Harvard Econ Student Walk Out to Protest Propaganda Approach to Econ 101

I thought the part of the point of going to a university was to learn opposing viewpoints. That whole learning thing, ya know?

 

"when i said price controls, I actually meant "hated price controls" and endorsed monetary policy.

Move the goalposts a little more and they will be completely submerged in your sphincter.

It was T-Tech, wasn't it?

 

Mankiw is actually a New Keynesian, btw. And a Republican.

Pretty much he's like Bernanke.

It's not like he's Ron Paul.

 

Signed, Egypt.

 

Mankiw is center-right on economic policies. Yes, he's a New Keynesian, but he's also a great admirer of Friedman, and like Friedman himself, has divurged somewhat to protest things like infrastructure as counter-cyclical management (which it must be admitted, even Keynes was somewhat hesitant about later), and to emphasize that even Pigovian taxes (carbon tax)---a very liberal idea---should be revenue neutral. In fact, he favors shrinking the government and fiscal policy by and large.

I do know, however, that he is an ardent believer of Keynesian ideas such as sticky prices/wages. If memory serves, he was the one who came up with menu costs (i.e the cost to changing prices represented by replacing menus with the new prices as an example), and he's one of those guys who is trying ever so hard to find empirical evidence for stickiness in the economy.

With all that said, if students have such a problem with Mankiw, they are gonna lose their minds with Austrian thinkers. I sympathize with them trying to challenge his positions, but they should do it in the classroom, rather than outside it. It doesn't portend well that students would rush to such an extreme action to protest what I would call a moderate bias, at best (and hell, economics instruciton is all about moderate, and sometimes extreme, bias). I sympathize with their position, I just wish they hadn't taken it so far as to create this big fuss about it.

 

And what Mankiw teaches on inequality is...what? Do you know?

There are other professors that teach diverging viewpoints.

 

Good post, I agree.

 

Macroeconomics was ECON 2105 for me
Micro was ECON 2106

Macro was a prereq for Micro.

 

You don't think what the central bank does is a price control? They might have a point for doing it, but isn't that always the argument with price controls? If Keynes hated price controls he wouldn't have supported a monetary policy that requires controlling the price of loanable funds.

 

Not only do I not think, I know it for a fact. Also I know that a dog is not a cat.

Film at 11.

What bizarre-o schools were these that taught people aggregate supply and aggregate demand before explaining supply, demand, equilibrium etc....and why do they suck so much for doing it?

 

I was just about to say this -- I recognized the name Mankiw immediately from at least one economics textbook I used back in college.

 

This is a made-up protest.

1. In intro econ you are learning to draw supply/demand curves. You are learning the fairly unbiased basics that then lead to the various theories.
2. If every student walked out of every class in which they disagreed with the professor, everybody would eventually walk out of a class or ten.
3. If you agree with every professor on everything, you are not learning anything.

 

Well, you're wrong on that one. You're telling me that a price that is set by a central authority and not by the equilibrium between supply and demand is not a price control. Seems like you're the one labeling the dog a cat.

 

See, the worst part about being a dogmatic twunt is that you say stupid things and will continue to say stupid things like this until the end of time.

Courtesy of Wikpedia - here's what a price control is:

.

Here's what monetary policy is:

They are not the same thing anymore than a tornado and a fart are the same thing.

YOu are welcome. If I were you I would write Texas Tech and ask them for a refund (hint...that is not a price control!)

 

Like i mentioned, my first econ 101 I took was before I declared it as a major and I took it as a foundational class. Once I did declare micro was my first class. Not sure if it would have been the same order had I declared first.

Micro is certainly the better weedout class though. First day of class the room was packed. Last day it was 1/4 full. I'm not sure if any of the BA econ people lasted.

 

Just like a Black Studies class, anywhere else but Harvard it's probably a waste of time.

 

Sigh these kids are being silly. I'd love to sit in on a class by Mankiw. I may not agree with him on everything but I respect him as an economist. He's not an Austrian school bozo like many of the crazies in Congress.

These kids don't realize how lucky they are to be taught by someone like Mankiw.

 

Many?

I'd love to sit in on one of his classes, as well.

 

And manipulating the interest rate as they please to keep the price of loanable funds below a market equilibrium, where the supply of loanable funds is determined by how much people in the aggregate economy are saving, isn't a price control put in place to maintain the affordability of loanable funds? And does that same price control not encourage too much risk taking by banks, consumers, and businesses? It's a price control. It does the same thing a price control does. The price is being controlled.

And I didn't go to Texas Tech. Keep up the guessing.