90 sats \ 11 replies \ @Bell_curve 2 Jul \ parent \ on: Robert Reich’s Blind Spots: The Elephant in the Progressive Left’s Room econ
No economic credentials
Not necessarily a dealbreaker. David Friedman taught law and economics at Santa Clara University for 25 years and all his degrees are in physics
BA history
MA philosophy politics economics
JD
He is a lawyer by training
He was appointed as secretary of labor by Bill Clinton because they were friends from law school and the labor department requires someone who has a legal background and some experience with labor law and antitrust laws and National Labor Relations Board etc
He has taught public policy but no economics courses
As labour secretary he clashed with Greenspan about the budget and spending and deficits
He has criticised the Fed for exacerbating inequality and focusing too much on inflation at the expense of “full” employment.
Friedman is a good example of someone with no economics credentials, who nonetheless is an economist. He thinks like an economist and he has been employed as an economist.
Anyone who advocates Fed printing to curb unemployment has most likely not made the connection between inflation and inequality, which is the criticism we were talking about at the beginning.
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Where was my original point about inflation and inequality?
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The original post is about how progressives, like Reich, don't understand that the Fed creates inequality when it inflates the money supply.
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Right. And I disagreed with Reich being lumped in with the others and your response was he is not an economist.
Am I missing something?
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He lumps the labor economist in with politicians
That's why I noted that he is not an economist.
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Ah, disagree. I know PhDs in Physics and Chemistry who are advanced engineers and confer PHDs in Biomedical Engineering. They'll yell you they are both. One says I'm educated in Physics, but work as an engineer.
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That's fine. I wasn't expecting this to turn into a debate about the meaning of "economist".
I am a labor economist and I don't think of him as one of us, because he wasn't trained in labor economics and he doesn't work as a labor economist. I can appreciate that these fine distinctions that are drawn within a field may not be shared by those outside the field.
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Secretary of Labor is never an economist
And not just Labor. Any cabinet level position is a political appointment.
You’re missing everything
Reich should be lumped with the communists and progressives.
He is not an economist. You challenged us to verify and we did
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I can't tell which side you arguing half the time. Sometimes both.
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His parents and uncle all had PhD in economics from U Chicago
Milton Friedman
Rose
Aaron Director
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