Sheldon Richman lays the smack down

Uncategorized

| January 18, 2012

Last week, I pointed out some of the most glaring absurdities in Matthew Yglesias’s uniformed hit piece on the Austrian School of economics. In it, Yglesias, a Think Progress employee and Keynesian apologist, mischaracterizes virtually every major tenet of Austrian theory. (By the way, how many recessions must be created or exacerbated through the application of Keynesian policy prescriptions before the economics profession, as a whole, comes to the scientific conclusion that the Keynesian framework is deeply flawed and wholly incapable of producing healthy normative recommendations?)

I’ve just come across Sheldon Richman’s response to that hit piece in Reason Magazine (originally run in The Freeman). Richman, the venerable sage of the Foundation for Economic Education, America’s oldest economic think tank, recommends Yglesias’s column “because it’s highly informative-about what Austrian economics is not.”

For those who value truth over false propaganda, I recommend giving Richman’s response a read – because it’s highly informative about what Austrian economics is!

Geoffrey Lawrence

Geoffrey Lawrence is director of research at Nevada Policy. Lawrence has broad experience as a financial executive in the public and private sectors and as a think tank analyst. Lawrence has been Chief Financial Officer of several growth-stage and publicly traded manufacturing companies and managed all financial reporting, internal control, and external compliance efforts with regulatory agencies including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawrence has also served as the senior appointee to the Nevada State Controller’s Office, where he oversaw the state’s external financial reporting, covering nearly $10 billion in annual transactions. During each year of Lawrence’s tenure, the state received the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting Award from the Government Finance Officers’ Association. From 2008 to 2014, Lawrence was director of research and legislative affairs at Nevada Policy and helped the institute develop its platform of ideas to advance and defend a free society. Lawrence has also written for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation, with particular expertise in state budgets and labor economics. He was delighted at the opportunity to return to Nevada Policy in 2022 while concurrently serving as research director at the Reason Foundation. Lawrence holds an M.A. in international economics from American University in Washington, D.C., an M.S. and a B.S. in accounting from Western Governors University, and a B.A. in international relations from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He lives in Las Vegas with his beautiful wife, Jenna, and their two kids, Carson Hayek and Sage Aynne.