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Coming Up With A Good Idea, With An Insight Into The Way The World Works That Is Really New And That You Really Believe In, Is A Deeply Satisfying Experience.

-Paul Krugman

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Coming Up With A

Paul Krugman

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Coming Up With A Good Idea, With An Insight Into The Way The World Works That Is Really New And That You Really Believe In, Is A Deeply Satisfying Experience.

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For Most Americans, Economic Growth Is A Spectator Sport.

...instead It Seems That Business - Like Weight Loss - Is A Subject Wherein Hope And Fear Inspire Limitless Gullibility.

Evidence And Expertise Have A Well-known Liberal Bias.

Are You, Or Is Someone You Know, A Gadget Freak? If So, You Doubtless Know That Wednesday Was Iphone 5 Day, The Day Apple Unveiled Its Latest Way For People To Avoid Actually Speaking To Or Even Looking At Whoever They're With.

Tax Cuts Were Not Going To Be Effective At Creating Jobs, And The Job Creation Record Is Lousy.

Yes, Over The Centuries Economic Progress Has Reduced Some Gross Disparities - Modern Americans Are Relatively Unlikely To Simply Starve To Death (though It Can Happen), So In That Sense The Gap Between Rich And Poor Has Narrowed. But The Question Isn't Whether Society Is, In Some Sense, More Equal Than It Was In 1900. It's Whether It Is Radically More Unequal Than It Was In 1970. And Of Course It Is.

The Federal Government Is Basically An Insurance Company With An Army.

Insurance Companies

Wealthy Individuals Bought Themselves A Radical Right Party, Believing - Correctly - That It Would Cut Their Taxes And Remove Regulations, But Failed To Realize That Eventually The Craziness Would Take On A Life Of Its Own, And That The Monster They Created Would Turn On Its Creators As Well As The Little People.

Until The Great Depression, Most Economists Clung To A Vision Of Capitalism As A Perfect Or Nearly Perfect System. That Vision Wasn’t Sustainable In The Face Of Mass Unemployment, But As Memories Of The Depression Faded, Economists Fell Back In Love With The Old, Idealized Vision Of An Economy In Which Rational Individuals Interact In Perfect Markets.

Most People, I Suspect, Still Have In Their Minds An Image Of America As The Great Land Of College Education, Unique In The Extent To Which Higher Learning Is Offered To The Population At Large. That Image Used To Correspond To Reality. But These Days Young Americans Are Considerably Less Likely Than Young People In Many Other Countries To Graduate From College. In Fact, We Have A College Graduation Rate That's Slightly Below The Average Across All Advanced Economies.

[i]n America, At Least, We Have A Pretty Good Record For Behaving In A Fiscally Responsible Fashion, With One Exception - Namely, The Fiscal Irresponsibility That Prevails When, And Only When, Hard-line Conservatives Are In Power.

In Our Country, Learned Ignorance Is On The Rise.

Surely I'm Not The Only Person To Ask The Obvious Question: How Different, Really, Is Mr. Madoff's Tale From The Story Of The Investment Industry As A Whole?

The Obama Campaign Seems Dangerously Close To Becoming A Cult Of Personality.

Cult Of Personality

The Goal In The End Is Not To Win Elections. The Goal Is To Change Society.

But Wall Street People Are In Fact Very Smart; They're Funny, They're Not Company Men Who Work Their Way Up The Chain.

The Economic Expansion That Began In 2001, While It Has Been Great For Corporate Profits, Has Yet To Produce Any Significant Gains For Ordinary Working Americans. And Now It Looks As If It Never Will.

I Believe That The Only Important Structural Obstacles To World Prosperity Are The Obsolete Doctrines That Clutter The Minds Of Men.

I Don't Think I've Had Any Great Success In Predicting Politics Or Social Change, Nor Have I Really Tried.

People Respond To Incentives. If Unemployment Becomes More Attractive Because Of The Unemployment Benefit, Some Unemployed Workers May No Longer Try To Find A Job Or May Not Try To Find One As Quickly As They Would Without The Benefit.

We Should Reject The Attempt To Divert The National Conversation Away From Soaring Inequality Toward The Alleged Moral Failings Of Those Americans Being Left Behind. Traditional Values Aren't As Crucial As Social Conservatives Would Have You Believe And, In Any Case, The Social Changes Taking Place In America's Working Class Are Overwhelmingly The Consequence Of Sharply Rising Inequality, Not Its Cause.

