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Remember Back When the Nobel Prize for Economics went to Looneytarian Shills?

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Bret Cahill

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Sep 26, 2012, 12:48:06 AM9/26/12
to
See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.


Bret Cahill

Nickname unavailable

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Sep 26, 2012, 2:16:27 AM9/26/12
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On Sep 25, 11:48 pm, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
> See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>
> Bret Cahill

yep, actually they were fake nobels. handed out by "CONSERVATIVE"
shills using nobels name. and of course the conservative legacy media
reported the prizes as legitimate.

$27 TRILLION to pay for Kyoto

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Sep 26, 2012, 3:58:12 AM9/26/12
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On Sep 26, 12:48 am, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
> See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>
> Bret Cahill

Reaganomics worked. Obamanomics didn't.

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 12:42:52 PM9/26/12
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On Sep 26, 2:58 am, "$27 TRILLION to pay for Kyoto"
the republican party is simply running out of al bundy, homer simpson,
archie bunker types. people so stupid, they cannot even do basic math,
let alone come in from the rain.
the constitution of the united states was a anti-conservative
statement by the majority of the founders of the united states of
america.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 but upon careful examination "THE CONSERVATIVES"  feeble attempts at
confusion and dishonesty does not stand up to the light. they live in
a counter-factual universe, the product of the hermetically sealed
"CONSERVATIVE" subculture. Trying to see the world through the lens
of
"THE CONSERVATIVE", is like looking at a fun-house mirror;
everything’s backwards and distorted.

"THE CONSERVATIVES" world view is flawed because its based upon a
small and particularly rosy sliver of reality.  To preserve that world
view, "THE CONSERVATIVES" believe that people had morally earned their
“just” desserts, and had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to
point out that the world didn’t actually work that way.  I think this
shows why "THE CONSERVATIVES" put so much effort into “creat[ing]
their own reality,” into fostering distrust of liberals, experts,
scientists, and academics, and why they won’t let a campaign “be
dictated by fact-checkers” (as a Romney pollster put it).  It explains
why study after study shows that avid consumers of "THE CONSERVATIVE"-
oriented media are more poorly informed than people who use other news
sources or don’t bother to follow the news at all.

Immortalist

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 12:57:26 PM9/26/12
to
On Sep 26, 12:58 am, "$27 TRILLION to pay for Kyoto"
Clintonomics worked and he left office with a budget surplus. He
raised taxes on the richest and problem was solved. Bush came and
wondered what to spend it on and invented some wars that would help
limit expenditures to his conservative interests. The new era of
openness and fakebook is killing all chance that the politicians have
of hoodwinking us fools anymore.

Les Cargill

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Sep 26, 2012, 1:27:49 PM9/26/12
to
Immortalist wrote:
> On Sep 26, 12:58 am, "$27 TRILLION to pay for Kyoto"
> <rander3...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sep 26, 12:48 am, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
>>
>>> See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>>
>>> Bret Cahill
>>
>> Reaganomics worked. Obamanomics didn't.
>
> Clintonomics worked and he left office with a budget surplus. He
> raised taxes on the richest and problem was solved.

The problem *wasn't* solved. I am a big Clinton fan, but
what was in play was a stock bubble which increased the wealth
effect and kept M3 up.

Then Wylie Coyote looked down... during Clinton's term....

> Bush came and
> wondered what to spend it on and invented some wars that would help
> limit expenditures to his conservative interests.

Something like that - although neocons consider war
spending perfectly good stimulus. It's Bismarckian
guns and butter...

> The new era of
> openness and fakebook is killing all chance that the politicians have
> of hoodwinking us fools anymore.
>

The difference now is that then, Cisco would *give* people the gear to
start an ISP*, mark it as a sale and write the rest as financing. ince
set as an ISP, the proprietor could hire "web designers" to have
a service component.

*if I had it all to do over again... I woulda...

That does not happen any more. Apple/Facebook/Google don't hire enough
people to make a dent.

--
Les Cargill

Bret Cahill

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Sep 26, 2012, 1:25:48 PM9/26/12
to
> > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.

>  yep, actually they were fake nobels. handed out by "CONSERVATIVE"
> shills using nobels name. and of course the conservative legacy media
> reported the prizes as legitimate.

James Fallows pointed that out back in the late 20th Century.


Bret Cahill



Nickname unavailable

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Sep 26, 2012, 3:55:44 PM9/26/12
to
yea all of the empirical evidence is in. when taxes are high we grow
much more than when taxes are low on the wealthy. its common knowledge
now. so cling to your tiny sliver of reality.

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 3:57:28 PM9/26/12
to
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

