The next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you’ll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we’re bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we’re good.
For being someone who’s supposed to be a scholar, I found his response to that issue to be very juvenile. It’s similiar to what you might hear someone say when you talk austrian economics:
Oh that free market stuff? Yeah if we took government out of everything then the invisible hand and fairy of the free market will sprinkle dust everywhere to magically fix everything
By the way I was reading this article when I came across his comment:
Not really. Among mainstream economists krugman is a legend. Others share his views, though they aren’t so blatantly biased. They are better at concealing their politics.
Remember this is the same profession that reveres John Maynard Keynes for his quip that “In the long run we are all dead”. So run deficits and print money, because the long-run effects aren’t worth worrying about.
Among professional economists, I imagine he’s held in high regard. He won the Nobel Prize in 2008. And he’s everywhere: TV (does he still appear on This Week?), NY Times, popular books. Dude’s a champ—I’m sure he’s the envy of many an “economist”.
Calling him a “troll” is accurate; he is also a dishonest ideologue. But, if you people actually read “mainstream” economists, you’d notice that many are accusing Krugman of being overly vicious and ill-reasoned, too. The younger Krugman was a voice worth hearing, but times have certainly changed him.
I always thought the fuller quote was more helpful in understanding Keynes: “The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.”
StrangeLoop is correct. Most academic economists don’t take Paul Krugman seriously anymore. He has done some good work on international trade which is required reading if you ever take an international trade theory class.
I think Krugman is a simply a very partisan liberal (in the American sense), that sees himself waging an (intellectual) war against conservatives, and therefore must do whatever it takes to win it.
In 100 years, I’m persuaded no one will remember him, just as no one now remembers partisan and political hacks in 1910.
