Is Sumner's not Having a Beard a Mere Coincidence

     I think not.

     http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/no-shaving-grace/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body

     For one thing, I find the theory that There are no coincidences rather charming.

     https://www.thetreeofawakening.com/synchronicity/

    http://godspeaks.com/boards/there-are-no-coincidences/

    Oh, well. Maybe the correlation between beards and intelligence is just a coincidence. However, there are some interesting correlations anyway. Think about it.

    1. Krugman has a beard.

    2. Simon Wren-Lewis has a beard

    3. I have a beard.

    4. Sumner has no beard.

    5. Dilbert's ignorant boss has no beard. He must have voted for Romney.

     6. Joe Stiglitz has a beard.

     And Sumner says I'm not an economist. Krugman teases us with the
serious matters of which he can't discuss':

    "Serious matters are afoot, but I don’t know if there’s anything more I can say about them right now. So, on to a subject where I think I can make a useful intervention: Peter Dorman’s query about why so many economists wear beards."

     "Actually, others have asked the same question — and found that bearded Nobelists are not quite as prevalent as one might have thought. Mostly, I think, it’s the impression conveyed by myself and Joe Stiglitz, although Simon Wren-Lewis has an even more impressive display."

    "But to the extent that there is a pattern here, it’s basically about the whiz-kid culture of economics, in which careers can take off very quickly — and one’s appearance may not have kept up with one’s professional reputation. I grew my beard when I was 26, and it was very definitely a defensive move: there I was, writing what I hoped were ground-breaking papers — everything everyone has said about international trade is wrong! — and looking like an undergraduate. (Seriously — when I went in to see a colleague some of the students complained that I was cutting ahead of the line). So I was looking for a bit of hairy gravitas."

     "And by the time I no longer needed that, the beard had become part of my persona."

      The reason for my beard followed a different trajectory let us say. I like to call my impressive bird's nest a Philosopher's Beard. But I'll take whatever puts me in the same category as Krugman, Stiglitz and Wren-Lewis and not with Sumner, Dilbert's ignorant conservative boss, and Jeb Bush. 

   By the way, Greg, I hope you appreciate my big writeup of your link after you couldn't help me out on Sadowski-LOL.

   "Yeah Im not really interested in taking that whole subject on. Sadowski and Sumner are two peas in a pod and not worth arguing with to be honest. "

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/ken-duda-resonds-with-possible-way.html#comment-form

     I disagree here. I can understand why he doesn't enjoy reading Sadowsski. But that's because most people not jut Greg don't like reading people they violently disagree with. 

    In this regard I'm different. Sumner for his part certainly never reads me though I read him. On the other hand I wouldn't be shocked if he does peak now and again which would explain why he is so thin-skinned when I engage him at his blog. 

    When someone says stuff you violently disagree with the natural tendency of most people I think is to just dismiss them and think about more pleasant thoughts. I'm not blanket criticizing this-I don't think there's a question of 'right and wrong' here, more a question of what the economists call 'preferences'-most people's preferences no matter if they're Right, Left, or Center prefers to stay away from those they violently disagree with. 

   As an optimal response there are some benefits though there is a drawback as well as Simon Wren-Lewis notes regarding this very same Mark Sadowski I asked Greg about. 

    "What do you do when a well known macroeconomics blogger says you have made a claim which you have never made? You have in fact clearly said the opposite, and the claim you are supposed to have made is obviously silly. Ignore it maybe? But then you get comments on your own blog expressing surprise at how you can make such a silly claim. There is only one thing you can do really - write a post about it."

     http://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/telling-lies.html

     So for me the reason I want to get into the weeds of Sadowski;s CBO gymnastics is because if I-or someone else doesn't; but usually with Sumner that's me, though Jason Smith did happily surface as a Sumner critic recentlyl

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/scott-sumner-mark-sadowski-jason-smith.html

      then Sadowski is gong to keep repeating the CBO gymnastics. By calling him out it moves the goalposts of a public debate. Even if he repeats them again he will put more qualifiers. Like now that he has been called by Wren-Lewis on looking solely at Q4 2012 to Q4 2013 in assessing the effect of fiscal contraction in 2013 he at least tries to explain why he's been doing this. 

     "Furthermore, none of the forecasts concerning the effects of fiscal consolidation, by either the CBO, or the major private forecasters, referred to annual 2013 RGDP growth. They all referred to quarterly RGDP growth in 2013 or to year on year RGDP growth in 2013Q4. This because this is the more reasonable measure when the question is what impact a budgetary change starting at or near the beginning of a given year will have on subsequent growth. The Q4/Q4 measure is approximately the average of the four quarterly growth rates following the budgetary change, whereas the Year/Year annual measure is essentially a weighted average of the previous and current year’s quarterly growth rates. In this particular instance 3/8ths of the weights in the Year/Year measure come from quarters that occurred before even a single act of the federal fiscal consolidation went into effect on January 1, 2013. For more on why the Q4/Q4 measure might be preferred to the Year/Year measure in this case, see this for example."

     https://thefaintofheart.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/failed-fiscalist-forecasts/

      If there is one thing in all honestly I think is different than how most folks seem to consider opinions or arguments they don't like is that even if I abhor a partiuclar argument I ask myself how many people disagree with me? If the number's sizable then arguing about it is not a waste of time. 

     Again, this is a preference anyway and people have a right to differ on it. But this is the way I look at it.