Comments

1
Dude's an economist, and hasn't forgotten the basics.
2
So did they let him out alive? With a severe beating for being uppity? What happened next?
3
@1,

He has a degree in economics, but Ben Stein is actually a lawyer.
4
Wow.
5
@1 He was never an economist. And most economists completely disagree with him: not about the taxes, but about the spending. Cutting spending now to 'fix' the deficit will hurt the economy, not help it. It may actually make the deficit worse in the long run.

There's a nice experiment being run in Europe right now that demonstrates this nicely.
6
I don't care if he got out alive. The damage that piece of shit did to any kids who watched his anti-science documentary forfeited his right to personal safety in Fox studios.
8
@7 and yet creating huge national debt has been a hallmark policy for Republicans for the past 50 years.
9
Ben Stein's father was an economist who worked for Nixon at one point.
10
@7 I thought that the situation in Europe proved that austerity harms prospects for a recovery
11
@ 9, Ben Stein himself wrote speeches for Nixon.

Well, his old game show on Comedy Central was fun, even if the prize money was paltry, even by pre-Who Wants to Be a Millionaire standards.
12
ID proponents forfeit their place at the adult's table.
13
I'm no economist, by several miles, but I don't see how you don't hurt the national economy, let alone help it, by reducing or eliminating people's disposable income. A guy who's struggling and depressed is not going to go out to spend money in the store. That means the people in the store lose their jobs, the people in the factories making the products not in demand lose theirs, and with more people out of work and without extra income, the problem just magnifies. This seems pretty straightforward and simple to me. You grow the economy from the middle and the bottom, not the top. And yet that's what Romney, Vampire of Companies, just can't wait to do.

Ben Stein's anti-evolution propaganda piece is worse than stupid - it's disingenuously dangerous, based on blind ideology rather than reason. It's the opposite of playing fair, in other words.

And yet... I can't help but like him, a little bit, on a personal level. Maybe it's the Ferris Bueller movie and Win Ben Stein's Money ("I shall do my best"), but he is clearly very, very smart (if blind in his ideology, for the most part) and he doesn't come off as a Romney Family jerk. The anti-tax, anti-government stance is required orthodoxy in today's Republican party, so the fact that he, a famous conservative, goes on the heart of conservative television and defies it, is very notable.
14
This isn't a sudden revelation for Stein. He was writing columns about the problem of wealth disparity back in the Bush years, before the crash, long before Occupy.

But every time I think I'm about to like him, he goes off and jumps on the wrong side of a big issue.
15
Ben Stein can kiss my Democratic ass.
17
@8
You might want to check your history, Republicans have not had legislative, or executive control for 50 years.

But who cares about facts when you got partisan vitriol.

Not like both parties have already been bought and sold or anything.
18
The Scientific American link that debunks Stein's moronic ID argument contained the following link in the sidebar;

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v45…

It's a 16th century "Urine Wheel" that graphically depicts the different urine colors & odors that were commonly used in diagnosing disease! Love science.
19
Bueller?
20
@18 That's so awesome.
21
His dad wasn't just an economist, he was a very good economist. Krugman always has kind words to say about him.
22
@7, The Irish economy was first to enter the recession while government debt was comparatively small, i.e. private debt was the problem, not government debt. In most neoliberal economies, private debt is huge due to the housing bubble whereas welfare states have comparatively little private debt. Conservatives are trying to implement the shock doctrine so they never mention that what matters is the total asset-liability mismatch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cou…
23
"Even a stopped clock can tell you it's hot if you put it in the oven at 450 degrees for a half an hour."

Not that this would have been a clever line *anyway*, but it's especially classy when talking about a Jewish man born during WW2.

Stay classy, Paul.
24
@17: Nitpicker, nitpicker, pick me a nit...
You're putting words in his mouth. He didn't say that they'd been successful in implementing those policies, just that they'd wanted to.
25
Ben Stein, the actor who plays an economist on TV thinks the government should raise taxes in order to pay off the national debt we are told we owe or we will suffer the fate of Greece or Argentina in the late 1990s?

Didn't Stein in 2007 say the economy was not in a recession and the subprime mortgage crisis would “blow over and the people who buy now, in due time, will be glad they did.”

Didn't he also dismissed fears of a credit crisis prior to Lehman Brothers going bankrupt, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac take over by the federal government, the AIG bail out by the Federal Reserve, and the rest of the destructive pile up following the global economic crisis beginning in September, 2008.

Ben Stein is an idiot. I think you Sloglodytes agree on more than you think.
26
I wouldn't make the mistake in saying Ben Stein is an idiot; come on, doesn't anyone remember Win Ben Stein's Money?

Seriously though, he is intelligent and shrewd. He is just also wrong. About most everything.

....You know what? I retract my argument.
28
@26) My friend won some of Ben Stein's money.
29
@1: He's a smart guy, but there's a reason why he went into acting rather than economics.
30
Is @23 a Godwin?

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