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Krugman recently came out and said almost all of his advice about globalism was wrong. The man can't be trusted.

by Railsify 6y ago

dctoedt 6y ago
Citation, please? Krugman has been laudably willing to confess error; I wasn't aware he'd done so on this point.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  Here's one: > And so during the 1990s a number of economists, myself included (Krugman 1995), tried to assess the role of Stolper-Samuelson-type effects in rising inequality. Inevitably given the standard framework, such analyses did in fact find some depressing effect of growing trade on the wages of less-educated workers in advanced countries. As a quantitative matter, however, they generally suggested that the effect was relatively modest, and not the central factor in the widening income gap. > Meanwhile, the political salience of globalization seemed to decline as other issues came to the fore. So academic interest in the possible adverse effects of trade, while it never went away, waned. > In the past few years, however, worries about globalization have shot back to the top of the agenda, partly due to new research, partly due to the political shocks of Brexit and Trump. And as one of the people who helped shape the 90s consensus – that the income distribution effects of rising trade were real but modest – it seems appropriate to ask now what we missed. What aspects of rising trade did we either fail to see at the time or fail to anticipate? * https://www.gc.cuny.edu/cuny_gc/media/liscenter/pkrugman/pk_globalization.pdf https://www.gc.cuny.edu/cuny_gc/media/liscenter/pkrugman/pk_... One hour talk by him from 2019: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWQ3jCURzy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWQ3jCURzy0 * https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/paul-krugman-globalisation https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/paul-krugman-globalisati...
  - dctoedt 6y ago
    Thanks, but these citations don't at all support the GP's sweeping assertion that "Krugman recently came out and said almost all of his advice about globalism was wrong. The man can't be trusted." Krugman's cited gc.cuny.edu paper is titled, "Globalization: What Did We Miss?" It concludes, not that economists were wrong per se, but that they didn't adequately take into account the pace of globalization: "Basically, the big problem with surging globalization wasn’t so much changing demand for broadly defined factors of production as the disruption caused by rapid change. And that rapid change appears to be largely behind us ...." (Emphasis added.) The summary in the University of Melbourne piece (the third cite) is to basically the same effect. (I don't have time to watch a one-hour YouTube video, but thanks for the link.)
    - throw0101a 6y ago
      > Thanks, but these citations don't at all support the GP's sweeping assertion that Agreed, it was hyperbolic. But it was a correction nonetheless, and IMHO it should be noted as form of intellectual honesty.
    - Railsify 6y ago
      "wrong per se", do you really want to bicker over the meaning of wrong. It was his advice/predictions/theory (call it what you want), that when followed turned out vastly different than predicted, that is wrong in my opinion. Look how many years it took him to come out and say "the pace" was not adequately (incorrectly) taken into account. He was even awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics and 1.4 million dollars for this theory that played a large part in tearing apart the middle class. My comment was indeed too hyperbolic but basically true. A mistake that affected our country so negatively cannot be forgotten or forgiven.
      - dctoedt 6y ago
        > A mistake that affected our country so negatively cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Sounds like 20-20 hindsight to me. Predicting the future is hard; making important societal policy choices based on those predictions, likewise.
throw0101a 6y ago
As opposed to the people who are wrong and don't admit it: > We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment. * https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.html https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.ht... As Paul Samuelson, an important 20C economist, said: > Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do? * https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/
imtringued 6y ago
Those who admit they are wrong are more trustworthy than those that don't.

Krugman recently came out and said almost all of his advice about globalism was wrong. The man can't be trusted.

dctoedt 6y ago

Citation, please? Krugman has been laudably willing to confess error; I wasn't aware he'd done so on this point.

throw0101a 6y ago
Here's one: > And so during the 1990s a number of economists, myself included (Krugman 1995), tried to assess the role of Stolper-Samuelson-type effects in rising inequality. Inevitably given the standard framework, such analyses did in fact find some depressing effect of growing trade on the wages of less-educated workers in advanced countries. As a quantitative matter, however, they generally suggested that the effect was relatively modest, and not the central factor in the widening income gap. > Meanwhile, the political salience of globalization seemed to decline as other issues came to the fore. So academic interest in the possible adverse effects of trade, while it never went away, waned. > In the past few years, however, worries about globalization have shot back to the top of the agenda, partly due to new research, partly due to the political shocks of Brexit and Trump. And as one of the people who helped shape the 90s consensus – that the income distribution effects of rising trade were real but modest – it seems appropriate to ask now what we missed. What aspects of rising trade did we either fail to see at the time or fail to anticipate? * https://www.gc.cuny.edu/cuny_gc/media/liscenter/pkrugman/pk_globalization.pdf https://www.gc.cuny.edu/cuny_gc/media/liscenter/pkrugman/pk_... One hour talk by him from 2019: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWQ3jCURzy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWQ3jCURzy0 * https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/paul-krugman-globalisation https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/paul-krugman-globalisati...
- dctoedt 6y ago
  Thanks, but these citations don't at all support the GP's sweeping assertion that "Krugman recently came out and said almost all of his advice about globalism was wrong. The man can't be trusted." Krugman's cited gc.cuny.edu paper is titled, "Globalization: What Did We Miss?" It concludes, not that economists were wrong per se, but that they didn't adequately take into account the pace of globalization: "Basically, the big problem with surging globalization wasn’t so much changing demand for broadly defined factors of production as the disruption caused by rapid change. And that rapid change appears to be largely behind us ...." (Emphasis added.) The summary in the University of Melbourne piece (the third cite) is to basically the same effect. (I don't have time to watch a one-hour YouTube video, but thanks for the link.)
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    > Thanks, but these citations don't at all support the GP's sweeping assertion that Agreed, it was hyperbolic. But it was a correction nonetheless, and IMHO it should be noted as form of intellectual honesty.
  - Railsify 6y ago
    "wrong per se", do you really want to bicker over the meaning of wrong. It was his advice/predictions/theory (call it what you want), that when followed turned out vastly different than predicted, that is wrong in my opinion. Look how many years it took him to come out and say "the pace" was not adequately (incorrectly) taken into account. He was even awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics and 1.4 million dollars for this theory that played a large part in tearing apart the middle class. My comment was indeed too hyperbolic but basically true. A mistake that affected our country so negatively cannot be forgotten or forgiven.
    - dctoedt 6y ago
      > A mistake that affected our country so negatively cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Sounds like 20-20 hindsight to me. Predicting the future is hard; making important societal policy choices based on those predictions, likewise.

throw0101a 6y ago

As opposed to the people who are wrong and don't admit it: > We believe the Federal Reserve's large-scale asset purchase plan (so-called "quantitative easing") should be reconsidered and discontinued. We do not believe such a plan is necessary or advisable under current circumstances. The planned asset purchases risk currency debasement and inflation, and we do not think they will achieve the Fed's objective of promoting employment. * https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.html https://economics21.org/html/open-letter-ben-bernanke-287.ht... As Paul Samuelson, an important 20C economist, said: > Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do? * https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/22/keynes-change-mind/

imtringued 6y ago

Those who admit they are wrong are more trustworthy than those that don't.