Paul Krugman: Scholar or political hack?

[balrog666]

Yes, and in every other country in the world.

Step 1. So we borrow money from China, pay out some of it to a few random people who are otherwise unable to hold a job, just to stimulate a little more widget production back China.

Step 2. ????

Step 3. Profit!

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Step 1. So we borrow money from China, pay out some of it to a few random people who are otherwise unable to hold a job, just to stimulate a little more widget production back China.
Step 2. ????

Step 3. Profit!

No. "We" (I am not an American) do it to stimulate the selling of goods and services in many countries, but first and foremost, in the USA.

 

[Humes fork]

No. "We" (I am not an American) do it to stimulate the selling of goods and services in many countries, but first and foremost, in the USA.

Why?

 

[jimtron]

I didn't get any response from this earlier in the thread, thought I'd give it another try.

For those of you who aren't crazy about Krugman, which economists do you prefer?

 

[Peephole]

If Paul Krugman was a political hack, wouldn't he be praising Democrats instead of bashing them? This thread is just filled with folks who can't argue with his analysis and so just resort to ad hominems.

 

[Peephole]

On the other hand, in this article he argues for the superiority of "Europe" (that recurring American assumption that Europe has a homogenous economic system...) by looking at if Frankfurt, Paris and London appear to be poor. Um okay, do we get to judge the American economic performance by looking at Manhattan and Beverly Hills, or the Russian economic performance by looking at Moscow? This article is not a scholarly article, it's the work of a political hack.

Because you disagree? Did you even read the full article? The article isn't centered on a couple of cities but uses European wide metrics to dismiss the ridiculous notion that social democracies are economic wastelands:

Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year
...
Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there.
...
In 2008, 80 percent of adults aged 25 to 54 in the E.U. 15 were employed (and 83 percent in France).

I really don't see any problem with this article.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Why?

Short of instantly using the money to order from DealExtreme.com (which ought to constitute a minority of transactions), you'll HAVE to use it in your home country. Even if the goods were not in the end produced in the US, there's still a lot of services and middle-men, the demand of which you are stimulating.

People in general will have to specialize some other way if they can't compete with the Chinese by producing goods.

 

[Peephole]

Much of his writing are just cheering on the party line,

Examples?

regardless of what he himself has said before.

The author in the first link (which you didn't seem to notice is from Republican hack Tucker Carlson's website) seems to have serious problems with reading comprehension. Nowhere does Krugman say aid to state and local governments is a bad thing. In fact, Krugman today mostly talks about layoffs on the state and local levels as one of the major drags on the economy. And when he's arguing for stimulus now, he's arguing for more aid to state and local governments so they can reverse those layoffs.

The second link (which is from an even more awful source, Erick Erickson) doesn't seem to understand the difference between cutting unemployment benefits in normal times, and cutting unemployment benefits in a severely depressed economy.

Personally, I don't like reading him because he dumbs down things too much. I don't care what Krugman thinks about this issue or what he feels is "textbook economics". I want to know what models he is basing those opinions on.

IS-LM, which he has talked about numerous times:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/is-lmentary/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/who-you-gonna-bet-on-yet-again-somewhat-wonkish/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-simple/?gwh=4BB55B19DF09CB09E6EE84109DC089ED
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/islm.html
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/08/ah-yes-lm-wonkish/

 

[Ziggurat]

I didn't get any response from this earlier in the thread, thought I'd give it another try.

For those of you who aren't crazy about Krugman, which economists do you prefer?

I'm a fan of Thomas Sowell.

 

[Peephole]

I have forced two retractions to his NY Times columns; in both cases the major mistake he made was believing a liberal source on something that was obviously wrong.

Can you provide some links please?

I agree that the rest of the article was good. But in the quoted part, he did basically ask his readers to cherrypick some of the richest parts of Europe and compare them to the US as a whole.

Where does he compare these cities to the US as a whole? He simply uses these to give some examples of how Europe isn't some kind of socialist hellhole, as right-wingers in the US seem to think.

Step 1. So we borrow money from China, pay out some of it to a few random people who are otherwise unable to hold a job, just to stimulate a little more widget production back China.

Step 2. ????

Step 3. Profit!

Well, no. First off, you borrow from a bunch of sources, about 8% from China. And secondly you use that, among other things, to hire people who had a job until the financial crisis, housing bubble and austerity destroyed that job.

