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Arnold Kling  
PERMANENT LINK | JANUARY 25, 2007

Multiple Choice

Arnold Kling
Speaking of Rising Inequality... An Economist or a Public Intel...

[2] once wrote,


While [1]'s theoretical work is universally admired by professional economists, there's much more ambivalence about his policy pronouncements and especially his popularizing. And it must be said that there were some serious questions about his intellectual honesty when he was speaking to the mass public.

Guess who is [1] and who is [2]? Your choices are Milton Friedman or Paul Krugman. No fair peeking before you click on the answer.

CATEGORIES: Political Economy


TRACKBACKS (3 to date)
The author at PrestoPundit in a related article titled Krugman on Friedman writes:
    The intellectually dishonest Paul Krugman examines Milton Friedman. Read it with a more than a few grains of salt. As is common with Krugman, the dishonesties begin in the first paragraph. The man simply has no shame. UPDATE: Read the article? Now... [Tracked on January 26, 2007 5:11 PM]
COMMENTS (2 to date)
Felix writes:

I can't believe you posted this! I got my copy of the New York Review in the mail yesterday, and normally there are a few days between the paper copies going out and the articles appearing on the web -- so I was going to do a quiz exactly along these lines tomorrow afternoon, with the answer to be revealed on Monday, which is Milton Friedman Day. But nybooks.com seems to have got its act together, unfortunately...

As for your pot/kettle point, I'd say that Friedman was lucky to have lived mostly in the era before blogs and cable-TV pundits: He would intone grandly on any subject, but I don't think he got into the muck of actually debating issues with his opponents nearly as much as today's pundits in general, and Paul Krugman in particular, does. I'm not sure how this is relevant, but I am sure that it is relevant...

Posted January 25, 2007 4:26 PM
asg writes:

That's a joke, right? When was the last time Krugman appeared to debate someone one on one? When was the last time Krugman was interviewed at length by a journalist hostile to his views? Friedman did these things regularly. Krugman's idea of "debate" is to write columns in a forum whose access is controlled entirely by people who agree with him, and then to insult the integrity and question the intelligence of those who disagree.

Posted January 27, 2007 12:42 PM
Comments for this entry have been closed
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