Why Agnosticism Is Bunk: Sometimes We DO Know Enough

Alright. I’m taking a break from economics and politics today in order to talk a little about religion. I hope you don’t mind. This post is a philosophical discussion of agnosticism and why it is bunk.

Let me begin with a preliminary definition of the relevant terms:

1. Agnostic: a person who claims, for whatever reason, to be undecided as to whether or not God exists.
2. Atheist: a person who claims, for whatever reason, to believe that God does not exist.
3. Theist: a person who claims, for whatever reason, to believe that God exists.

This 3-part classification is usually taken, without much thought, to account for all possible positions in regard to the existence of God. This is convenient, because it also allows for division of people into 2 important groups, the Decided and the Undecided. Atheists are decided one way, theists another, while agnostics are supposed to be undecided.

This, I think, is why so many people choose agnosticism. On a question as complicated and murky as that of the existence of God, neutrality (or undecidedness) can seem the only safe and responsible thing to do. The agnostic can take comfort in her caution, so much more sophisticated than the haughty atheists and dogmatic theists.

I take issue with agnosticism because it is not always true that we do not have enough information to determine whether or not God exists or that our minds are too small to decide so celestial an issue. In fact, it’s often quite easy to see whether God – depending on how it is initially defined – exists or not, and we can do this using simple logic coupled with observation.

1. It is not always true that we do not have enough information to determine whether or not God exists.

Let’s think like scientists here. A scientist begins (or at least should begin) by formulating a hypothesis on the basis of definitions and axioms (perhaps implicit) and then creating situations (experiments) well-suited to disproving the hypothesis. If the hypothesis survives a great number of such experiments, it is deemed to be true, the more so as it survives more and better experiments.

Thus, my hypothesis might be “This paper plate will not melt if tossed into a fire.” The first thing I should do is toss the plate in a fire. If it melts, then my hypothesis is junk, and I start over.

Notice the structure of this sequence. Let A stand for “the plate gets tossed in a fire”. Let B stand for “the plate melts”. My hypothesis is a conditional: If A, then not-B” (if the plate gets tossed in a fire, then the plate will not melt). By the rules of logic, not-not-B is equivalent to B. Also by the rules of logic, if B (not-not-B), then not-A. The result of the experiment was B (not-not-B). So logic compels me to conclude from my experiment that not-A (that the plate was not tossed in a fire). This is absurd, though, because I did toss the plate in a fire.

All this is to illustrate a piece of elementary logic: If it is true that (if A, then B) and if it is also true that (not-B), then it must be true that (not-A). If an effect is known to follow a cause, and if the effect does not appear, then the cause cannot possibly be at work. Because if it were, the effect would have appeared.

Now to the question of God. If we can say, to a degree of certainty greater than half, that IF God exists, THEN A will be the case, then we can know, to a degree of certainty greater than half, whether or not God exists.

Of course, this will depend on how God is initially defined. This is not a big deal, though, because the only definition of God that matters (to anyone outside philosophical circles, anyway) is the so-called “Omnigod” of popular theology: all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful.

So the next step is to decide what would almost certainly be the case if an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God existed. Thinking it through, it is pretty easy to see that IF such a God existed, THEN there would be no evil in the world, as long as “evil” was defined as contrary to “good”. Because God is, by definition, all-knowing, it could not be ignorant of any evil whatsoever. Because God is, by definition, all-good, it cannot be directly responsible for evil. Because God is, by definition, all-powerful, it cannot be powerless to prevent the evil for which it is not directly responsible. Such a world is built, by definition, to categorically exclude not only evil itself but the very possibility of evil.

Thus we can say that IF the Omnigod exists, THEN there would be no evil in the world. According to the principle given above, if there IS evil in the world, then the Omnigod CANNOT exist.

So it remains to be decided whether or not there is evil in the world. Keeping in mind such things as 9/11, earthquakes, murder, rape, and the fact that Lady Gaga is actually popular, it would seem that there IS evil in the world. From this it follows that the Omnigod does NOT exist.