[Note: Part of the HET Website.  This page is not related to or
endorsed by the Nobel Foundation, the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences or any other organization. See the official Nobel Memorial
Prize website]
In 1896, Alfred Nobel, the Swedish industrialist and inventor of
dynamite, bequeathed his fortune to a foundation to create an annual
prize for person "who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred
the greatest benefit on mankind."   Nobel's will specified prizes in
physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature and peace.  These
were first awarded in 1901.
In 1969, the Swedish central bank (Sveriges Riskbank) established a
prize known as the "Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel", which is commonly shortened to the Nobel
Memorial Prize.   The Nobel Memorial Prize has a similar procedure of
award selection (by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) as the
original Nobel prizes.  It also disburses the same monetary amounts
and shares in the formal ceremony.
The Nobel Memorial Prize has been quite controversial since its
inception and numerous objections have been raised against it.  The
first objection is that economics is either not "scientific" enough or
does not contribute to "human advancement" enough to merit the
prestige of an award with the Nobel name.  The sentiment, often echoed
in wider intellectual circles and the popular press, is shared by many
economists themselves.  Indeed, Gunnar Myrdal, after having helped the
Riksbank set it up in 1968 and receiving the award himself in 1974,
eventually came to publicly admit this.
The second objection, is that the Bank of Sweden's decision to use the
prestigious "Nobel" name has thrust economics into a kind of medal
race, pitting nations, universities and individual economists against
each other.  All this leads to a lot of unnecessary acrimony that
distracts and disrupts serious economics research.
A third objection, and one that has become increasingly louder, is
that there is an insufficient number of truly outstanding economists
that deserve it.  After the initial splash of glorious names in the
1970s and early 1980s, many have come to argue that the awards made
during the 1990s are more disputable.
This is true to some extent, but understandable. When the awards began
being handed out from 1969 onwards, there were generations upon
generations of deserving scholars which had to be quickly awarded
before it was too late.  The choices of the 1970s were not really
disputed.  By sheer bad luck, giants such as Joan Robinson, Nicholas
Kaldor, Abba Lerner and Don Patinkin never won the award partly
because they were unfortunate enough to die too soon.   By the
mid-1980s, with the "doubtless" Nobel laureates either already
rewarded or dead, it was natural for the awards committee to begin
pacing itself somewhat and start scooping gems from a little bit below
the cream.
A fourth objection is that the Nobel awards committee has its own
agenda and doles out the awards with an eye to encourage the
profession to move in a particular direction.   At the crudest level,
some have claimed that it has  a "Chicago School" bias, given the
number of economists associated with the University of Chicago that
have won the awards (for a breakdown of the awards by nationality and
school, click here).
This is not wholly untrue, but it ought to be placed in context. The
Nobel name, of course, lends a powerful platform to the recipients --
and the awards committee has made controversial and idiosyncratic
choices which have had a profound impact on the economics profession. 
The 1974 award to the nearly-obscure Friedrich A. Hayek, for instance,
generated a huge resurgence of interest in Hayek and Austrian
economics.  Milton Friedman's 1976 award elevated him overnight from
the profession's maverick to one of its elder statesmen and gave
Monetarism a more respectable polish.  In more recent years, awards
have brought entire fields of study into the research spotlight:
bounded rationality was virtually unknown before Herbert Simon's 1978
award; so was Public Choice theory until James Buchanan's 1986 award.
  New Institutionalism and New Economic History were still fringe
movements before the awards to Coase, Becker, Fogel and North in
1991-1993. Of course, at times, the suggestions of the Nobel committee
do not seem to have the desired impact.  The awards to Kuznets and
Stone, for instance, were perhaps meant to encourage the vital but
unglamorous tasks of data compilation and interpretation, but there
was no perceptible rise in interest as a consequence.
A corollary to this is that the Bank of Sweden is occasionally
criticized is for failing to choose the most popular candidates.  Some
of the choices it made have been openly criticized by professional
economists.  There are a number of perennial candidates so universally
liked and recommended, always leading straw polls year after year,
whom nonetheless received no award.  So, even if one disagrees
violently with its choices or gets frustrated by the fact that one's
favorite candidate keeps missing out, perhaps one ought to continue to
admire the Bank of Sweden's bravery.
However, it is precisely because of the erratic and disproportionate
"impact" the Bank of Sweden's choice has upon the profession and the
shape of subsequent economics research that many  have called for an
end to the Nobel Memorial Prize. One proposition is to replace it with
a less lop-sided and less pretentious "lifetime award", like the
Francis Walker Medal that used to be handed out by the American
Economic Association.
The Bank of Sweden's Nobel Memorial prize for economics is announced
around October 12th of every year, while the actual ceremony (shared
with the original Nobel awards) is on December 8th.  Winners are
requested to present a "Nobel Memorial Lectures", which is initially
published in the volume Les Prix Nobel en 19xx, put out every year by
the Nobel Foundation and then republished later in the academic
journals of their laureate's choice.  In recent years, the American
Economic Review has intermittently reprinted many of the Nobel
Memorial Lectures.
NOBEL MEMORIAL PRIZES, 1969-1999.
1969 -
• Ragnar Frisch, 1895-1973. (Norwegian, Oslo University; Ph.D Oslo)
• Jan Tinbergen, 1903-1994. (Dutch, Netherlands School of Economics,
Dr. Univ. Leiden)
• "for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis
of economic processes"
• Lecture: "From Utopian Theory to Practical Applications: The case
of econometrics", Ragnar Frisch, 1981, AER
• Lecture: "The Use of Models: Experience and prospects", by Jan
Tinbergen, 1981, AER
1970 -
• Paul A. Samuelson, 1915-  (American, M.I.T., Ph.D Harvard)
• "for the scientific work through which he has developed static and
dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level
of analysis in economic science"
• Lecture:"Maximum Principles in Analytical Economics", by Paul A.
Samuelson, 1972, AER.
1971 -
• Simon Kuznets, 1901-1985. (American, (b. Russian), Harvard, Ph.D
Columbia)
• "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth
which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social
structure and process of development"
• Lecture: "Modern Economic Growth: Findings and reflections", by
Simon Kuznets, 1973, AER.
1972 -
• John Hicks, 1904-1989. (British, Oxford, M.A. Oxford )
• Kenneth J. Arrow, 1921- (American, Harvard, Ph.D Columbia)
• "for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium
theory and welfare theory"
• Lecture: "The Mainspring of Economic Growth" by John Hicks, 1981,
AER
• Lecture: "General Economic Equilibrium: Purpose, analytic
techniques, collective choice", by Kenneth J. Arrow, 1974, AER.
1973 -
• Wassily Leontief, 1906-1999. (American (b. Russian), Harvard, Ph.D
Berlin)
• "for the development of the input-output method and for its
application to important economic problems"
• Lecture: "Structure of World Production: Outline of a simple input-
output formulation", by Wassily Leontief, 1974, AER
1974 -
• Gunnar Myrdal, 1898-1987. (Swedish, Stockholm, Dr. juris, 
Stockholm)
• Friedrich A. von Hayek, 1899-1992.  (British (b. Austrian), Univ.
Freiburg, Dr. jur. Univ. Vienna)
• "for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic
fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence
of economic, social and institutional phenomena"
• Lecture:  "The Equality Issue in World Development", by Gunnar
Myrdal, 1989, AER
• Lecture: "The Pretence of Knowledge", Friedrich A. von Hayek, 1989,
AER
1975 -
• Leonid V. Kantorovich, 1912-1986. (Soviet Union, Inst. Nat. Econ.
Management, Moscow; Dr. Leningrad Univ.)
• Tjalling C. Koopmans, 1910-1986. (American (b. Dutch), Yale, Ph.D,
Univ. Leiden)
• "for their contributions to the theory of optimum allocation of
resources".
• Lecture: "Mathematics in Economics: Achievements, difficulties,
perspectives" by Leonid V. Kantorovich, 1989, AER
• Lecture: "Concepts of Optimality and their Uses", by Tjalling C.
Koopmans, 1977, AER,
1976 -
• Milton Friedman, 1912-  (American, Chicago, Ph.D Columbia)
• "for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis,
monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the
complexity of stabilization policy"
• Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment", by Milton Friedman, 1977,
JPE.
1977  -
• Bertil Ohlin, 1899-1979. (Swedish, Stockhom Sch. of Econ., Dr.
Univ. Stockholm)
• James E. Meade, 1907-1995. (British, Cambridge, M.A. Oxford)
• "for their pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international
trade and international capital movements"
• Nobel Lecture: "1933 and 1977 - Some Expansion Policy Problems in
Cases of Unbalanced Domestic and International Economic Relations", by
Bertil Ohlin, 1993, AER
• Lecture: "The Meaning of "Internal Balance"", by James E. Meade,
1993, AER
1978 -
• Herbert A. Simon, 1916- (American, Carnegie-Mellon, Ph.D. Chicago)
• "for his pioneering research into the decision-making process
within economic organizations"
• Lecture: "Rational Decision Making in Business Organizations", by
Herbert Simon, 1979, AER.
1979 -
• Theodore W. Schultz, 1902- (American, Chicago, Ph.D Wisconsin)
• W. Arthur Lewis, 1915-1991. (British (b. St. Lucia), Princeton,
Ph.D. L.S.E.)
• "for their pioneering research into economic development research
with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries"
• Lecture: "The Economics of Being Poor", by T.W. W. Schultz 1980,
JPE
• Lecture: "The Slowing Down of the Engine of Growth", by W. Arthur
Lewis, 1980, AER.
1980 -
• Lawrence R. Klein, 1920-  (American, Pennsylvania, Ph.D. M.I.T.)
• "for the creation of econometric models and the application to the
analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies"
1981 -
• James Tobin, 1918- (American, Yale, Ph.D Harvard)
• "for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to
expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices"
• Lecture: "Money and Finance in the Macroeconomic Process", by James
Tobin, 1982, JMCB
1982  -
• George J. Stigler, 1911-1991. (American, Chicago, Ph.D Chicago)
• "for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of
markets and causes and effects of public regulation"
• Lecture: "The Process and Progress of Economics", by George J.
Stigler, 1983, JPE.
1983 -
• Gérard Debreu, 1921- (American (b. French), UC Berkeley, D.Sc.
Univ. Paris)
• "for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic
theory and for his rigorous reformulation of the theory of general
equilibrium"
• Lecture: "Economic Theory in a Mathematical Mode", by Gérard
Debreu, 1984, AER
1984 -
• Richard Stone, 1913-1991. (British, Cambridge, DSc. Cambridge)
• "for having made fundamental contributions to the development of
systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for
empirical economic analysis"
• Lecture: "The Accounts of Society", by Richard Stone, 1986, Journal
of Applied Econometrics
1985 -
• Franco Modigliani, 1918- (American (b. Italian), M.I.T., Ph.D New
School for Social Research)
• for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets"
• Lecture: "Life Cycle, Individual Thrift and the Wealth of Nations"
by Franco Modigliani, 1986, AER.
1986  -
• James M. Buchanan, 1919- (American, George Mason Univ., Ph.D
Chicago)
• "for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases
for the theory of economic and political decision-making"
• Lecture: "The Constitution of Economic Policy", by James M.
Buchanan, 1987, AER
1987  -
• Robert M. Solow, 1924- (American, M.I.T., Ph.D. Harvard)
• "for his contributions to the theory of economic growth"
• Lecture: "Growth Theory and After", by Robert M. Solow, 1988, AER
1988 -
• Maurice Allais, 1911- (French, Ecole Nat. Sup. Mines, Ing. Dr.
Univ. Paris)
• "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and
efficient utilization of resources"
• Lecture: "An Outline of My Main Contributions to Economic Science",
by Maurice Allais, 1990, Theory and Decision
1989 -
• Trygve Haavelmo, 1911- (Norwegian, Oslo, Ph.D Oslo)
• "for his clarification of the probability theory foundations of
econometrics and his analyses of simultaneous economic structures"
• Lecture: "Econometrics and the Welfare State", by Trygve Haavelmo,
1997, AER
1990 -
• Harry M. Markowitz, 1927- (American, CUNY, Ph.D Chicago)
• Merton H. Miller, 1923-2000 (American, Chicago, Ph.D Johns Hopkins)
• William F. Sharpe, 1934- (American, Stanford, Ph.D UCLA)
• "for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics"
• Lecture: "Foundations of Portfolio Theory" by Harry M. Markowitz,
1991, J of Finance
• Lecture: "Leverage" by Merton H. Miller, 1991, J of Finance
• Lecture: "Capital Asset Prices With or Without Negative Holdings",
William F. Sharpe, 1991, J of Finance
1991 -
• Ronald H. Coase, 1910- (British, Chicago, B.Com. L.S.E.)
• "for his discovery and clarification of the significance of
transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure
and functioning of the economy"
• Lecture: "The Institutional Structure of Production", by Ronald
Coase, 1992, AER
1992 -
• Gary S. Becker, 1930- (American, Chicago, Ph.D Chicago)
• "for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide
range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket
behaviour"
• Lecture: "The Economic Way of Looking at Behavior", by Gary S.
Becker, 1993, JPE
1993 -
• Robert W. Fogel, 1926- (American, Chicago, Ph.D Johns Hopkins)
• Douglass C. North, 1920- (American, Washington Univ. St. Louis,
Ph.D UC Berkeley)
• "for having renewed research in economic history by applying
economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic
and institutional change"
• Lecture: "Economic Growth, Population Theory and Physiology: The
bearing of long-term processes on economic policy" by Robert W. Fogel,
1994, AER
• Lecture: "Economic Performance Through Time" by Douglass C. North,
1994, AER
1994 -
• John C. Harsanyi, 1920-2000 (American (b.Hungarian), UC Berkeley,
Ph.D Budapest)
• John F. Nash, 1928- (American, Princeton, Ph.D. Princeton)
• Reinhard Selten, 1930- (German, Bonn, Ph.D. Frankfurt)
• "for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-
cooperative games"
1995 -
• Robert E. Lucas, 1937- (American, Chicago, Ph.D Chicago)
• "for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational
expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic analysis
and deepened our understanding of economic policy"
1996 -
• James A. Mirrlees, 1936- (British, Cambridge, Ph.D. Cambridge)
• William Vickrey, 1914-1996.(Canadian, Columbia, Ph.D Columbia)
• "for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of
incentives under asymmetric information"
1997 -
• Robert C. Merton, 1944- (American, Harvard, Ph.D. M.I.T.)
• Myron S. Scholes, 1941- (American (b. Canadian), Stanford, Ph.D.
Minnesota)
• "for a new method to determine the value of derivatives"
1998
• Amartya K. Sen, 1933- (Indian, Cambridge, Ph.D. Cambridge)
• for his contributions to welfare economics.
1999 -
• Robert Mundell, 1932- (Canadian, Columbia, Ph.D M.I.T.)
• for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different
exchange rate regimes and his analysis of
optimum currency areas
2000 -
• James J Heckman, 1944- (American, Chicago, Ph.D. M.I.T.)
• Daniel L. McFadden, 1937- (American (b. Canadian), UC Berkeley,
Ph.D. Chicago)
• Heckmann: for his development of theory and methods for analyzing
selective
samples,
• McFadden: for his development of theory and methods for analyzing
discrete choice
2001 -
• George A. Akerlof, 1940- (American, UC Berkeley, Ph.D. M.I.T.)
• A. Michael Spence, 1943- (American, Stanford, Ph.D. Harvard)
• Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1943- (American, Columbia, Ph.D. M.I.T.)
• for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information
2002 - ? To be announced early October 2002.  Check out the Nobel
laureates internet poll at Economics.com/Amherst College in the
meantime.
NOBEL STATISTICS
Nobels Awarded
• Total - 33
• Awarded Individually - 20
• Shared between two - 10
• Shared between three - 3
• Nobelists - 49
Nationalities of Laureates
• American - 31
• British - 7
• Canadian - 2
• Norwegian - 2
• Swedish - 2
• French - 1
• Dutch - 1
• Indian - 1
• German - 1
• Soviet Union - 1
(Note: foreign-born Kuznets, Koopmans, Debreu, Modigliani, Harsanyi
and Scholes received their awards as Americans; foreign-born Hayek and
Lewis received theirs as British.  Foreign citizenship was retained
for recepients Coase (British) and Vickrey and Mundell (both
Canadian)).
Affiliated Universities/Institutions (at time of award)
• Chicago - 9
• UC Berkeley - 4
• Cambridge - 4
• Harvard - 4
• Columbia - 3
• M.I.T. - 3
• Stanford - 3
• Oslo - 2
• Princeton - 2
• Yale - 2
• Bonn - 1
• Carnegie-Mellon - 1
• City University of New York - 1
• Ecole National Superieure de Mines, Paris - 1
• Freiburg - 1
• George Mason - 1
• Institute for National Economic Management, Moscow- 1
• Netherlands School of Econ. (Erasmus Univ.) - 1
• Oxford - 1
• Pennsylvania - 1
• Stockholm Univ. - 1
• Stockholm School of Econ. - 1
• Washington Univ., St. Louis - 1
Universities where Laureates received their Highest Degree (Ph.Ds,
etc.)
• Chicago - 7
• M.I.T. - 5
• Columbia - 4
• Harvard - 4
• Cambridge - 3
• Johns Hopkins - 2
• Leiden - 2
• L.S.E. - 2
• Oxford - 2
• Oslo - 2
• Paris - 2
• Princeton - 2
• Stockholm - 2
• Berkeley - 1
• Berlin - 1
• Budapest - 1
• Frankfurt - 1
• Leningrad - 1
• Minnesota - 1
• New School - 1
• UCLA - 1
• Vienna - 1
• Wisconsin - 1
Resources on the Nobel Memorial Prize
• Official Nobel Memorial Prize Website in Sweden
• "The Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) Prize in Economic Sciences
in Memory of Alfred Nobel 1969-1998" by Assar Lindbeck
• Nobel winners internet poll at Economics.com/Amherst College
• Britannica Guide to the Nobel Prizes
• "Who Wins the Nobel Prize?" by Johan van Gompel in Challenge, 1999
• "Dynamite Plan Bolsters Myth: The Nobel, Towering Genius", by
Catharine R. Stimpson, New York Observer, 2000
• "Too Many Eyes On the Prize" by James Glanz, New York Times, 2000
• "Les courants qui ont marqué trente ans de prix Nobel d'économie",
Le Monde, October 16, 2000
• Nobel Prize Winners at Ideachannel
• Autographs of Nobel Prize Winners - private collection by Reinhard
Zuta
• "Five Market-Friendly Nobelists", by C.K. Rowley, 1999, Independent
Review
• Several Nobelists, 1981, Boston Globe
• About the Nobel Prize at Nobelists for the Future
• Other Internet Nobel Pages: Britannica, Bartleby, Univ. of
Victoria,
 "THE "NOBEL" PRIZE THAT WASN'T"
BY HAZEL HENDERSON



