McCloskey Destrói a Pseudo-Ciência de Richard Thaler

Thaler ganhou o Nobel em economia. Ganhou porque é socialista, pois suas contribuições não lhe dão cabedal para o prêmio, argumenta McCloskey. Ela diz “Thaler is distinguished but not brilliant,(…) His prize was for the study of mistakes people make when they buy milk.(…) Yet the politics is clear. Once Thaler has established that you are in myriad ways irrational it's much easier to argue, as he has, vigorously—in his academic research, in popular books, and now in a column for The New York Times—that you are too stupid to be treated as a free adult. You need, in the coinage of Thaler's book, co-authored with the law professor and Obama adviser Cass Sunstein, to be "nudged." Thaler and Sunstein call it "paternalistic libertarianism." Depois de detonar Thaler ela provoca Krugman e Stiglitz. Sobre o gordão Samuelsoniano ela diz: “The amiable Joe Stiglitz says that whenever there is a "spillover"—my ugly dress offending your delicate eyes, say—the government should step in. A Federal Bureau of Dresses, rather like the one Saudi Arabia has. In common with Thaler and Krugman and most other economists since 1848, Stiglitz does not know how much his imagined spillovers reduce national income overall, or whether the government is good at preventing the spill. I reckon it's about as good as the Army Corps of Engineers was in Katrina.” Porradão lindo.