Well then let me ask a question about which experts to trust. Take Japan - they've been in a prolonged economic slump for about 20 years. Assuming there is "the right thing to do" to get them out of this situation, and they have access to economic experts to advise them, why have they been unable to get out of it?
Well, do you smoke? If so, is it because you don't have access to the right medical experts to tell you how unhealthy a habit it is, or is it because for whatever reason you can't or don't want to quit? Similarly, most Americans are at least slightly overweight; many are vastly so. That's not because they don't know that excess weight is unhealthy or they've been listening to the wrong experts; indeed, I don't know any "experts" who tell you that weighing 300+ pounds is a good idea.
But the obesity epidemic persists.
Japan is in something of a similar situation; they've tried doing "the right thing" as the experts recommend several times, and each time it ends up getting stopped for political reasons. Really, it's the same reason that the deficit hawks have been winning the stimulus debate recently in the states. Every economist knows they're wrong, but there are more people who aren't economists -- and they vote, too.
The Japanese are also in a rather special situation culturally and politically; they have a much bigger pensioner problem than the Americans have, and inflation is a much greater problem for pensioners and similar people on fixed incomes. (Note, for example, how hard the [US-based] AARP pushed for a "cost-of-living" increase last year despite the fact that costs of living actually
decreased over the previous year. Multiply that by several times and you have the Japanese retirement lobby.)
I realize there were some answers posted to this question, but it seems like the answer was that the layman needed to do some kind of analysis to tell the difference between a true expert and a snake oil salesman. But if the layman was capable of this level of discrimination then he's not exactly a layman.
The hell he's not. Laymen aren't idiots. Most of the analysis doesn't involve figuring out who's right or who's wrong, but who's trustworthy and who isn't. You're being asked to do the same sort of analysis of an economist that you do of a mechanic -- or of a late-night TV pitchman. Post #5, for example, specifically points out that the column discussed in the OP is written by a guy
hoping to make money off the people he scares. It's a late-night infomercial in print. You don't need to know exactly how he's wrong -- you just need to know that his advice is not unbiased, and discount it appropriately. Henry Blodgett was banned from the securities industry for fraud, and now runs a business information Web site. Again, you don't need to know how he's wrong to know that he's not trustworthy.
But since most people are layman and don't really know who to trust they end up trusting Sarah Palin or Ron Paul or Paul Krugman or their neighbor or whoever.
Well, let's look at them.
Sarah Palin is widely recognized as a total airhead whose multiple lies ("death panels," anyone) are well-documented.
Ron Paul is well-recognized as one of the top members of the Libertarian movement, and a few seconds on Google will illustrate that they're not the sort of group you'd trust with a burnt-out match.
Krugman,....
Sure, Krugman has a Nobel Prize
... and several other major awards in economics; he's a tenured faculty member at one of the top econ departments in the world and a regular columnist at one of the major mainstream newspapers in the world.
I'd trust him more than I'd trust Palin or Paul.
but he's not an infallible source of truth either,
No one said he was "infallible." But if you need to pick between Krugman, Palin, and Paul, there's no choice.
and he's so political that a lot of people are going to write him off immediately for his self avowed liberalism regardless of the merits of his arguments.
All right, let's go a little deeper. Who are the
economists who write him off immediately for his self-avowed liberalism?
We've already established that Palin and Paul
don't know any economics. So their opinion to write Krugman off is no more valid or authoritative than Paul's support for the gold standard. Show me another major economist -- even better, show me a major group of economists -- who write him off. Just because he's "political" doesn't mean he's wrong. Just because he's "liberal" doesn't mean he's wrong. If you can find a single fact-based criticism of Krugman, we can look at the criticism and see how it adjusts our opinions.
I've given you a fact-based criticism of Palin. She tells lies, and is therefore untrustworthy. Show me a similar criticism of Krugman and I'll stop trusting him.
And even if someone was able to do this, the vast majority of people are just going to go about their lives in a confused state getting their information from Fox News or whatever.
Then people are dumb. They'll also go around smoking and eating too much. You can't force people to think critically if they believe that's too much work. But you also shouldn't pay attention to the opinions of people who can't be bothered to think critically.
