The Devil’s Dictionary of Economics
Search For: (All Definitions Starting with the Letter: K)
Definition Total: (6)
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| Ken and Barbie |
The 2008 presidential candidates. Between his advocacy of a free lunch for the voters and his rather fuzzy understanding of geography, John McCain is the male version of Barbie, who says “math is hard!” This is in sharp contrast to Barack Obama, the Black version of Ken, who thinks that he is just too darned handsome to possibly lose an election – in spite of the fact that his résumé is printed on tissue paper, he has never published a serious academic paper on any subject (unless his biography counts as a serious study in narcissism) and his only accomplishment in the Senate is showing up and voting “present” 130 times.
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| Keynes, John Maynard |
“Pyramid building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth…. If the treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise… to dig the notes up again…, there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.” (For pure comedic effect, I can do no better than to quote the man himself.) See Waste.
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| Keynesianism |
The belief (held by Paul Krugman) that all economic problems can be solved by printing more money is, in modern parlance, Keynesianism. However, Keynes himself, back in his 1936 to 1941 heyday, was more into calls for war and deficit spending, which he (naïvely) thought would be paid for after the war by tax increases. In reality, they were paid for through recourse to the printing press. Do calls for war and deficit spending remind you of anyone? That’s right, among the 2008 presidential candidates, John McCain is the only pure, 1930's-style Keynesian. See Free Lunch.
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| Kolmogorov, A. N. |
A Russian mathematician, his Theory of Probability served as an inspiration for my Axiomatic Theory of Economics. He would have been a natural ally of Ludwig von Mises and could have helped put Mises’ airy praxeology on solid ground if Mises hadn’t shot himself in the foot with his ridiculous discussion of the meaning of probability.
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| Krugman, Paul |
A humor columnist (motto: Print more money!) regarded as being second only to Dave Barry in his informative columns on economic policy and other fun topics. A part-time drummer in the country-western band, Moral Hazard. See Keynesianism.
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| Ku Klux Klan |
“If the KKK supports this language [in the Civil Rights Initiative], then God bless them,” says Ward Connerly. I agree. If Klansmen can restrict their comments to reasoned critiques of affirmative action, then I will raise my glass to them. If they make ignorant, racist remarks about my surname, then fuck ´em.
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