Excerpts:
"[Krugman] has a clear ideological incentive to portray the ‘50’s and ‘60’s as this enlightened period of governance. Liberals were in charge, it was a time of very activist government, lots of intervening in markets, and yet the economic numbers were stellar. Growth was fantastic, income growth in particular was great, and these egalitarian values of income compression were being fulfilled as well. To him, it looks like a wonderful model for liberals of today. ‘Look back at what liberals did in the 50s and 60s and we can do that again.’ But to reach that kind of ideologically satisfying, for him, conclusion I think he has to be very selective about what was actually going on back in the 50s and 60s. He has to cherry-pick policies he likes"
"Once those bygone policies and norms are seen in their totality, it should be clear that nostalgia for them is misplaced. The political economy of the early postwar decades, while it generated impressive results under the peculiar conditions of the time, is totally unsuited to serve as a model for 21st-century policymakers. And as to the social attitudes and values that undergirded that political economy, it is frankly astonishing that self-described progressives could find them attractive."Podcast here.
No comments:
Post a Comment