DenBeste throws down

After ignoring months of abuse, DenBeste finally exposes Daniel Davies as the charlatan he is. I feel the same way about Davies' writing on economic issues. He claims to understand economic fundamentals, but in fact does not. He makes outrageous statements and then hides behind jargon. I tried to take him seriously for a while, but when I realized he wasn't, I stopped. And I stopped reading him.

I don't have a PhD in econ, but I will say that, at base, it's a way of thinking which is very honest about costs and incentives, and believes people know their own preferences best which they reveal through action, and the system tries to optimize to something. Krugman, ironically, put it best in this old Slate piece. He then proceeded to get a job at the NYTimes and lose his mind. He no longer writes like an economist, he writes like a partisan hack, and there better hacks out there. Anyway, I've stopped reading him too -- he no longer has any credibility.

And I hardly read Democrat economist Brad Delong anymore either. Brad likes (or at least used to) Daniel Davies, and you can infer from that what you want. Brad sometimes writes like an economist, and sometimes like a democrat loyalist. The latter damages his credibility as the former and it's also painful to wade through. But whatever--make your own cost/benefit analysis and do what you want. There's no coercion on the Web.