In the series of posts to follow, I hope to introduce my readers to evidence casting doubt on the view that New Deal programs ended, or mostly ended, the Great Depression. I’ll also address here and there some other popular misconceptions (as I see them) about the New Deal. I don’t expect to win everyone over to my view of things. I’m not that ambitious. I merely hope to convince you that those who claim the New Deal held up recovery don’t deserve to have their opinions dismissed out of hand, or attributed to purblind partisanship.
Tim Worstall uncovers evidence of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s innumeracy. (The language we’re stuck having to use in discussions of so-called “trade deficits” is unavoidably confusing, not least because the very concept of a country’s “balance of trade” or “balance of payments” is, as Adam Smith observed, “absurd.” But we communicate using language.)
“The modelers thought of everything except reality.” A slice:
We cannot centrally plan an economy. Computers are no help. We cannot centrally plan a response to a new virus. Computers are of no help. For the sake of health, prosperity, human rights, and liberty, leave disease mitigation to the professionals and get it out of the hands of modelers and the politicians they intimidate into implementing their plans.
Tarnell Brown writes about Bloody Tulsa.
Arnold Kling summarizes his thoughts on calls to “defund the police.”
Ross Douthat reflects on the dust-up at the New York Times over the Tom Cotton op-ed.
The term “Twitter Robespierres” is so very appropriate.
