Noah Smith is a very smart and often funny young economist. He runs the Noahpinion Blog, which has a different tag line just about every day. I keep up with his blog, but I don’t spend that much time on it because it is largely over my head. However, he has a better understanding of libertarians and their foibles than anyone else I know. For example: The liberty of local bullies; Libertarianism and the Tamerlane Principle; and Libertarianism is a “low-end” strategy of state formation. This is not to say that I always agree with Smith. In fact, it seems to me that he goes out of his way to be provocative. But he’s interesting. And smart. And funny.
He was in fine form yesterday when he wrote a long article about trolls on economics blogs. I recommend reading the whole thing, but I thought you all might like to see his section on Republicans:
How the world sees them:
Favorite blog: The Wall Street Journal editorial page
Favorite dead economist: Art Laffer
Will appear in response to posts regarding: taxes, politics, taxes
Craziest idea: Difficult to say, but probably a tie between bankrupting the country with debt, privatizing the prison system, invading Iraq, cutting funding for science, dishing out billions in pork to well-connected no-bid contractors, throwing millions of harmless marijuana users into nightmarish prisons, repressing gays, disenfranchising black voters, forcing millions of “illegal” immigrants into second-class citizen status, and blocking any sensible policy reform through the abuse of supermajority tactics in the Senate…
Special attack: Taking over the entire United States for three decades
Secret weaknesses: hot liberal chicks, fatty food
Notes: See also History, American, all
I particularly like the “Favorite dead economist” entry, because Art Laffer is not dead. But he might as well be. He greatly annoys me, because all he does is smile and babble.