Both links via Common Sense & Wonder
6 thoughts on “Hanson vs Hanson”
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Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
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Maybe he wrote one piece in the morning and the other late in the evening.
Politics vs. potential.
2012 election hangover? One minute I would think, “We can’t lose.” The next minute, “We’re screwed.”
Same now. A lot depends on the next few years as to whether things work themselves out here at home in an orderly, democratic manner or some people get pantsed.
Much of Hanson’s optimism in “America’s Bright Future” is based on his citations of economic statistics compared to other countries. With all due respect, those figures are massaged to the point where they are as true as the scripted events on an MTV reality show.
Unemployment is stated as artificially low, because they keep lowering the size of the labor force it is a fraction of by dropping the unemployed from the books. Or like today’s figures, not including several states and “estimating” their unemployment. Or use of “birth/death” estimates of undetected businesses created to boost reported employment. Every optimistic figure announced is revised later as being much worse.
Real GDP is the raw GDP minus inflation. Inflation is measured by using a “basket” of prices for certain things. That basket has been changed administratively to reduce the weight of the costs of food and energy [been to a grocery store, a gas station, or opened an electric/gas bill lately?] and to increase the weight of housing costs [with home values collapsing] to factor in the equivalent of buying a home every month. Thus technically we have a fractional percentage increase in GDP monthly.
But if you use the same standards as during the Bush 43 term, we have unemployment in the range of 14-16%, not the 7.9% claimed. Similarly our real inflation rate is 8-10%, which when subtracted from the GDP growth gives a negative number. For a long time. As in we are and have been in a depression masked by transfer payments and government statistical lies.
Subotai Bahadur
My reaction to the column was, “Just think if Romney had won the election.”
He didn’t and I can see a thousand ways Obama will kill this economy. Most of them are more likely than not.
Bookworm just attended a luncheon at which Hanson spoke about America’s future, and has a post here.