Just finished reading Prof. Quiggin’s book Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us. The book is the walk through the usual dead ideas still filling the thinktank libraries and spoonfed in MBA programs everywhere. Prof. Quiggin has no quibbles taking a mallet to the dead ideas and then finishing them with sledgehammer. He spares no one!
The book is also filled with tidbit about how these bad ideas started taking root. This one grabbed my attention:
Supply side economics dates back to 1970s, when it was popularized by Jude Wanniski, then associate editor of Wall Street Journal, and later an economic advisor to Reagan.
He later became one of the first commentators to suggest that sadder hussies ands had been found and destroyed by UN inspectors this assessment proved more accurate than most of his economic predictions.
Makes total sense. Where else could such a trashy, crappy idea come from other than the pages of the loony wingnut op-ed of the WSJ! 40 years and a giant economic flustercuck later, they’re still at it. Now that’s perseverance. I guess when there’s no one calling you on the bullshit and you’ve indoctrinated 30 years of MBAs filling wall street with this bull, why would anyone call them out? And then, there’s this:
Wanniski, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Art Laffer drew a graph on a napkin
And the bullsh*t Laffer curve was born, just like numerous bullsh*t dotcom business models. At least they had the decency to go bankrupt.
