Why Does the New York Times Publish Casey Mulligan?
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
If the New York Times is still around a generation from now, it will be because it spent the first generation of the twenty-first century building a reputation for informing its readers.
So I look at things like this:
Casey Mulligan, October 2008: So, if you are not employed by the financial industry (94 percent of you are not), don’t worry. The current unemployment rate of 6.1 percent is not alarming, and we should reconsider whether it is worth it to spend $700 billion to bring it down to 5.9 percent.
And this:[1]
Casey Mulligan, August 2009: Unfortunately, public policy has done much during this recession to discourage the supply of labor, and little to encourage it.
There are lots of smart, articulate conservative economists interested in informing the public whom the New York Times could publish--people who are reality-based enough and have good enough judgment not to have spent last October mocking those who correctly forecast a deep recession.
And there are lots of smart, articulate conservative economists interested in informing the public whom the New York Times could publish--people who are reality-based enough and possess good enough judgment to have more to say about how public policy should deal with this recession than merely "the federal government needs to roll back... the marginal income tax rates in excess of 100 percent embedded in... mortgage modification programs..."
So I wonder: what are they thinking in the New York Times building? Do they care at all?
[1] What does Mulligan mean by "public policy [that] has done much during this recession to discourage the supply of labor? The only thing I can find is:
School’s Out for Summer: [T]he federal government needs to roll back some of the terrible incentives it has created, like the marginal income tax rates in excess of 100 percent embedded in President Bush’s and President Obama’s means-tested mortgage modification programs...
