Paul Krugman…
…appears to finally have gone stark raving mad.
He thinks Obama has erred in following:
…a strategy of playing it safe: never put forward proposals that might fail to pass, avoid highlighting the philosophical differences between the parties.
Has Krugman been paying any attention at all? For example, did he notice how many promises and deals had to be made, and how the usual procedures were passed over and avoided, in passing HCR, all because the bill was so radical there was a high probability that it would be defeated even with such strong Democrat majorities in both houses?
Does he understand that other bills such as cap and trade had to ultimately be abandoned because there was no support for such an extreme anti-business agenda?
Does he have any notion that the American people are leaning Republican now in good part because the actions of the Obama administration (and Pelosi and Reid) in advancing legislation with such radical goals has accomplished just what he said they failed to do: highlight the philosophical differences between the parties?
Krugman’s error here is to ignore basic political reality. He seems to have become delusional: what he wants Obama to have done is what Obama should have done, and that’s that.
I was listening to this week’s Ricochet podcast with Mark Steyn, Peter Robinson, Rob Long and James Lilecs, and the mentioned the blog Krugman in Wonderland.
http://krugman-in-wonderland.blogspot.com/
I haven’t explored it yet, but if this Ricochet crew finds it good, it’s worth a look see.
I picture a man in a room padded on all sides with a tape of his own columns being endlessly looped back to him. I imagine there are others in there with him. All in straitjackets so they cannot hurt themselves or others. Alas, they are publlshing a newspaper from this room.
1. Krugman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.
2. Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
3. Krugman is one of many examples of why we shouldn’t adopt a policy just because the high-IQ people say we should, especially about matters outside their area of expertise or from which they as a class will benefit. (But they deserve an attentive hearing.)
4. The best and the brightest have been referred to as a single group. That may have been somewhat true for the Great Generation and it was certainly true for the Founding Generation. Afaic our best are no longer our brightest, and our brightest are no longer our best.
5. I conjecture that strong academic performance can can be based on a regurgitative mimicry that does not immunize one from groupthink. Quite the contrary, perhaps.
Paul Krugman is a veritable trove of SuperPositions. SuperPositions are akin to the Quantum theory superposition, i.e., a thing is all of its possible states until it is observed. So Krugman, as per the link, has been on both sides of an issue at different instances, when he comes down, where he comes down, depends upon the observable situation at hand.
So no matter what happens, Paul Krugman always remains the smartest economist ever — always right — half the time.
Out of curiosity, does anyone know who if Krugman, the genius economist, became rich off of his investments?
5a. More years ago than I’ll admit, my academic advisor told me that his neighbors were crazy but they were crazy wrt different things and it tended to cancel out. He was worried because people at the university were crazy too, but, in contrast, they were crazy in the same way.
Neo
Krugman’s error here is to ignore basic political reality. He seems to have become delusional: what he wants Obama to have done is what Obama should have done, and that’s that.
This reminds me of Neo’s recent thread about the David Brooks column on what ∅bama should have done: listen to what David said after the fact! We should speed up the process and elect media pundits to the Presidency. The Pundit-Presidents can then write columns on why their programs didn’t work.
http://neoneocon.com/2010/09/03/david-brooks-2/
Krugman’s error here is to ignore basic political reality. He seems to have become delusional…
Take out the name Krugman and this can be said of every single Democrat out there today who still is one.
We feel that it is okay to be highly critical of a Krugman because of who he is and the influence he has. But delusional is delusional. In the end, Krugman had one vote. It is those tens of millions of oters that are every bit as delusional and who are the real problem.
We have to start shouting at them.
We have to start pointing at them.
We have to call them out over and over and over.
It’s brainwashing. It’s delusion. It’s utter madness. It’s them. And they are destroying our life and liberty.
That sounds sooooo mean, I know. The truth is the truth. Before it is too late, and it will very soon be too late, we have to be mean to be truly kind. It is not mean to shout at a person driving a bus over a cliff.
George Pal,
That was pretty interesting.