These Days, However, The Main Problem Comes From The Right - From Conservatives Who, Unlike Most Economists, Really Do Think That The Free Market Is Always Right - To Such An Extent That They Refuse To Believe Even The Most Overwhelming Scientific Evidence If It Seems To Suggest A Justification For Government Action.

The Economics Profession Went Astray Because Economists, As A Group, Mistook Beauty, Clad In Impressive-looking Mathematics, For Truth.

[the Us] Budget Is Dominated By The Retirement Programs, Social Security And Medicare - Loosely Speaking, The Post-cold-war Federal Government Is A Big Pension Fund That Also Happens To Have An Army.

We're Living In A Dark Age Of Macroeconomics. Remember, What Defined The Dark Ages Wasn’t The Fact That They Were Primitive — The Bronze Age Was Primitive, Too. What Made The Dark Ages Dark Was The Fact That So Much Knowledge Had Been Lost, That So Much Known To The Greeks And Romans Had Been Forgotten By The Barbarian Kingdoms That Followed.

[d]ebt Increases That Didn't Arise Either From War Or From Extraordinary Financial Crisis Are Entirely Associated With Hard-line Conservative Governments.

In Short, What The Living Wage Is Really About Is Not Living Standards, Or Even Economics, But Morality. Its Advocates Are Basically Opposed To The Idea That Wages Are A Market Price-determined By Supply And Demand, The Same As The Price Of Apples Or Coal. And It Is For That Reason, Rather Than The Practical Details, That The Broader Political Movement Of Which The Demand For A Living Wage Is The Leading Edge Is Ultimately Doomed To Failure: For The Amorality Of The Market Economy Is Part Of Its Essence, And Cannot Be Legislated Away.

The Problem Isn't That People Don't Understand How Good Things Are. It's That They Know, From Personal Experience, That Things Really Aren't That Good.

When Depression Economics Prevails, The Usual Rules Of Economic Policy No Longer Apply: Virtue Becomes Vice, Caution Is Risky And Prudence Is Folly.

The French, Unfortunately, Actually Believe What They Say, And That Has Been Very Destructive.

Debt Is One Person's Liability, But Another Person's Asset.

America's Political Landscape Is Infested With Many Zombie Ideas - Beliefs About Policy That Have Been Repeatedly Refuted With Evidence And Analysis But Refuse To Die. The Most Prominent Zombie Is The Insistence That Low Taxes On Rich People Are The Key To Prosperity.

If You Are A Good Economist, A Virtuous Economist, You Are Reborn As A Physicist. But If You Are An Evil, Wicked Economist, You Are Reborn As A Sociologist.

So What Are The Effects Of Increasing Minimum Wages? Any Econ 101 Student Can Tell You The Answer: The Higher Wage Reduces The Quantity Of Labor Demanded, And Hence Leads To Unemployment.

Default Is Not In Our Stars, But In Ourselves.

The United States In Particular And The West In General Should Be Feeling A Little Embarrassed About All That Lecturing We Did To The Third World.

The Trouble With Poverty, As An Issue, Is That It Has Basically Exhausted The Patience Of The General Public.

Europe Is Often Held Up As A Cautionary Tale, A Demonstration That If You Try To Make The Economy Less Brutal, To Take Better Care Of Your Fellow Citizens When They're Down On Their Luck, You End Up Killing Economic Progress. But What European Experience Actually Demonstrates Is The Opposite: Social Justice And Progress Can Go Hand In Hand.

What The Depression Teaches Us Is That When The Economy Is So Depressed That Even A Zero Interest Rate Isn't Low Enough, You Have To Put Conventional Notions Of Prudence And Sound Policy Aside.

Sometimes Economists In Official Positions Give Bad Advice; Sometimes They Give Very, Very Bad Advice; And Sometimes They Work At The Oecd.

Coming Up With A Good Idea, With An Insight Into The Way The World Works That Is Really New And That You Really Believe In, Is A Deeply Satisfying Experience.

