Re: Leftists knocking Friedman ?

problems@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 wrote:
> I'm commenting on a recent long post which basically knocks 
> Milton Friedman and claims that Paul Samuelson was his 'opponent'.
> The author also falsely claims that Keynes' theories disprove Friedman.
> 
> I disagree on all three issues and suggest that the following analogy
> is apt.
> 1.  the discovery and development of antibiotics was a great 
> contribution to humanity.
> 2.  the discovery that pathogens become immune to antibiotics 
> was a further great contribution.
> 3.  the later developed/ing methods of trying to manipulate
> antibiotics usage to manage the problem of pathogens becoming 
>    immune, is a further later refinement.
> 
> Analagously Keynes showed that/how government intervention
>   could prevent the destructive trade-cycles common since antiquety.
> 
>  After some decades [eg. the 70's stagflation] the market anticipated
> and became immune to the state manipulations.

That, of course, is patent nonsense.  Just because Milton Friedman
learned to tie his shoelaces, doesn't mean the aggregate behavior of
the human race suddenly changed or got "smarter."

> Rightly so, Friedman pointed out that decades of post war lack of
>  market discipline had had inevitable results, and that shock
>  treatment had become necessary.

Any excuse for a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to
the wealthy, eh?  I'm sure the "shock therapy" was responsible for the
discovery of North Sea oil and the decision of the Saudis not to raise
prices as high as the market would bear.

> My reading of Samuelson, starting back in the 60s as an econ.
>  student is that he understood the whole picture.
> 
> The leftist author, who's against globalisation, is right, as I guess
> Friedman too fully realised, that "economics must be understood
> within it's social context".  So yes, once the discipline of the
> market was reduced after WWII, many parasites learned to work
> the welfare system.   Nothing is constant, except that it takes
> about 7 years to forget the lessons of the previous cycle, so the
> economists/pathologists must just keep managing the mixture.

Parasites like McDonnell-Douglas and Lockheed/Martin have been
working the welfare system for years, very effectively.

> If the cause of the present/pending credit crisis had not been 
> stimulation by Bush's reaction to 9/11: telling the people to 
> 'go out and shop', which promoted the disgusting expressions:
> "shop till you drop", "Yea babe, I've maxed-out all my credit
> cards", another later cause would have brought the inevitable
> pandemic around.
> 
> Now that obsesty has replaced hunger as the 'economic' 
> problem, a new paradigm is needed.  It's not new/revolutionary;
> just it needs to be sold.   As Friedman refined Keynes, so we too
> need to refine [away] the growth mantra.
> 
> Use different rules for different stages of a society/human-life:
> when you're a child you need to grow, later it's called obesity and
> even cancer.

Some grow wise, some just grow old.  I have a feeling you're a
parasite in the second group.

--Jeff

-- 
It is only those who have neither
fired a shot nor heard the shrieks
and groans of the wounded who cry
aloud for blood, more vengeance, more
desolation.  War is hell.
--William Te***seh Sherman