EXCLUSIVE TO LEMONDE DIPLOMATIQUE
© Hazel Henderson, December 2004
www.hazelhenderson.com
(word count 1,367)

"THE "NOBEL" PRIZE THAT WASN'T"
by 
Hazel Henderson
An unusual row erupted at the recent annual Nobel Prize awards.  Peter
Nobel, heir of Alfred Nobel, who endowed the Prizes added his voice to
the growing outrage of many scientists at the confusion over The Bank
of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel.  Over
the years since this $1 million prize was set up by Sweden’s central
bank in 1969, it has become conflated with the real Nobel Prizes and
is now often mis-labeled as the so-called “Nobel Memorial Prize.”
The brouhaha emerged December 10th, 2004 in Sweden’s main newspaper,
Dagens Nyheter in an extensive Op-Ed by mathematician and member of
Sweden’s Royal Academy of Sciences, Peter Jager, Mans Lonnroth, Senior
Lecturer in Technology and Society and former Environment minister and
Johan Lonnroth, economist and a former member of the Swedish
Parliament.  The article pointed out in great detail how many
economists including those who had been awarded the Bank of Sweden
Prize – actually mis-used mathematics by creating unrealistic models
of social processes.  Peter Nobel, in an exclusive interview, told me
that Alfred Nobel had never mentioned in any of his letters a prize in
economics.  Nobel added “The Swedish Riksbank has put an egg in
another very decent bird’s nest and thereby infringed on the
trademarked name of Nobel.  Two thirds of the Bank’s prizes in
economics have gone to US economists of the Chicago School who create
mathematical models to speculate in stock markets and options – the
very opposite of the purposes of Alfred Nobel to improve the human
condition.”
What appeared to be the last straw, which caused these objections to
finally surface, was this latest award of the Bank of Sweden Prize to
two more US economists, Finn E. Kydland and Edward C. Prescott. Cited
was their 1977 paper describing their mathematical model which
purports to prove that central banks should be independent of the
influence of elected legislators – even in democracies.  This has been
an ideological drumbeat of central bankers, commercial banks,
neoclassical economists and financial journals, including London-based
The Economist.  Witness the citation that went with this year’s Bank
of Sweden Prize, which lauded Kydland and Prescott’s paper as having
“had a far-reaching impact on reforms carried out in many places (such
as New Zealand, Sweden, Great Britain and in the Euro area) aimed at
legislated delegation of monetary policy decisions to independent
central bankers.”
These dubious “reforms” are precisely the problem for popularly-
elected representatives in democracies, where transparency in policy
decisions is highly valued.  Monetary policy is at the heart of how
wealth, income and opportunities are distributed in societies.  An
excessively tight monetary policy for example, falls heavily on
workers as unemployment rises, while many small borrowers of car and
home loans bear the brunt of high interest rates.  Lenders and those
with capital assets do well.
In my Politics of the Solar Age (1981, 1986), I documented the
ideological biases of neoclassical economics and the unreality of many
of the inaccurate assumptions underlying even today’s economics
textbooks.  A new chorus of scientists in physics, mathematics,
neurosciences and ecology are now joining their Swedish colleagues in
calling for the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economics to either be
broadened, properly labeled and disassociated from the Nobel Prizes –
or simply abolished.
The objections are from the “hard” scientists who study the natural
world and whose research findings are therefore subject to
verification or refutation.  They contend that the economics prize
devalues all the real Nobel Prizes and has become an embarrassment. 
Scores of ecologists, biologists, natural resource experts, engineers
and thermodynamicists have critiqued economics, building on the 1971
classic by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the Economic
Process, which I reviewed in the Harvard Business Review.
But even the growth of hybrid professions – so-called ecological
economics, natural resource economics and others, cannot escape
economics’ fundamental errors.  Many critics liken these to religious
beliefs, such as the postulate of “an invisible hand” of markets. 
Thus, the long-standing question of whether economics is a science –
or a profession has now surfaced.  I have long-maintained that
economics is a profession, not a science since so many of its
“principles” are unlike the tested principles in physics that can
guide a spaceship to the moon.  For example, I showed that economics’
Pareto Optimality “Principle” ignored prior distribution of wealth,
power and information – and could lead to unfair social outcomes. 
Dressing up such concepts in fancy mathematics tends to disguise their
underlying ideologies. Professor Robert Nadeau, a distinguished
historian of science at George Mason University in the USA has also
examined such flaws in economics in his recent books, The Non-Local
Universe (Oxford University Press 1999) and The Wealth of Nature
(Columbia University Press, 2003).
The temptation to mathematize concepts and faulty assumptions in
economics is understandable, because it obscures these value-laden
biases.  This conceals public issues as too “technical” for the public
or even legislators to understand.  Thus, economists gain influence
with the wealthy and powerful institutions in society which usually
employ them.  Neither have economists been held to the same standards
of accountability as other professions.  If a doctor makes a patient
sick, a malpractice suit can be filed.  Economists’ bad advice can
make whole countries sick – with impunity.
Neuroscientists, biochemists and those studying the role of hormones,
as well as psychologists, anthropologists, behavioral scientists and
evolutionary biologists are now dealing death blows to economics’ most
enduring error.  This lies in its model of “human nature” as the
“rational economic man” who competes against all others to maximize
his own self-interest. This fear and scarcity based model is that of
the early reptilian brain and the territoriality of our primitive
past.  Neuroscientist Paul Zak at Claremont University has linked
trust, which enables humans to bond and cooperate, to the reproductive
hormone oxytocin.
David Loye in his Darwin’s Lost Theory of Love (2000) based on re-
visiting Charles Darwin’s original notebooks, shows that Darwin did
not focus on the “survival of the fittest” and competition as major
factors in human evolution.  Darwin was more interested in the human
capacity to bond and trust, to cooperate and share and in the
evolution of altruism as factors in human success. Game theory can
lead to similar conclusions, as Robert Axelrod documents in The
Evolution of Cooperation (1984), also emphasized by Robert Wright in
Non Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny (2000) and Riane Eisler in The
Power of Partnership (2002). Indeed, how otherwise could we humans
have evolved from roving bands of nomad gatherers and hunters to
create cities, corporations, The European Union and the United
Nations?
Other scientists including physicist, Professor Dr. Hans Peter Durr of
Germany’s famed Max Planck Institute agree that economics is not a
science.  Durr says “economics is not even bad science because its
core assumptions are incorrect.”  Chaos theorist and Professor of
Mathematics at the University of California, Ralph Abraham believes
that economics may one day become a science.  Abraham is researching
the new mathematics employed by some economists, by programming
“agents” in computer models that are supposed to mimic human
behavior.
 The snag for mathematicians is that people don’t behave like atoms,
golf balls or guinea pigs.  Unlike the economists “rational economic
man” people are often irrational and their motivations are complex,
with many, especially women, enjoying caring, sharing and cooperating
often as unpaid volunteers.  The agent-based computerized efforts to
make economics more scientific may pay off in the future.  One recent
model “Sugarscape” simply recreated poverty gaps and trade wars.  I
suggested that if they had programmed half of their “agents” with the
behavior females so often exhibit (by choice, or involuntarily in
patriarchal societies) they might have produced different results. 
Economics is patriarchal to its core, which accounts for the rise of
feminists economics.
The row over the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science (which I
hold was set up to give this profession the aura of a science) has
uncovered all these deeper issues.  A major academic scandal may be
unfolding. It may be ignored by the World Economic Forum of business
and government elites in snowy Davos, Switzerland, while becoming a
major focus at the World Social Forum in sunny Porto Alegre in Brasil.

