Sunday, August 3, 2014

Econolosophy — Sociologizing Krugman and His Evolving Worldview

The bottom line is that we are slowly starting to see an evolution in Krugman’s worldview. He is inching toward heterodox economists like James Galbraith and Richard Wolff, but not explicitly. It will be interesting to see if Krugman elaborates on how his mind is evolving at the upcoming Rethinking Economics conference in NYC in September.
Economics without sociology is nonsense when power is at the heart of a society's social, political and economic structure and functioning.

Sociologizing Krugman and His Evolving Worldview
Econolosophy

Favorite line:
Krugman never once – or perhaps never once explicitly – has entertained the view that the system may be being politically managed by the rentier class so as to maintain a high rate of return for the capitalists.

5 comments:

circuit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
circuit said...

That may be so, Dan, though Krugman is using the same argument as James Galbraith here: Stein's Law...if it cannot go one forever, it won't.

Brian Romanchuk said...

My guess is that his argument has an embedded assumption about inflation; the current trends are presumably inconsistent with hitting a particular inflation target. Since we live in a world of inflation-targeting central banks, it is not too unusual that he would not mention that qualifier in a blog post.

Matt Franko said...

circuit ... "Stein's Law" is all he has????

C'mon 'if it cant go on forever it wont' is all he can come up with with a PhD in Economics???

Yeah the conservative US is really impressed with that scholarship...

"Stein's Law"? ... LOL!

This guy will never get with it as to do so he would have to flush probably half of his entire economic career... which btw is not that impressive anyway if all he can come up with after all of his efforts is "Steins Law"...

What other part of the academe would ever rely on "Steins Law" to make a point???

Medical: "no sense doing that angioplasty, eventually that coronary blockage cant go on forever... either it will clear itself up or not...."

This is horrible... the academe of economics is just horrible... it's like a curse on humanity...

circuit said...

Matt, I don't disagree with you. Krugman is indeed omitting to state the obvious. (fiat money, faulty assumption in calculating future revenue 'shortfalls' used by the CBO and others, etc...)

I'm just saying that the article linked in the post argues that PK's worldview is converging with heterodox folks like Galbraith. I'm just pointing out that Galbraith also appeals to Stein's Law on matters of fiscal sustainability.

Brian: Good point