Comments on: Gintis on Krugman

By: union slogans

union slogans — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:37:10 +0000

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By: Richard Green

Richard Green — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:21:51 +0000

Maybe there’s an element of personal animosity, which Krugman is adept at inspiring!
In this case the snide and vitriolic attitude Krugman has towards the heterodoxy of which Bowles and Gintis (I can only ever name them together) are one part of, particularly when contrasted with the constructive and civil disagreement shown by other parts of the liberal wing of orthodox economics like Joe Stiglitz. The intolerance for, or at least blindness to a diversity of views is not only an irritating trait of Krugman’s, but also hinders his research, resulting in pointless jaunts like New Economic Geography.

So we can understand some spite on Gintis’ part.

Which doesn’t detract from the fact that much of what he says is correct, and reminds us that American liberalism may have fallen into a hole, being a mirror image of the new right, focused on totemistic policies and issues and shrill polemics.

It almost makes Australian politics inspiring…

By: JM

JM — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:46:16 +0000

I’m not impressed.

Gintis draws a prima facie reasonable distinction between inequality and injustice, sets Krugman up as an exemplar strawman, and then knocks him down by demanding (“some have asked”? c’mon) that Krugman accept Gintis’ stupifyingly small beer agenda:-

* health insurance like auto insurance (ie. not attached to employment)
* school vouchers
* faith based charity
* indentured apprenticeships
* “minority entreupeneurship” (a shoeshine stand perhaps?)

ie. a step back to pre WWII

Why would anyone go for that?

Which led me to think about the gambit (inequality/injustice). On reflection that strikes me as a distinction almost without a difference. A political activist would focus on injustice as an organizing principle, but Krugman is an economist – why shouldn’t he focus on the quantifiable aspect – inequality?

What stunned me in reading this was the disconnect between the opening gambit and the complete banality – and stupidity – of the “solutions”

Sorry, Nick, I haven’t heard of Gintis before but thanks for pointing him out, I know now to avoid him.

By: Stewart

Stewart — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:04:17 +0000

I’ve read this piece skimmingly, not being an economist and not being too much up on, or interested in, US domestic policy. I’ve read Krugman’s The Great Unravelling, and enjoyed his anger at Bush and Cheney’s depradations, and was naturally more interested in it from a US foreign policy perspective. I’d just say a couple of things – Gintis is surely right to want to focus on solutions than carping criticisms, but Krugman wasn’t criticising carpingly, he was often engaged in outraged exposes of truly criminal behaviour – and he does seem to have a handle on solutions, even if i can’t always follow them. Second, Gintis makes the absolutely correct claim that politics is all about ethics, then claims that ‘liberals don’t get this’. Really? My view would be that anybody who didn’t get this could hardly be classed as a liberal. Of course this connection dates back at least to Aristotle, who I prefer to think of as a liberal philosopher, but then i was never an ancient Greek slave…