Analogies and the federal debt
August 31, 2009
I tell my students that reasoning by analogy can be very powerful but it's also quite tricky: one has to pick the right analogy. Paul Krugman writes that our projected debt-to-GDP ratio isn't that bad because it will be less than what we had right after World War II. And in the 50s and 60s we did fine, right?
James Hamilton argues: bad analogy.