Lawrence H. Summers and Sir Angus Deaton on Is Economic Failure an Economics Failure?

[@advocate1563]

Larry Summers is discussing macro economics; Deaton is discussing sociological economics. By English academic standards Summers is slightly too robust, but delightful to hear 2 people disagreeing so fundamentally without recourse to cancellation, abuse, etc. Thank you Markus - great job, as ever, and I wish you had more subscribers for your efforts.

[@jara1462]

summers is old shoes, last year's snow, old globalist brain of 20th century

[@pldevries]

Larry Summers aggressively defends his career as an economic policy maker who advocated business and market friendly economic policies that were intended to maximize overall economic output but that invariably ignored the human cost of those polices. Angus Deaton looks at the human cost of economic policies. and gives the human cost of economic policies precedence over efficiency gains or output maximization. I find it hard not to side with Deaton. Human welfare is more important thanthe achievement of rosy aggregate measures of economic performance. The economics profession has lost sight of that.

[@123axel123]

Larry is a globalist and cares about the median world income. Angus is a nationalist and cares about the median US income.

[@mamanitubea]

What kind of academic concerned about the poor supports not removing barriers against exports from poor nations? How can Deaton support such discrimination against the poor.

[@stefanopaoli717]

I love this guy (Deaton) so much, and I am on his side. I have changed my mind on the economics (or rather on the economists) so much in the last 10-15 years. I appreciate Summers (one of the last few) but it’s kind of Summers is looking at the trees, while Deaton is seeing the forest. Economists use fancy math to show off some skills and pretend economics is a science like physics. Well, it’s not. It’s a social science. I’ve seen so many Nobel laureate economists making statements or predictions that came completely wrong, that I stopped caring about their models and their fancy talking. Deaton gets it completely right. Thanks

[@mamanitubea]

What kind of academic concerned about the poor supports not removing barriers against exports from poor nations? How can Deaton support such discrimination against the poor.

[@ritornelloandrefrain]

"I yield to no one...!" Fun, informative & important discussion/debate.

[@stephenmcgrail7661]

Personally I think it's a good thing that an economist of Deaton's standing is arguing against modern market fundamentalism. Summer's reactions remind me of the saying "he doth protest too much".

[@larissafraser8315]

Summers's appeal to morals is beyond hilarity indeed.

[@kmkcorner]

I would love to see a discussion between Brad DeLong, and Larry. Brad echoes much of the same concerns of Angus, but his recent work, "Slouching Towards Utopia" has a lot of data and rigor that Larry seems to be seeking from Angus in this video. The two have had a discussion before at the Harvard Library I believe, but it wasn't published online.

[@carlosfetter]

I think there is a video of them talking somewhere in youtube. They used to work together at the Us Treasury and are really good friends.

[@RightTailAngst]

I haven’t seen one with Delong and Summers that would be fun to hear.

[@marshalldonnelley7667]

I'd also like to see Dean Baker thrown into the mix. He has a lot to say about how NAFTA and the TPP hollowed out the unskilled jobs in America while maintaining protections for American doctors and lawyers against foreign competition. I think Summers feels that what hollowed out unskilled jobs was not foreign competition from Chinese goods, but automation.

[@niccolomurtas3691]

thank you for reminding an italian economics student that yes, it is really economics and not economic.

[@kmkcorner]

Their comments about being over data dependent reminded me about David Landes' book, "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations". He makes the point that one reason Japanese manufacturers are so competitive is the dexterity they get from using chopsticks. I have no idea is this is true, but how easy would it be for a modern economist to throw this away since it doesn't fit nicely into a mathematical model? Does its qualitative nature make it less important to the field? I wonder how many other potentially important viewpoints are not looked into for this reason.

[@stavros.malkidis]

Does anyone have a link to the substack that Summers refers to?

[@dimitriosgoumenos]

what minute is it? interested to hear what he says exactly

[@stavros.malkidis]

@@dimitriosgoumenos ''The "Deaths of Despair" narrative is wrong'' by Matthew Yglesias, you can google it. Deaton strongly rejects it as nonsense basically.

[@bleacherz7503]

gdp isn’t the metric of importance as much as gdf should be *family

[@danielrodriguez4697]

Is the transcript available?

[@jennervasquezguevara6333]

¿Cómo hace Markus que estas reuniones se realicen? realmente un punto a tener en cuenta es como brindas ayuda a las personas menos desfavorecidas (que sufren algún mal social) e insertar las respuestas en las bases económicas, fue fabuloso escuchar y debatir a Larry, Angus, gracias Markus

[@ranand089]

love the debate

[@TheControlBlue]

That Angus guy is pretty based 💯 👍🏿👌🏿!

[@thomasrundquist]

Author of Psychological Index of the Stock Market is my psychological analysis of what is money in social psychological terms. Is there a need for earners to be in deep debt or job insecurity to determine a high need of goods and services to be created? Is a strong desire created by making earners value getting rich to satisfy their desires and/or need to fill good or calm. Then having lots of exchanges tools (money)?

[@cuttysark57]

Summers is completely wrong that nuclear war and climate change have nothing in common. The issue that connects them is nuclear winter and the climate effects of nuclear war. I'm shocked he isn't aware of this.

[@mamanitubea]

What kind of academic concerned about the poor supports not removing barriers against exports from poor nations? How can Deaton support such discrimination against the poor.

[@kleinbogen]

Deaton looks like Churchill.

[@Jensth]

Is hairsplitting splitting hairs?