The Growth Of The Internet Will Slow Drastically, As The Flaw In 'metcalfe's Law'–which States That The Number Of Potential Connections In A Network Is Proportional To The Square Of The Number Of Participants–becomes Apparent: Most People Have Nothing To Say To Each Other! By 2005 Or So, It Will Become Clear That The Internet's Impact On The Economy Has Been No Greater Than The Fax Machine's.

If You're Doing Your Job Right, Some Substantial Group Of People [is] Going To Be Mad At You.

A Snarky But Accurate Description Of Monetary Policy Over The Past Five Years Is That The Federal Reserve Successfully Replaced The Technology Bubble With A Housing Bubble

I'm Not Sure That The Current Value Of The Nasdaq Is Justified, But I'm Not Sure That It Isn't.

This Is A Serious Analysis Of A Ridiculous Subject, Which Is Of Course The Opposite Of What Is Usual In Economics.

Generous Unemployment Benefits Can Increase Both Structural And Frictional Unemployment. So Government Policies Intended To Help Workers Can Have The Undesirable Side Effect Of Raising The Natural Rate Of Unemployment.

Whenever You See Some Business Person Quoted Complaining About How He Or She Can't Find Workers With The Necessary Skills, Ask What Wage They're Offering. Almost Always It Turns Out What Said Business Person Really Wants Is Highly (and Expensively) Educated Workers At A Manual-labor Wage. No Wonder They Come Up Short.

Obama Is Very Much An Establishment Sort Of Guy. The Whole Image Of Him As A Transcendent Figure Was Based On Style Rather Than Substance. If You Actually Looked At What He Said, Not How He Said It, He Said Very Establishment Things. He's A Moderate, Cautious, Ameliorative Guy. He Tends To Gravitate Toward Beltway Conventional Wisdom.

The Key Reason Executives Are Paid So Much Now Is That They Appoint The Members Of The Corporate Board That Determines Their Compensation And Control Many Of The Perks That Board Members Count On. So It's Not The Invisible Hand Of The Market That Leads To Those Monumental Executive Incomes; It's The Invisible Handshake In The Boardroom.

The Habit Of Disguising Ideology As Expertise Has Created A Deficit Of Legitimacy.

If We Discovered That, You Know, Space Aliens Were Planning To Attack And We Needed A Massive Buildup To Counter The Space Alien Threat And Really Inflation And Budget Deficits Took Secondary Place To That, This Slump Would Be Over In 18 Months. ... There Was A Twilight Zone Episode Like This In Which Scientists Fake An Alien Threat In Order To Achieve World Peace. Well, This Time, We Don't Need It, We Need It In Order To Get Some Fiscal Stimulus.

There's Nothing Magic About Spending On Tanks And Bombs Rather Than Roads And Bridges.

For Decades The G.o.p. Has Won Elections By Appealing To Social And Racial Divisions, Only To Turn After Each Victory To Deregulation And Tax Cuts For The Wealthy A Process That Reached Its Epitome When George W. Bush Won Re-election By Posing As America's Defender Against Gay Married Terrorists, Then Announced That He Had A Mandate To Privatize Social Security.

And When The Chickens That Didn't Hatch Come Home To Roost, We Will Rue The Day When, Misled By Sloppy Accounting And Rosy Scenarios, We Gave Away The National Nest Egg.

There Is No Economic Policy. That's Really Important To Say. The General Modus Operandi Of The Bushies Is That They Don't Make Policies To Deal With Problems. They Use Problems To Justify Things They Wanted To Do Anyway. So There Is No Policy To Deal With The Lack Of Jobs. There Really Isn't Even A Policy To Deal With Terrorism. It's All About How Can We Spin What's Happening Out There To Do What We Want To Do.

Under The Gold Standard America Had No Major Financial Panics Other Than In 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, And 1933.

Congress Has Always Had A Soft Spot For "experts" Who Tell Members What They Want To Hear, Whether It's Supply-side Economists Declaring That Tax Cuts Increase Revenue Or Climate-change Skeptics Insisting That Global Warming Is A Myth.

Bad Ideas Flourish Because They Are In The Interest Of Powerful Groups.

It’s Not About The Budget; It’s About The Power...so Will The Attack On Unions Succeed? I Don’t Know. But Anyone Who Cares About Retaining Government Of The People By The People Should Hope That It Doesn’t.

