Getting It Write

Reading Barro is refreshing in the sense that he lays out in each essay specific points and reasonable argumentation to bolster them. For example, in his discussion of "Economic Advisers and Economic Outcomes" he some seemingly unrelated information, and creates a bridge which brings light to a more expansive idea which is both provocative and fresh. He uses an evaluation of economic policy which contributes to the "misery index" which includes unemployment rate change, inflation change, long-term interest rate change, and GDP growth rate change along with the amount of scholarly articles citing the US Council of Economic Advisers to estimate whether there is any correlation in expertise to effectiveness in promoting change. in crisis alone are economic advisers of any real importance in Barro's view.
Sensible in his approach, Barro does not fail to include a counter-argument--one which he is lucky enough to have authored (South America countries reform and influence of economic counsel in those cases).

Barro also provides exaggeration to emphasize his points cleanly. For example he reacts--seemingly disgusted--to extreme versions of government public spending by stating that one might conclude that natural disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes were fortunate in some sense because they create more jobs in construction. In this same section I enjoyed his ability to cleverly summarize conclusions by making a statement about public goods: "fixing potholes is a good idea but bullet trains and star wars communications networks are less obvious" (113). These sorts of manipulatively smart argumentative techniques will get him far with crowds that are pleased by such suave writing--however I am not quite sure whether the class will take his side.