<p>Doct…you you used to post all these pro Goldman Sachs links,…</p>
<p>What happened?</p>
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I get it … you mean like the Columbia, Berkeley, and Cornell students who were at the forefront of Vietnam protests and whose middle class parents thought they were disrespectful naive college students … oh wait, maybe that example doesn’t really support your point.</p>
<p>I’m glad people - young and old, at Harvard and in my own backyard - are protesting. It shows a general awareness that there is something rotten in the state of America. Without wholesale demand for change, nothing will.</p>
<p>The problem with Mankiw’s arguments are that the college educated aren’t kicking butt unless they are in the top 1 percent…or even the top .1 percent.</p>
<p>I think we have a lot more college educated than that…</p>
<p>[Graduates</a> Versus Oligarchs - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/graduates-versus-oligarchs/]Graduates”>Graduates Versus Oligarchs - The New York Times)</p>
<p>Come the Revolution!!</p>
<p>;)</p>
<p>Personally, I think it’s good that young people are finally protesting something. Would have liked to have seen something like this back in 2003. Just shows that when one has skin in the game they will do something about it. </p>
<p>I don’t buy the "i won’t work as hard’ nonsense if my taxes go up. I don’t believe for a minute someone making over $1M/yr is going to work less because the next dollar is going to be taxed a teeny bit higher than the millionth dollar.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe for a minute someone making over $1M/yr is going to work less because the next dollar is going to be taxed a teeny bit higher than the millionth dollar.”</p>
<p>I don’t believe it either…</p>
<p>The immediate impact of Occupy Oakland was to hurt small business owners and employees in downtown Oakland. Local restaurant owners, waiters and busboys were interviewed on the news, saying that they were devastated by several days without income.</p>
<p><a href=“Opinion | The Senate Puts Millionaires Before Jobs - The New York Times”>Opinion | The Senate Puts Millionaires Before Jobs - The New York Times;
<p>Large infrastructure bill that would have supplied jobs to many turned down by senate repugs, who previously supported the bill - so rich won’t have to pay a .7% tax.</p>
<p>Good to see the 60’s coming back - I do miss that decade </p>
<p>Me too!</p>
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<p>That’s only moderate right if one considers that the US has made a seismic shift to the right politically for the last decade and one’s own politics is on the right-leaning side of the spectrum to begin with in the US context. </p>
<p>That’s not taking into account that in most other Western democracies, the modern US Democratic party would be considered conservative/right-wing and what we’d consider radical-left parties like the Green Party would be considered moderate to slightly left-leaning at best.</p>
<p>I’ve used one of Mankiew’s books for an undergrad econ course I took one summer at an Ivy. Very readable…but got some impressions the book was dumbed down compared with other econ texts I’ve read.</p>
<p>Do you mind me posting here? I’m not a parent, but I was at the lecture in question. (I didn’t take it last year, since I took AP Econ in high school, but I was contributing to the reporting for a student publication.) I thought that the particular lecture itself was pretty fair. He talked about rising income inequality, which was an ironic subject for people to walk out on. I thought he did a good job going “here’s an issue that exists, here’s what liberal economists think, here’s what conservative economists think, and it’s up to each person to make their own value judgment.”</p>
<p>Here are the complaints of the students who walked out, if you want them:
[An</a> Open Letter to Greg Mankiw](<a href=“http://hpronline.org/campus/an-open-letter-to-greg-mankiw/]An”>http://hpronline.org/campus/an-open-letter-to-greg-mankiw/)
They know nothing about economics if they think Keynes is applicable to microeconomics! It’s a year-long class, they’re in micro right now, and they will be doing a lot of Keynes in the spring. Also, how can you make both the points “he’s way too biased!” and also “he doesn’t teach enough”? If he’s biased, why do you want more of it? The textbook does cost way too much, but claiming that that is an Occupy issue cheapens the Occupy movement.</p>
<p>Here’s the Crimson’s article:
[Group</a> Endorses Walk Out in Economics 10 | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/11/2/students-protest-Ec-10/]Group”>Group Endorses Walk Out in Economics 10 | News | The Harvard Crimson)
I find it telling that the most-liked comment is “<em>shakes head</em> freshmen.”</p>
<p>Here, imo, is the best defense of Ec 10:
[In</a> Defense of Ec 10](<a href=“http://hpronline.org/campus/in-defense-of-ec-10/]In”>http://hpronline.org/campus/in-defense-of-ec-10/)</p>
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<p>Maybe more efforts by the Prof to each with an effort to reduce his biases to an absolute minimum. IMHO, this is a minimum requirement that should be expected of all Profs/teachers. </p>
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<p>That’s a contributory factor in the current college loan/debt crisis. Only people I know who don’t feel this is a related issue are those who are not well-informed of this problem among current university students/recent graduates or someone who is so sheltered(i.e. Some oblivious sons/daughters of really well-off full-pay parents) that they’re out of touch. </p>
<p>I write this as someone who was a near-full scholarship student to a private LAC and worked part-time/summers to cover the difference…including college textbooks. Prices back then were already ridiculously high…and it seems the problem has gotten worse since my undergrad years in the mid-late '90s.</p>
<p>Textbooks in general are too expensive! I completely agree. But singling out one in particular seems ehh to me, especially given that we, being so privileged as to attend Harvard, get to have much lighter student debt obligations than most students. ([Financial</a> Aid Overview](<a href=“http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page244023]Financial”>http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k51861&pageid=icb.page244023)) And while you make that point convincingly, they didn’t.</p>
<p>As Mr. Mankiw says, tf they raise my mother the “job creator”'s taxes, she’ll work less. </p>
<p>Oh, wait - she hasn’t worked since 1983…</p>
<p>Well considering Harvard is know to be overwhelming left/liberal…having a moderate prof is pretty unusual.</p>
<p>I recall reading through part of one of Mankiw’s texts a few years ago and he basically includes a rather long section from Paul Krugman on the negative effects of free trade on those dislocated in wealthy nations from cheap, foreign labor; and what countries should do about it [provide social benefits for the dislocated]. Does that make him a raving liberal professor?</p>
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<p>Harvard is left-leaning…but not overwhelmingly left/liberal based on what I’ve observed and certainly when compared with Berkeley before the mid-90s or Oberlin College when I was there in the mid-late’90s. </p>
<p>During the dozens of times I visited the Harvard campus with close friends who are Harvard alums…most students were either mainstream Democrats or Greens at most. </p>
<p>During my time at Oberlin…those groups would be regarded as “right-wing” by our campus standards. Very interesting times considering my politics placed me further to the right back then.</p>
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<p>Exactly! </p>
<p>These Harvard kids sap up all the liberal nonsense from their extremists teachers without realizing it but all of a sudden they are experts on bias economics? It looks like Harvard has a section reserved for the stupid students.</p>
<p>Let them all be social workers making 25K per year and maybe they will be happy.</p>
<p>Ec 10 is kind of the baby econ for freshmen. Those with higher placement and/or APs will either do 1010 or 1011. These kids “walking out” are not really taking one of the more challenging freshmen classes to begin with and are unlikely to be future wall street tycoons. So perhaps a good use of their time.</p>
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<p>They wouldn’t have been admitted if they didn’t know everything about everything.</p>