****
HAZEL HENDERSON, author of Building a Win-Win World and other books
(www.hazelhenderson.com), co-created with the Calvert group of
socially-responsible mutual funds, the Calvert-Henderson Quality of
Life Indicators (updated at www.Calvert-Henderson.com). She created
the financial TV series, Ethical Markets, premiering on Public
Broadcasting stations in the USA in January, 2005.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/business/20nobel.html?em&ex=1193025600&en=47c2b5f3ce1aa479&ei=5087%0A

The Prize That Even Some Laureates Question

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: October 20, 2007
Carping from time to time over the unworthiness or politics of a
particular Nobel peace or literature laureate is expected. But when it
comes to economics, it’s the award itself that sometimes comes in for
sneers; even a couple of its winners have suggested it be abolished.
Skip to next paragraph

Jonas Ekstromer/Agence France-Presse
The laureate Amartya Sen said his focus, social welfare, had not been
given its due.
Unlike the original five prizes named in Alfred Nobel’s will more than
a century ago, the economics award — formally called the Bank of
Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — was
created in 1968 by the nation’s central bank in honor of its 300th
anniversary. But it isn’t so much bloodlines that have stirred up
dismay as the kind of work that has often been honored.
“They’re not engaged in the problems of the actual world,” said James
K. Galbraith, an economist at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public
Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin, voicing an all-too-
common complaint that much of the Nobel-anointed economic work seems
out of touch with reality.
Complaints about prize winners generally fall into one of three
categories: too ideological; too preoccupied with theory and
mathematics; or too narrowly focused on problems facing Wall Street
instead of on pressing global issues like inequality, poverty and the
environment.
“Historically, there was a lot of justification to the critique that
it was somewhat ideological in nature,” said Joseph E. Stiglitz, who
won the prize in 2001 along with George A. Akerlof and A. Michael
Spence for their analyses of markets in which people are informed to
different degrees.
He referred to a six-year period in the 1990s when economists from the
University of Chicago — Milton Friedman’s headquarters and the temple
of laissez-faire economics — won five of the prizes. Some of that
work, he complained, “was clearly not breakthrough in any fundamental
sense.”
That is no longer the case, he said; indeed, he said, the trouble now
stems from the committee going to the opposite extreme.
“The main criticism right now is, if anything, they’re slanted more to
mechanical modeling and technical advances,” he said. “One can
understand that as part of a response to criticisms that they were too
ideological,” he explained, but the problem is that not enough thought
has been given to “how substantial the work is.”
That’s not how Gary S. Becker — an economist at the University of
Chicago who won the 1992 prize for applying economic theory to a wide
range of human behavior, including crime and racial discrimination —
sees it.
“People have different judgments about what constitutes the biggest
contribution,” he said, but he maintains that the winners “do reflect
the most important work in economics” and that the work being honored
is “useful in understanding how societies work.”
Amartya Sen, one of the few winners whose work focuses on social
welfare, said he, too, thought the winners were “very worthy” of the
honor. He was particularly pleased that this week the prize went to
Leonid Hurwicz, 90, and Roger B. Myerson and Eric S. Maskin, both 56 —
three American economists who helped create and develop a
sophisticated explanation of the interaction among individuals,
markets and institutions.
While “there was a fair amount of criticism” about ideological bias
more than a decade ago, he said, that has not been the case recently.
A lot of work has been “connected to technical reasoning,” Mr. Sen
said, but that is “related to the nature of the subject.”
Mr. Becker compared the field of economics with chemistry or physics,
in which there is “more of an orientation towards theory” to get at
more fundamental questions. He also dismissed the idea that the string
of University of Chicago awards showed a political bias, saying the
work for which those academics were honored had “nothing to do with
ideology.”
The hard-science prizes were certainly the model for the newest Nobel.
As Burton Feldman explains in his book “The Nobel Prize: A History of
Genius, Controversy and Prestige,” the economics award was created at
a time of exuberant affluence, when mathematics and statistics had
colonized economics and practitioners were claiming their field was
more akin to physics than to sociology.
Yet the notion that economics is scientific, said Jeff Madrick, the
director of policy research at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy
Analysis at the New School in New York, is “highly exaggerated.”
Mr. Madrick not only doubts that significant contributions in the
field can be limited to those based on econometrics but also questions
whether that type of work is as unbiased as is often claimed. “The
Nobel prize has become quite a political animal,” he said, “in the
disguise of being scientifically pure.”
This was the heart of the complaint from the Nobel winner Gunnar
Myrdal. In a 1977 letter to a Swedish newspaper, he rejected the idea
that the field of economics could claim a Nobel on the basis of its
scientific rigor. Economics should concern itself with political and
social needs, he argued, and he called for an end to the prize in
economics.
The free-market conservative Friedrich von Hayek, who shared the Nobel
in economics with Myrdal in 1974 despite being his ideological
opposite, agreed on that point. If he had been asked, Hayek said, he
would have “decidedly advised against” creating an economics prize.
Barbara Bergmann, an emerita professor at American University and the
University of Maryland, said the same problem that afflicts the award
afflicts the profession as a whole: too much theorizing and not enough
actual research.
For all its prestige, the award’s biggest failing, Mr. Galbraith
complained, is that “certain branches of economics have been more or
less excluded,” citing as examples work on poverty, inequality, the
economics of climate change, the collapse of communist economic
systems and debt crises.
Mr. Galbraith needed to look no farther than his own dinner table for
evidence. His father, John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the most
influential economists of the 20th century but always an outsider to
the academic ranks of the profession, never won the prize.
Mr. Sen also mentioned John Kenneth Galbraith as someone who could
have been honored but was overlooked. Work dealing with unemployment,
inequality and poverty, Mr. Sen agreed, has not been cited in
Stockholm very frequently.
“Those require recognition, too,” Mr. Sen said, “but that doesn’t mean
those who were recognized don’t deserve it.”
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-chinobel.htm

The Long FAQ on Liberalism
A Critique of the Chicago School of Economics:

ALL THOSE NOBELS…



To date, the Chicago School of Economics has garnered eight Nobel
prizes -- an odds-defying achievement, given that there are thousands
of economic departments around the world. "I'm astonished," said
Robert Lucas after he picked up his prize. "They keep coming back to
us. I'm sure there will be more." (1)

There will be more if Assar Lindbeck has anything to do with it.
Lindbeck is the Swedish economist who has chaired the Nobel selection
committee for economics since 1980. (He has been on the committee
since its inception in 1969.) At the start of his career, Lindbeck's
politics were slightly right of center, but over the decades he has
become increasingly conservative. His working papers today make
arguments typically associated with the Chicago School's. In 1994 he
published a book entitled Turning Sweden Around, which called for
drastic cutbacks in Sweden's welfare state. (2)

As Lindbeck's politics have marched to the right, so has the selection
of prize winners. In its early days, leftist economists like Paul
Samuelson and Gunnar Myrdal could occasionally win the prize. But
between 1990 and 1995, the Nobel has gone to someone from the
University of Chicago five out of six times.

What is the relationship between Lindbeck and the University of
Chicago? By all accounts, it is a cozy one. This alone does not prove
impropriety, of course, but when an award is as distinguished as the
Nobel prize, even the appearance of impropriety should be avoided.
Lindbeck not only ignores this rule, but flouts it openly.

For over twenty-five years, Lindbeck has served as head of the
Institute for International Economic Studies, a prestigious research
center that is both publicly and privately funded. Seven of "Assar's
Ten Commandments" for running (and presumably funding) a successful
research program call for establishing international contacts. His
fourth commandment calls for these contacts to be based on "intense
individual interaction." (3) Along these lines, Lindbeck has forged
close working relationships with many of the Chicago economists to
whom his committee has awarded Nobel prizes. For example, Lindbeck
joined Nobel laureates Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Douglass
North in a long-running project to construct an "Economic Freedom
Index." The purpose of this project was to rank developing nations by
the level of government interference in their economies. It was funded
by the Center for International Private Enterprise, a far-right think
tank designed to promote the international business interests of its
affiliate, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (4)

On a certain level, Lindbeck's actions can be defended: he is a
respected economist, and it is only normal that he should write
papers, attend conferences and cooperate in projects with other
respected economists. However, the possibility of incestuous
relationships between awarders and awardees means that the selection
process should be carefully designed to avoid this pitfall. The award
process for economics is not so designed. Consequently, not a few
economists agree with Edward Herman's charge that the Chicago School's
growing number of "awards has increased its leverage in the award
process." (5)

The history and award process of the Nobel prize

The Nobel prize for economics is not one of the five original prizes
that Alfred Nobel created in his 1895 will. The economics prize was
added in 1969, but not by any of the Nobel prize-awarding institutions
(such as the Swedish Academy, the Norwegian parliament, etc.). It was
actually created by the Bank of Sweden. For this reason, it is not
really the "Nobel Prize for Economics." It's real name is "The Bank of
Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel." The
prize money does not come out of the Nobel inheritance, but is paid
for by the Bank of Sweden.

The creation of a Nobel prize in economics has raised many criticisms.
Some protest that the Bank of Sweden has no legal or moral right to
use Nobel's name. Others argue that a radical idealist like Alfred
Nobel would have never approved of an award defending capitalist
economics. Others claim that the award was created to legitimize
capitalism at a time of great social protest against it. These are, to
be sure, superficial criticisms, but there are more substantial ones
that can be leveled at the Nobel newcomer.

Perhaps the most troubling is that the selection process for economics
does not resemble the other five. Although the economics committee
boasts that it uses the same procedures, a closer look reveals this to
be untrue. In the other five categories, the process starts by
gathering nominations from as many as 3,000 scientists, which are then
assessed by 15-member prize committees. The committees must then argue
their own selections before a Nobel Assembly of 50 scientists before
reaching a final decision. Usually the discussion of a prize lasts
from 5 to 10 years before the prize is awarded.

There is a potentially weak link in this process: the 15-member prize
committee. It is free to select any nominations it wishes -- and with
thousands of scientists making the nominations, it basically has its
choice. And the committee is more expert in its scientific category
than the Nobel Assembly, so whatever case it makes is bound to be
persuasive. At any rate, the Nobel Assembly has generally rubber-
stamped the committee's recommendations.

Where the economics committee differs from the others is that it does
not seat 15 members, but only six -- nearly two-thirds smaller. This
greatly increases the possibility of bias. How much so becomes
apparent in Assar Lindbeck's own description of his committee's
selection process:
"So far, the proposals of the prize committee to the [Swedish] Academy
have been unanimous. A consensus has in fact developed quite
'automatically' within the committee, as if by some kind of invisible
hand." (6)
This is an astonishing admission, for two reasons. First, the
"invisible hand" is one of the most famous and sacred economic
concepts of the far right, and to say that an invisible hand guides
the committee's consensus is an open taunt to the left. Second, there
is probably no field of science as wracked by controversy as
economics. For the committee to advance unanimous recommendations year
after year is possible only if a perfect bias exists in the committee.
And even then, were six libertarians to sit on the committee, it is
still implausible that their proposals should be unanimous -- even
libertarians have bitter disputes. What is more likely is that the
"invisible hand" guiding the committee is the iron hand of Lindbeck
himself.

Why would committee members defer to Lindbeck? Because Lindbeck's
positions create a conflict of interest. Lindbeck serves in two
powerful positions: both as head of the Nobel committee and the
prestigious Institute for International Economic Studies. If you are a
Swedish economist and are serving either on the Nobel committee or in
the Nobel Assembly, you must kowtow to Lindbeck if you want your
research funded or your career advanced.

