Results for “writing”

1385 found

The Conscience of a Liberal is um…not that polemic.  It’s not that shrill.  There is an argument, to be sure, but the book has much more economic history than I had expected, and much more political history.

I’ve already blogged on The Great Compression; Krugman’s more detailed account in the book does emphasize the role of war, wage and price controls, and very high rates of taxation.  Normative questions aside, Krugman’s positive analysis isn’t as far from mine as I had been expecting from his blog post.

Some claims in the book are simply wrong: "…if there’s a single reason blue-collar workers did so much better in the fifties than they had in the twenties, it was the rise of unions."  (p.49)  Of course it was instead greater capital investment per head and better technology; if Krugman means relative status he needs to say so.  This conflation of relative and absolute magnitudes is a running problem throughout the first part of the book.

Most of all, today’s world — or even an extrapolated version thereof — isn’t nearly as like the Gilded Age as Krugman suggests.  Absolute standards of living really do matter, and most Americans today live very fine lives, or if they don’t the economy is not at fault.

Krugman writes of "the vast right-wing conspiracy" repeatedly, and in these moments he verges on the shrill.  But Bush receives virtually no attention; perhaps Krugman is simply sick of writing about the guy. 

Conservatism rose in the 1980s in large part because the mid to late 1970s were such an economic mess and because American had lost so much relative status internationally.  Krugman won’t face up to that; instead he blames the Republican manipulation of "the race card," even though at the time racial tensions arguably were lower than ever before.  Of course in a relatively close election any single factor can be called decisive but I found this discussion well below the standards of the political science literature, even the popular political science literature.

Krugman calls for single-payer health insurance, tax hikes, and raising the minimum wage.  He doesn’t come off as all that radical.

His theory of government failure is that wealthy right-wingers hijack the state to redistribute wealth to themselves, and that’s all we hear on what’s wrong with government.  That’s the part of the book I find hardest to swallow, but if you’re asking "should I read this?" the answer is yes.

My prediction: For lack of red meat, this book won’t sell nearly as well as Naomi Klein’s latest.  At my Borders, circa 4 p.m., they hadn’t even unpacked it.  "Yeah, we have that in the back somewhere, I haven’t seen it yet." was what the guy said.

My question:  Is Paul Krugman willing to come out and simply pronounce: "Margaret Thatcher turned the UK around and for the better"?  If so, how does this square with his broader narrative?  And if not, why not?

Addendum: Here is Ed Glaeser’s review.

…comes again on the question of science.  He points out correctly that most of the major technological innovators did not get much for their efforts.  Clark therefore does not see the late 18th century or early 19th century as giving special incentives for science.  I agree as far as he goes, but I view the incentives for science more broadly.

Core Europe, starting in late medieval times, developed a new and still poorly understood organizational technology.  This was, very roughly, the ability to work in groups, cumulate technologies and advances, and learn from each other in competitive environments.  Most notably, this new technology led the Florentine and Venetian Renaissances, especially in the visual arts.  But there was more.  The rise of printing.  The rise of classical music, starting in 1685 or whenever.  The rise of early modern philosophy.  Europe goes crazy with inventiveness, albeit in splats and bursts.  (Clark’s own chapter 12 gives good evidence for this tendency, though it will play a less central role in his version of the story.)

It is also the case that most of these bursts of inventiveness didn’t do much for the average standard of living.  Yes mastering oil paint technique made Florence richer but not so much.

It just so happened that one of these bursts came in science, technology, and engineering.  And it came in England, mostly for reasons of "national character."  It just so happened that the English burst did more for the standard of living, for reasons of external benefits.  But having had such a burst was not unique to England.  England was just one spoke on a more broadly turning wheel, and a European distribution of bursts was well in place prior to most of the special conditions we might find in England.

England, by the way, also had the literary revolution of the 18th century, and England plus Scotland drove the rise of modern economics.  There is no Chinese Adam Smith and that is because that Europe was pulling decisively ahead in ideas production.  I consider this a fact of great importance whereas for Clark it is a sideshow to some other story.

Most generally, I see the historical problem of growth through the lens of culture — in the sense of the history of the arts, music, and letters — more than through the economic history literature.  I am very taken by Max Weber’s writing on Western music and also his conception of the broader style of Western rationality.  And I see the rise of these organizational improvements as a central — the central? — story of early modern Europe and the move to prosperity.  It simply took a long time to apply these organizational movements to science, and to turn that science into concrete technical advances.

None of this need contradict Clark and indeed you will find parts of this narrative in his book.  But unlike Clark I would not superimpose this on a broader Malthusian story or an emphasis on the long run.  Nor am I putting much stock in genetic evolution.  So these organizational/technological improvements, in my view, move closer to the center of the story of European progress.

Unlike Clark, I think incentives to create matter greatly, but not through patents or other direct pecuniary rate of return effects.  The great creators have a burning desire to create, provided they have the opportunity to do so.  This new European technology of organization (whatever it should be called), combined with growing wealth for the upper classes, meant that such creative opportunities were far more available than ever before.  And powerful intellects grabbed them, for reasons of psychic incentives.  So incentives are paramount to the European story, while Clark remains correct in criticizing the standard account of how those incentives might have mattered.

I also see England has having innovated with the quality of its state in particular its fiscal grounding.  I wish this played a larger role in Clark’s account although of course I understand why it does not.  Institutions are not allowed to become a competing force on center stage.  The economic returns from colonies might be given more play as well.

Overall I am willing to accept many of Clark’s arguments, but I always go back to wanting to superimpose a broader institutional story on his microfoundations.

He resists that move, and that is the major place where I part company with him.  I think he is too intent on pushing institutional and ideological factors off the stage; I am happy to allow Clark’s factors on the stage — most of all gradual growth downward mobility and quality of labor — but I want a very busy and cluttered stage.

I believe, by the way, that if Clark’s vision were correct, Australia and New Zealand would be stronger economic powerhouses than has turned out to be the case.

"Every reader has a personal ethic for how to treat a book, a morality for what can and can’t be done to the physical object."  Is dog-earing a page a violation of the sanctity of the volume, or an easy way to hold your place?  What about highlighting key passages, or writing notes in the margins?  Or even (gasp!) throwing out an old book you don’t want anymore?

Here is the link.  I do not believe that books have rights, Nozickian or otherwise.  I am most likely to rip up travel books if only to minimize my carry burden.  But I don’t write in books because I wish to discover new ideas — and not just my old ideas — each time I open them up.  Dog-earing pages is useful because you can go back to old books and see how far in them you read and then decide you really shouldn’t give it another chance after all.

Here is a story about book left behind in hotel rooms, including a list of the top 10 most abandoned titles (UK).