Monday, January 2, 2012

A great Krugman op-ed on debt

This has good coverage of misconceptions and that bad tendancy to use false analogies from individual experience to community-level experience.

Since he doesn't use that Dean Baker language about a burden on the future being "impossible", and focuses on misunderstandings about public debt, I suspect even Nick Rowe could get on board with this one.

Don Boudreaux, in responding to the article, makes really excellent points about the costs and benefits of government spending, but makes a bad criticism of Krugman. Why he thinks Krugman said what he's suggesting he said is beyond me.

3 comments:

  1. "Why he thinks Krugman said what he's suggesting he said is beyond me."

    (Invisible Backhand waving hand frantically like a first year Hermione Granger)

    "I know! I know!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Daniel: no, I'm not really on board with this one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Here's my post saying why it's wrong (or rather, why Matt Yglesias' version of it is wrong):

    http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2012/01/matt-yglesias-and-spilt-milk.html

    ReplyDelete

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