Fred Douglass details Paul Krugman’s battle with commentors at Krugman’s blog, The Conscience of a Liberal. (HT Lyle Albaugh and Todd Cerami) By the way, when I read that Krugman admits to being unfamiliar with public-choice literature, I was reminded of a long-ago lunch that I had with a Cornell University economist. A fine economist, this Cornell don nevertheless – in response to a lunch-time remark of mine – rejected public-choice economics out-of-hand. “It’s just a rationale for conservatives to prevent government from doing what we all know government should do” was his reply. I was stunned.
I join Steve Landsburg in not-fearing deflation – as long as deflation is the result of increases in productivity. (One small nit to pick with Milton Friedman’s work on the optimum quantity of money: it overlooks the vital point made by the late W.H. Hutt in Hutt’s 1954 paper “The Yield from Money Held.” Leland Yeager assigned that paper years ago, and it remains one of the most eye-opening that I’ve ever read. Unfortunately, I can find no link to it.)
