dagblog - Comments for "Niall Ferguson vs. Paul Krugman: Where are the Real Conservative Intellectuals"

I think Ezra Klein did a good

DF — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:20:49 +0000

In reply to This is quite a dust up even

I think Ezra Klein did a good job here of describing exactly why what Ferguson did - and his explanation of what he did - was so awful:

The problem, as Krugman pointed out, is that the CBO and the JCT do not now say otherwise. Ferguson is simply wrong. But that’s understandable. The CBO did release a confusing report back in March 2012 in which they updated their estimates for the insurance coverage provisions of the law (which is to say, the part of the kaw that spends money) without including estimates for the revenue provisions, or the Medicare provisions, which are the parts that save money. It was easy to get confused. But if you actually read the report, it said that the Affordable Care Act was going to cut the deficit by more than the CBO initially thought, not by less.

But Ferguson says he wasn’t confused. Rather, he phrased his original comments very carefully in order to deceive his readers. You see, Ferguson specified that he was only talking about the “insurance-coverage provisions,” and so, if you happen to be an employee of the Congressional Budget Office and you’re aware of the difference between these reports, you would’ve understood that when Ferguson wrote —

The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.

— that the first sentence and the second sentence had nothing to do with each other. Of course, most people are not employees of the CBO, and so they just got tricked. In the pages of Newsweek. Bummer for them.

This is quite a dust up even

EmmaZahn — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:04:06 +0000

In reply to Niall Ferguson vs. Paul Krugman: Where are the Real Conservative Intellectuals

This is quite a dust up even by Ferguson standards. I first read about when Kevin Drum was 'gobsmacked' by Ferguson's defense of the article:

Niall Ferguson Finally Renders Me Speechless | Mother Jones

I'm speechless. How do you even react to something like this? Ferguson is like some clever middle schooler who thinks he's made a terrifically shrewd point by inserting "insurance coverage provisions" into his sentence so that he can later argue that it's technically correct if anyone calls him on it. You can almost hear the adolescent tittering in the background.

Drum then linked to Noah Smith who is always angered by Ferguson:

Noahpinion: Niall, the British Empire is over. Accept it.

this is why he makes me so angry - Niall Ferguson badly misunderstands my country. We are a Republic, not an Empire, and we always will be. We rejected the mantle of Anglo-Saxon world domination in the Philippines, again in Vietnam, and again in Iraq. And we will always reject it. We do not want to go forth and educate and enlighten the brown people at the point of our Tomahawk missiles, Mr. Ferguson. We want to invite them here, to live with us, to work for us and hire us, to marry our children, to become part of this country. Even, yes, to lead this country, as Barack Obama, for all his faults, has done. We do not want to conquer the world. We want to become the world.

The British Empire is over, Niall. It had its day. We can debate eternally how much good it did, but now it is done, and it is not coming back. Stop trying to screw up my Republic in your doomed effort to bring it back.

Smith keeps adding links of others joining the conversation at the end of his piece if you are interested in following it.

I did enjoy this one. I really liked how Cassidy ended it:

These days, the right seems unable to rise above rabble-rousing. The end of the Cold War robbed it of an external enemy. The tensions between its social and economic wings robbed it of any internal cohesion. The financial crisis and Great Recession robbed it of a creed—laissez faire. It’s still got plenty of willing foot soldiers, and a lot of big money behind it, but where is the fresh thinking and intellectual direction? All that’s left is anti-government posturing, waving the flag, and Obama-bashing. And even in pursuing this limited agenda, it often gets its facts wrong.

Here's Brad DeLong on

DF — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:28:00 +0000

In reply to Niall Ferguson vs. Paul Krugman: Where are the Real Conservative Intellectuals

Here's Brad DeLong on Ferguson.

I think the answer is that

DF — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:12:21 +0000

In reply to Niall Ferguson vs. Paul Krugman: Where are the Real Conservative Intellectuals

I think the answer is that conservatism is not an intellectual business at this point - if it ever truly was. The world will be better off when posers like Ferguson and Tina Brown have been flushed down the loo of history.