Skip to main content

Obama thinks like an economist

I have finally put my finger on why I like Obama so much (other than the obvious): he thinks like an economist. Specifically, he understands how to separate the positive from the normative. For example, this is from last night's press conference:
"When people suggest that, what a waste of money to make federal buildings more energy efficient -- why would that be a waste of money? We're creating jobs immediately by retrofitting these buildings, or weatherizing 2 million American's homes, as was called for in the package. So that right there creates economic stimulus. And we are saving taxpayers when it comes to federal buildings potentially $2 billion. In the case of homeowners, they will see more money in their pockets, and we're reducing our dependence on foreign oil in the Middle East. Why wouldn't we want to make that kind of investment?

Now, maybe philosophically you just don't think that the federal government should be involved in energy policy. I happen to disagree with that. I think that's the reason why we find ourselves importing more foreign oil now than we did back in the early '70s when OPEC first formed. And we can have a respectful debate about whether or not we should be involved in energy policymaking, but don't suggest that somehow that's wasteful spending. That's exactly what this country needs."
The first paragraph outlines a positive argument: one can disagree about how many jobs will be created but ultimately, it is an objective question that can be answered with data. Obama mixes in some normative rhetoric but the argument itself is a positive one. The second paragraph identifies the normative argument, what Obama refers to as a difference in 'philosophy': whether or not you believe the federal government should be involved in energy policy is a matter of opinion.

What's fascinating to me is that thinking about issues like this - separating the positive from the normative - is so rare in Washington that people are completely confused about what Obama is doing.

On a related point, Tyler Cowen points out that there is actually more consensus among economists than it may appear from the mainstream media and the blogosphere.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...
Post a Comment
Read more

When is an exam "too hard"?

By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu...
3 comments
Read more

This is about getting through, not re-inventing your course

As someone who has worked hard to build a lot of interactivity into my courses, I have never been interested in teaching fully online courses, in part because I have felt that the level of engaged interaction could never match that of a face-to-face class (not that there aren't some exceptional online courses out there; I just have a strong preference for the in-person connection). But the current situation is not really about building online courses that are 'just as good' as our face-to-face courses; it is about getting through this particular moment without compromising our students' learning too much. So if you are used to a lot of interaction in your F2F class, here are some options for adapting that interaction for a virtual environment: [NOTE: SDSU is a Zoom/mostly Blackboard campus so that's how I've written this but I am pretty sure that other systems have similar functionality] If you use clickers in class to break up what is otherwise mostly lect...
2 comments
Read more