Circumstantial evidence? You bet. But the chain of implausibilities
required to believe that the committee is acting without bias is too
long to be seriously believed. And at any rate, even if it were, the
Bank of Sweden needs to initiate immediate reforms to correct a very
strong appearance of bias.

The extent of the bias

None of this is meant to suggest that the economists who've won Nobels
haven't been leaders in their fields. They have. (As for the validity
of those fields, well…) The point is that in any given year, the
number of economists eligible for a Nobel runs in the dozens. These
economists span the political spectrum, and hail from many different
schools of thought. Much of their work has an "apples and oranges"
quality, ranging from the economics of slavery to the economics of
bumblebees. Lining up their work and picking out "number one" is
therefore impossible; the committee actually has a group of possible
candidates, and selecting one is a judgment call. That the reward,
then, should go repeatedly to the Chicago School is a strong
indication of bias.

Could it be that the Chicago School is simply better than the others?
But as Robert Lucas himself has admitted, "The Keynesian orthodoxy
hasn't been replaced by anything yet." (7) One would think, therefore,
that Keynesians were well-represented in the Nobel department. That is
not so. Only a few neo-Keynesians have been honored, like Paul
Samuelson, James Tobin and Robert Solow. Other great Keynesians, like
Joan Robinson, Sir Roy Harrod and Nicholas Kaldor, have been
conspicuously blackballed. Also ignored have been distinguished
institutionalists like Hyman Minsky, Charles Kindleberger and Raymond
Vernon.

But the bias exists on numerous other levels than just the political.
Some of these are quite unseemly, like the fact that the prize has
been perfectly Eurocentric. In his original will, Alfred Nobel wrote:
"It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration
whatever shall be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that
the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be a Scandinavian
or not." Unfortunately, no Japanese economist has ever won the Nobel,
even though the Japanese have built one of the most highly functioning
economies in the world. Why? Apparently results in the real world do
not count as much as the fact that the Japanese do not generally
subscribe to neoclassical theory.

Another bias: the disproportionate number of winners who come not from
mainstream economics, but from the fringes. Examples include James
Buchanan, Herbert Simon, Ronald Coase, Douglass North, Friedrich von
Hayek and Gunnar Myrdal. What is revealing is that even after these
individuals won their Nobels and received a world-wide burst of
academic attention, their ideas still remained on the fringe.

Sometimes it's not even the same fringe. As the old joke goes,
"Economics is the only field in which two people can win a Nobel Prize
for saying exactly the opposite thing." And this is no joke: the
libertarian Hayek shared his 1974 Nobel with the socialist Myrdal,
both for their theories on the business cycle. Ronald Simon won the
Nobel for his theories on "Bounded Rationality," which essentially
notes that people are not walking calculators and statistics manuals.
But then Lucas won a Nobel for "Rational Expectations," which presumed
largely that.

One would think that those economists who have forged a consensus
would be natural candidates for a Nobel prize. Awarding the prize to
fringe candidates suggests that the Nobel committee is judging
economic theory by a different yardstick than academia uses. But if
this yardstick were truly better, then the Nobel committee would be
awarding itself prizes.

Also curious is the timing of the Nobels, relative to the shifting
winds of consensus. During the 70s and 80s, when Rational Expectations
was all the rage, the committee steadfastly ignored Robert Lucas.
Instead, they waited until his theory had fallen out of favor with
academia, and then they awarded him the Nobel.

Lucas's award prompted the following Reuters news report:
"The Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet, tipping Lucas as the winner in
its Tuesday edition, quoted an economist as saying such an award would
be very controversial, although Lucas's theories have dominated many
governments' recent economic policies." (8)
At this point, one wonders just what the Nobel committee's criteria
are. If it is awarding prizes for theories that A) have fallen out of
favor with mainstream economists; B) are controversial and C) are
widely practiced by the world's governments, then it is a wonder why
more Soviet economists have not been awarded the prize.

The shifting of academic consensus highlights the problem of even
having a Nobel prize for economics. There are many different schools
of thought, all opposed to each other, and many have enjoyed their
different heydays. This suggests that economics hasn't really advanced
to the stage yet where we can call any one of them undeniably true. So
what is the purpose of awarding a Nobel?

In his original will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the awards should
be given to those scientists who have "conferred the greatest benefit
on mankind." In other words, those who bring practical results to the
real world. Economics fails this criterion. Of course, it is unlikely
that any false theory could bring benefit to the world, and if various
economic theories pass in and out of academic fashion, it is
impossible that they could all be true and therefore beneficial.

The bias favoring useless theoretical models is just as bad as the
bias favoring right-wing economics. Samuelson -- himself a
conservative -- has an excellent suggestion for making the prize a
"more fitting memorial to Alfred Nobel:"
"Give it to people, not necessarily economists, who have improved a
nation's -- or the world's -- economic well-being. Among Americans,
why not ennobel former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker for
ending double-digit inflation, Ralph Nader for making corporations
more responsive to consumers, or engineer Jack Kilby for co-inventing
the integrated circuit?" (9)
The beauty of this suggestion is that it would force economists to
address real economic problems, if they were to continue winning
Nobels at all. Unfortunately, that would force economists to come to
grips with their methodology, as well as answer the hard questions
about their field's limitations. In other words, Samuelson's
enlightened proposal doesn't stand a chance.

Return to Main Page

Endnotes:

1. Reuters News Service, "Economics Prize 1995," October 10, 1995.

2. Assar Lindbeck et. al., Turning Sweden Around (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1994).

3. Assar Lindbeck, "Principles For Successful Research: Assar's Ten
Commandments," Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm
University. http://www.iies.su.se/tencom.htm.

4. James Gwartney and Robert Lawson, "Economic Freedom and the Growth
of Less Developed Countries" Economic Reform Today no. 2, 1996,
http://www.usis.usemb.se/ERT/e20/gwa_E20.html. A publication of the
Center for International Private Enterprise.

5. Edward Herman, Triumph of the Market (Boston: South End Press,
1995), p. 41.

6. Quoted in Robert Kuttner, "The Visible Hand Guiding the Nobel Prize
in Economics," Business Week, November 12, 1990, p. 20.

7. Steven Pearlstein, "Chicago Economist Wins Nobel Prize: Lucas has
Focused on Theoretical Issues," San Jose Mercury News, Wednesday,
October 11, 1995, p. 4A.

8. Reuters News Service, "Nobel Economics Prize 1995," October 10,
1995.

9. Robert Samuelson, "Booby Prize," The New Republic, December 3,
1990, p. 18..










Alfred Nobel
Corbis-Bettmann
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on Oct. 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden,
and was the fourth son of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel. Immanuel was an
inventor and engineer who had married Caroline Andrietta Ahlsell in
1827. The couple had eight children, of whom only Alfred and three
brothers reached adulthood. Alfred was prone to illness as a child,
but he enjoyed a close relationship with his mother and displayed a
lively intellectual curiosity from an early age. He was interested in
explosives, and he learned the fundamentals of engineering from his
father. Immanuel, meanwhile, had failed at various business ventures
until moving in 1837 to St. Petersburg in Russia, where he prospered
as a manufacturer of explosive mines and machine tools. The Nobel
family left Stockholm in 1842 to join the father in St. Petersburg.
Alfred's newly prosperous parents were now able to send him to private
tutors, and he proved to be an eager pupil. He was a competent chemist
by age 16 and was fluent in English, French, German, and Russian, as
well as Swedish.

Alfred Nobel left Russia in 1850 to spend a year in Paris studying
chemistry and then spent four years in the United States working under
the direction of John Ericsson, the builder of the ironclad warship
Monitor. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Nobel worked in his
father's factory, which made military equipment during the Crimean
War. After the war ended in 1856, the company had difficulty switching
to the peacetime production of steamboat machinery, and it went
bankrupt in 1859.
Alfred and his parents returned to Sweden, while his brothers Robert
and Ludvig stayed behind in Russia to salvage what was left of the
family business. Alfred soon began experimenting with explosives in a
small laboratory on his father's estate. At the time, the only
dependable explosive for use in mines was black powder, a form of
gunpowder. A recently discovered liquid compound, nitroglycerin, was a
much more powerful explosive, but it was so volatile that it could not
be handled with any degree of safety. Nevertheless, Nobel in 1862
built a small factory to manufacture nitroglycerin, and at the same
time he undertook research in the hope of finding a safe way to
control the explosive's detonation. In 1863 he invented a practical
detonator consisting of a wooden plug inserted into a larger charge of
nitroglycerin held in a metal container; the explosion of the plug's
small charge of black powder serves to detonate the much more powerful
charge of liquid nitroglycerin. This detonator marked the beginning of
Nobel's reputation as an inventor as well as the fortune he was to
acquire as a maker of explosives. In 1865 Nobel invented an improved
detonator called a blasting cap; it consisted of a small metal cap
containing a charge of mercury fulminate that can be exploded by
either shock or moderate heat. The invention of the blasting cap
inaugurated the modern use of high explosives.
Nitroglycerin itself, however, remained difficult to transport and
extremely dangerous to handle. So dangerous, in fact, that Nobel's
nitroglycerin factory blew up in 1864, killing his younger brother
Emil and several other people. Undaunted by this tragic accident,
Nobel built several factories to manufacture nitroglycerin for use in
concert with his blasting caps. These factories were as safe as the
knowledge of the time allowed, but accidental explosions still
occasionally occurred. Nobel's second important invention was that of
dynamite in 1867. By chance, he discovered that nitroglycerin was
absorbed to dryness by kieselguhr, a porous siliceous earth, and the
resulting mixture was much safer to use and easier to handle than
nitroglycerin alone. Nobel named the new product dynamite ( from Greek
dynamis, "power") and was granted patents for it in Great Britain
(1867) and the United States (1868). Dynamite established Nobel's fame
worldwide and was soon put to use in blasting tunnels, cutting canals,
and building railways and roads.

