a burst balloon.


I think first you have to commit to a theory about what's wrong with the economy now -- not symptoms, like unemployment is high, but what the underlying root cause is.

There are a lot of things it's not being caused by. It's not been caused by any physical damage to our country's industry or infrastructure. It's not been caused by people suddenly waking up one morning having forgotten how to make things. We didn't suddenly lose all our natural resources. What, in terms of real economic capacity did we lose? Anything? Anything at all?

The other half of the "fake alien invasion" thing is that it tends to focus our minds on what's real (factories, workers, materials), and what's not (debt, money, inflation), and helps us realize how ridiculous it is that we would let concern about debt or inflation stand in the way of us putting our resources to work to save ourselves from being turned into some alien race's dinner.

Once you realize that, all you need to do to get the rest of the way is to realize that the best way to save yourself from problems with debt and inflation is to put your resources to work making as much stuff as possible, you start to see why Keynesians are annoyed that they might need to fake an alien invasion to get people to do the sensible thing...

That's a good summary of the Keynesian response. I guess my answer would be that even supposing the 10% unemployed were neatly then employed in building these weapons this would just be temporary. Later they will eventually all be unemployed again having wasted time and money in training for "fictional" work. Even if that work had some beneficial side effects, making unnatural economic growth will still be a net cost to the economy versus spending time finding real jobs. These are what they really 'should' in some sense be doing. To do this would surely be better unless you claim the 10% will continue unemployed permanently.

A typical argument against my response is that the economy is like a pump and that this is pump priming. Demand from these people's fictional labour will create the new jobs. The Austrian reply to that is that the pump metaphor is simply not valid and the economies grow organically. If you force a branch to grow with artificial sunlight, when that fake light gets turned off the branch will wither and all the people involved in its support spend a lot of time looking for what they should have been doing. I think Hayek would claim this type of fake labour policy is what causes the 10% unemployment to begin with.

These arguments can be seen in the two Hayek/Keynes rap videos. There are two inconsistent models of the economy. How can we decide which one is right? This argument is very old so I guess it's not that easy... Maybe look at long run growth in more and less interventionist countries? I suspect growth will be faster in the less interventionist nation.


>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^pyloricvalve: Just seems like straight up broken windows fallacy. If we spent 18 months preparing for war with aliens we might all be employed but we'd end up with a bunch of weapons pointed at the sky. Otherwise we could have spent the time making ipods, cars or whatever good or service you might want. Doesn't what he's saying just sound wrong? It clearly would not be a good thing for the world to spend 18 months that way.. I think that's the real problem with the broken window "fallacy" -- it assumes that as your starting point you already have full employment and no idle infrastructure or capital. That's not true in our situation at all. Unemployment is around 10%, factories are being left idle, and companies are sitting on mountains of cash. The idea here is to get people back to work doing something, because even if they're producing things there isn't a high demand for (windows, alien-fighting spaceships), it's not like those things come at the cost of the other things they would've otherwise been producing, since they're not producing anything at all right now. Oh, and in the case of alien-fighting spaceships, there's a pretty high chance that the technology and industrial infrastructure that's developed to build them will be able to be re-purposed for consumer goods once the alien threat is shown to be fake. Ideally instead of faking an alien invasion, we'd just have the government go and invest directly in our infrastructure (transportation, education, power generation), but without the alien threat it doesn't seem like Congress is willing to engage in any more fiscal stimulus, no matter how economically sound it would be.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Just seems like straight up broken windows fallacy. If we spent 18 months preparing for war with aliens we might all be employed but we'd end up with a bunch of weapons pointed at the sky. Otherwise we could have spent the time making ipods, cars or whatever good or service you might want. Doesn't what he's saying just sound wrong? It clearly would not be a good thing for the world to spend 18 months that way..


I think that's the real problem with the broken window "fallacy" -- it assumes that as your starting point you already have full employment and no idle infrastructure or capital.

That's not true in our situation at all. Unemployment is around 10%, factories are being left idle, and companies are sitting on mountains of cash.

The idea here is to get people back to work doing something, because even if they're producing things there isn't a high demand for (windows, alien-fighting spaceships), it's not like those things come at the cost of the other things they would've otherwise been producing, since they're not producing anything at all right now.

Oh, and in the case of alien-fighting spaceships, there's a pretty high chance that the technology and industrial infrastructure that's developed to build them will be able to be re-purposed for consumer goods once the alien threat is shown to be fake.

Ideally instead of faking an alien invasion, we'd just have the government go and invest directly in our infrastructure (transportation, education, power generation), but without the alien threat it doesn't seem like Congress is willing to engage in any more fiscal stimulus, no matter how economically sound it would be.

lets hope the alien invasion threat can continue to justify our military spending

>> ^Stormsinger:

I may even have to go to the theater to see this one. An alien invasion of the old West seems worthwhile, and a topless Thirteen makes it something of a no-brainer.
Although, to be honest, I couldn't even make a good guess as to Wilde's chestsize...I've never been able to take my eyes off of her face when she's onscreen. She has the most amazing cheekbones I've ever seen.


Are you kidding? She's TERRIFYING! When she opens her eyes wide she looks like she's going to devour your soul!

Also...newly single.