See how easy that was? But some people, agnostics included, do not get this. My guess is that logic is not as important to them as are other things, e.g., the comforts they derive from religion or the opinions of their peers.

But is it really that easy to settle the matter? Aren’t there other things to consider, such as free will or the possibility that what appears to be evil is not really evil “in the bigger picture”?

Um, not really. Whether or not people have free wills, it must be true that IF people have free wills, THEN God is not all-powerful. To say that God is all-powerful AND people have free wills is like saying that all the walls in the room are red AND one of the walls is green. I don’t want to be mean, but you would have to be a moron to take it seriously.

So insisting on the existence and importance of free will changes the definition of God considerably, by making it non-omnipotent. This would take the punch out of the argument just given, because if God is not omnipotent, then the existence of evil does not disprove its existence, because God might just be powerless to stop evil. Interestingly, theists generally do not – and popular theology certainly has not – taken this route of redefining God’s attributes to exclude omnipotence, despite the fact that it rudely contradicts their belief in free will. Why this is, I do not know. Maybe it is because redefining God as non-omnipotent would cause much, if not most, of Christian theology to collapse altogether. And what self-respecting Christian wants that?

The “bigger picture” defense is silly, and that’s all I have to say about it.

(NOTE: I acknowledge that even if you accept the above argument against the existence of the Omnigod, you are not necessarily a non-theist. You may believe in some other God(s) whose existence is not disproven by the argument. Even so, I have a hunch that any God claimed to be actively involved with human affairs – that is, any God worth paying attention to – can be disproven in a similar way. But I could be wrong.)

A Modest Note on the Role of Mathematics in Economics

Throughout the portion of the blogosphere concerned with economics, there is a palpable tension over the role of mathematics in economic teaching and research. I cannot speak to the palpability, so to speak, of this tension in the classroom or in the economics “lab”, because I’ve not yet breathed that rarefied air (he said with tongue in cheek).

From a distance, it seems there is no tension about the role of maths (as they say across the lake) in economics: graduate programs make it clear that prospective econ grads must learn as much math as possible, as soon as possible. Also, econ journals are rife with graphs and equations that are intimidating, at best, to anyone not very well versed in mathematics. Complicating matters, for some, is the fact that many of the most prestigious names in economics – Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Keynes, etc – used mathematics sparingly or not at all to arrive at their often intricate and groundbreaking conclusions, while other leading economists have questioned what they perceived to be economists’ ambitions to make their field as precise as the natural sciences, e.g., von Mises and Hayek.

All of this prompts some people – myself included – to wonder what exactly is the role of mathematics in economics? Is it truly, as Krugman called it, “no more than a scaffolding used to help construct an intellectual edifice”, or is it a crutch? Worse yet, could it be that the use of mathematics in economic teaching and research is a disingenuous attempt to make economics appear more “scientific” than it actually is or could possibly be? Is the use of mathematics an attempt by economists to escape what has somehow become their greatest fear – subjectivity, lack of rigor, speculation, perhaps even (whispering) metaphysics? Metaphysics, after all, has not been widely respected since Hegel.

This much we can admit: A page of unbroken prose looks a good deal less “scientific and rigorous” and more “metaphysical, subjective, and speculative” than a page of graphs and equations crammed with sub- and super-scripted variables.

The question, I think, is whether or not this visceral – and not at all completely misguided – distaste for unbroken prose in favor of mathematical precision of expression and rigor of method has driven economists away from the fundamental and important challenges of their field – often not (or not easily) mathematizable – and into the trivial and inconsequential but conveniently mathematizable. In other words, have some economists purchased relative precision and rigor at the price of relative irrelevance?

I have to answer “no”. Now I will qualify my answer. Most economists, I believe, are doing irrelevant “work”, arriving at “results” that are of little use to anyone outside the small circle of professional economists. More often than not, they use mathematics to do this. However, their use of mathematics has little to do with the relevance, or lack thereof, of their work. That is due to other, more fundamental factors about which I will not bother to speculate right now.

