Jeff Frankel participates in a discussion of Chinese currency policy — and finds many of the participants subscribing to the doctrine of immaculate transfer. As he says, I thought I had definitively disposed of that doctrine 25 years ago. But it keeps coming back.

That’s the sad thing about economic discourse, and the reason I keep talking about zombies: the same demonstrably wrong ideas just keep coming back, and back, and back, from the Treasury view on demand to the trust fund bait and switch. And those are just the logical fallacies; there are also historical fallacies (unprecedented growth under Reagan!) and empirical fallacies (huge growth from cuts in top rates!).

On top of that, basic information takes amazingly long to make its way into public discussion. Some of us have spent years trying to drive home the point that many Americans haven’t shared in rising life expectancy, making policy recommendations like a rise in the Medicare age a really bad idea; so while I’m glad to see the WaPo running a story saying “Hey, it turns out that lower-income Americans haven’t seen much rise in life expectancy!”, it’s frustrating to see this presented as new and surprising information.

What all this means is that if you’re going to try to play a constructive role in public economic discourse, you have to be willing to say the same thing over and over again. Also, if you’re going to try to play a constructive role in public economic discourse, you have to be willing to say the same thing over and over again. And if you’re going to try …

This can be frustrating, and can annoy readers who want every piece to be brand new and counter-intuitive. But someone has to keep rolling the stone up the hill.