I don’t actually dislike Krugman’s politics, in the sense that I’m also generally a market oriented economic liberal. But this is America, and here we value people who build stuff and are skeptical of people who just study stuff. It’s not just us. There’s a reason he won the “Nobel Memorial Prize” in economics and not a real Nobel Prize.
Close. The US values people who capture the hard work of others and put it forward as their own. The actual people who do the work, not valued so much, treated as replaceable and disposable cogs.
If you work hard, you’re the sucker. But running around as a thought leader on the backs of everyone else? Captain of Industry, probably mentioned in Arena Magazine or a Works In Progress publication.
Americans acknowledge that technical direction, leadership, organizing people, and allocating capital is incredibly valuable work. A guy working construction in the U.S. builds a skyscraper and a guy working construction in my dad’s village in Bangladesh builds a tin roof house. Did the first guy do 1,000 times as much “hard work” that he has so much more to show for his efforts? No, the Bangladeshi guy worked harder. If you took the first guy and put him in Bangladesh (but retaining all of his knowledge and skills) would he build a skyscraper? No, he would build maybe a somewhat nicer and better made tin roof house.
You point to the skyscraper and say “the construction worker built that! Someone else is taking credit for his work! Someone is getting rich off his back!” But how is it that we ended up with a skyscraper instead of a tin roof house? Whatever it is, it isn’t intrinsic to the worker. So it seems odd to give the worker all the credit for the skyscraper when in a different context his same effort would have produced a tin roof house instead.
> Americans acknowledge that technical direction, leadership, organizing people, and allocating capital is incredibly valuable work.
How has China built far more and better than the US without great allocators of capital? I suppose because competent people in positions of power will still encourage building and progress without the capitalism performance art and theatrics.
You think America is great, I’m not going to talk you out of your religion, and believing America is a great is a religion not grounded in data and evidence. But I believe the data shows others have done far better with arguably better systems.
There’s a reason China can build 50M EVs a year and the US can barely build 1-2M, or double global annual solar PV demand, as examples. Good luck fighting a conflict with the stock market and “great allocators of capital.”
> How has China built far more and better than the US
It's not because Chinese workers put in so much more effort than American ones!
China supports my point, not your's. Since 1990, China has followed a model of authoritarian-capitalism: https://www.hudson.org/economics/china-banks-on-authoritaria.... The CCP provides broad industrial policy and leadership, while capitalist business owners provide technical direction and capital allocation. The post-1990 Chinese model bears a resemblance to Hamilton's "American System," a combination of state interventionism to build infrastructure and free markets to allocate capital: https://carnegieendowment.org/china-financial-markets/2017/0...
Notably, in 1990 China and India had the same per-capita GDP: https://www.bmsmoney.com/article/full/gdp-per-capita-india-v... (both were desperately poor). Today, China's is five times higher than India's. How did that happen? It wasn't because Chinese workers suddenly started putting in five times the effort. It's because Chinese leaders and business owners started doing better at their job of directing people and allocating capital. For the last 35 years Indian workers have been putting in just as much effort as Chinese workers. But thanks to the people above the workers, Chinese workers now get to live in a country that's on the precipice of breaking into first world living standards.
So who is taking credit for the other's work here? The worker, who puts in the same amount of effort, or the leadership who, if they do their jobs well, will turn that same amount of effort into modern China as opposed to modern India?
> You think America is great
I think China is great. America is good for Americans who are socialized into England's 800+ years of civic development. China provides a model the third world can follow.
Huh? China received tons of investment from US investors and benefited greatly from the US decision to grant China free access to the US market.
The US is self-sufficient in oil, so naturally it hasn't invested as heavily in risky ventures to reduce its dependence on oil as a country that gets most of its oil from a long supply line (past potentially hostile powers like India) to the Persian Gulf and even further through to Russia's European ports.
What has Krugman gone out and built? There are economists who helped turn around countries. The Chicago boys helped Chile become one of the richest countries in Latin America. Has Krugman done any of that?
Krugman makes me think of Ashraf Ghani, the former President of Afghanistan and academic. The guy literally wrote a book “Fixing Failed States.” Then he got the chance to put his theory to practice and he flamed out miserably. Then there’s Muhammad Yunus, another Nobel Prize winning economist who is currently shitting the bed as prime minister of Bangladesh. I’d love to see Krugman put his money where his mouth is and run even a small economy.
Yeah, you simply don’t like the guy, and it’s becoming clear that you probably don’t like economists in general.
I gave you the benefit of doubt earlier, but you can’t get through a comment without dropping a snarky jab.
Not liking people is normal. I don’t see why you thought you had to attempt to conceal your contempt (or that you could, since it’s apparently so strong).
You’re right I don’t value the opinions of economists unless they’ve applied their theories in practice. I don’t think someone who just thinks about stuff should have the power to “take Starlink away” from someone who does stuff. That’s not “snarky,” it’s a substantive judgment about the value of theory versus practice. It’s like some computer science theorist saying we should “take Linux away from Linus.”
