Nonsense.

Statism is the doctrine that holds that one’s life and one’s property belongs to the state, who may dispose of it as it sees fit, to achieve any of its alleged goals or satisfy any of its alleged “needs”.

The notion of a fiscal “stimulus” is the notion that the state, not the individual, has the right to decide how much of the individual’s money should be spent at any one time — and that if, in the opinion of the state, the individual is spending too little and saving too much, the state may veto the individual’s decision and spend his/her money anyway.

Thus, the very notion of a fiscal “stimulus” is a manifestation of statism — statism is the premise on which it is founded. To claim that advocating a fiscal stimulus has nothing to do with any statist premises is to confess an ignorance of the meaning of the terms one is using.

My “challenge to Krugman’s prescription” is to assert that my life and my money belong to ME, not to Krugman, not to “society”, and not to the government — and that, as a consequence, no one but ME has any right to decide how much of my money will be spent or saved at any one time.

The fact that Krugman “laid out exactly how he came to the figure that he did” is utterly irrelevant! If a man in the street points a gun at you and demands that you give him $184.63 of your money, his action is not excused, and he is not automatically entitled to that much of your money, merely because he can show you precisely how he came to that total.

Only a concrete-bound mentality — one that is impervious to the actual principles involved — can possibly think that what Krugman advocates is justified because he’s done his sums properly.

The stimulus figure Krugman came up with has nothing to do with any imagined statist premises. He got his figure from decades old back-of-the-envelope fiscal policy equations (Okun’s law, essentially), and CBO numbers on NAIRU, the output gap, and unemployment. An undergrad could do it.

If you’re going to challenge Krugman’s prescription explain why he’s wrong. Accusing him of an “-ism” is the easy way out – and not too convincing when he’s laid out exactly how he came to the figure that he did.

If we have a good economic recovery, he’ll say it’s a result of the stimulus (or some other interventionist government actions). If we experience only a deeper recession, he’ll simply say see, I told you so, the stimulus needed to be bigger. Regardless of the outcome, regardless of the facts, Krugman will never give up his advocacy of government intervention into the economy.

Look, anyone that can continue to advocate statist intervention in the economy — despite it’s global-scale, perfect-failure-record — deserves to be called dogmatic, if not a whole lot worse.

As for my position on the stimulus, I say it’s an immoral looting of my income and thus a blatant violation of my property rights. To falsify that position, you must prove that some men have a greater right to a man’s property than does the man who has earned it and is thus its rightful owner. You have to prove that it is right and just to deny someone what he’s earned while granting it, instead, to someone who has NOT earned it. Proceed to justify that, if you can.

I do enjoy reading from Russ and Don a lot, but I find it so funny that people think they are the anti-Krugman. I actually read them for much the same reasons as I keep up with Krugman’s blog – and I find the three of them very similar. They’re all hopelessly predictable, not afraid to mix normative judgements into their economics, all are respectful of older intellectual traditions in economics (which I think is very important to keep in touch with), all three are brazenly outspoken – which is always nice to read in a blog, and all three take it very personally when someone suggests they may be wrong about something (which makes for interesting dynamics on a blog).

And don’t worry – when I say that another economist is like Krugman I mean it as the highest of compliments.

This is nonsense – if you followed what Krugman said about the stimulus, he gave a figure that he thought was more appropriate. To falsify his prediction about what this stimulus will do, we’ll have to compare the administration’s projections to his. Obviously we can’t falsify his ideal stimulus because the figures he proposed from the outset were never passed. But in that sense, your position on the stimulus is unfalsifiable as well. You can’t blame Krugman for being unfalsifiable just because Congress didn’t listen to him – especially when you’re in the same boat. This stimulus is good but not nearly enough to pull us out – and when it ends up not pulling us out you’re just going to argue that that’s a reason for why we should have done less in the first place.