Paul Ryan's Other Guru: Friedrich Hayek
Prime Time for Paul RyanÂ’s Guru (the One WhoÂ’s Not Ayn Rand)
As Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney take the stage in Tampa next week, the ghost of an Austrian economist will be hovering above them with an uneasy smile on his face. Ryan has repeatedly suggested that many of his economic ideas were inspired by the work of Friedrich von Hayek
Many of Ryan’s most famous proposals have clear Hayekian roots. His Roadmap for America’s Future includes calls for government to step out and let the market decide. His proposal to allow citizens to buy whatever health insurance they want, rather than use a government-promoted exchange, also seems to be embedded in the Austrian tradition. In other important ways, though, Ryan is anything but Austrian. While Hayek would laugh at an economic forecast for distant 2013, Ryan’s budget plan includes predictions about 2083. The congressman’s proposal for two separate tax systems — a flat-tax system and a loophole-filled tax system — is exactly the sort of contradictory governmental problem-solving that Hayek detested.
In actuality, Ryan is like a lot of politicians who merely cherry-pick Hayek to promote neoclassical policies, (THAT'S THE REAL PROBLEM, IMHO) says Peter Boettke, an economist at George Mason University and editor of The Review of Austrian Economics. “What Hayek has become, to a lot of people, is an iconic figure representing something that he didn’t believe at all,” Boettke says. For example, despite his complete lack of faith in the ability of politicians to affect the economy, Hayek, who is frequently cited in attacks on entitlement programs, believed that the state should provide a base income to all poor citizens.
To be truly Hayekian, Boettke says, Ryan would need to embrace one of his central ideas, known as the “generality norm.” This is Hayek’s belief that any government program that helps one group must be available to all. If applied, Boettke says, a Hayekian government would eliminate all corporate and agricultural subsidies and government housing programs,
and it would get rid of Medicare and Medicaid or expand them to cover all citizens. (Hayek had no problem with a national health care program.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/m...ans-guru-the-one-thats-not-ayn-rand.html?_r=0
That's because the Austrian School under Ludwig von Mises ran into a pretty big problem. They just knew their economic theories were right, but there was all this pesky data that got in the way which said the opposite. The facts didn't say what von Mises and the other Austrian economists wanted them to say. In the 1940's, Von Mises had a brilliant realization. The problem wasn't with their right, perfect, and holy economic ideas. The problem was that the scientific method doesn't work!
And thus, with the sweep of a pen, Von Mises created the "Praxeological Method" where the math always says exactly what the Austrians want it to say.
LOL
Paul Ryan's Magical Economic Worldview: The Austrian School
All one has to do to discount them is look at its adherents here & IRL such as
Lyin' Ryan (R-WS)
I actually used to comment on Lord Keynes blog until I joined this place.