Alfred Nobel, portrait by Emil Österman, 1915; in the Nobel
Foundation, Stockholm
Ann Ronan Picture Library/Image Select
In the 1870s and '80s Nobel built a network of factories throughout
Europe to manufacture dynamite, and he formed a web of corporations to
produce and market his explosives. He also continued to experiment in
search of better ones, and in 1875 he invented a more powerful form of
dynamite, blasting gelatin, which he patented the following year.
Again by chance, he had discovered that mixing a solution of
nitroglycerin with a fluffy substance known as nitrocellulose results
in a tough, plastic material that has a high water resistance and
greater blasting power than ordinary dynamites. In 1887 Nobel
introduced ballistite, one of the first nitroglycerin smokeless
powders and a precursor of cordite. Although Nobel held the patents to
dynamite and his other explosives, he was in constant conflict with
competitors who stole his processes, a fact that forced him into
protracted patent litigation on several occasions.
Nobel's brothers Ludvig and Robert, in the meantime, had developed
newly discovered oilfields near Baku (now in Azerbaijan) along the
Caspian Sea and had themselves become immensely wealthy. Alfred's
worldwide interests in explosives, along with his own holdings in his
brothers' companies in Russia, brought him a large fortune. In 1893 he
became interested in Sweden's arms industry, and the following year he
bought an ironworks at Bofors, near Varmland, that became the nucleus
of the well-known Bofors arms factory. Besides explosives, Nobel made
many other inventions, such as artificial silk and leather, and
altogether he registered more than 350 patents in various countries.
Nobel's complex personality puzzled his contemporaries. Although his
business interests required him to travel almost constantly, he
remained a lonely recluse who was prone to fits of depression. He led
a retired and simple life and was a man of ascetic habits, yet he
could be a courteous dinner host, a good listener, and a man of
incisive wit. He never married, and apparently preferred the joys of
inventing to those of romantic attachment. He had an abiding interest
in literature and wrote plays, novels, and poems, almost all of which
remained unpublished. He had amazing energy and found it difficult to
relax after intense bouts of work. Among his contemporaries, he had
the reputation of a liberal or even a socialist, but he actually
distrusted democracy, opposed suffrage for women, and maintained an
attitude of benign paternalism toward his many employees. Though Nobel
was essentially a pacifist and hoped that the destructive powers of
his inventions would help bring an end to war, his view of mankind and
nations was pessimistic.
By 1895 Nobel had developed angina pectoris, and he died of a cerebral
hemorrhage at his villa in San Remo, Italy, on Dec. 10, 1896. At his
death his worldwide business empire consisted of more than 90
factories manufacturing explosives and ammunition. The opening of his
will, which he had drawn up in Paris on Nov. 27, 1895, and had
deposited in a bank in Stockholm, contained a great surprise for his
family, friends, and the general public. He had always been generous
in humanitarian and scientific philanthropies, and he left the bulk of
his fortune in trust to establish what came to be the most highly
regarded of international awards, the Nobel Prizes. (See Nobel's
will.)
We can only speculate about the reasons for Nobel's establishment of
the prizes that bear his name. He was reticent about himself, and he
confided in no one about his decision in the months preceding his
death. The most plausible assumption is that a bizarre incident in
1888 may have triggered the train of reflection that culminated in his
bequest for the Nobel Prizes. That year Alfred's brother Ludvig had
died while staying in Cannes, France. The French newspapers reported
Ludvig's death but confused him with Alfred, and one paper sported the
headline "Le marchand de la mort est mort" ("The merchant of death is
dead.") Perhaps Alfred Nobel established the prizes to avoid precisely
the sort of posthumous reputation suggested by this premature
obituary. It is certain that the actual awards he instituted reflect
his lifelong interest in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology,
and literature. There is also abundant evidence that his friendship
with the prominent Austrian pacifist Bertha von Suttner inspired him
to establish the prize for peace.
Nobel himself, however, remains a figure of paradoxes and
contradictions: a brilliant, lonely man, part pessimist and part
idealist, who invented the powerful explosives used in modern warfare
but also established the world's most prestigious prizes for
intellectual services rendered to humanity.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Biographies of Nobel include Michael Evlanoff and Marjorie Fluor,
Alfred Nobel: The Loneliest Millionaire (1969), focusing on his
personal relationships; and Kenne Fant, Alfred Nobel (1993; originally
published in Swedish, 1991), presenting Nobel through his
correspondence and his play, Nemesis.

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 4:51:21 PM9/26/12
to
In article
<861b9de2-7a6d-439d...@wz4g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
Bret Cahill <BretC...@peoplepc.com> wrote:

> See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.



Don't recall any loonitarians getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.
Perhaps you'd like to name them, but I'll bet you can't.



I DO recall a recent loonitarian being given the Nobel Peace prize, and
the irony is he's since been charged with war crimes.



snicker

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 4:52:30 PM9/26/12
to
In article
<d9e02bc3-148c-4c0c...@wz4g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
Immortalist <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 12:58 am, "$27 TRILLION to pay for Kyoto"
> <rander3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sep 26, 12:48 am, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
> >
> > > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
> >
> > > Bret Cahill
> >
> > Reaganomics worked.  Obamanomics didn't.
>
> Clintonomics worked . . .



. . . thanks to the Republican Congress that forced it on him.



snicker

erschro...@gmail.com

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 5:02:27 PM9/26/12
to
On Sep 26, 4:52 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article
> <d9e02bc3-148c-4c0c-8529-b735627a7...@wz4g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
>
>  Immortalist <reanimater_2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Sep 26, 12:58 am, "$27 TRILLION to pay for Kyoto"
> > <rander3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Sep 26, 12:48 am, Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
>
> > > > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>
> > > > Bret Cahill
>
> > > Reaganomics worked.  Obamanomics didn't.
>
> > Clintonomics worked . . .
>
> . . .  thanks to the Republican Congress that forced it on him.
>
> snicker

Republicans forced a tax increase on the wealthy? Wow. Where did
those Republicans go?

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 8:42:49 PM9/26/12
to
In article
<28b90102-5e02-4835...@i14g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,
What branch of government sets taxes and spending? Which party
controlled that branch of government for 6 of Clinton's years as Current
Resident? Does that answer your stupid question?


snicker

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 8:45:10 PM9/26/12
to
On Sep 26, 3:51 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article
> <861b9de2-7a6d-439d-8039-1e664eb7a...@wz4g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
>  Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
>
> > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>
> Don't recall any loonitarians getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.
> Perhaps you'd like to name them, but I'll bet you can't.
>
> I DO recall a recent loonitarian being given the Nobel Peace prize, and
> the irony is he's since been charged with war crimes.
>
> snicker


when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
criminals.

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/e891055dbf97c108?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=ol&

Harold Burton
View profile
 More options May 19, 8:14 pm
In article
<90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
 Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:


- Show quoted text -

Well doh.  Democrat FDR proved that in the 40s when he firebombed
thousands of innocent women and children in Dresden, Tokyo and
numerous
other cities.
snicker


you were responded to promptly by a patriot.
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
While It's ALWAYS DISconcerting To Encounter a HOPELESS IGNORAMUS,
it is Conversely, a GREAT PLEASURE To Illustrate - And Hopefully
DISSIPATE - The HARM  of The DEPENDABLY, Self-Serving, Fact-
INTOLERANT, Delusional And INTRACTABLE IGNORANCE of such Notable
RighTARDS as "Harold Burton"...
   THUS: The Rationale For AND Decision To Bomb [FIRST With High-
Explosives, THEN With Incendiaries] Dresden [Among OTHER High-Value
Targets] Was a - Waaaaait Forrr Iiiiiit - *British* Undertaking...
FDR's Involvement being Limited To his Administration's LONG-Standing
Acquiescence To Placing [American] Eighth Air Force assets At The
Disposal Of British Air Marshalls... As  Would Be Expected Of a GOOD
War-Time Ally...
   ERGO: *The British* Bombed Dresden [Among OTHER High-Value
Targets] 
employing Combined Military Assets of British and American
Forces... 
The *British* FIRST Low-Level Attacking at *Night*, Per
British 
Strategy; American Forces [Under *British* Command] High-
Level 
Attacking by Next Daylight...
   ERGO - The Sequel: CONTRARY To Harold The RighTARD's HOPELESSLY
IGNORANT And Self-Serving, Ignoramus-Speak Blather, FDR had LITTLE OR
NOTHING To Do With The Bombing Of Dresden and Most Likely, Wasn't
Even 
Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb
Several 
East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian
Advance...

even after knowing the slaughter of americans in the Philippines,
and all of the other atrocities commited by them, they would have to
be worn down, as they tried to do to us.
and here is your response, you defended the nazis, and now you defend
the imperialists japanese.

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services do.
  
The buck stopped at FDR's desk.

>  . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...

Hahahahahahahahahaha.  Now THAT's even funnier.
I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
Tokyo . . .   
and Osaka . . . and Kobe  . . .  and Fukuoka . . . and,
oh hell just 
check out http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html.  How
are you going to 
blame that on the Brits?
then i demanded a apology,
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
and he owes WWII vets a apology.

you said,

Just as you owe sentient beings an apology
Hahahahahahahahahahah


you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 26, 2012, 8:46:10 PM9/26/12
to
On Sep 26, 4:02 pm, "erschroedin...@gmail.com"
do not expect a response that is even remotely coherent.

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 27, 2012, 10:26:50 PM9/27/12
to
In article
<45f99369-9fea-4173...@l32g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
Nickname unavailable <video61%tcq...@gtempaccount.com> wrote:

> On Sep 26, 3:51 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > In article
> > <861b9de2-7a6d-439d-8039-1e664eb7a...@wz4g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
> >  Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
> >
> > > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
> >
> > Don't recall any loonitarians getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.
> > Perhaps you'd like to name them, but I'll bet you can't.
> >
> > I DO recall a recent loonitarian being given the Nobel Peace prize, and
> > the irony is he's since been charged with war crimes.
> >
> > snicker
>
>
> when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
> criminals. (sic)


When are you going to apologize for calling our Iraqi vet war criminals?


snicker

Bret Cahill

unread,
Sep 27, 2012, 10:51:08 PM9/27/12
to
> > > > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>
> > > Don't recall any loonitarians getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.
> > > Perhaps you'd like to name them, but I'll bet you can't.
>
> > > I DO recall a recent loonitarian being given the Nobel Peace prize, and
> > > the irony is he's since been charged with war crimes.
>
> > > snicker
>
> >  when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
> > criminals. (sic)
>
> When are you going to apologize for calling our Iraqi vet war criminals?
>
> snicker

When will Republicans support the troops and get Dumbya Bush to
rebuttal Ahmadinejad?

Let us know how that's workin' for ya:

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=743474







Bret Cahill

unread,
Sep 28, 2012, 1:35:32 AM9/28/12
to
Not much support for the patriotic Dumbya Bush, the patriotic Cheney,
the patriotic Rummy and Condi.

Wassa matter?


Bret Cahill



Barbarian Mutual

unread,
Sep 28, 2012, 12:57:30 PM9/28/12
to
On Sep 26, 8:46 pm, Nickname unavailable
Of course not, the confusion on this newsgroup comes from the
rightwing deniers.

