Thread by @Noahpinion

1/In this thread, I will address this rather absurd thread of allegations by @jvtklooster, a professor of political economy at the University of Amsterdam.

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718525504528386

2/A week ago, @jvtklooster called my post about price controls a "silly polemic", lifting a quote from the post. I was rightfully annoyed at this characterization. A week later, @jvtklooster writes that only now has he "dug into" the work of mine that he insulted a week ago!

3/My recent post targeted a New Yorker article by @zachdcarter that, unfortunately, contained many errors. Here, @jvtklooster calls the article "nice", "factual", and "precise", but offers no more specific defense of the article.

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718528117620741

4/If you want to read what I wrote, and to see all the various errors that the New Yorker article made, please do so! If @jvtklooster disagrees with any of these, I invite him to debate the specifics.

noahpinion.blog/p/price-contro…

5/In his next tweet, @jvtklooster writes that I don't challenge the core of Carter's narrative. That is wrong; I do challenge it!

He then accuses me of calling @IsabellaMWeber's ideas "cultish" and "catastrophically crazy", providing this screenshot:

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718530772680704

6/Just one problem: The tweet that @jvtklooster screenshots was specifically talking about MMT, rather than @IsabellaMWeber or her ideas! I made that explicitly clear in another tweet in the thread, which @jvtklooster neglects to mention or link to:

https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1668712210582093825

7/It is possible that @jvtklooster simply didn't scroll and read the other tweets in that thread, or it's possible that he lied and mischaracterized my tweet as an attack on Weber when I had explicitly stated it was in reference to MMT.

Either way, not good on his part.

8/@jvtklooster then says that I was one of the "angry online men" attacking @IsabellaMWeber last year, citing a post of mine about price controls that I wrote at the time.

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718533285003265

9/You are of course free to read that post that I wrote, and maybe you will agree with @jvtklooster that it was "angry"!

noahpinion.blog/p/why-price-co…

10/But note that at the time, people considered my post measured and reasonable, rather than angry. For example, here is @adam_tooze recommending the post:

https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1478110703429033987

11/@jvtklooster then looks at my earlier post and says it's now "quite dated", referencing an argument that I relayed from @MattBruenig:

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718535805849600

12/But @jvtklooster misunderstands Bruenig's argument entirely. His counterargument is that firms did in fact jack up prices. But @MattBruenig explicitly does not dispute this. Instead, he argues that there was a reason they DIDN'T jack up prices in 2019.

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718540260188162

13/@jvtklooster claims that "the data has shown beyond any doubt" that powerful firms jacked up prices more than others.

Does it? Conlon et al. (2023) find ZERO correlation between markup increases and price increases in recent years.

chrisconlon.github.io/site/markups_p…

@jvtklooster 14/@jvtklooster then points out that I endorsed a couple of @IsabellaMWeber's ideas -- the G-7 oil price cap and buffer stocks -- and said they had been helpful.

That is true! I did! I always try to be fair-minded, generous, and accurate.

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718542214742017

15/But it's strange that instead of giving me credit for giving @IsabellaMWeber credit, @jvtklooster chooses to characterize my endorsement of those ideas as a forced concession made in the middle of a "silly polemic".

Friend, I could have just not written those paragraphs!

16/@jvtklooster then argues that I caricatured Weber's idea for comprehensive, wartime price controls. He ignores that this was Carter's characterization in the article I was critiquing!!

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718546086084608

17/But @jvtklooster also ignores the fact that in my post, I quoted Weber's own paper extensively, and discussed which of her recommendations from that paper have been implemented.

noahpinion.blog/p/price-contro…

18/Next, @jvtklooster discusses the German gas commission. It did not implement price controls, but rather a subsidy; my post goes into detail about this. The German government paid producers for gas rather than regulating the price they could charge.

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718548384448512

19/I'm not at liberty to discuss my own source on the German commission. But the HEAD of the commission called Carter's article "bad journalism" on Twitter -- a fact @jvtklooster fails to mention.

https://twitter.com/GrimmVeronika/status/1666347287809867776

20/In sum, it was @jvtklooster's thread, not my posts, that qualifies as a "silly polemic".

I don't expect him to apologize, but I definitely do expect the world to see that he is talking out of his rear end on this one!

(end)

https://twitter.com/jvtklooster/status/1669718550951473152