Talk:Randal O'Toole

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Oregon Portal This page is part of WikiProject Oregon, a WikiProject dedicated to articles related to the U.S. state of Oregon. To participate: join (or just read up) at the project page, or contribute to the project discussion.
PSU stuff & Applegate Trail are the current Collaborations of the week.
Start	This page is rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Low	This article is rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.

	This article covers subjects of relevance to WikiProject Urban studies and planning, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Urban studies and planning on Wikipedia.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]
	This article is supported by the Science and academia work group.

It is requested that a picture or pictures of this person be included in this article to improve its quality. Note: Wikipedia's non-free content use policy almost never permits the use of non-free images (such as promotional photos, press photos, screenshots, book covers and similar) to merely show what a living person looks like. Efforts should be made to take a free licensed photo during a public appearance, or obtaining a free content release of an existing photo instead.

[edit] Economist?

I am not sure if O'Toole can be called anything but a polemicist. Referring to this author as an economist confuses O'Tooles polemical writings with academic empirical research. Besides, if you look at http://www.urbanfutures.org/otoole.html, you can see that O'Toole was trained in forest management and geology. The graduate work he supposedly undertook in economics in the 1970s doesn't make him an economist--not by training and certainly not by accomplishment. --Kim--~~—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kimwell (talk • contribs) 03:07, August 14, 2006

[edit] Not an Economist

O'Toole does not hold a graduate degree in economics. Holding a BS in Forest Management might pass the Cato Institute's sniff test for an economist, but it would not get him hired on an economics faculty at a reputable university. 24.21.99.110 21:05, 28 July 2007 (UTC)Brian

• Perhaps passing the sniff test at a "reputable" university would not get someone hired at the Cato Institute, either. Academic and government institutions tend to be either Keynesian or Monetarist, while Cato tends to be more Austrian or Libertarian. That difference in fundamental philosophy makes it less likely that an adherent of one would take an adherent of the other seriously. For example, I sometimes want to put the word "economist" in quotes when I talk about academics or people running the Fed or Treasury. (I see their success as coming from the use of force [taxes, etc.] rather than from having the best ideas.) This is the counterpart to your not wanting to call someone an economist unless they've gone through the academic filter. SkyDot 17:12, 20 September 2007 (UTC)