Another Poor Argument From Paul Krugman

Anyone who has taken a course in macroeconomics and is familiar with Paul Krugman would not be surprised to learn he’s unconcerned about the current budget deficit. That’s fine. He can have his opinion. (After all, who am I to question the economic judgments of someone who’s won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel?) In today’s New York Times, he claims that recent concerns about the growing U.S. budget deficit (which is forecasted to be 1.56 trillion this year) amount to little more than the “fear-mongering has become a key part of the Republican political strategy.” He compares the public’s fears about the deficit to the WMD hysteria leading up to the Iraq War. This really is a poor argument. How is pushing for war analogous to spending less money? Calling for war involves asking government to do more. Skepticism about government spending is asking government to do less. A better argument would compare the Bush Administration’s push for war after 9/11 to Congress’s aggressive assurances about the necessity of passing a stimulus bill in order to avert a second Great Depression.

Of course, Paul Krugman cannot make this argument, because he supports efforts to stimulate the economy through government spending. I am not asking him to change his economics. That is irrelevant here. Krugman writes, “The trouble, however, is that it’s apparently hard for many people to tell the difference between cynical posturing and serious economic argument.” Where is Dr. Krugman’s economic argument, here or in other pieces? I read his column regularly and see very little sustained economic reasoning. Instead, he opines openly and sublimates the bad economics that drive his (frequently partisan) convictions: this process frequently results in his producing the kind of shaky argument I mentioned above.

Winning the Nobel Prize does not make you exempt from making real arguments. Until Paul Krugman realizes this, he won’t convince me of anything.