Professor Certitude

Large minds talk about ideas. Small minds delve in personalities.

Anyway, there’s this guy – he’s a college professor, and so he’s free of any threat of ever losing his job. He gets free health care and nice retirement benefits and an expense account. So, consequently, he’s more insulated from the free market than any I know (save a few trust babies I once worked for). This guy preaches the beauty!, the wisdom!, the genius! of …. the very free market from which he is exempt.

I’ve interacted with him several times now, and found he has other characteristics that now seem to fit – the insulation from the stress and strain of survival in the market have made him cocky in his attitudes. Viewing us all from above, he’s quick with bromides for every problem, virtually all of the same proscription: Less Government, More Market. He’s a man on a mission, enlightened and ready to show us the way, if only we would listen.

One other matter – the man studiously researches his views, constantly reassuring himself that he is right. He seeks out studies that reinforce him, and, I learned last night, even done a study himself. Here’s the exchange, redacted, which has gone off the main page at Electric City Weblog:

Mark T: You methodically seek out data and economists that support your views, as we all do, but you are different in one important regard: You are so sure you are right that you don’t postulate – you conclude conclusively and with finality. You have spoken. . And you always conclude that you are right….

Since you present yourself as methodical, I ask that you measure Montana’s economic performance while neutralizing two important variables – national [and] world commodity prices, and subsidy. You are looking for correlation between income tax and economic performance, and since you look very very hard for that correlation, you of course find it. But with such a narrow focus, you miss more than you see.

…[Montana} state tax revenues tend to go up when oil prices are high, as they do when farmers are prospering. Most of our farmers are heavily subsidized, as is our road building and land management. Where are we without subsidy and high commodity prices? Do income taxes even matter? In fact, so much of our economic performance is beyond our control that I am reminded of a child with a pretend-steering wheel thinking he is driving a car as I listen to your rhetoric.

…Your focus is too narrow, your outcomes preordained – your philosophy is not worth much. But it seems, as always, that your way of looking at things is the only way. You are widely critiqued and criticized all over the Montana blogosphere, but you never seem to leave here. Why?

Natelson: Actually, I don’t believe a total taxation package should be regressive. I believe it should be proportional with respect to income.

Did you know that an MSU economist and I ran the numbers ourselves for Montana years ago? In a study published by the Independence Institute in 1994, we found highly robust, statistically significant connections between both taxes and government spending as a share of state personal income and subsequent (not simultaneous) economic growth over the previous quarter century: The higher the Montana taxes and spending, the lower the subsequent growth and vice versa. Montana state-local fiscal policy accounted for 25-40% of the difference in growth rate between Montana and the nation as a whole.

So we didn’t just rely on other published studies, nor did we assume that what was true elsewhere was true in Montana. WE DID THE LEGWORK OURSELVES.

And I’m delighted to hear from you that, I am “widely critiqued and criticized all over the Montana blogosphere.” Since I actually work for a living and therefore don’t have infinite blogging time, I guess they’ll all just have to come over to Electric City Weblog to engage me, won’t they?

If they have the GUTS . . .

Mark T: Oh, they have the guts, Ron. Each and every one of them. Crisp, for example, has written about you on a couple of occasions. It’s a click of the button – not a factor of time. It’s not like it takes extra time to visit another blog. You’re being disingenuous here. You have plenty of time to blog and respond to blog posts, but when it comes time to face your critics, you get too busy.

Anyway, go back a re-read what I wrote:

Have you finally learned that most studies are a reflection of the desired outcomes of those who study?

Your answer to this: “I did the study.”

What sense does that make? Is a study better because you did it? Are you more objective in your analysis than you are in debate? Do you set aside your extreme views when you enter the laboratory?

That’s preposterous.

Anyway, show us the study, and show us where it was peer reviewed. I’d be interested – peer review is essential in these matters, so I presume that you and your cohort published both your findings and your data, and that others then replicated your findings with that data.

End of story. What did I learn? Here’s s snippet from Rolling Stone Magazine, an article titled “Bitter Pill” by Ben Wallace-Wells, regarding trials and studies of new drugs:

studies have found that drug trials sponsored by the industry (which, since rule changes made in the Reagan administration, has meant virtually every large drug trial) are at least four times more likely to suggest that a drug is a success than trials that are independently funded.

My conclusion? Studies by conservative and libertarian think tanks are four times as likely as any other study to find that the policies advocated by conservative libertarian think tanks – lower taxes (or no taxes) on wealth, unregulated trade and deregulation – are the right policy for our country.

I further conclude by use of an exponent applied to an extreme personality, that a study sponsored by Mr. Natelson is sixteen time more likely than objective observers to say that Mr. Natelson has been right all along.