In Short, It's A Great Economy If You're A High-level Corporate Executive Or Someone Who Owns A Lot Of Stock. For Most Other Americans, Economic Growth Is A Spectator Sport.

Outrageous Fiscal Mendacity Is Neither Historically Normal Nor Bipartisan. It’s A Modern Republican Thing.

Social Security Is A Social Insurance Program - It Is Not Designed To Be The Same Thing As A 401(k).

I Don't Want A Job In The Administration; I Think I'm More Effective Carping From The Sidelines.

Can We Break The Machine That Is Imposing Right-wing Radicalism On The United States? The Scariest Part Is That The Media Is Part Of That Machine.

I Really Think That People Have To Think Safety; Taking Risks For Higher Yield Is A Bad Idea Once You're In Late Or Latish Middle Age.

Unsustainable Situations Usually Go On Longer Than Most Economists Think Possible. But They Always End, And When They Do, It's Often Painful.

Rising Inequality Isn’t About Who Has The Knowledge; It’s About Who Has The Power.

The World Economy Is In A Nosedive, And Understanding What I Call "depression Economics" - The Weird World You Get Into When Even A Zero Interest Rate Isn't Low Enough, And A Messed-up Financial System Is Dragging Down The Real Economy - Is Essential If We're Going To Avoid The Worst.

Governments Do Not Necessarily Act In The National Interest, Especially When Making Detailed Microeconomic Interventions. Instead, They Are Influenced By Interest Group Pressures. The Kinds Of Interventions That New Trade Theory Suggests Can Raise National Income Will Typically Raise The Welfare Of Small, Fortunate Groups By Large Amounts, While Imposing Costs On Larger, More Diffuse Groups.

Some Years Down The Pike, We're Going To Get The Real Solution, Which Is Going To Be A Combination Of Death Panels And Sales Taxes. It's Going To Be That We're Actually Going To Take Medicare Under Control, And We're Going To Have To Get Some Additional Revenue, Probably From A Vat. But It's Not Going To Happen Now.

I Have Friends, Political Scientists, Sociologists, Who All Share An Interest At Least In Certain Kinds Of Science Fiction.

Every Once In A While I Feel Despair Over The Fate Of The Planet. If You’ve Been Following Climate Science, You Know What I Mean: The Sense That We’re Hurtling Toward Catastrophe But Nobody Wants To Hear About It Or Do Anything To Avert It.

The Great Thing About Fiscal Policy Is That It Has A Direct Impact And Doesn't Require You To Bind The Hands Of Future Policymakers.

Republican Candidates Had To Appeal To Their Base, Which Is By And Large Elderly White People Arguing With Empty Chairs.

Anyone Who Thinks That The Last 80 Years, Ever Since Fdr Took Us Off Gold, Have Been A Doomed Venture, That Strikes Me As Kind Of Cranky.

People Who Are Complaining About The Fed Are People Who've Been Predicting Runaway Inflation For Five And Six Years, And It Hasn't Happened.

[i]f One Asks What Substantive Contributions [f. A. Hayek] Made To Our Understanding Of How The World Works, One Is Left At Something Of A Loss. Were It Not For His Politics, He Would Be Virtually Forgotten.

As I've Often Said, You Can Shop Online And Find Whatever You're Looking For, But Bookstores Are Where You Find What You Weren't Looking For.

[i]f You Look At United States History Since World War Ii, You Find That Of The 10 Presidents Who Preceded Barack Obama, Seven Left Office With A Debt Ratio Lower Than When They Came In. Who Were The Three Exceptions? Ronald Reagan And The Two George Bushes.

The Fact Is That The Two Years Or So After 9/11 Were A Terrible Time In America – A Time Of Political Exploitation And Intimidation, Culminating In The Deliberate Misleading Of The Nation Into The Invasion Of Iraq. It’s Probably Worth Pointing Out That I’m Not Saying Anything Now That I Wasn’t Saying In Real Time Back Then, When Bush Had A Sky-high Approval Rating And Any Criticism Was Denounced As Treason. And There’s Nothing I’ve Done In My Life Of Which I’m More Proud.

Approval Rating

As An Economics Professor I Am By Nature Inclined To The View That The Truth Isn't Out There, It's In Here - That Usually You Learn A Lot More By Thinking Really Hard About The Data Than You Do By Sniffing Around For Supposedly Inside Information.

