The Paul Krugman Thread

Krugman on the British Chancellor's "Autumn" Statement — Flimflam Does London

In terms of opposition, don't look at Labour — they support the same ideas, maybe not at the same degree or at the same speed — and they're not trusted by voters on the economy. And personally, I don't like Ed Balls, since he's too much of an attack dog for my liking.

Instead, opposition may come from:

• Trade Unions: As most members are in the public sector, most of the major unions are against cuts, and despite having some power over Labour, are not listened to by the leadership.
• The SNP: They've vigorously opposed cuts from Westminster — indeed it was an major issue during the Independence Referendum — and have come out in favour of Keynesianism. It's also important to remember that Scotland is to the left of London.
• UKIP: Remember, UKIP is populist and cuts to public services aren't that popular, especially from disillusioned Labour voters. Keynesianism may be the way achieve their policies.

And something else from the NYT on current British Politics: British Noses, Firmly in the Air

And remember, there's a General Election next year.

edited 7th Dec '14 4:16:03 AM by Greenmantle

Interesting article by Ezra Klein: "What is Paul Krugman Afraid Of?"

"...Now we have this very integrated world with very uneven levels of public health. You have to think that a pandemic is at least a possibility. I think we can be reasonably sure that it won't actually involve zombies, but aside from that, it's a real threat..."

In the wake of Ebola, I would say that Krugman is not alone in that particular concern...

Ebola is a lousy candidate for a pandemic due to how difficult it is to spread. But it did provide a perfect example of how poorly the public understand the issues involved.

edited 29th Dec '14 6:37:24 PM by Fighteer

Another interesting insight from Krugman:

Ezra Klein: "I feel like you hear politicians rail on income inequality as a defining challenge of our time, and then they want to raise the top marginal tax rate by three percent or something. There's a real gap between the scale of the problem people are describing and the solutions they’re willing to embrace. Do you think this is a problem we actually know how to solve?"

Paul Krugman: "I think it is, but we know that it takes an extraordinary political environment to change it. The Great Compression took place under FDR. They took a society that was about as unequal as what we have now, maybe more so because of a weaker social safety net, and turned it into a broadly middle-class society that lasted for more than a generation. But that was done through a combination of a dramatic increase in unionization, extremely high rates of progressive taxation, and wage controls during the war that were used to compress the wage distribution.

So we can describe a set of policies that will restore a middle-class society, but they take FDR-sized majorities in Congress, and even then, it took a war to really bring those changes about. Which is why everybody, me included, talks about chipping away at the margins and hopes that, cumulatively, you're going to get something done."

Yeah, I dont think so. Inequality will continue to rise, until we have the conditions for a general social revolt. Since we still live in a functional democracy, I dont think that the revolt will necessarily be a violent one. Nor do I necessarily think it will achieve revolutionary goals. But I am fairly confident that my grandchildren will live under a more egalitarian society than I do now. It could take that long, though...

Interesting that he seems down on self-driving cars as being further off.

Krugman: Rage and Reaganolatry

But self driving cars are real things that can actually drive around. It's pretty much just a matter of regulatory approval.

Though I'm sure it will be a lot longer before they can completely replace human drivers.

Given how much Krugman talks about waiting to see the whites of wage inflations eye's before tightening, I was interested to see this article in TheEconomist talking about wage growth in America. I guess we're finally getting a normal recovery.

Yeah, and we're only about 40 years behind on the wage growth curve.

I couldn't think of a better place to put this, so I'll drop it here. Krugman discusses trends in labor automation and the idea that, in the future, the jobs that will be automated aren't manual labor, but what we think of as "highly educated" jobs. If it involves math, programming, engineering, it'll be computers and robots handling things. But there will always be a demand for humans to do housework and gardening.

Cue cries of "But those aren't real jobs, that's just something a housewife does on a lazy Sunday."

edited 11th Apr '15 8:37:06 AM by PotatoesRock

Plus i disagree with that anyway. Multifunction robots could easily do housework (roomba, for starters, doing routine vacuuming, and also if the robots take away all the other jobs, we'll all have time to do our own housework/gardening anyway.

It'll be easier to create a computer that can, say, write lines of programming, sure, but there are few positions short of psychiatrist and personal caregiver that can't be taken over by robots in the next fifty years (the latter would require either highly complex AI in the first case, or very realistic androids to simulate companionship, which is ultimately what this in-home care craze provides)

Still, the interesting thing about automation is that the machines can't be too intelligent, otherwise they'd be sapient and start demanding pay as well, which just defeats the point for the most part. And sapient machines will indeed demand similar rights to us.

Really, a 'post-labor' economy in general is just gonna be a reality eventually, and we're gonna have to figure out what to do with those who aren't working in certain industries that can't really be automated.

Our attitudes towards work are molded by old societies where loafing was indeed a material drain on society: providing for them was a drain on the workers, and also impacted the overall productive capacity of old societies which were hugely labor-intensive. We've definitely surpassed the second problem and could get over the first if we were willing to redistribute better, but the barrier for redistribution comes from the old moods.

The idea is that many technical jobs, like engineering and programming, require little in the way of judgement that a computer can't be taught to do. Gardening, on the other hand, is an aesthetic task that's remarkably complicated for an expert system to learn.

Heck, most of our machines are already designed by computers; human skills are more along the lines of how to operate the software than how to design microcircuitry.

edited 11th Apr '15 10:58:18 AM by Fighteer

But the aesthetic side of gardening would simply fall to a designer job, similar to a modern architect who rarely builds the homes he or she designs: "geraniums should go here," etc. Then you have a machine that can go out and scoop a hole in the ground to place seeds or seedlings, automated digging tools, image recognition technology can tell the difference between a sick plant and a healthy plant. All expensive now, in 30 years?

If history is any guide, we will simply create new tasks that the new automation makes possible for the first time. Like the new specializations in medicine that became possible after computers started collecting and collating patient data.