 

[Peephole]

I'm a fan of Thomas Sowell.

The truest thing that Senator John McCain said during this election campaign is what got him into the most trouble: "The economy is sound."

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2008/11/04/a_sound_economy

The Chinese are no fools. They know that all this unbridled spending-- even when it is called "investment"-- means that inflation is coming. That in turn means that the dollars with which U.S. government bonds will be paid off will be worth a lot less than the dollars with which the bonds were bought.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...552&hl=en&client=firefox-a&prmd=imvns&strip=1

Rofl.

 

[jimtron]

I'm a fan of Thomas Sowell.

He's better than Krugman? In this column, "Is U.S. Now On Slipper Slope To Tyranny?" he invokes Hitler and Nazi Germany in the first sentence of an op-ed piece about how terrible it is that Obama made BP cough up money for a cleanup fund.

 

[Brainster]

Can you name those mistakes? Making a mistake isn't being a hack. Refusing to correct your opinion in the face of evidence however... Which is something we see a lot more of coming from those who Krugman has the strongest disagreement with.

I'll do the first one for now; the second one is quite complicated and I don't feel up to it this morning. Start with this column by Krugman. He goes through the usual gyrations to prove that Gore actually won Florida in 2000. Then he talks about Ohio 2004:

Miami County reported that voter turnout was an improbable 98.55 percent of registered voters.

That would certainly be improbable, and so I went looking for information on Miami County, Ohio's 2004 results.

The Free Press article shows the percentage turnout at various precincts around Miami County. One precinct, CONCORD SOUTH WEST, is shown as having a 98.55 percent turnout; the others range from 50% to 94%. CONCORD SOUTH WEST had a grand total of 679 voters; the entire county had over 52,000. It is pretty obvious that the county as a whole did not have anywhere near a 98.55% turnout.

And in actuality the total turnout for the entire county was 72.23%.

Others, including fellow JREFer JamesB, found more mistakes in Krugman's column, regarding Florida 2000. Krugman wrote:

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida's ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

James B replied, using Krugman's own paper to back him up.

Of course what he is leaving out is that these "media consortiums" only said that this might have happened in certain scenarios, NONE of which were called for by the Gore campaign. Krugman's very own newspaper, which he apparently never reads reported:

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court

Krugman wrote an entire column the following Monday, trying to explain what his previous column had meant, while still claiming he was right. In newspaper terms, this is known as a rowback. He reiterates his earlier claim, but this time notes:

The three recounts that had been most widely discussed during the battle of Florida, including the partial recount requested by the Gore campaign and two interpretations of the Florida Supreme Court order, would have given the vote to Mr. Bush.

JamesB noted that the definitive statement "would have given the election to Mr Gore" had now been watered down to "probable". He also notes that Krugman continues to claim that the recount that probably would have given the election to Gore "should have been". Of course, the fact that Mr Gore himself did not demand that particular recount, nor did the Supreme Court, or Florida election law.

Bizarrely, Krugman did not take that opportunity to correct the Miami County mistake, even though that was transparent. It was not until the following Friday that he acknowledged that error:

Corrections: In my column last Friday, I cited an inaccurate number (given by the Conyers report) for turnout in Ohio's Miami County last year: 98.5 percent. I should have checked the official state site, which reports a reasonable 72.2 percent. Also, the public editor says, rightly, that I should acknowledge initially misstating the results of the 2000 Florida election study by a media consortium led by The Miami Herald. Unlike a more definitive study by a larger consortium that included The New York Times, an analysis that showed Al Gore winning all statewide manual recounts, the earlier study showed him winning two out of three.

Note as well that after much emailing back and forth, Calame himself was forced to write a further correction at the end of that column (Krugman himself petulantly refused to do so):

Correction:
In describing the results of the ballot study by the group led by The Miami Herald in his column of Aug. 26, Paul Krugman relied on the Herald report, which listed only three hypothetical statewide recounts, two of which went to Al Gore. There was, however, a fourth recount, which would have gone to George W. Bush. In this case, the two stricter-standard recounts went to Mr. Bush. A later study, by a group that included The New York Times, used two methods to count ballots: relying on the judgment of a majority of those examining each ballot, or requiring unanimity. Mr. Gore lost one hypothetical recount on the unanimity basis.