Seven Habits That Help Produce The Anything-but-efficient Markets That Rule The World. 1. Think Short Term. 2. Be Greedy. 3. Believe In The Greater Fool 4. Run With The Herd. 5. Overgeneralize 6. Be Trendy 7. Play With Other People's Money

The Problem With Digital Books Is That You Can Always Find What You Are Looking For But You Need To Go To A Bookstore To Find What You Weren't Looking For.

Not All Private Equity People Are Evil. Only Some.

The Party Of Ideas Has Become The Party Of Beavis And Butthead.

In Fact, I'd Say That The Sources Of The Economy's Expansion From 2003 To 2007 Were, In Order, The Housing Bubble, The War, And - Very Much In Third Place - Tax Cuts.

Economists Don't Usually Make Good Speculators, Because They Think Too Much.

The Real Danger With Debt Is What Happens If Lots Of People Decide, Or Are Forced, To Pay It Off At The Same Time.

If You Had To Explain America's Economic Success With One Word, That Word Would Be "education".... Until Now, The Results Of Educational Neglect Have Been Gradual - A Slow-motion Erosion Of America's Relative Position. But Things Are About To Get Much Worse, As The Economic Crisis ... Deals A Severe Blow To Education Across The Board.... We Need To Wake Up And Realize That One Of The Keys To Our Nation's Historic Success Is Now A Wasting Asset. Education Made America Great; Neglect Of Education Can Reverse The Process.

Asset Bubbles Have Happened Even Without Not-so-easy Money. And, In A Depressed Economy, Where Alternative Uses Of Money Are Not Great, People Are Going To Bid Up The Prices Of Profitable Corporations And Stuff Like That.

Economics Is Not A Morality Play.

Political Figures Who Talk A Lot About Liberty And Freedom Invariably Turn Out To Mean The Freedom To Not Pay Taxes And Discriminate Based On Race; Freedom To Hold Different Ideas And Express Them, Not So Much.

I've Always Believed In Expansionary Monetary Policy And If Necessary Fiscal Policy When The Economy Is Depressed.

Monetary Policy

Many People ... Prefer To Describe Themselves As Progressives Rather Than Liberals. To Some Extent That's A Response To The Decades-long Propaganda Campaign Conducted By Movement Conservatives, Which Has Been Quite Successful In Making Americans Disdain The Word Liberal But Much Less Successful In Reducing Support For Liberal Policies.

What Our Economy Needs Is Direct Job Creation By The Government And Mortgage-debt Relief For Stressed Consumers. What It Very Much Does Not Need Is A Transfer Of Billions Of Dollars To Corporations That Have No Intention Of Hiring Anyone Except More Lobbyists.

We Know That Advanced Economies With Stable Governments That Borrow In Their Own Currency Are Capable Of Running Up Very High Levels Of Debt Without Crisis.

We Should Try To Create The Society Each Of Us Would Want If We Didn't Know In Advance Who We'd Be.

If Europe’s Example Is Any Guide, Here Are The Two Secrets Of Coping With Expensive Oil: Own Fuel-efficient Cars, And Don’t Drive Them Too Much.

What Republicans Have Actually Put On The Table Is Almost Nothing. All Of The Rest Is Just Big Talk. So How Is The President Supposed To Negotiate With People Who Say, 'here's My Demands. By The Way, I Can't Give You Any Specifics. Just Make Me Happy'?

I Predict That In The Years Ahead Enron, Not Sept. 11, Will Come To Be Seen As The Greater Turning Point In U.s. Society.

Wealthy Americans Who Benefit Hugely From A System Rigged In Their Favor React With Hysteria To Anyone Who Points Out Just How Rigged The System Is.

By Rescuing The Financial System Without Reforming It, Washington Has Done Nothing To Protect Us From A New Crisis, And, In Fact, Has Made Another Crisis More Likely.

The Science Fiction World Has A Lot Of People Doing Seriously Imaginative Thinking.

Friedrich Hayek Is Not An Important Figure In The History Of Macroeconomics.

