An Education minister says our curricula used to be "designed upwards" to suit the universities and that now they should be "designed downwards" to suit the needs of, you know, actual students. An unfortunate turn of phrase but it does hint, subconsciously, at the troglodytically poor standards of inner city secondary education.
Ten minutes later the Afghan ambassador to the Court of St James is talking about "time", "having enough time", and "this being the time to take time, not having enough time notwithstanding". He sounds like Culture Club.
Overall I'm, like, totally, like disturbed about the declining standards of public discourse on Radio 4, innit.
Maybe I have over-sensitized to the corruption of public discourse by last night's experience, on a "hot date" watching "Get Him to the Greek". I've always complained about having to choose between a career as an economist and as a film programmer. It seemed to me that these worlds were very different and rightly so. And now I find Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman in a cameo in a Judd Apatow comedy. It's like seeing your dad crop up as a background singer in a Miley Cyrus video.
When I first started reading Krugman it was 1998 and he was but a humble trade economist with a lo-rent website out of MIT upon which he opined about the Liquidity Trap. (That was back in the day when the only liquidity trap was Japan, as opposed to now, when you could be referring to anywhere in the developed world.) Reading Krugman was a niche interest for Econ students at Oxford. It was the geek equivalent of being into Vampire Weekend before they put out "I Stand Corrected" as Free Song of the Week on iTunes. And then Krugman went to Princeton. I guess we should've seen it coming. From the third best University in Jersey, but the only one with a Gucci store, it was just a mere hop, skip and jump to the NY Times Op Ed page. Ever since then, Krugman's university page has been abandoned, and while he won the Nobel for his trade work, he hasn't written anything of substance since. Rather, he seems to have become enmeshed in political spats and ad hominem attacks. It's a crying shame. Krugman, in his old guise, could've been instrumental in actually rolling up his sleeves and sorting out the mess we're in - at the Fed, Treasury, IMF, whatever. Now, he's reduced to just another Huffpost contributor - and to being a cameo in a Judd Apatow movie.
I genuinely wonder how Krugman views this latest venture. Does he see it as part of his apparent mission to popularise economics? Is it just a vanity project? Or is he just a little bit embarrassed? He looked bewildered in the movie. But maybe that was just his "character". All I know is that he has probably ruled himself out of being Fed Chief. Or maybe not. In a world where Arnold Schwarzenegger can be elected Governor of California, anything is possible, maybe even the first Bank of England MPC member who simultaneously reviews flicks in The Grauniad?
6 comments:
"Political spats", when a prominent citizen and leading economist sees an obligation to fight against political folly and conventional wisdom on the basis of facts and research?
"Ad hominem attacks", as in sharply attacking the statements of specific opinion-leaders on the basis of facts and research? Please present an example with an actual Krugman ad-hominem attack, i.e. debasing a person regarding their basic human qualities. (Trying to explain why people are inclined towards certain viewpoints psychologically, which he has done, can surely qualify as an ad-hominem attack sometimes if geared towards a specific person, but I have yet to find an instance on his NYT blog, which I'm following, where Krugman would have overstepped.)
Regarding the cameo, how wouldn't showing some humour and maybe some self-mockery (I haven't seen the movie yet...) rather increase one's appreciation for his multi-faceted personality? I can't see that a man and his work become ridiculous en bloc if he strays from the path of statuesque academic seriousness, apparently the absolute ideal?
It's not that I'd know you to be sternly serious or blandly one-dimensional. So it makes me wonder why you would portrait him as someone who earned his merits in the field of trade but has since lost his academic substance and should better stop his newspaper polemics and go back to doing some actually valuable academic work. Do you see no value in his NYT articles, where he raises points and explains economics in an easily accessible language?
Also, you make it seem as if economists have no place in popular culture as self-contained personalities, except maybe if they use it to promote the popularity of economics - otherwise their arguments lose any claim to receive serious consideration. (I know there's a fine line of taste regarding not subject-related media presence but I don't find him moving in with the Kardashians yet.) Had you actually looked up to him and are now deeply disappointed? Where is this beef coming from? Is it just that the movie was so bad?
But it's not on the base of facts and research, but a simple clash of politics (which is subjective). And I promise you I have seen ad hominem attacks, though on TV (I'll check youtube tomorrow) where I assume Krugman is less well thought out (and less edited) than in the NYT.
