Horwitz on Freedom Watch

Steven Horwitz

Here's my appearance on Freedom Watch this evening. (The embed code was not cooperating.)

Comments

[Jasper]

If the idea of deficit funded tax cuts is to get people investing and spending (augment aggregate demand?), then how it is fundamentally different than stimulus spending?

[Steve Horwitz]

It's not. The point isn't to get people spending, it's to encourage production. These tax cuts don't do it very well, but they help a bit. And raising taxes is never a good idea in a recession, esp. when cutting spending is the real problem.

[Lee Kelly]

The Judge understands monetary economics like I understand quantum physics; it hurts my brain to watch this kind of obnoxious nonsense.

Steve, I respect your views regarding current monetary policy, even though I disagree with them. But no sensible debate could be elicited under those circumstances. All participants in the debate except you were just loud, ignorant, and conceited beyond all measure. They obviously didn't know what they were talking about, but weren't going to let that stop them telling everybody else what's what.

[Will Luther]

Unfortunately, I'm not sure the Judge got your final point.
Arguing that (monetary) deflation is good because goods are cheaper is like arguing that (monetary) inflation is good because workers earn higher wages.

I've only seen a couple episodes of Freedom Watch, but I got more or less the same impression as Lee Kelly.

[Dan]

"Arguing that (monetary) deflation is good because goods are cheaper is like arguing that (monetary) inflation is good because workers earn higher wages."

Deflation per se is neither good nor bad if it is the consequence of real consumer demand. What is bad is interfering with that demand by any amount of artificial monetary pumping. Considering that this is the only possible alternative, the Judge is absolutely correct.

[John Voigt]

I didn't think so many economic fallacies could be regurgitated in so little time. Most of the arguments made by that unbearable woman were refuted in the 19th century during the Malthus-Ricardo debates. How unfortunate.