Yes, Donald Luskin Is Still the Stupidest Man Alive: I Think He Endorses Obama in This One

Is this what you paid a fortune for, Mr. Murdoch? To see this appear in your media empire?

Donald Luskin: Democratic claims are true: Since 1948, the Standard & Poor's 500 total [nominal] return (capital gains plus dividends) has averaged 15.6% when a Democrat was in the White House and only 11.1% when a Republican was in the White House. You get a similar result if you look at growth in real gross domestic product. Under Democratic presidents, the average since 1948 has been 4.2%. Under Republican presidents it has been only 2.8%.

But it's not so simple when you study that "study." First, not all Democrats act like Democrats, and not all Republicans act like Republicans. John F. Kennedy, for example, was an enthusiastic supply-side tax cutter, and George H.W. Bush raised taxes. Bill Clinton promoted free trade, and Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls. If you assign those four presidents to the opposite party based on that -- make the two Democrats into Republicans and the two Republicans into Democrats -- the numbers completely reverse...

If I understand this, I think it is an endorsement of Obama: it's advice that you should vote for the Democrat because he is more likely to act like a growth-promoting Republican than the Republican is. With Obama's chief economic advisor being University of Chicago Professor Austan Goolsbee, and McCain's being bureaucratic oligopolistic corporate establishment figure ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina, the proper path is clear.

Comments

[Gene O'Grady]

Isn't calling JFK a supply sider a bit like calling Pericles an Episcopalian?

[Automated Robot]

Yes, lets make Clinton a Republican, I mean, Republicans loved the guy.

[Bernard Yomtov]

I believe the proper phrase is "failed ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina."

Just check HP's stock price during her tenure as CEO. Is she really McCain's chief economic advisor? There's an ad for Obama there somewhere.

[Lewis Carroll]

You can relax, Bernard. His chief economic advisor is Phil Gramm, who's did a bang-up job at UBS. Don't you feel so much better?

[howard]

the minute that luskin endorses a return to the tax rates that prevailed under jfk, i'll take luskin seriously.

even by his standards, this is an amazingly stupid comment.

[Cal]

But Kennedy was the original supply-sider, so that makes Reagan a Democrat and the Democrats then won the Cold War!

[low-tech cyclist]

As an example of the continuing decline of the Washington Post, Luskin has a long Outlook piece this morning. Shorter Luskin: Americans believe the economy is bad because Obama and the media told them so.

Stupidest man alive? I dunno, it's a tough competition. But Luskin sure packs a lot of stupid.

[allan_in_upstate]

Warren Buffet can not, or should not, be a happy camper that
the management of the Washington Post, in which he has a major stake,
publishes buffoons like Luskin, thereby driving the brand further nto the muck.

The Post will make Buffett look back fondly
on his USAir investmemt as 'the good old days'.

[Blissex]

Luskin is actually quite bright an capable, he is just a totally partisan propagandist, and knows which side is buttered on, and how gullible USA voters are. Anyhow Luskin as channeled by Browne did write a very interesting piece on the crucial changes in the USA financial system in 1995 that have caused the Great American Credit Explosion: http://www.smartmoney.com/ahead-of-the-curve/index.cfm?story=20060203 http://www.signallake.com/innovation/FedReserve1995.pdf and even if written from the demented point of view of a gold bug, I think that the points made in there deserve to be taken with great interest.

[Blissex]

«very interesting piece on the crucial changes in the USA financial system in 1995 that have caused the Great American Credit Explosion:» As to the Great American Credit Explosion, here is a piece that advocates continuing the same policy: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/recession_plagued_nation_demands «The manner of bubble isn't important—just as long as it creates a hugely overvalued market based on nothing more than whimsical fantasy and saddled with the potential for a long-term accrual of debts that will never be paid back, thereby unleashing a ripple effect that will take nearly a decade to correct." "The U.S. economy cannot survive on sound investments alone," Carlisle added. Congress is currently considering an emergency economic-stimulus measure, tentatively called the Bubble Act, which would order the Federal Reserve to† begin encouraging massive private investment in some fantastical financial scheme in order to get the nation's false economy back on track.» The above sounds like the Fed*mart policy manual :-).

[Maynard Handley]

"Luskin is actually quite bright an capable"

Actually no he is not. The man does not know the difference between a flow and a lump sum. I remember some nutty article he published a while back comparing lump sums to dollars/year which makes as little sense as saying my car is better than yours because my car has 30 gallons of gas in it, and your car gets 25 miles to the gallon.

[rea]

"McCain can't type because of permanent injuries sustained from his POW captivity under the tender mercies of the Viet Democrats running the Hanoi Hilton."

Odd--he ws cleared to fly jets for the Navy after being released. But I guess that's not as physically demanding as, say, blogging . . . .

[skeptical]

"Trying to make McCain look like some-out-of-touch old fogey because he doesn't use a computer. McCain can't type because of permanent injuries sustained from his POW captivity under the tender mercies of the Viet Democrats running the Hanoi Hilton."

a) Stephen Hawking can use a computer, you moron. I know a quadriplegic who can type faster than me holding a pointer in his teeth. It has nothing to do with physical ability. If McCain can't use a computer it's because he hasn't bothered.

b) Stop pulling alleged facts out of your ass. The McCain campaign is now insisting that, dammit, McCain can use a computer and in fact uses one all the time.

c) Really, the McCain campaign should start paying for higher-quality trolls. This is pretty bush-league spam.

d) "Viet Democrats"? But, but... according to Luskin, Nixon was a Democrat; so I suppose by McCain logic the NVA were the Republicans.

[Peet]

Luskin is right. If you call something the opposite of what it actually is, it changes everything.

If you call the Union the "Confederacy" then the South actually won the Civil War. And if you call the sun the "moon" then we can all work on our tans at midnight.

I took ONE macroeconomics class at a community college, and suddenly feel much smarter in comparison. If I can see how dumb that comment is, anyone can.

Luskin's comments are a subtle variation on the "Bush wasn't a 'true' conervative" gambit. ugh.

[Maynard]

"If I understand this, I think it is an endorsement of Obama: it's advice that you should vote for the Democrat because he is more likely to act like a growth-promoting Republican than the Republican is."

No, I think what he's saying is that if Obama's economic plan is sensible, he should be called a Republican. If McCain's is stupid, he should be called a Democrat.

[And Obama's economics are sensible.]

[Julian Elson]

I have an idea: instead of merely calling presidents whose economic performance was bad "Democrats" and those whose performance was good "Republicans," you could say that presidential policies varied in their partisan nature even within single administrations. You could say, then, that business cycles from nadir to peak are presided over by presidents who act "Republican," while business cycles from peak to nadir are presided over by presidents who act "Democratic." That way you could show that Republicans have a *much* better economic record than Democrats!

[Elvia]

lets make Clinton a Republican, I mean, Republicans loved the guy.

[larb]

Undoubtedly one of the dumbest things I have ever read.

[RedKing]

And if my aunt had a penis, she'd be my uncle.

Seriously, if you need to contort the statistics with that many caveats, just throw them out the window and admit that you just don't like reality.