Phd: "$17T in Debt is Ok, America will Never Go Bankrupt" - Granite Grok

Phd: “$17T in Debt is Ok, America will Never Go Bankrupt”

I work in an office littered with highly lettered people. Both men and women with graduate degrees, some simply Masters, mostly Phds. Some are heavily credentialed, garnering more than a few of the creds.

The conceit that accompanies many of them is obvious when speaking with them or casually observing them. The once unceremonials cleaning their noses with pencils, crapping themselves through junior high, and always the last to get a date, grew to see themselves as celebrated geniuses. Because they’re smart and they stayed in an environment that cultivated their mental gifts. And through the cultivation they learned to focus on a narrow field of study like a red laser site on the eye of a target. They learned the field, and extended it by discovering a new rule or law or invention (Okay, I’m talking about the real Phds, not the overly educated on cruft.) So, good for them I say, it’s kind of balances out the early life misery many of them experienced.

That said, something I observed today reminds me of Hayek’s definition of scientism which

“ … describes, of course, an attitude which is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.” -F.A. Hayek Counter Revolution of Science, Studies on the Abuse of Reason

Walking back to my office, I overheard one of the several overly educated aver that, “ A country’s finances cannot be compared with those of the person or business because we will continue to print money, and that’s fine. There’s no way we’ll ever go bankrupt. ”. Alas, the wonderous results of a faith based economy.

Nothing to see here. Not a problem, go back to not paying attention.
Nothing to see here. Not a problem, go back to not paying attention.

I wish I could be so sanguine about $17,000,000,000,000 of debt our nation has incurred and the devaluation of our currency. (Not to mention, bleak depths of our unfunded liabilities). It must be nice to have that sort of confidence in the infallibility of modern man. Let alone extending that blithe confidence of iron infallibility to the same politicians who plunged us into that amazing sea of zeros.

Sure, one might say I’m being naïve. They’re Phd’s after all. That makes them experts on, well, everything. Regardless of their field of study, it matter’s not. They know everything. It’s just like with global warming. They’re everywhere telling us skeptics that we’re the flat Earthers clinging to an ungodly religion while at the same time denying science that’s staring us right in the face. There are models, they claim, that say that the oceans are rising, doom is just around the corner, so you must buy a Prius and carbon credits or you’ll expedite our Earth to a fiery hell.

Well it’s the same with the debt. Let’s apply our completely unrelated expertise to the debt problem. There’s no way the United States will ever become bankrupt, they tell us. Trust us, we’re Phds. We model this stuff, just like we model global warming. Never mind what you heard about that global cooling gap these 15 past year that no one can explain and that’s nowhere to be found in our “models”. Trust us. It’s simply a problem with the data.

Trust them, their models are never wrong. Except for when they are. Nope, not me. Call me a provincial rube relying on ol’ arithmetic, since I hold this crazy belief that if you spend so much more than you can pay back and in such vast amounts that the world has never seen, at some point, something will give. And it wont’ end well. But hey, what do I know. I’m not a scientist. I’m not a debt denier.

“It is difficult to conceive of anything more scientifically bigoted than to postulate that all possible experience conforms to the same type as that with which we are already familiar… Such an attitude bespeaks an unimaginativeness, a mental obtuseness and obstinacy…which might be expected … at a lower plan of mental activity.” -P.W. Bridgman, The Logic of Modern Physics

One more thing on the overly credentialed. Many do believe they are experts on “everything”. But if you think about it. It’s the narrow and deep vs broad and shallow vs the balance of the two. Most of them focus so intently at great length on the proverbial tree, they’re completely unaware that the forest they wandered into is now a field of smoldering ash.

 

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