So why are so many people complaining? There are three main groups of critics.First, there’s the crazy right, the tea-party and death-panel people — a lunatic fringe that has moved into the heart of the Republican Party. In the past, there was a general understanding that major parties would at least pretend to distance themselves from irrational extremists. But those rules are no longer operative. No, Virginia, at this point, there is no sanity clause. A second strand of opposition comes …

“Crazy, “lunatic fringe,” and “irrational extremists,” an implication of insanity.   Dr. Krugman does not bother to articulate opposing views, let alone refute them.  He prefers to impugns their character and psychological well-being.

Remember, Paul Krugman is Nobel Prize winner, a Professor at Princeton University, and New York Times columnist.  These are top credentials, as if you need the reminder.  Yet, I would expect to find his type of argument, or lack of argument, in a school playground or posted anonymously on an on-line discussion group.  What is more disappointing is that the New York Times editors consider such rhetoric “fit to print.”

Paul Krugman has avoided addressing arguments for years, as economist Arnold Kling noted in “An Open Letter to Paul Krugman” back in 2003. It begins:

Dear Paul,

You might remember me from graduate school at MIT. I would like to ask you a question about what constitutes a reasonable argument.

For example, suppose I were to say, “We should abolish the minimum wage. That would increase employment and enable more people to climb out of poverty.”

There are two types of arguments you might make in response. I call these Type C and Type M.

A hypothetical example of a Type C argument would be, “Well, Arnold, studies actually show that the minimum wage does not cost jobs. If you read the work of Krueger and Card, you would see that the minimum wage probably reduces poverty.”

A hypothetical example of a Type M argument would be, “People who want to get rid of the minimum wage are just trying to help the corporate plutocrats.”

Paul, my question for you is this: Do you see any differences between those two types of arguments?

I highly recommend reading the whole letter for examples of Paul Krugman uses “Type M” arguments.

(Thanks to Justin Longo for the pointer.)

Paul Krugman seems never to take account of the findings of public choice. Even a basic understanding of public choice would make him question his views about how effective government can be in achieving good things. This comes across clearly to those who, as I do, read over 30 percent of his columns in the New York Times. He seems to believe that if one can conceive of a government solution to a problem, then all that has to happen is that the legislative bodies pass a law to spend money on the problem and the problem will be fixed.

Read the whole post here.  Henderson is the editor or the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, available on-line here.

Speaking of public choice, here’s a succinct summary from a Medicare reform report:

Like for-profit firms, politicians must compete to survive. But the nature of that competition forces them to weigh political costs against political benefits – where “costs” and “benefits” are measured in terms of impact on the next election. Private firms competing in a marketplace, by contrast, must compare economic costs with economic benefits.

For more, see here.

Massive government spending is no solution to unemployment.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been on the attack lately in regard to the New Deal. His new book “The Return of Depression Economics,” emphasizes the importance of New Deal-style spending. He has said the trouble with the New Deal was that it didn’t spend enough.

He’s also arguing that some writers and economists have been misrepresenting the 1930s to make the effect of FDR’s overall policy look worse than it was. I’m interested in part because Mr. Krugman has mentioned me by name. He recently said that I am the one “whose misleading statistics have been widely disseminated on the right.”

Mr. Krugman is a new Nobel Laureate, teaches at Princeton University and writes a column for a nationally prominent newspaper. So what he says is believed to be objective by many people, even when it isn’t.

Read the rest here.  See also the work of Robert Higgs linked to this recent podcast.

(via David Harsanyi)