Archive for the 'Journalism' Category

The Next Trump Cabinet

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on August 1, 2024
in Bad Reasoning, Economics, Journalism and Politics
. 6 Comments

Here is a headline from this morning’s New York Times:

Over the course of the day, I’ve heard three different radio commenters riffing on this theme, mocking the former president for not realizing that presidents don’t control monetary policy.

The mockers are wrong. They’re even obviously wrong. If interest rates are determined by monetary policy and nothing else, then what determines interest rates in an economy without money, where people still borrow and lend?

Interest rates are largely determined by the difference between prosperity now and expected prosperity in the future. If everyone expects to be a lot richer in ten years, they’ll try to borrow more now and drive interest rates up. If everyone expects to be a lot poorer in ten years, they’ll try to save more now and drive interest rates down. And pretty much everything a president does affects both current and future prosperity, so pretty much everything a president does affects interest rates.

Trump’s promise to bring down interest rates is an implicit promise to adopt policies that either a) make us more prosperous today, but only temporarily and/or b) make us less prosperous in the future. In other words, he’s promising to adopt policies that many of us would describe as short-sighted. The New York Times notwithstanding, he’s perfectly capable of fulfilling that promise. He can, for example, appoint a lot of short-sighted people to influential policy positions.

And we know who some of those people are! The New York Times and the radio commentators completely missed the boat on this one. They thought Trump was promising the impossible, but failed to realize that there’s nothing impossible about filling the Cabinet with childless cat ladies.

Click here to comment or read others’ comments.

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In the Matter of Sarah Jeong

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on August 6, 2018
in Bad Reasoning, Current Events and Journalism
. 16 Comments

Two decades after hiring Paul Krugman, the New York Times has doubled down by hiring the venomous Sarah Jeong, whose old tweets include the following rhetorical question:

Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins?

According to Jeong’s supporters, the tweet needs to be read in context — it was, you see, intended as a parody of Andrew Sullivan’s audacious piece in New York magazine, advocating research — or at least opposing the suppression of research — into racial differences in IQ.

I’m all for parody. I’m all for taking other people’s logic (and my own!), pushing it to its limits, seeing where it leads, and thereby calling attention to its weaknesses. And I am outraged when authors engaged in this enterprise are taken out of context. If I say “X”, and if “Y” is both analogous to X and clearly outrageous, then Sarah Jeong or anyone else ought to be able to tweet “Y” by way of making fun of me, without having to face down a gang of yahoos accusing her of believing “Y”.

But that’s not what this is about. Because — and here is the crux of the matter — the analogue to

Are some races genetically disposed to be less intelligent than others?

is

Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun?

which is not at all the same thing as

Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins?

The problem here is not that Sarah Jeong believes white people are fit only to live underground like groveling goblins. (I feel pretty confident, in fact, that she believes no such thing.) The problem here is that she is attempting to refute Andrew Sullivan’s logic by writing down an analogy (so far so good) and then, having done so, tacking on the phrase “being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins”, which in no way reflects anything Andrew Sullivan said, and which Sarah Jeong pulled out of her ass.

Continue reading ‘In the Matter of Sarah Jeong’

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Quote of the Day, Election Edition

Published
by
Steve Landsburg
on November 3, 2014
in Journalism, Rants and WTF?
. 8 Comments

From Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times, writing with no apparent sense of irony about Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Serena Mancini:

She favors raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation, for example, and opposes making Rhode Island a “right to work” state. Her chief focus is creating jobs.

If you doubt the existence or direction of bias at the New York Times, ask yourself when you’re next likely to read a Times piece that says something like:

She favors widespread deregulation, for example, and opposes all taxes on capital income. Her chief focus is alleviating poverty.

Wait, that’s an imperfect analogy, since (unlike the passage from Ms. Seelye) it actually makes sense. Let me try again:

Continue reading ‘Quote of the Day, Election Edition’

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