Of course serious academics can appear in the popular media, and a little self-mockery is a good thing. But Krugman isn't there to be funny (sending himself up like P Diddy does). He seems uncomfortable and bewildered. Check it out - it is truly bizarre. This was no Simpsons "Budget deficit rag" episode.
Basically, you sum it up perfectly when you say "why you would portrait him as someone who earned his merits in the field of trade but has since lost his academic substance and should better stop his newspaper polemics and go back to doing some actually valuable academic work." I portray him like that because that's what I believe. To anyone doing professional economics, Krugman has nothing to say that is valuable that was written after 2000.
And yes I am angry and disappointed about that because I respected him so much not just as a thinker but as a person who could write clearly. No doubt, that's why the NYT tapped him on the shoulder. But clarity of expression to the layperson is not enough. There needs to be substance. And economics is like surgery - skills need to be kept up.
It's sad to me to see a Clark Medal and Nobel Prize winner squandering his talent. Less time wasted filming idiotic cameos - more time at the computer writing real economics.
Bah humbug!
Again, all I see him do in his NYT column is try to debunk myths and question conventional knowledge, in all of which he's been consistent at least since the Nineties (e.g. see some collected popular articles in The Accidental Theorist [...], 1999). He obviously sees an obligation to intensify his public activities in this time of economic crisis. I am not an economist but as a citizen who realizes that politicians are almost exclusively incompetent in economics and international finance and rely on a limited circle of good or bad consultants and civil servants (and on everyone's own prejudices), I'm glad that he pushes his arguments out there and calls on the bullshit.
At least in his column he is careful to provide sources, background and clear logic. In the current debate, he seems more "real" to me than many other opinion leaders in the sense that while he also finds there is a need to consolidate public finances, he argues adamantly that doing this too soon would likely (and unnecessarily) cost millions of workers their jobs while not reasserting bond investors (he refers to Ireland), i.e. hardly delivering on its objective anyways.
This is something he believes in and as someone like me who is not partisan to any particular camp in economics avoiding _unnecessary_ hardship on citizens seems like a respectable political goal.
This supposed moral self-entitlement seems to make a considerable number of people angry at him (and others who argue to the same ends).
You claim he hasn't got a sufficient substance any more - I would just wish that prominently educated economists (such as yourself, too) would realise it as their obligation as a citizen more often to lead a public discussion argument-by-argument with the same verve as Krugman instead of "denouncing" the person behind the arguments.
Which maybe you have done in your briefings and articles, I do not know, and it is not addressed at you personally - but certainly the public discussion as far as I follow it seems to consist more of self-righteous low blows than honesty and good scholarship. Some publicly speaking economists just don't seem to act as though economics were there to improve all our livelihoods.
So was the movie any good? I'm dying to see it. (It's almost as if "Get Him to the Greek" has a very current vibrancy also in economic terms.)
I think the problem is that his economic arguments contain elisions that would not be obvious to the lay reader. They seem logical, coherent, etc but there are premises that he states as factual/uncontroversial that are actually highly contentious, and unintended consequences of his recommendations that he skates over. (He's a little bit like Keynes in that sense).
The quality of his argument has deteriorated, maybe as a response to the pressures of word count. Read his early articles on Japan on his old MIT site - there's simply no comparison.
Political economists certainly have a duty to be present in public debate. The problem is that economics is a technical subject and that economists can get away with stating complicated arguments and having most intelligent readers give them the benefit of the doubt.
Krugman is more than able to call politicians and Foxnews pundits on bullshit. But when credible economists such as Mankiw and Rogoff call him on the substance of his economics, he doesn't respond as well.
As for the movie - it was deeply bizarre and ultimately a failure. Luckily the dinner afterwards was much more fun!
So as usual, never judge a flick by its promo trailer (except when the promo trailer makes it look bad already. Then of course the impression is perfectly reliable). Ebert liked it though. I'll have to wait till August anyways, when Germany-Austria gets graced by the release. (OR do I?)
I'll review it later today. It's not without it's merits - but just deeply bizarre. Maybe I'm over-thinking it, but you basically have a movie about an addict - not just narcotics but SLA too - and it just seems odd to have treated the material in such a manner as they do. Plus not enough real laughs. But P Diddy is very funny.
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