Bret Cahill

unread,
Sep 28, 2012, 1:48:03 PM9/28/12
to

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 28, 2012, 10:22:13 PM9/28/12
to
In article
<6926f0d1-43bb-4e19...@e14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
But the stupidity comes from the leftards.


snicker

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 28, 2012, 10:23:08 PM9/28/12
to
In article
<bc8a6ec0-a044-44e4...@kg10g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
Nothing other than idiot like you like to respond to your own posts.


Leftards, batshit crazy and dogshit stupid, every single last one of you.

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 28, 2012, 10:23:58 PM9/28/12
to
In article
<91afb93f-18c4-40ee...@s9g2000pbh.googlegroups.com>,
Bret Cahill <Bret_E...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > > > > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
> >
> > > > Don't recall any loonitarians getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.
> > > > Perhaps you'd like to name them, but I'll bet you can't.
> >
> > > > I DO recall a recent loonitarian being given the Nobel Peace prize, and
> > > > the irony is he's since been charged with war crimes.
> >
> > > > snicker
> >
> > >  when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
> > > criminals. (sic)
> >
> > When are you going to apologize for calling our Iraqi vet war criminals?
> >
> > snicker
>
> When will Republicans support the troops


Same time Democraps do.


snicker

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 12:38:59 AM9/29/12
to
On Sep 28, 9:24 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article
> <91afb93f-18c4-40ee-890a-66e1ce1af...@s9g2000pbh.googlegroups.com>,
>  Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cah...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > > > > > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>
> > > > > Don't recall any loonitarians getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.
> > > > > Perhaps you'd like to name them, but I'll bet you can't.
>
> > > > > I DO recall a recent loonitarian being given the Nobel Peace prize, and
> > > > > the irony is he's since been charged with war crimes.
>
> > > > > snicker
>
> > > > when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
> > > > criminals. (sic)
>
> > > When are you going to apologize for calling our Iraqi vet war criminals?
>
> > > snicker
>
> > When will Republicans support the troops
>
> Same time Democraps do.
>
> snicker



when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
criminals.

<90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,

Bret Cahill

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 11:46:47 AM9/29/12
to
> > > > > > > See if an issue dodging looneytarian can get it today.
>
> > > > > > Don't recall any loonitarians getting a Nobel Prize for Economics.
> > > > > > Perhaps you'd like to name them, but I'll bet you can't.
>
> > > > > > I DO recall a recent loonitarian being given the Nobel Peace prize, and
> > > > > > the irony is he's since been charged with war crimes.
>
> > > > > > snicker
>
> > > > > when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
> > > > > criminals. (sic)
>
> > > > When are you going to apologize for calling our Iraqi vet war criminals?
>
> > > > snicker
>
> > > When will Republicans support the troops
>
> > Same time Democraps do.
>
> > snicker
>
>  when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
> criminals.
>
> https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
>
> Harold Burton
> View profile
>  More options May 19, 8:14 pm
> In article
> <90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
>  Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
>
> - Show quoted text -
>
> Well doh.  Democrat FDR proved that in the 40s when he firebombed
> thousands of innocent women and children in Dresden, Tokyo and
> numerous
> other cities.
> snicker
>
>  you were responded to promptly by a patriot.https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
> https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
> The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services
> do.   
The buck stopped at FDR's desk.
>
> >  . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> > Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> > East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...
>
> Hahahahahahahahahaha.  Now THAT's even funnier.
> I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
> Tokyo . . .   
and Osaka . . . and Kobe  . . .  and Fukuoka . . . and,
> oh hell just 
check outhttp://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html.  How
> are you going to 
blame that on the Brits?
>  then i demanded a apology,https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
> and he owes WWII vets a apology.
>
>  you said,
>
> Just as you owe sentient beings an apology
> Hahahahahahahahahahah
>
>  you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.

Today's teabagger won't even support the patriotic Dumbya Bush getting
equal time to rebut Ahmadinejad!


Bret Cahill

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 12:45:36 PM9/29/12
to
On Sep 28, 11:57 am, Barbarian Mutual
the al bundy/homer simpson/archie bunker types, are a towering
achievement to the success of the nanny state. those types live long
stupid lives. without the nanny state, they would live short brutal
lives like in somalia.
but today the polices that the stupid feverishly support and cling
to, are starting to bear fruit. only the stupid would feverishly cling
to polices that will shorten their lives, and make life more
miserable, they are now dying off early, on average, their lives are
being shortened by about four years.
its a zero sum game though for the wealthy parasites that they
feverishly worship, because now "THE CONSERVATIVES" are running low on
stupid voters. as rick sanitarium said, the smart will never side with
us.

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 12:46:22 PM9/29/12
to
its amazing how well the nanny state has worked.

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 9:27:05 PM9/29/12
to

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 9:27:32 PM9/29/12
to

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 9:27:57 PM9/29/12
to

1treePetrifiedForestLane

unread,
Sep 29, 2012, 10:14:34 PM9/29/12
to
yes, I do recall, when the Swedish Bank Prize was awarded
exclusively to Americans for decades & decades. I also recall
a cool, unsigned article in *National Review*,
about teh Mont Pelerin Society, a British organization,
called "Global Warning."

things that make y'go, Hm ... duh?

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 30, 2012, 12:50:59 AM9/30/12
to
On Sep 29, 8:28 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article
> <93d2f2c0-4196-4493-a02d-0ee7734e2...@b8g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/e891055dbf97c108?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=ol&

Harold Burton
View profile
 More options May 19, 8:14 pm
In article
<90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
 Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:


- Show quoted text -

Well doh.  Democrat FDR proved that in the 40s when he firebombed
thousands of innocent women and children in Dresden, Tokyo and
numerous
other cities.
snicker


you were responded to promptly by a patriot.
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services do.
  
The buck stopped at FDR's desk.

>  . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...

Hahahahahahahahahaha.  Now THAT's even funnier.
I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
Tokyo . . .   
and Osaka . . . and Kobe  . . .  and Fukuoka . . . and,
oh hell just 
check out http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html.  How
are you going to 
blame that on the Brits?
then i demanded a apology,
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&

Bret Cahill

unread,
Sep 30, 2012, 1:52:32 PM9/30/12
to
> > you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.

> Today's teabagger won't even support the patriotic Dumbya Bush getting
> equal time to rebut Ahmadinejad!

Doesn't anyone want to revive the glory days of BushCo?

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 30, 2012, 8:53:52 PM9/30/12
to
In article
<986f5bc1-10b0-42d2...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
> https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/84
> 55997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
> The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services do.
>  
> The buck stopped at FDR's desk.
>
> >  . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> > Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> > East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...
>
> Hahahahahahahahahaha.  Now THAT's even funnier.
> I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
> Tokyo . . .  
> and Osaka . . . and Kobe  . . .  and Fukuoka . . . and,
> oh hell just
> check out http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html.  How
> are you going to
> blame that on the Brits?
> then i demanded a apology,
> https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/84
> 55997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
> and he owes WWII vets a apology.
>
> you said,
>
> Just as you owe sentient beings an apology
> Hahahahahahahahahahah
>
>
> you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.

snicker

Harold Burton

unread,
Sep 30, 2012, 8:57:00 PM9/30/12
to
In article
<c5d55b81-3847-4f1b...@wz4g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
No more than he wants to revive the "glory" days of Odumbya. Just wait
until the Obamacare tax increases kick in. Just wait until the sheeple
discover that thresholds aren't indexed to inflation and the middle
class more and more gets reclassified as "rich". Remember the AMT?

Why do sheeple never learn?


snicker

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Sep 30, 2012, 8:57:44 PM9/30/12
to
On Sep 30, 7:54 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article
> <986f5bc1-10b0-42d2-8402-1faa18543...@r7g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
> >https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
> > 55997cbba5630d/e891055dbf97c108?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=ol&
>
> > Harold Burton
> > View profile
> >  More options May 19, 8:14 pm
> > In article
> > <90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
> >  Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> > Well doh.  Democrat FDR proved that in the 40s when he firebombed
> > thousands of innocent women and children in Dresden, Tokyo and
> > numerous
> > other cities.
> > snicker
>
> >  you were responded to promptly by a patriot.
> >https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
> >https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
> > 55997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
> > The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services do.
> >
> > The buck stopped at FDR's desk.
>
> > >  . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> > > Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> > > East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...
>
> > Hahahahahahahahahaha.  Now THAT's even funnier.
> > I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
> > Tokyo . . .
> > and Osaka . . . and Kobe  . . .  and Fukuoka . . . and,
> > oh hell just
> > check outhttp://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html.  How
> > are you going to
> > blame that on the Brits?
> >  then i demanded a apology,
> >https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
> > 55997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
> > and he owes WWII vets a apology.
>
> >  you said,
>
> > Just as you owe sentient beings an apology
> > Hahahahahahahahahahah
>
> >  you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.
>
> snicker

when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
criminals.

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...

Harold Burton
View profile
More options May 19, 8:14 pm
In article
<90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,

Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:

- Show quoted text -

Well doh. Democrat FDR proved that in the 40s when he firebombed
thousands of innocent women and children in Dresden, Tokyo and
numerous
other cities.
snicker

you were responded to promptly by a patriot.
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services do.

The buck stopped at FDR's desk.

> . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...

Hahahahahahahahahaha. Now THAT's even funnier.
I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
Tokyo . . . 
and Osaka . . . and Kobe . . . and Fukuoka . . . and,
oh hell just 
check out http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html. How
are you going to 
blame that on the Brits?
then i demanded a apology,
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...

Bret Cahill

unread,
Sep 30, 2012, 9:14:53 PM9/30/12
to
On > > > >  you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at
that.
>
> > > Today's teabagger won't even support the patriotic Dumbya Bush getting
> > > equal time to rebut Ahmadinejad!

> > Doesn't anyone want to revive the glory days of BushCo?

> No more than he wants to revive the "glory" days of Odumbya.  Just wait
> until the Obamacare tax increases kick in.

You can increase your money by an order of magnitude in 5 weeks on
Ipredict if you think Romney will win.

> Just wait until the sheeple
> discover that thresholds aren't indexed to inflation and the middle
> class more and more gets reclassified as "rich".  Remember the AMT?

What's going to happen?

More teabag spree shootings?