I've Always Believed That A Speculative Bubble Need Not Lead To A Recession, As Long As Interest Rates Are Cut Quickly Enough To Stimulate Alternative Investments. But I Had To Face The Fact That Speculative Bubbles Usually Are Followed By Recessions. My Excuse Has Been That This Was Because The Policy Makers Moved Too Slowly - That Central Banks Were Typically Too Slow To Cut Interest Rates In The Face Of A Burst Bubble, Giving The Downturn Time To Build Up A Lot Of Momentum.

...academic Credentials Are Neither A Necessary Nor A Sufficient Condition For Having Your Ideas Taken Seriously. If A Famous Professor Repeatedly Says Stupid Things, Then Tries To Claim He Never Said Them, There's No Rule Against Calling Him A Mendacious Idiot - And No Special Qualifications Required To Make That Pronouncement Other Than Doing Your Own Homework.conversely, If Someone Without Formal Credentials Consistently Makes Trenchant, Insightful Observations, He Or She Has Earned The Right To Be Taken Seriously, Regardless Of Background.

There Are No Atheists In Foxholes And There Are No Libertarians In Financial Crises.

Simple Doesn't Mean Stupid. Thinking That It Does, Does.

One Way In Which Americans Have Always Been Exceptional Has Been In Our Support For Education. First We Took The Lead In Universal Primary Education; Then The “high School Movement” Made Us The First Nation To Embrace Widespread Secondary Education.

I'm Especially Baffled By The Idea Of Taking Insurance Against A U.s. Default. If America Defaults, We're Talking About A Chaotic World - Mad Max, More Or Less - In Which Case, Who Imagines That Insurance Claims Will Be Honored?

The Raw Fact Is That Every Successful Example Of Economic Development This Past Century Every Case Of A Poor Nation That Worked Its Way Up To A More Or Less Decent, Or At Least Dramatically Better, Standard Of Living Has Taken Place Via Globalization, That Is, By Producing For The World Market Rather Than Trying For Self-sufficiency.

Consumer Spending Is Now Plunging At Serious-recession Rate ... Even If The Rescue Now In Train Succeeds In Unfreezing Credit Markets, The Real Economy Has Immense Downward Momentum. In Addition To Financial Rescues, We Need Major Stimulus Programs.

You Really Have To Go Searching Desperately To Find Any Contemporary Examples Of Good, Old-fashioned Runaway Inflation.

To The Extent That Sacrifices Need To Be Made, Shouldn't The People Who've Made Out Like Bandits This Past Generation Be First In Line? The Problem With Getting Out Of The Slump Is That We Need To Spend More. It's Not That Somebody Needs To Spend Less. We Have Idle Workers Who Have The Skills And The Willingness To Work. We Have Idle Factories. Dealing With This Is Not About Saying Somebody Needs To Suffer. It's Saying That We Need To Be Prepared To Open The Taps.

If You Want To Understand Opposition To Climate Action, Follow The Money.

The Raw Fact Is That Every Successful Example Of Economic Development This Past Century ... Has Taken Place Via Globalization.

I Think Stockman Is An Interesting Sort Of Amalgam.

So, Very Early Reports Are That Obamacare Exchanges Are, As Expected, Having Some Technical Glitches On The First Day - Maybe Even A Bit Worse Than Expected, Because It Appears That Volume Has Been Much Bigger Than Predicted. Here’s What You Need To Know: This Is Good, Not Bad, News For The Program... Lots Of People Logging On And Signing Up On The Very First Day... Is An Early Indication That It’s Going To Be Fine, That Plenty Of People Will Sign Up For The First Year Of Health Reform.

There's One Thing That The Fed Has Been Really Good At Cracking Down On, And That's Inflation.

When Stock Prices Are Rising, It's Called ''momentum Investing''; When They Are Falling, It's Called ''panic.''

There Has Been Plenty To Criticize About President Obama’s Handling Of The Economy. Yet The Overriding Story Of The Past Few Years Is Not Mr. Obama’s Mistakes But The Scorched-earth Opposition Of Republicans, Who Have Done Everything They Can To Get In His Way - And Who Now, Having Blocked The President’s Policies, Hope To Win The White House By Claiming That His Policies Have Failed.

Our Popular Economics Writers, However, Are Not In The Business Of Giving Their Readers A Ringside Seat On The Research Action; With No Exception I Can Think Of, They Use Their Books To Do An End Run Around The Normal Structure Of Scholarship, To Preach Ideas That Few Serious Economists Share. Often, These Ideas Are Not Just At Odds With The Professional Consensus; They Are Demonstrably Wrong, And Sometimes Terminally Silly. But They Sound Good To The Unwary Reader.

