The Sage takes on Krugman. He’s a baddie apparently. Because he doesn’t know his economics like MMT and so on.
Now yes, I know, we’ve all got our complaints with PKrug. But it’s vital to distinguish between the economist and the columnist. The second is largely the standard centrist D line. The first is extremely good work. That is, go after PK for his social views, why not, but not for his economics.
Spud decides to do this the wrong way around. He goes after the economics. Which is as amusing as watching the chihauha trying to shag the toe of the Great Dane.
Well done that man, vry well done.
“It is most certainly not because he won one of the so-called Nobel prizes in economics for his work on trade theory.”
Ouch, harsh criticism from a so-called Professor (ex), so-called tax expert, so-called accountant (ex), so-called democrat and so-called free-speech champion.
But on the counterfeit Nobel Prize he’s more accurate than our host. A rarity indeed.
Seems Spud has a different kind of Stockholm syndrome.
It’s interesting your pointing out the dichotomy between his published economics & his political views. So what happens when one contradicts the other? Is he ignoring the economics to further the polemic? Or let’s turn it the other way round. It’s the polemic he believes but he writes the economics to give him status among economists. Actually he thinks it’s a load of bollocks. And let’s face it. Writing a load of bollocks about economics to gain status is pretty well the standard for economists.
Explicable in the same way religious scientists are explicable. The rational, empirical part describes the world as it is. The “spiritual”, social part describes a world as he wishes it would be, because that is meaningful to him. They are not coterminous. One is fact, the other, fiction. Hume was right.
I’ll take that as meaning bollocks then…
But meaningful bollocks, BiS.
It defies the scientific method. Which is to make the observation & accept the result of the observation. Attempt to explain the mechanism based on the observation. How can it be meaningful to posit a deity cannot be observed?
Category error. Humans observably have a need for meaning, and will go right ahead and make it up, whether or not it involves deities: Chesterton was right. The more interesting question is whether other species observably do, too.
Humans observably have a need for meaning,
I would say humans have need for meaning that preserves their place in the world. That’s from observation of humans.
That amounts to something similar but one also has to remember the fear of death, and oblivion, or what might lie beyond.
Another post debunking a Nobel prize winner. Is there a single one he agrees with? No doubt he’s expecting the call anytime soon for his work on the economics of waddling around saying quantum.
Reading the entire post I am struck by the urgent need to find my old copy of, or obtain a new copy of the work ‘Mein Kampf’ because genuinely when I read something like this I am struck by the stylistic similarity:
The planetary crisis cannot be solved with better spreadsheets. It demands a moral and structural transformation, one that mainstream economics, even in Krugman’s humane hands, cannot deliver.
The same almost messianic belief in his own righteousness. The same complete absence of compromise. The same belief his opponents are evil, not simply misguided. Truly a deranged individual and I’d have to speculate about early onset dementia.