Is Paul Krugman Really a Martyr?
Paul Krugman operates with numerous themes, although for the most part they revolve around his belief that (1) the U.S. economy is in a “liquidity trap,” and (2) government must spend, borrow, raise taxes (ostensibly to seize “idle” money holdings), print money, and spend some more. Anyone who does not agree, according to Krugman, is not worthy of existence and certainly should not be allowed to make any public utterances.
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(The Austrians, in Krugman’s view, are nothing more than an evil cult who apparently are trying to foist things like the Law of Scarcity and Marginal Utility — What? Marginal Utility? — upon the world. Everyone but the Austrians knows that government can create prosperity by printing and borrowing.)
Lately, however, Krugman has fastened himself to another theme: Paul Krugman, martyr.
Yes, Krugman is fashioning himself as the Lonely Voice In The Wilderness, the ignored prophet, the abused Holy Man, and now the Last Hippie (or at least until Ben Bernanke testified to Congress that showering the world with freshly-printed dollars was sound economic policy — that made Bernanke an Honored Hippie).
To be honest, I find this amusing. Martyrs do not receive Nobel Prizes, nor do Sunday television news shows compete literally every week for the man’s appearance. Nor do martyrs make millions of dollars a year, and martyrs certainly do not have positions on a faculty of one of the world’s top-ranted universities.
What Krugman seems to mean is that if anyone — Anyone — publicly criticizes what he is saying, then whoever had the temerity to utter such blasphemies also has inflicted a grievous wound upon The Great One and has thrown him into the pit of martyrdom. Those who refuse to believe in the Inflation Fairy or who would deny that governments can create more wealth by forcing up real costs have no place in the discussion of economics.
William L. Anderson is an author and an associate professor of economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland. He is also an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy as well as for the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama.
Read more at “Krugman-in-Wonderland”
