Another old piece, but more true than ever. On the left, the talking heads the media puts on the TV as economists are economists. On the right, they are grifters who play economists on TV. My recent encounter with Steve Moore at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club has erased any doubts I might have had:
Paul Krugman (2015): On Econoheroes: "I gather that some readers didn’t get what I was driving at in declaring that Joe Stiglitz and yours truly are the left’s 'econoheroes', but the likes of Stephen Moore and Art Laffer play that role on the right.... What I meant—I thought this was obvious—is that Joe and I do tend to get quoted, invoked, etc. on a frequent basis in liberal media and by liberals in general, usually with (excessive) approbation. And the thing is that while there are people playing a comparable role in right-wing discussion, they tend not to be highly cited or even competent...
...So don’t tell me that Greg Mankiw or Robert Barro are famous economists and also conservative. Indeed they are. But are they omnipresent on the conservative scene? Take a crude metric, and look at hits on Google News. If you put in “mankiw economy” you get about 5200 hits, many of them involving debates at the recent economics meetings. If you put in “stephen moore economy” you get 65,700 hits. If you put in “stiglitz economy” you get 43,800. I see this as a real asymmetry...
Paul Krugman (2015): On Econoheroes: "I gather that some readers didn’t get what I was driving at in declaring that Joe Stiglitz and yours truly are the left’s 'econoheroes', but the likes of Stephen Moore and Art Laffer play that role on the right.... What I meant—I thought this was obvious — is that Joe and I do tend to get quoted, invoked, etc. on a frequent basis in liberal media and by liberals in general, usually with (excessive) approbation. And the thing is that while there are people playing a comparable role in right-wing discussion, they tend not to be highly cited or even competent economists. So don’t tell me that Greg Mankiw or Robert Barro are famous economists and also conservative. Indeed they are. But are they omnipresent on the conservative scene? Take a crude metric, and look at hits on Google News. If you put in “mankiw economy” you get about 5200 hits, many of them involving debates at the recent economics meetings. If you put in “stephen moore economy” you get 65,700 hits. If you put in “stiglitz economy” you get 43,800. I see this as a real asymmetry...
#noted
