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« SuperMegaSpeed Reviews | Main | Doing the Work We Won't »

Professional turf-defending and whatever?

Paul Krugman takes a look at a theory by Noah Smith saying that the real reason our politicians and Central Bankers won't do the obvious regarding our economic recovery because they want to use the crisis as an opportunity to push for unrelated structural reforms. And that's certainly what it all looks like to me (why else have we pivoted to deficit reduction and especially social security "reform"?). But my thinking here was always influenced by Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. And Krugman notes the similarities between Smith's theory and Klein's, but then says:

I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein's book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever -- but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what's going on in Europe in particular.

I wish he'd expand on that! This probably falls into The Radicalization of Paul Krugman category...

In his columns, Krugman is belligerently, obsessively political, but this aspect of his personality is actually a recent development. His parents were New Deal liberals, but they weren't especially interested in politics. In his academic work, Krugman focussed mostly on subjects with little political salience. During the eighties, he thought that supply-side economics was stupid, but he didn't think that much about it. Unlike Wells, who was so upset when Reagan was elected that she moved to England, Krugman found Reagan comical rather than evil. "I had very little sense of what was at stake in the tax issues," he says. "I was into career-building at that point and not that concerned." He worked for Reagan on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers for a year, but even that didn't get him thinking about politics. "I feel now like I was sleepwalking through the twenty years before 2000," he says. "I knew that there was a right-left division, I had a pretty good sense that people like Dick Armey were not good to have rational discussion with, but I didn't really have a sense of how deep the divide went."

...but i'd like to hear in a little more detail why he was dismissive of Klein. He seems to have come around, in any event.

By fnord12 | May 16, 2013, 3:31 PM | Liberal Outrage