What I’m saying is that irrelevance is irrelevance and triviality is triviality, mathematically expressed or not. The same is true for disconnectedness from the real world (the justly favored accusation against econometric models): if a theory does not adequately reflect actual behavior of economic agents and variables, then it has to be tossed, no matter how it is expressed.

Economics cannot do without the precision of expression and rigor of method provided by mathematics, any more than it can do without the other fundamentals of investigation, literacy, and education, e.g., language and logic. Just as many philosophers and artists (Heidegger and Gertrude Stein come to mind) have used the inherent ambiguity of language to cover the barrenness of their “ideas” with a veil of seeming-profundity, economists are liable to use the inherent precision of mathematics to cover the barrenness of their theories with a veil of seeming-sophistication. However, just as this is no reason to lessen the role of language in philosophy, it is also no reason to rob economists of the considerable tools afforded them by mathematics.

Ultimately, for the good of economics as a field of science and all the gifts it could give to the public at large, it is important that we not be deceived in either direction. Sophisticated graphs and equations do not a sound theory make. At the same time, they do not a sound theory break, either.

Superfunk

Here’s Mark Thoma opining concerning the “villains” of the present crisis. (He opens by listing candidates: irresponsible borrowers and lenders, benighted economists (incidentally, this is my vote), China, the Fed (I swear to heaven, some people would blame the Fed for their common cold, but that doesn’t mean they’re not to blame), etc. I will have a couple of unimportant things to say afterward:

But even that wasn’t enough to produce a bubble by itself, we have to ask why the checks and balances within the housing sector, both from the market and from regulators, failed to stop the massive flow of money into these assets. The reason is that there were incentive problems all the way through the system. The homeowner gets a non-recourse loan which makes risks mostly one-sided, real estate agents are paid on commission giving them to incentive to maximize the number of houses sold at the highest price they can get, real estate appraisers were in the pocket of the real estate agents (that’s obvious when you buy a house), if they don’t give the values the agents are looking for, their phone stops ringing. The mortgage brokers were being paid, essentially, on commission and they were able to move these loans off their books – sell them as repackaged securities – so as to remove any long-run interest in the outcome of the loans (so they didn’t care what the appraisers said). Their incentive was to sell as many loans as possible with no real concern for quality. Why did people buy these repackaged loans from banks and brokers? Here we come again to the ratings agencies and the poor risk assessment models, the culture within these institutions, moral hazard from implicit or explicit government guarantees, compensation structures, and so on. The incentives at just about every step of the process were to create as many loans as possible with little regard to quality, every check and balance that ought to be in place was missing. The market did not self correct, and regulators clearly fell down on the job, fixing any one of these incentives could have made a big difference by plugging up the pass-through of the excess liquidity from China and the Fed, but the regulators were absent. Whether this is due to incompetence, poorly structured regulatory procedures, or regulatory capture – money talks and nobody wanted to spoil the party – I don’t know for sure. But the regulatory failures were clearly broad based.

Now, a couple of unimportant things, arranged in order of unimportance:

First of all, Mark Thoma needs to learn how to use commas. I love the View (no, not that one), but come on.

Second of all, in regard to incentives, I’ve been thinking lately – and I have a feeling I’m not the first to say this in so many words, but I’m not well enough read in economics to say who my (surely illustrious) predecessors are or in what illustrious tomes they iterated this idea – that economic security, like every other kind of security, is among those public goods, of which Adam Smith wrote so long ago, which need to be provided by the state precisely because there are not sufficient private resources to create it or because there is not sufficient incentive to recruit private resources to its creation. Everyone wants security, but no one is willing to pay the cost of security, because there’s nothing in the way of a return on investment, in the sense that the return on investment would belong to everyone rather than exclusively to the people who paid for it. Given the miserable failure of monetary policy – on full display right now – this is, I believe, a sound argument for fiscal policy. In fact, I think this is the broadest statement of the conclusions of Keynesian economics: the private realm is in a superfunk, and part of being in a superfunk is that you cannot get yourself out of it. Somebody else has to get you out of a superfunk. (In 1907, JP Morgan got the U.S. out of a not-quite-super funk.) Now, while the possibility that Jesus will descend from the clouds and raise economies from the dead cannot be ruled out entirely, it seems that only governments can lift us out of a superfunk right now. In other words, only governments can provide security, because it is a public good.

