Meet the 28-Year-Old Grad Student Who Just Shook the Global Austerity Movement

[AdHocSolver]

78. Two comments about the Reinhart and Rogoff study promoting economic austerity.

First, from an economic perspective, their study is irrelevant to understanding what problems occur from having large debt.

The main problem with incurring debt is if you cannot repay it. If you lack the income or revenue to pay back the debt when it is due, then reducing your expenses will NOT help you repay the debt.

Only increasing your revenue will accomplish that. The austerity meme is utter nonsense. This is evident without the study.

If someone lacks the money to pay the rent, then not buying food will NOT help pay the rent.

Secondly, I worked for two different colleges at two different universities. In both cases I observed research in progress that was paid for by research grants.

In the first case, the experiments were rigged which I discovered as I had a chance to talk to the participating subjects after the research project was completed.

In the second case, the experimentation may have been authentic, but the data was subsequently manipulated to produce a specific outcome, so as to ensure that the research grant money would continue to flow.

Since their entire premise is illogical from the standpoint of economic analysis, then either these two guys are not very bright, or they purposely doctored their data assuming that no one would try to verify their results, as this Ph.D. student tried to do.