A slightly off-center perspective on monetary problems.
Or so he claims:
Some have asked if there aren't conservative sites I read regularly. Well, no. I will read anything I've been informed about that's either interesting or revealing; but I don't know of any economics or politics sites on that side that regularly provide analysis or information I need to take seriously. I know we're supposed to pretend that both sides always have a point; but the truth is that most of the time they don't. The parties are not equally irresponsible; Rachel Maddow isn't Glenn Beck; and a conservative blog, almost by definition, is a blog written by someone who chooses not to notice that asymmetry. And life is short "¦
That’s right, and George Will isn’t Michael Moore; and a liberal blog, almost by definition, is a blog written by someone who chooses not to notice that asymmetry. No need to read Marginal Revolution, Becker/Posner, Econlog, John Taylor, Greg Mankiw, Robin Hanson, Steven Landsburg, etc, etc. Nothing of interest, just move right along folks. I’m always amazed when someone so brilliant can be so clueless about life. How someone can reach middle age and still live in a kindergartener’s world of good guys and bad guys.
Perhaps if Krugman would get out a bit more he might make fewer embarrassing errors, like this one, where he forgot the fallacy of composition, something taught in EC101. I guess none of his liberal friends have the nerve to point out these sorts of silly errors. So it’s still there, uncorrected after two weeks. A monument to his pride at being ignorant of the views of those with whom he disagrees.
You might ask whether I’m being a bit harsh calling him “ignorant.” Actually, he’s the one who proudly flaunts his ignorance of conservative thought.
I find that reading good liberal blogs like Krugman, DeLong, Thoma, Yglesias, etc, sharpens my arguments. It forces me to reconsider things I took for granted. I’d guess that when Krugman tells people at cocktail parties that the post-1980 trend of lower tax rates, deregulation, and privatization was a plot devised by racist Republicans, they all nod their heads in agreement. If he occasionally read a conservative blog he might learn that all those trends occurred in almost every country throughout the world after 1980, usually much more so than in the US.
I wonder if his blanket condemnation of reading conservative outlets would include books that attack silly liberal arguments for protectionism. Or articles that show the folly of liberal opposition to sweatshops. Are those conservative ideas also no longer worth reading?
Some conservatives have given up on reading Krugman because of his insulting tone. That’s a big mistake—indeed it’s playing right into his hands. Krugman is right in many of his criticisms of conservative ideas (such as tighter money.) Conservatives need to hear his views. Better to read things that annoy you, and respond when you are outraged, than to be oblivious to the best arguments against your worldview. The best liberal bloggers are those who don’t stay in their echo chamber, but rather are willing to also read blogs that annoy them.
PS. I will be away for a few days, and hence won’t do much blogging.
Update: Many commenters failed to click on the link in Krugman’s post, so they didn’t realize that he cited Tyler Cowen as the sort of conservative who is so partisan that he ”doesn’t notice that asymmetry” and therefore is not worth reading. I don’t even consider Cowen to be a conservative (much less partisan), but Krugman obviously does.
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51 Responses to “Paul Krugman: Ignorant, and proud of it”
This is classic Krugman – the ignorant, narcissistic kindergarten student throwing temper tantrums and hurling mud at other kids. I can rarely stomach reading him. This is why I was extremely grateful when Scott Sumner came along to filter out his actual ECONOMICS arguments away from the filthy muck of political idiocy. And this moved me from an Austrian business cycle explanation to a quasi-monetarist one.
Meh, Krugman isn’t insulting… its hard to feel insulted by someone as perennially biased and clueless as him. The only person on the econ-blogosphere worse than him is deLong who regularly deletes comments on his site.
Unlike him, Thoma, Yglesias, Angrybear, etc are great lefty bloggers who tend to be honest and clue-full. And, while I agree with you that its good to read blogs with different points of view, Krugman is just not worth reading, when any of his good points will be also made by the better lefty bloggers.
Well, I think this particular post might be unecessarily harsh. Krugman is very smart, and influential. I would rather build bridges to someone like him, than burn bridges.
Even more importantly, he seems slowly, ever so slowly, to be coming around in his points of view regrading monetary policy.
Sure, Krugman is a big lib. Then John Taylor is a big conservative. They have biases, that we may or may not agree with.
For now, we want greater acceptance of QE, and other monetary stimulus. I think we need all the friends we can get, usually gained by finding common ground, and expanding on that.
Benjamin How much crudity and dishonesty, ignorance and insults are you willing to allow to “build bridges” with Kruggerz? Please read his hit piece on Milton Friedman after his death. That alone was despicable. This post needs to be much harsher. Krugman deserves far worse.
Thanks for the praise of MR, in any case I interpret Krugman’s post a little differently than you do. He’s said on other occasions that he reads the two of us, and he regularly takes or counters arguments from us. It is highly likely that he reads others as well, such as Mankiw. Maybe he was just careless in mixing talk of what is a “political” blog or not. Or maybe there is a psychoanalytic question of why he would hurt peoples’ feelings, by denying such readings, and I think that is perhaps what his post boils down to. I don’t pretend to have an answer to that psychological question, and I’m not even sure I am framing it the right way, but in any case I would say this: don’t take the bait. Maybe *his* feelings are hurt, I don’t know. But there is no reason why your feelings should be hurt, and maybe you should even read his post as a strange form of flattery to you, albeit unintended. It’s a bit like Bloom on The Anxiety of Influence. You are of course correct that we always should be reading Krugman, and if he makes himself a more interesting character psychologically, well, that is simply another reason to keep on reading him, in addition to all the other content.