Nickname unavailable

unread,
Oct 1, 2012, 11:33:03 AM10/1/12
to
maybe they will all go to the mountains to hide, then we can ring the
mountains with razor wire, and watch the circuses inside unfold by
live streaming feeds:)

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 3, 2012, 10:30:15 PM10/3/12
to
In article
<27705747-1fdb-4fae...@o8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
4 minutes. You're clearly glued to your keyboard just waiting for my
post. I OWN you.


snicker

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 3, 2012, 10:32:25 PM10/3/12
to
In article
<5e922725-7967-48e9...@s9g2000pbh.googlegroups.com>,
Bret Cahill <Bret_E...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On > > > >  you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at
> that.
> >
> > > > Today's teabagger won't even support the patriotic Dumbya Bush getting
> > > > equal time to rebut Ahmadinejad!
>
> > > Doesn't anyone want to revive the glory days of BushCo?
>
> > No more than he wants to revive the "glory" days of Odumbya.  Just wait
> > until the Obamacare tax increases kick in.
>
> You can increase your money by an order of magnitude in 5 weeks on
> Ipredict if you think Romney will win.


Who said that? What part of "Just wait until the Obamacare tax increases
kick in." I'm going to enjoy the whining of a WHOLE lot of leftards who
suddenly discovery buyers' remorse.


snicker

Bret Cahill

unread,
Oct 3, 2012, 10:40:00 PM10/3/12
to
On Oct 3, 7:33 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article
> <5e922725-7967-48e9-ba94-36b1e1fe2...@s9g2000pbh.googlegroups.com>,
>  Bret Cahill <Bret_E_Cah...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > On > > > > you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at
> > that.
>
> > > > > Today's teabagger won't even support the patriotic Dumbya Bush getting
> > > > > equal time to rebut Ahmadinejad!
>
> > > > Doesn't anyone want to revive the glory days of BushCo?
>
> > > No more than he wants to revive the "glory" days of Odumbya. Just wait
> > > until the Obamacare tax increases kick in.
>
> > You can increase your money by an order of magnitude in 5 weeks on
> > Ipredict if you think Romney will win.
>
> Who said that?

Traders on Ipredict.



Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 6, 2012, 8:56:47 PM10/6/12
to
In article
<f6da48a6-bfd2-4377...@r8g2000pbf.googlegroups.com>,
And leftards are stupid enough to buy it.


BTW Bret, are you still so stupid as to buy into your claim:


"Nazis and communists were allies in WWII?

Are you this stupid in real life or are you just pulling our legs?"


Are you stupid enough not to be aware of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.



Clearly you were, but let me help you out:


<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Non-Aggression_between_Germany_an
d_the_Soviet_Union>


Leftards, batshit crazy and dogshit stupid, every single last one of you.

snicker

Bret Cahill

unread,
Oct 7, 2012, 2:58:53 AM10/7/12
to
> > > > On > > > > you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at
> > > > that.
>
> > > > > > > Today's teabagger won't even support the patriotic Dumbya Bush
> > > > > > > getting
> > > > > > > equal time to rebut Ahmadinejad!
>
> > > > > > Doesn't anyone want to revive the glory days of BushCo?
>
> > > > > No more than he wants to revive the "glory" days of Odumbya. Just wait
> > > > > until the Obamacare tax increases kick in.
>
> > > > You can increase your money by an order of magnitude in 5 weeks on
> > > > Ipredict if you think Romney will win.
>
> > > Who said that?
>
> > Traders on Ipredict.
>
> And leftards are stupid enough to buy it.
>
> BTW Bret, are you still so stupid as to buy into your claim:
>
> "Nazis and communists were allies in WWII?

You're projecting again. _You_ said that.


Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 7, 2012, 10:00:33 PM10/7/12
to
In article
<3699913a-1b70-4305...@c6g2000pba.googlegroups.com>,
Nope, from your posting

<ce468f9d-0ef0-4598...@s7g2000prh.googlegroups.com>

"Nazis and communists were allies in WWII?

Are you this stupid in real life or are you just pulling our legs?"


Gotta love leftards who post stupidity and then try to run away from it.

snicker.

Bret Cahill

unread,
Oct 8, 2012, 12:44:04 AM10/8/12
to
> > > > > > On > > > > you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at
> > > > > > that.
>
> > > > > > > > > Today's teabagger won't even support the patriotic Dumbya Bush
> > > > > > > > > getting
> > > > > > > > > equal time to rebut Ahmadinejad!
>
> > > > > > > > Doesn't anyone want to revive the glory days of BushCo?
>
> > > > > > > No more than he wants to revive the "glory" days of Odumbya. Just
> > > > > > > wait
> > > > > > > until the Obamacare tax increases kick in.
>
> > > > > > You can increase your money by an order of magnitude in 5 weeks on
> > > > > > Ipredict if you think Romney will win.
>
> > > > > Who said that?
>
> > > > Traders on Ipredict.
>
> > > And leftards are stupid enough to buy it.
>
> > > BTW Bret, are you still so stupid as to buy into your claim:
>
> > > "Nazis and communists were allies in WWII?
>
> > You're projecting again.  _You_ said that.
>
> Nope, from your posting
>
> <ce468f9d-0ef0-4598-9c7c-5d76b5c08...@s7g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
>
> "Nazis and communists were allies in WWII?

The ? mark at the end indicates that you must have implied Nazis and
communists were allies in WWII.

What next? Snipping letters out of words?

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 8, 2012, 9:25:50 PM10/8/12
to
In article
<d8b99fc3-4e9f-44ff...@q5g2000pbk.googlegroups.com>,
I didn't imply it, I stated it, you denied it. You were wrong. What
else is new.


Gawd, you don't have to be a complete moron to be a leftard, but it
helps.


snicker

Bret Cahill

unread,
Oct 9, 2012, 1:14:20 AM10/9/12
to
'nuff said.

Now everyone knows you are bat crap insane.



Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 12, 2012, 9:15:52 PM10/12/12
to
In article
<6682cc8e-77de-4fe8...@q7g2000pbj.googlegroups.com>,
And everyone knows you're too stupid to know anything about the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.


snicker.

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Oct 13, 2012, 1:46:56 AM10/13/12
to
On Oct 12, 8:16 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:



when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
criminals.

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...

Harold Burton
View profile
More options May 19, 8:14 pm
In article
<90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,

Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:

- Show quoted text -

Well doh. Democrat FDR proved that in the 40s when he firebombed
thousands of innocent women and children in Dresden, Tokyo and
numerous
other cities.
snicker

you were responded to promptly by a patriot.
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services do.

The buck stopped at FDR's desk.

> . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...

Hahahahahahahahahaha. Now THAT's even funnier.
I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
Tokyo . . . 
and Osaka . . . and Kobe . . . and Fukuoka . . . and,
oh hell just 
check out http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html. How
are you going to 
blame that on the Brits?
then i demanded a apology,
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/...
and he owes WWII vets a apology.

you said,

Just as you owe sentient beings an apology
Hahahahahahahahahahah

Bret Cahill

unread,
Oct 13, 2012, 11:07:00 AM10/13/12
to
>  you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.

He's good for a laugh. Besides he so dumb helps keep threads about W.
Bush running.


Bret Cahill


Nickname unavailable

unread,
Oct 13, 2012, 11:42:56 AM10/13/12
to
i know. it also gives me a chance to post what he said. and there are
times when others jump in mad at what he has stated. it all helps to
expose "CONSERVATIVES" for what they are.

BeamMeUpScotty

unread,
Oct 13, 2012, 12:04:37 PM10/13/12
to

>> you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.
>


That's pretty harsh just because the Liberal-Socialists types hate
Americans and hate our economic system and hate our way of life and call
us the enemy and want to "FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA".



They have good intentions.....



--

*Rumination*
#45 - If you haven't found the lie in what a Liberal told you, then you
didn't dig deep enough.

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 16, 2012, 8:55:21 PM10/16/12
to
In article <50799115...@blackhole.nebulax.com>,
BeamMeUpScotty <ThenDestro...@blackhole.nebulax.com> wrote:

> >> you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.
> >
>
>
> That's pretty harsh just because the Liberal-Socialists types hate
> Americans and hate our economic system and hate our way of life and call
> us the enemy and want to "FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA".
>
>
>
> They have good intentions.....


Leftards are such hypocrites. According to idiots like Braincells
Unavailable calling FDR a war criminal is equivalent to calling our
soldiers war criminals, but calling President Bush a war criminal isn't.

Go figure.


Leftards, batshit crazy and dogshit stupid, every single last one of
them.


And, BTW, is Obama the first Nobel Peace prize recipient to be charged
with war crimes? :-)

Nickname unavailable

unread,
Oct 16, 2012, 9:02:48 PM10/16/12
to
On Oct 16, 7:56 pm, Harold Burton <hal.i.bur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> In article <50799115.1070...@blackhole.nebulax.com>,
when are you going to apologize for calling our WWII vets war
criminals.

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/e891055dbf97c108?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=ol&

Harold Burton
View profile
 More options May 19, 8:14 pm
In article
<90d4c035-5a00-4dc5-b0c5-3b981dc6d...@s9g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
 Bret Cahill <BretCah...@peoplepc.com> wrote:


- Show quoted text -

Well doh.  Democrat FDR proved that in the 40s when he firebombed
thousands of innocent women and children in Dresden, Tokyo and
numerous
other cities.
snicker


you were responded to promptly by a patriot.
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
The CiC takes ultimate responsibility for what our armed services do.
  
The buck stopped at FDR's desk.

>  . . . .and Most Likely, Wasn't Even
> Aware that The British High Command had Determined To Bomb Several
> East German Cities, In Aid Of The Burgeoning Russian Advance...

Hahahahahahahahahaha.  Now THAT's even funnier.
I also notice you did your best to ignore the firebombing of
Tokyo . . .   
and Osaka . . . and Kobe  . . .  and Fukuoka . . . and,
oh hell just 
check out http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html.  How
are you going to 
blame that on the Brits?
then i demanded a apology,
https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/8455997cbba5630d/b08042a9da25f19f?hl=en&q=Harold+Burton++world+war+two&lnk=nl&
and he owes WWII vets a apology.

you said,

Just as you owe sentient beings an apology
Hahahahahahahahahahah


you sir are not only a liar, but a unpatriotic one at that.

and you added this recently

https://groups.google.com/group/alt.politics.economics/browse_thread/thread/3803f1d64d8e4b45/5d73a1560313be84?hl=en&

. . . and deliberately targeting and murdering civilians.
snicker

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 16, 2012, 10:34:39 PM10/16/12
to

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 16, 2012, 10:35:50 PM10/16/12
to

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 16, 2012, 10:35:19 PM10/16/12
to

BeamMeUpScotty

unread,
Oct 16, 2012, 10:37:04 PM10/16/12
to
I believe Vassar Arafat was a Nobel peace prize recipient charged with
terrorist crimes.

Harold Burton

unread,
Oct 16, 2012, 10:44:55 PM10/16/12
to
In article <db6s781j2p5e8t39l...@4ax.com>,
OK, so Obama in is good company. :-)
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