Friday, May 29, 2009

Krugman's flawed thinking

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning and liberal-minded economist, has just enough facts to support his views, but then trips up his own points with his own flawed liberal worldview.

His New York Times editorial today is a good case in point. While he makes some good points against inflation looming on the horizon, he also shows how his own liberal bias influences his thinking:
But it’s hard to escape the sense that the current inflation fear-mongering is partly political, coming largely from economists who had no problem with deficits caused by tax cuts but suddenly became fiscal scolds when the government started spending money to rescue the economy.


I would expect a "respected" economist like Mr. Krugman would realize that federal tax revenues went up during the period of President Bush's tax cuts (once more providing the truth of the Laffer Curve). Assuming Krugman is referring to the economists I think he means, rather than just making a political strawman point, those economists were appropriately, and accurately, deriding the government spending which was creating the deficits.

For a Nobel Prize-winning economist to make such a blatantly political statement, and one which is wrong on top of it, is disturbing, especially in what is essentially a well-argued opinion piece.

2 comments:

William R. Barker said...

Apparently Krugman has never heard of the term "magnitude," as in "Order of Magnitude."

(*SIGH*)

Hey, Ed... I've probably mentioned this before, but I've got a blog recommendation for you:

http://www.newmajority.com/Default.aspx

Check it out. It's kinda reminiscent of Ragged Thots - both in terms of the contributions and the comments section back and forth.

BILL

EdMcGon said...

I'll look into it. Thanks Bill!