Stephen Moore

CalPundit made a great catch, noting that Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth (a lobbying group devoted to Supply Side policies–Moore is on CNN, Fox, …, writes opinion pieces that appear in major newspapers, and gets quoted fairly often) can’t do simple math. This likely explains his devotion to Supply Side Economics. National Review Online, which published the faulty piece, has since changed the math, without noting the error.

This made me wonder whether Moore has a Ph.D.–he doesn’t. But I did find something that explains a bit about Dick Armey:

Mr. Moore served as a Senior Economist at the Joint Economic Committee under Chairman Dick Armey of Texas. There, he advised Mr. Armey on budget, tax, and competitiveness issues. He was also an architect of the Armey flat tax proposal now before Congress.

I’m not sure if this means that Armey’s misguidedness caused him to hire Moore, or whether hiring Moore caused Armey to become misguided–though I suspect it’s the former. Incidentally, Moore has an MA in Economics from George Mason University. Typically, though not always, people get masters in Economics as a sort of consolation prize when they can’t pass the qualifying exams at the end of the first or second year (Economics is a bit unusual in that very few people enter terminal Masters in Economics programs, because that degree just doesn’t do much for you, so few schools offer them. Instead, you get a Masters by entering a Ph.D. program and then dropping out along the way).

AB