Middle-class Societies Don't Emerge Automatically As An Economy Matures, They Have To Be Created Through Political Action.

On The Political As On The Economic Front It's Important Not To Fall Into The "not As Bad As" Trap. High Unemployment Isn't O.k. Just Because It Hasn't Hit 1933 Levels; Ominous Political Trends Shouldn’t Be Dismissed Just Because There’s No Hitler In Sight.

Now, It’s True That Some Of The Protesters Are Oddly Dressed Or Have Silly-sounding Slogans, Which Is Inevitable Given The Open Character Of The Events. But So What? I, At Least, Am A Lot More Offended By The Sight Of Exquisitely Tailored Plutocrats, Who Owe Their Continued Wealth To Government Guarantees, Whining That President Obama Has Said Mean Things About Them Than I Am By The Sight Of Ragtag Young People Denouncing Consumerism.

If The Price Of Everything Is Going Down, That's Going To Include Wages As Well. People Will Have An Incentive To Sit On Their Cash And Not Spend It.

Our Grandfathers Lived In A World Of Largely Self-sufficient, Inward-looking National Economies - But Our Great-great Grandfathers Lived, As We Do, In A World Of Large-scale International Trade And Investment, A World Destroyed By Nationalism.

It Has Been Obvious All Along, To Anyone Paying Attention, That The Politicians Shouting Loudest About Deficits Are Actually Using Deficit Hysteria As A Cover Story For Their Real Agenda, Which Is Top-down Class Warfare. To Put It In Romneyesque Terms, It's All About Finding An Excuse To Slash Programs That Help People Who Like To Watch Nascar Events, Even While Lavishing Tax Cuts On People Who Like To Own Nascar Teams.

Politics Determines Who Has The Power, Not Who Has The Truth.

I Believe In A Relatively Equal Society, Supported By Institutions That Limit Extremes Of Wealth And Poverty. I Believe In Democracy, Civil Liberties, And The Rule Of Law. That Makes Me A Liberal, And I’m Proud Of It.

Most Work In Macroeconomics In The Past 30 Years Has Been Useless At Best And Harmful At Worst.

It Should Be Possible To Emphasize To Students That The Level Of Employment Is A Macroeconomic Issue, Depending In The Short Run On Aggregate Demand And Depending In The Long Run On The Natural Rate Of Unemployment, With Microeconomic Policies Like Tariffs Having Little Net Effect. Trade Policy Should Be Debated In Terms Of Its Impact On Efficiency, Not In Terms Of Phoney Numbers About Jobs Created Or Lost.

Something Terrible Has Happened To The Soul Of The Republican Party. We've Gone From Bad Economic Doctrine. We've Even Gone Beyond Selfishness And Special Interests. At This Point We're Talking About A State Of Mind That Takes Positive Glee In Inflicting Further Suffering Upon The Already Miserable.

What Happened After 9/11 - And I Think Even People On The Right Know This, Whether They Admit It Or Not - Was Deeply Shameful. The Atrocity Should Have Been A Unifying Event, But Instead It Became A Wedge Issue. Fake Heroes Like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, And, Yes, George W. Bush Raced To Cash In On The Horror. And Then The Attack Was Used To Justify An Unrelated War The Neocons Wanted To Fight, For All The Wrong Reasons....the Memory Of 9/11 Has Been Irrevocably Poisoned; It Has Become An Occasion For Shame. And In Its Heart, The Nation Knows It.

[t]he Next Time You Hear Serious-sounding People Explaining The Need For Fiscal Austerity, Try To Parse Their Argument. Almost Surely, You'll Discover That What Sounds Like Hardheaded Realism Actually Rests On A Foundation Of Fantasy, On The Belief That Invisible Vigilantes Will Punish Us If We're Bad And The Confidence Fairy Will Reward Us If We're Good. And Real-world Policy - Policy That Will Blight The Lives Of Millions Of Working Families - Is Being Built On That Foundation.

However, The Fact That An Economist Offers A Theoretical Analysis Does Not And Should Not Automatically Command Respect. What Is Needed Is Some Assurance That The Analysis Is Actually Relevant.

