Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Over at Equitable Growth--The Equitablog:

• Painful Lessons from the Great Recession
• Nick Bunker: How high can the minimum wage go?
• Larry Mishel: Uber Is Not the Future of Work: "Driving mostly for supplementary income on a transitory basis..." :: I'm with Larry Mishel here: Why do people think Uber-type companies are an important deal, again? Uber, AirBNB, Criagslist... and what else?
• Steven Pearlstein: The Value and Limits of Economic Models: "The alleged failings of economics are now widely understood.... Rodrik no doubt set out to offer an evenhanded view of modern economics, [but] in the end he winds up delivering a fairly devastating critique..." :: Let me agree with Steve Perlstein here: the economics that Dani Rodrik praises is not the strongest current, outside of our liberal-arts non-business school ivory towers, and not always even in them.
• John Fernald: The Pre-Great-Recession Slowdown in U.S. Productivity Growth: "Counting “free” digital goods wouldn’t raise market productivity much..." :: I do not understand what John Fernald is getting at here: Who cares if it is not "market" but "home" production?
• Mark Thoma: Where Fed's Critics Got It Wrong in GOP Debate: "The Federal Reserve was instrumental in easing the impact of the Great Recession..." :: Critics of expansionary macro policies in a high-slack low-inflation economy have taken over Republican-Party economic policy. Can somebody please tell me what is going on?