We can’t even begin to fathom what Krugman sees as the political median. Remember that his wife, who serves as his closest partner and first editor, left the country in response to the election of Ronald Reagan. The domestic is the global in this case.
The Nobel Prize is to academia as the Heisman Trophy is to athletics. How many Nobel Laureates in economics were at Long Term Capital Management? And how’s it doing now?
Oh.
Has Krugman ever run a company or held an executive position?
Call me crazy, but isn’t this fellow’s influence a bit much, I mean considering he has had absolutely no real life experience.
Has anyone read any of the commenters on the Krugman article? The degree of delusion is amazing. (Or maybe I’m deluded? I feared the worst from an Obama Administration, and they’ve exceeded my expectations frightfully!) Per the comments, either it’s not Obama’s fault — it is his staff that have mucked up things. And/or, the administration has not had the courage of its liberal convictions and is actually too centrist. They haven’t gone far enough left!
We’re being governed by college faculty. God help us.
Call me crazy, but I don’t see how we could do worse with an administration filled with auto mechanics, lumberjacks, or electricians.
csimon Says:
September 5th, 2010 at 12:04 am
No, not until you mentioned it. Thanks a bunch. 😛
That line could have been spoken by one of the looters in Atlas Shrugged.
@ ricki 1:14 a.m. Call me crazy, but I don’t see how we could do worse with an administration filled with auto mechanics, lumberjacks, or electricians. Actually, we might do better: those kinds of people have to make things work right in the real world or forfeit their livelihoods, if not their lives. Academics and other intellectuals can be profoundly wrong about many fundamental issues without that kind of reality-induced corrective.
Krugman’s an idiot. If you want good economic or political views listen to him and do the opposite. My favorite Krugman moment was during the healthcare debate when he asked a room filled with Canadians to put their hands up if they disliked their healthcare system, and the overwhelming majority did. He was shocked, but he didn’t listen. A few days later, he wrote another comulmn for the NYTimes talking about the virtues of government-run healthcare.
Here’s the big thing to hit liberal idiots like Krugman with: the Dems and the White House knew a year ago that their stimulus package didn’t cut it. Now ask them what they’ve done since that time. The White House has an economic crisis on their hands, and they’ve been thrashing around for months taking long vvacations, throwing parties, and not putting forward any ideas. The fun thing about tax cuts is that it is an idea they rejected months ago. And now they think that some tax cuts might be a good idea.
The healthcare bill was supposed to be their big answer to the country’s economic problems. It has proved to be anything but, and it is such a budget buster, Congress gave up trying to write a budget. We have no budget for the first time I can remembers, and next year is no better.
These clowns can argue that they inherited a mess, but they are 100% responsible for doing something. Waiting for months without producing any ideas doesn’t cut it.
Economics, like many other fields, has areas of specialization. In the area that Krugman did his work that won him the Nobel, he is the real deal. The danger is in believing that he therefore is a world expert on the general topic of “economics.” It ain’t so.
Krugman has mentalpause… comes with age like menopause… but often strikes liberals whose reality is crafted by others capricious needs…
I think you can get Nobel prizes in Crackerjack boxes nowadays.
I suppose ‘theorists’ can provide a great ‘theoretical model’ by which to win a Nobel Prize; however, I wonder how one can even be considered for such a prize without personal experience; testing economics theories personally. As far as I’m concerned when they awarded Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize, they lost their credibility; they renewed their lack of credibility when they awarded Obama the prize; so the prize really doesn’t mean what it use to any more and no body should even pay attention to it until the committee proves worthy of bestowing worthwhile honorariums, etc.. As far as I can tell, Jim Rogers was correct in saying Krugman is an idiot. He wants to find ways to make the economy do what HE thinks it ought to do and can’t even figure out the basic fact that you can’t make it do what you want it to do and sustain this; and you typically end up with unexpected problems; hence, why Obama has tanked our economy. Krugman needs to find someone who will let him try his hand in the real world and once he realizes how much he really don’t know as far as real world application, maybe he can than advocate for the opposite of what he’s doing now