Notice Me!

NOTICE ME (NOTICE ME)
NOTICE ME (NOTICE ME)
FACE IT BABY, YOU NEED ME!
NOTICE ME (NOTICE ME)
NOTICE ME (NOTICE ME)
DON'T PRETEND YOU DON'T SEE ME, HONEY...
..............................alexa ray joel

Congratulations Stevereeno! Kudos to Steve Landsburg! After years relentlessly pummelling Paul Krugman, the Nobel Memorial andClark Medal winner finally deigns to notice him. Alas, he is not too kind.

Brad DeLong and Noah Smith have some fun with a bizarre post by Steve Landsburg — even more bizarrely endorsed by Alex Tabarrok — in which Landsburg asserts that you can’t tax a man if you can’t persuade him to reduce his consumption.

There are multiple things wrong with this claim, but the most fundamental, I think, is that it represents a remarkable misunderstanding of the reasons why we have taxes in the first place. They don’t primarily exist as a way to induce lower private consumption, although they may sometimes have that effect; they are there to ensure government solvency...

Krugman goes on to explain his argument in some detail, but the Steevester despite his super high IQ and Econ PhD bizarrely fails to get it.

[Picks up virtual two by four, delivers virtual whack]  Taxes are not (mainly) about consumption!  Consumption, expecially now, is not a zero sum game!

Not that I expect any of that to penetrate SL's efficient markets brain damage.

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