You Know That Republicans Will Yell About The Evils Of Partisanship Whenever Anyone Tries To Make A Connection Between The Rhetoric Of Beck, Limbaugh, Etc. And The Violence I Fear We’re Going To See In The Months And Years Ahead. But Violent Acts Are What Happen When You Create A Climate Of Hate. And It’s Long Past Time For The Gop’s Leaders To Take A Stand Against The Hate-mongers.

We Have A Lot Of Evidence On What Happens When You Raise The Minimum Wage. And The Evidence Is Overwhelmingly Positive: Hiking The Minimum Wage Has Little Or No Adverse Effect On Employment While Significantly Increasing Workers' Earnings.

Adverse Effects

A Message To Progressives: By All Means, Hang Senator Joe Lieberman In Effigy.

The Public Has No Idea That The Deficit Has Been Falling Like A Stone.

If You Can Create Even The Illusion Of High Profitability For A Few Years, Then When The Thing Collapses You Can Walk Out Of The Wreckage A Very Rich Man.

Raising The Minimum Wage And Lowering The Barriers To Union Organization Would Carry A Trade-off - Higher Unemployment. A Better Idea Is To Have The Government Subsidize Low-wage Employment. The Earned-income Tax Credit For Low-income Workers - Which Has Been The Object Of Proposed Cuts By Both President Clinton And Congressional Republicans - Has Been A Positive Step In This Direction.

I Think So Long As Fossil Fuels Are Cheap, People Will Use Them And It Will Postpone A Movement Towards New Technologies.

Close The Weak Banks And Impose Serious Capital Requirements On The Strong Ones...you See, It May Sound Hard-hearted, But You Cannot Keep Unsound Financial Institutions Operating Simply Because They Provide Jobs.

The Planet Will Continue To Cook.

Democracy Or Breakdown In Syria Would Change The Whole Middle East Overnight.

What Saved The Economy, And The New Deal, Was The Enormous Public Works Project Known As World War Ii, Which Finally Provided A Fiscal Stimulus Adequate To The Economy’s Needs.

When The Fed Decides That Inflation Is Too High, They Have The Tools, And They've Shown Historically That They Have The Will, To Bring It Down. And, It Might Be Painful.

I Think If You're A Liberal, You Believe That We All Are, At Least To Some Extent, Our Brothers' Keepers, You Really Believe That We Have A Sumptuary Responsibility To Make Sure That Life Is Decent For Everybody In America, That You Believe That Society Out To Be Broadly Shared, And You Believe That You Can't Have A Real Democracy Unless You Have A Little Bit, At Least, Of Economic Democracy.

But Where Will The Fed Find Another Bubble?

The Important Thing To Understand Is That The Case For Pollution Control Isn't Based On Some Kind Of Aesthetic Distaste For Industrial Society. Pollution Does Real, Measurable Damage, Especially To Human Health.

Pollution Control

If You Want A Simple Model For Predicting The Unemployment Rate In The United States Over The Next Few Years, Here It Is: It Will Be What Greenspan Wants It To Be, Plus Or Minus A Random Error Reflecting The Fact That He Is Not Quite God.

Where's That Toxic Rhetoric Coming From? Let's Not Make A False Pretense Of Balance: It's Coming, Overwhelmingly, From The Right. It's Hard To Imagine A Democratic Member Of Congress Urging Constituents To Be "armed And Dangerous" Without Being Ostracized; But Representative Michele Bachmann, Who Did Just That, Is A Rising Star In The G.o.p.

It's A Funny Thing, By The Way, How People Who Love Free Markets Are Also Quite Sure That They Know That Investors Are Being Irrational.

I Know That When I Look At Today’s Mexicans And Central Americans, They Seem To Me Fundamentally The Same As My Grandparents Seeking A Better Life In America. On The Other Side, However, Open Immigration Can’t Coexist With A Strong Social Safety Net; If You’re Going To Assure Health Care And A Decent Income To Everyone, You Can’t Make That Offer Global. So Democrats Have Mixed Feelings About Immigration; In Fact, It’s An Agonizing Issue.

I Admit It: I Had Fun Watching Right-wingers Go Wild As Health Reform Finally Became Law.

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Martin Feldstein

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