I follow Matt Yglesias on twitter. I like to get the far left's perspective of things despite disagreeing with a lot of their positions. Yglesias writes quite a bit on economics but so often he comes to simplistic conclusions. So, what's happening? Simply put, he's a leftist journalist that writes on economics related topics and uses simple Keynesian analysis to back up any policy that recommends more government power or control. Granted, I haven't read every piece of his work so there may be a few gems that defy the trend.
In this link from Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux points out that Yglesias's analysis falls short when analyzing the stimulative effects of rebuilding after a hurricane.
Yglesias's shortcomings reinforce my feelings that journalists should pick a field they want to work in and specialize in that field by earning either a double major or a graduate degree. One, this would reduce the supply of journalists and maybe increase their pay. Two, the quality of journalism as a whole only has one direction to go: up. I hope. Requiring journalists to have some understanding of what they report on would improve the analysis coming out of our media outlets.
No comments:
Post a Comment