Of course, there are problems here that fall squarely under the “moral hazard” umbrella. But I think – and I don’t know, I just think – that professional economists, sociologists, political scientists, and anybody else who cares to give it a shot should take this opportunity to rethink the relationship between the public realm, the private realm, and the moral hazard phenomenon. I say this because, as easy and seemingly simple as it seems to rid the world of the moral hazard by minimizing the role of government to the very limit, the cookie does not crumble this way in the real world. In the real world, we have this pattern in which the private realm tells the state “Hands off!” during boom times and then runs to the government for bailouts and “rent” during the thus-far-apparently-inevitable superfunks. So the moral hazard does not disappear when government is minimized, as much because the private realm wants the government ready to hand for morally hazardous purposes as because the government is – well, you know, doing its job and trying to make life secure for everybody.

My question, then, is where is the moral hazard socially located? Is it in an overly involved government, or is it in a private realm that wants its government neither small nor large but just right, i.e., a private realm that wants the government to be, quite frankly, its enabler, its messiah, its defender, its bitch, and out of the way, all at once?

Rethinking (a Component of) the American Dream

Richard Florida writing for the Atlantic this month (in my estimation one of the most creative and important pieces of literature to emerge from the global downturn so far):

The housing bubble was the ultimate expression, and perhaps the last gasp, of an economic system some 80 years in the making, and now well past its “sell-by” date. The bubble encouraged massive, unsustainable growth in places where land was cheap and the real-estate economy dominant. It encouraged low-density sprawl, which is ill-fitted to a creative, post-industrial economy. And not least, it created a workforce too often stuck in one place, anchored by houses that cannot be profitably sold, at a time when flexibility and mobility are of great importance.

So how do we move past the bubble, the crash, and an aging, obsolescent model of economic life? What’s the right spatial fix for the economy today, and how do we achieve it?

The solution begins with the removal of homeownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy. Substantial incentives for homeownership (from tax breaks to artificially low mortgage-interest rates) distort demand, encouraging people to buy bigger houses than they otherwise would. That means less spending on medical technology, or software, or alternative energy – the sectors and products that could drive U.S. growth and exports in the coming years. Artificial demand for bigger houses also skews residential patterns, leading to excessive low-density suburban growth. The measures that prop up this demand should be eliminated.

If anything, our government policies should encourage renting, not buying. Homeownership occupies a central place in the American Dream primarily because decades of policy have put it there. A recent study by Grace Wong, an economist at the Wharton Shool of Business, shows that, controlling for income and demographics, homeowners are no happier than renters, nor do they report lower levels of stress or higher levels of self-esteem.

And while homeownership has some social benefits – a higher level of civic engagement is one – it is costly to the economy. The economist Andrew Oswald has demonstrated that in both the United States and Europe, those places with higher homeownership rates also suffer from higher unemployment. Homeownership, Oswald found, is a more important predictor of unemployment than rates of unionization or the generosity of welfare benefits. Too often, it ties people to declining or blighted locations, and forces them into work – if they can find it – that is a poor match for thei interests and abilities.

As homewonwership rates have risen, our scoeity s become less nimble: in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans were nearly twice as likely to move in a given year as they are today. Last year fewer Americans moved, as a percentage of the population, than in any year since the Census Bureau started tracking address changes, in the late 1940s. This sort of creeping rigidity in the labor market is a bad sign for the economy, particularly in a time when businesses, industries, and regions are rising and falling quickly.

[...]

[D]ifferent eras favor different places, along with the industries and lifestyles those places embody. Band-Aids and bailouts cannot change that. Neither auto-company rescue packages nor policies designed to artificially prop up housing prices will position the country for renewed growth, at least not of the sustainable variety. We need to let demand for the key products and lifestyles of the old order fall, and begin building a new economy, based on a new geography.

