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NYT’s Richard Thaler savagely attacks Barack Obama.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  April 1st, 2012 at 03:34 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I know, I’m as shocked as you are: but that’s what happened. You see, Richard Thaler was trying to push back on the entire steadily-rising gas price thing (four bucks a gallon, if you’re lucky), and so in an op-ed today for the New York Times Thaler authoritatively declared:

Here is a one-item test to see whether you are guilty of cloudy thinking about gas prices: Do you believe that they are something a president can control? Many Americans believe that the answer is yes, but any respectable economist will tell you that the answer is no.

Meet the not-respectable economist Barack Obama:


…for those without video, it’s a campaign ad where then-candidate Barack Obama was engaged in some would-be faux populism over Big Oil and how they were causing high gas prices (three-fifty a gallon, back then), and how Obama would do something about it (mind you, what he did about it, apparently contra Thaler, was to turn what was a somewhat temporary spike in gas prices into the new baseline).  In other words, Barry certainly acted like he thought that he’d have some control over the process there, Professor Thaler. Was that acting an artifact of that informal advice to the President you were saying that you gave, Professor Thaler?

Before you turned on this administration, of course.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Isn’t YouTube fun? …And we have years of footage with which to work with, too.

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COMMENTS

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  • altexas

    This could turn out to be a fun year if more of this keeps coming.

    I am particularly fond of Obama getting a budget rejected 97 – 0 by the Senate and another of his delusional budgets getting rejected 414 -0 in the House. Bipartisanship is #winning :)

    Of course if you are the Zero, it is a ‘do nothing Congress.’

    Maybe Obama supporters will take on the catch phrase, ‘We are the Zero Percent.’

  • medamorphus

    I forced myself to read the NY Times and I found this paragraph in the piece

    “Although the United States cannot unilaterally lower the price of oil, it can reduce its consumption, by using oil more efficiently and by developing alternative sources of fuel. For example, the Obama administration has raised the corporate average fuel economy standards imposed on automakers. If consumers buy more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, demand for gasoline falls, as does the burden imposed by high gas prices. But while such rules help, they are not the best way of achieving societal goals.”

    So, it’s really not about the price of gas, as increasing supply would have the same effect as lowering consumption in terms of price, but it’s REALLY about achieving those good ole liberal “societal goals” which we all know is about Global Warming and the liberal dreams of wind and solar and getting rid of the evil Big Oil. They really want the high prices, they just won’t come out and say it.

  • johnt

    unless he’s Republican. Poor guy has no control over federal lands, OSHA, EPA, offshore drilling, permits, etc. Well there’s more people in the tank for leftism then the media.

  • brettstevensmn

    We get to torture the left with the evidence in the form of his very own words.

  • altexas

    A bevy of unelected, extralegal tzar’s doing his will over agencies he has no control over.

    Or the collection of RINO’s too chicken shit to question his minions.

  • truthhunter

    Did you even read the piece? It was hardly a “savage attack” on Obama. Instead the piece was another cover for Obama’s lack of a energy policy by simply stating Obama has cannot control the direction of energy prices. The author then goes on to say a better policy to influence energy consumption would be to RAISE gas taxes thereby forcing consumers into small cars. I don’t like misleading headlines whether coming from conservaties or liberals.

  • http://itsaboutliberty.com/ Conservative Phantom

    You cannot equate increasing supply with lowering consumption via raising the CAFE standards. This is an apples to oranges comparison.

    While it is theoretically possible to achieve lower prices by doing one or the other it is demonstrably provable that raising the CAFE standards will also result in an increase in traffic fatalities.

    There was a time when you could chalk up these deaths to the usual liberal oversight, the law of unintended consequences. But the deadly outcome of higher CAFE standards is now well documented so one can only conclude that liberals who insist on conservation over increasing fuel supply simply do not care about more dead Americans.

    But we knew that already.

  • The_Gadfly

    you KNOW it’s a strawman argument. No, the President doesn’t “control” oil prices, but his policies sure have a huge influence on them. And policies that put more and more oil out of reach of development are guaranteed to drive it up.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    What’s relevant is that the dummy who wrote the article is either too blinkered or too ignorant to realize that his attack on anybody who thinks that the President can control gas prices can be effortlessly and immediately applied to the dummy’s own man-god.

    Now go have a cookie, and thank your lucky stars that I’m in a cheerful mood this fine morning. Usually, insinuating that site moderators are being dishonest is not a viable long-term strategy here, Sparky.

    Moe Lane

    PS: We’re not having a conversation, by the way.

  • harlan

    LIAR!