One of the reasons why I keep reading this blog (in addition, of course, to its interesting subject material), is that Scott Sumner is one of the few right-wingers who doesn’t descend into mindless fact-free name-calling when it comes to people they disagree with, the way that some commenters on this post are already starting to do. I think most people are unfortunately more willing to excuse rhetorical excesses committed by people they agree with (I would probably find a right-wing version of Krugman unreadable), which is why it’s good to see people like Sumner who keep a relatively calm tone.
My question for Scott is: what conservative sites should he (or me, I guess) be reading? I know Krugman does read your blog and MR from time to time, but what other sites would you say offer good right-of-center analysis, however you would define that?
Aaron, in the post above:
“Marginal Revolution, Becker/Posner, Econlog, John Taylor, Greg Mankiw, Robin Hanson, Steven Landsburg, etc, etc”
Everyone, I wasn’t sure whether I should post this or not. (When that happens, 90% of the time it’s a mistake.) I suppose “ignorant” is a pejorative, but he was proudly calling himself ignorant, so I didn’t see that inflammatory headline as making an accusation, but rather simply pointing out what Krugman was publically admitting to.
I agree with Tyler that generally one shouldn’t take the bait. But I don’t quite agree that his attack was aimed at low-brows like Beck, and not highbrows like Mankiw and Cowen. Krugman has a link to Cowen right before his final insult, so he’s clearly implying that Tyler is so biased that he’s not worth reading. I can’t see any other interpretation, although I’m open to suggestions.
Of course he does read MR on occasion (probably often), and once and a while he reads my blog as well. I saw his post as a particularly gratuitous insult against some bloggers that I greatly respect, and also an easy softball that I could ridicule without working up a sweat.
Finally, there’s a big difference between saying one doesn’t care to read such and such, because of lack of interest, and saying that one doesn’t care to read people one disagrees with because they are so biased that their writings contain little of interest.
Maybe I did get down in the mud with him. (And that’s why Tyler is a better person than me.) But since I’m older than Krugman I prefer to think of this post as like a parent scolding a child that has been naughty.
Sean, I wasn’t clear if he was considering all of those people to be ideological opposites or what, I certainly don’t consider someone like Robin Hanson to be “conservative” in the way that, say, Rortybomb is “liberal”.
Aaron, Certainly all the sites I mentioned in this post are excellent, but I don’t even have time to always keep up with them. I also read my fellow quasi-monetarists, but as their number expands I’m having more and more trouble keeping up. The key is to read stuff with various points of view.
There are also lots of blogs that I consider moderate, but that have conservative views on some issues (Ryan Avent, Jim Hamilton, etc.) I also forget to mention Will Wilkinson, who recently started blogging more actively, and of course many others. I’m sure there are at least 100 blogs by people who could loosely be called “conservative” (including libertarians) who are worth reading.
I think he’s brilliant! At least, he says he is.
When I think conservative sites I think the ilk of Faux News, certainly not worth spending time on. There certainly isn’t anything more ill informed. Thankfully Stewart and Colbert watch it so I don’t.
I have to admit I read the title and expected him to deny any rightwing legitimacy but I did gasp a little when he recommended Digby.
1. George Will is totally Michael Moore. At least today. He seemed more reasonable in the past. But so did Moore. Trains are a liberal plot to make us more conformist? Regulating CO2 would be regulating breathing?
2. I’m glad you brought up the fallacy of composition again! Gives me another chance to restate my argument … anti-stimulus and pro-stimulus theories both predict increases at the micro level, right? They differ at the macro-level where anti-stimulus predicts at most zero job growth while pro-stimulus predicts more job growth. So showing micro-level job increases doesn’t differentiate the theories or prove either right. But there is a leap of faith here. Let’s say 1’s are job increases. An anti-stimulus theory says:
1 + 1 + 1 + … = 0 overall increase
The micro level job increases sum to zero (since there are decreases in there). A naive calculation that didn’t account for the decreases would show a fallacy of composition.
Now a pro-stimulus macroeconomic theory says:
overall increase 10 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + …
when you look at the the micro-level.
Mathematically, the micro-level increases predicted are differential elements in an anti-stimulus theory but could be regarded as either differential elements or simply a partition in a pro-stimulus theory (i.e. an increase in jobs nationally means an increase in jobs in at least one state).
So I think the Feyrer and Sacerdote study counts as evidence for a pro-stimulus theory but is inconclusive for an anti-stimulus one. Krugman: “And the burden of proof should always have been on stimulus critics to explain why this doesn't mean that stimulus spending creates jobs at the national level too.”
Scott Factual error: Krugman is 2 years older than you
That Krugman didn’t disappear into the Witless Protection Program after the Jason Leopold-Thomas White debacle tells us a lot about his psychology. That he continues to write as if it never happened–those who live in glass houses…–tells us he has absolutely no self-awareness at all.
And for his lateest high school level error:
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
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