Krugman's Economic Fictions

Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. (Daniel Okrent, NY Times Public Editor)

Progressive arguments usually go something like this:

Aha! Paul Krugman said it, and he’s an Ivy League economics professor and a Nobel Prize winner, so there! Game, set match!

That is what’s known as the logical fallacy of appeal to authority. The next time a lefty trots out a Krugman talking point, ask him or her to explain the data behind it. They won't be able to, because Krugman's specialty is confecting arcane metrics with odd slices and perpetrating chart scale distortions to make his partisan points.

I often use the arguments of Thomas Sowell and Friedrich Hayek, but I don’t just say they said it so it must be true. I roll out their arguments and pit them against the real world, and that is what you must do if you’re going to employ the work of others. I like the back and forth, but the Krugmanites on the left either give you a dumb stare or vituperation of you dare to question The Bearded One.

There’s another little problem. Krugman has a reputation for making imperiously unacademic statements and he’s a partisan hack, who is frequently challenged by others in his profession. Sowell and Hayek do not get seriously challenged in such a way because they keep their studies and theses confined to the subject at hand, investigating economic and social questions in search of the truth rather than throwing partisan tomatoes at their enemies. Indeed, Hayek dedicated one of his books “to the socialists of all parties,” and wrote a short essay explaining why he is not a conservative.

Also, I do not discount everyone I disagree with. Brookings Institute leans left, but their studies are valuable and impeccably done, so much so that they’ve got even CATO and Heritage Foundation talking about structural income inequality. I also like Market Watch’s Paul Farrell, a lefty who often raves about end of the world scenarios, but amid the often hysterical tone, he points out how we’ve lost our way and that the system is broken.

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