5 ms·

Paul Krugman is keeping awfully quiet nowadays

by AzzieElbab 4y ago

cjbgkagh 4y ago
His fax machine must have broke.
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > His fax machine must have broke. This is really getting old. Literally so. It's been over twenty years already. So my first response would be: perhaps get over it? > I must have tossed it off quickly (at the time I was mainly focused on the Asian financial crisis!), then later conflated it in my memory with the NYT piece. Anyway, I was clearly trying to be provocative, and got it wrong, which happens to all of us sometimes. * https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-effect-economy/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-eff... My second response would be that he's not as wrong as your probably think he is/was: > So the first part of Krugman’s prediction was obviously, completely, unequivocally wrong. It turns out that people have a lot to say to each other. More than we ever thought. A total zero on that one. Points to the dunkers. > The more interesting half of the quote though — and the one that the critics mostly remember — is the second part about the impact on the economy being no greater than the fax machine. This one is completely defensible. > As Skanda Amarnath, head of research at Employ America, wrote to me, what people see as a major economic impact is really the social impact. From a true data impact, Krugman wasn’t wrong. “Productivity growth has been substantially weaker during the age of the internet,” Amarnath wrote. “The same deceleration is visible in terms of both nominal and real investment in software and even the broadest definition of hardware (information processing equipment). There has been some shifting and cannibalization of activity as a result of retail moving to e-commerce channels, and new media dominating advertising services at the expense of old media, but if we’re talking about macro impact beyond substitution, the burden of proof is with those eager to mock Krugman on this point.” * https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-24/paul-krugman-got-something-very-right-about-the-internet-the-fax-machine-and-the-economy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-24/paul-krug... * https://archive.ph/FD6GR https://archive.ph/FD6GR
  - cjbgkagh 4y ago
    I am unconvinced. It is still funny.
throw0101a 4y ago
By "quiet" do you mean publishes twice a week: * https://www.nytimes.com/column/paul-krugman https://www.nytimes.com/column/paul-krugman and tweets regularly: * https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/ https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/ ?
- AzzieElbab 4y ago
  You are right. He is not quiet, he is rationed

Paul Krugman is keeping awfully quiet nowadays

cjbgkagh 4y ago

His fax machine must have broke.

throw0101a 4y ago
> His fax machine must have broke. This is really getting old. Literally so. It's been over twenty years already. So my first response would be: perhaps get over it? > I must have tossed it off quickly (at the time I was mainly focused on the Asian financial crisis!), then later conflated it in my memory with the NYT piece. Anyway, I was clearly trying to be provocative, and got it wrong, which happens to all of us sometimes. * https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-effect-economy/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-eff... My second response would be that he's not as wrong as your probably think he is/was: > So the first part of Krugman’s prediction was obviously, completely, unequivocally wrong. It turns out that people have a lot to say to each other. More than we ever thought. A total zero on that one. Points to the dunkers. > The more interesting half of the quote though — and the one that the critics mostly remember — is the second part about the impact on the economy being no greater than the fax machine. This one is completely defensible. > As Skanda Amarnath, head of research at Employ America, wrote to me, what people see as a major economic impact is really the social impact. From a true data impact, Krugman wasn’t wrong. “Productivity growth has been substantially weaker during the age of the internet,” Amarnath wrote. “The same deceleration is visible in terms of both nominal and real investment in software and even the broadest definition of hardware (information processing equipment). There has been some shifting and cannibalization of activity as a result of retail moving to e-commerce channels, and new media dominating advertising services at the expense of old media, but if we’re talking about macro impact beyond substitution, the burden of proof is with those eager to mock Krugman on this point.” * https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-24/paul-krugman-got-something-very-right-about-the-internet-the-fax-machine-and-the-economy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-24/paul-krug... * https://archive.ph/FD6GR https://archive.ph/FD6GR
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  I am unconvinced. It is still funny.

throw0101a 4y ago

By "quiet" do you mean publishes twice a week: * https://www.nytimes.com/column/paul-krugman https://www.nytimes.com/column/paul-krugman and tweets regularly: * https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/ https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/ ?

AzzieElbab 4y ago
You are right. He is not quiet, he is rationed