s a matter of formal deductive logic it is"
Yes. But I didn't see any formal, deductive logical arguments going on. They were informal, and an appeal to authority is perfectly ok in such a setting.
Which is why I went on to say -
"But basing the claim on a false authority is an informal fallacy."
and
In other posts here, I've pointed out how no one is really an authority in terms of the complex economic interactions in a large economy. There are more knowledgeable and respected people and less knowledgeable and respected people, but no real authority.
They used standard values to plug into their model.
There is no such standard model. Different schools of economic thought, and different economists within each school, have widely varying opinions of multipliers from government spending, from well over one, to very low, or even negative. It is one of the most controversial current disagreement in economics, not something that has any accepted standard answer.
Opinions on the multiplier are opinions on the effect of government spending. When the question is "what is the effect of this extra government spending?", than plugging in a value for the multiplier, is plugging in the answer of the question, in order to derive the answer. Its X therefore X. Its circular. Or to look at it another way, it can be considered simply asserting X. It isn't a real argument for X, just a bald assertion. |