 

[Wayward son]

Several years ago under the assumption that the evidence base for economics supported Thomas Sowell (something I had heard from many people) I decided to read several Sowell books such as his Basic Economics, Applied Economics, Economic Facts and Fallacies etc. I don't care for his work or positions, but I accept that many of my views must be completely wrong, and as I am not an economist, I must give a lot of credence to the views of people who appear to be alligned with the majority of top economists. But I no longer believe it to be the case that Sowell is inline with the majority of top economists. Thomas Sowell does not appear on the list of most cited economists (the top 5% are included - about 1600) and I see little reason to consider him any more than a political hack. If you look at that list's top 20 it includes economists from the right (such as Becker) as well as the left (such as Krugman). Stiglitz and Acemoglu are also economists who have written popular books that appear in the top 20.

 

[Ziggurat]

He's better than Krugman? In this column, "Is U.S. Now On Slipper Slope To Tyranny?" he invokes Hitler and Nazi Germany in the first sentence of an op-ed piece about how terrible it is that Obama made BP cough up money for a cleanup fund.

Better in what regard? Is he less partisan? Maybe not. But I find that I learn a lot more from reading Sowell than I do from reading Krugman. Filtering out partisan rhetoric isn't a problem, but if I don't learn something useful after I do that filtering, then I'm just wasting my time. And I haven't learned anything from Krugman in a long time. I did, quite a few years back, but not anymore. YMMV.

 

[Ziggurat]

Thomas Sowell does not appear on the list of most cited economists (the top 5% are included - about 1600)

I'm not sure that's the relevant metric here. Carl Sagan, for example, only has an H-index of 25, which is fairly modest. But it wouldn't make sense to claim he's not a significant figure or that his views on science are less worthy on that account. Citation rates are indicative of how productive someone is within their academic field, but it tells us nothing about either the validity of their work or the usefulness of their work outside an academic setting. As I'm not a professional economist, his citation rate seems rather unimportant.

 

[Peephole]

Looking at some of Sowell's columns it's pretty pure Republican hackery, and he barely even talks about economics.

I'll do the first one for now; the second one is quite complicated and I don't feel up to it this morning. Start with this column by Krugman. He goes through the usual gyrations to prove that Gore actually won Florida in 2000. Then he talks about Ohio 2004:

That would certainly be improbable, and so I went looking for information on Miami County, Ohio's 2004 results.

And in actuality the total turnout for the entire county was 72.23%.

Others, including fellow JREFer JamesB, found more mistakes in Krugman's column, regarding Florida 2000. Krugman wrote:

James B replied, using Krugman's own paper to back him up.

Krugman wrote an entire column the following Monday, trying to explain what his previous column had meant, while still claiming he was right. In newspaper terms, this is known as a rowback. He reiterates his earlier claim, but this time notes:


JamesB noted that the definitive statement "would have given the election to Mr Gore" had now been watered down to "probable". He also notes that Krugman continues to claim that the recount that probably would have given the election to Gore "should have been". Of course, the fact that Mr Gore himself did not demand that particular recount, nor did the Supreme Court, or Florida election law.

Bizarrely, Krugman did not take that opportunity to correct the Miami County mistake, even though that was transparent. It was not until the following Friday that he acknowledged that error:

Note as well that after much emailing back and forth, Calame himself was forced to write a further correction at the end of that column (Krugman himself petulantly refused to do so):

So Krugman made two mistakes, that were later rectified? Not that making mistakes is something to aspire to, but how many media make mistakes and never admit to them? All by all the general point also still stands, the US has a pretty broken electoral system, that is very prone to tampering by politicians.

 

[TubbaBlubba]

And the mistake Krugman made look... Well, it looks like the kind of honest mistake you would make. Yeah, it looks really bad in hindsight, but I don't think that in and of itself reflects badly on him as a columnist.

 

[balrog666]

He's better than Krugman? In this column, "Is U.S. Now On Slipper Slope To Tyranny?" he invokes Hitler and Nazi Germany in the first sentence of an op-ed piece about how terrible it is that Obama made BP cough up money for a cleanup fund.

Did Teh Ohole have the authority to do that? No. So it was an act of outright thuggery, a la Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, et al. And that the victim 9eventually) agreed to be robbed is not an excuse for the robbery.

Note that the courts still marched on in their own direction even after the Teh Ohole's so-called "decision" ...

 

[Peephole]

Ohole?