What will this geography look like? It will likely be sparser in the Midwest and also, ultimately, in those parts of the Southeast that are dependent on manufacturing. Its suburbs will be thinner and its houses, perhaps, smaller. Some of its southwestern cities will grow less quickly. Its great mega-regions will rise farther upward and extend farther outward. It will feature a lower rate of homeownwership, and a more mobile population of renters. In short, it will be a more concentrated geography, one that allows more people to mix more freely and interact more efficiently in a discrete number of dense, innovative mega-reigions and creative cities Serendipitously, it will be a landscape suited to a world in which petroleum is no longer cheap by any measure. But most of all, it will be a landscape that can accommodate and acclerate invention, innovation, and creation [...].

Forecasts from “a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality” (?)

On the heels of a USA Today article (sorry, no link) reporting a recent ARIS survey reporting a dramatic rise in “Nones” (people who check the “none” box when asked what religion they identify with) comes this musing from Michael Spencer, a self-described “post-evangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality”:

The coming evangelical collapse
An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.
By Michael Spencer
from the March 10, 2009 edition

Oneida, Ky. – We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap ofbelieving in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to “do good” is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

What will be left?

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the “conversion” of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

•Evangelicalism needs a “rescue mission” from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

Is all of this a bad thing?

Evangelicalism doesn’t need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to “evangelize” Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church’s problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a “godly society.” That doesn’t mean they’ll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of “empire subversion” will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, “Christianity loves a crumbling empire.”

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I’m not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

Hmmm. I wonder if Mr. Spencer would settle for Jesus-shaped cookies?

Unusual Organizations Pt 4

Introducing…

The Christian Boys’ and Men’s Titanic Society!!!

This organization, headquartered in San Antonio, TX,

is devoted to portraying the story of the Titanic as it really happened. We stand for the proposition that the strong must sacrifice for the weak, that greater love hath no man than he lay down his life for another, and to the enduring legacy of those men who died that women and children might live.

What this looks like in practice the website leaves unclear. Probably looks like any other manifestation of patriarchal condescension…

Is (Macro) Economics Science?

Dani Rodrick applauds Keynesian warriors DeLong and Krugman, but concludes there’s something wrong with macroeconomics that needs explaining.

A commenter (apparently off a very long and learned speech by Friedrich Hayek) trenchantly observes that “An untold number of economists are at bottom bad philosophers with a false, Marvel Comics understanding of ‘science’”.

Stimulus Shushdown?

Here’s video ofBrad DeLong and Michele Boldrin arguing over the effectiveness of Stimulus.

I felt for DeLong, because it’s very difficult to remain dignified in debate with an overbearing – and rather pompous – clown. I am pretty sure Brad expected a grappling with the issues at hand, but Boldrin was simply not interested. He just did a lot of shoulder-shrugging and shushing.

I also felt for the debate’s auditors, who probably expected edification from an open debate between “experts” but were instead treated to a farcical performance by Boldrin that left DeLong with nothing to sharpen a saw against and therefore unable to edify.

DeLong is right; it was “very strange”. Almost as though Boldrin had no grasp of the most basic economic concepts, such as “unemployment” and “spending”. For instance, he seems not to know (or is pretending not to know) what people do with increases in their income (answer: they spend some and save some) or how (or even that) asset deflation bled into the rest of the economy.

Final note: Boldrin dismissed a very good analogy by DeLong. My mother always told me not to trust anyone who didn’t appreciate a good analogy.

Oh, well. Here’s wishing Brad DeLong worthier opponents in the future.

India-Africa Medical Link-Up

BBC reportsthat India will try to “bridge the digital divide” between South Asia and Africa by offering on-line physician consults and medical training to the struggling continent.

Another illustration that globalization, like almost everything else in this world, is a double-edged sword.

CBO on Stimulus

Here is the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the short-run and long-run effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.