An Apparently Ongoing Service To Our Readers

Raise the level of the debate! Address the issues he raises! So cry the many enthusiastic supporters of Professor Krugman.

Daniel Drezner obliges here.

Jane Galt obliges here.

At Dr. D's site, one of the earnest K-supporters has an interesting suggestion - serious Krugman critics should restrict themselves to what Prof. Krugman writes, not what he says, as in, for example, the CalPundit interview linked by Dr. Drezner.

Since the particular topic was income inequality and political polarization, we oblige. Stay with me, there are banana peels coming, I promise. Two substantial ones, actually - Prof. Krugman apparently failed to read the final version of a paper to which he linked. Although the draft version (found elsewhere) supports his conclusion, the final version to which he linked does not.

And, we drag in a couple of experts to argue that immigration has a significant affect on inequality statistics in the US. Since Prof. Krugman totally fails to mention this, we deem it to be an important oversight.

Unleash the hounds!

From his NY Times magazine article last fall, the Earnest Prof:

"...as McCarty, Rosenthal and Poole put it, ''If income and wealth are distributed in a fairly equitable way, little is to be gained for politicians to organize politics around nonexistent conflicts.'' Now the conflicts are real, and our politics is organized around them. In other words, the growing inequality of our incomes probably lies behind the growing divisiveness of our politics.

Describing his sources for the article, Professor Krugman enthusiastically endorses the McCarty, Rosenthal and Poole paper, saying:

For part 5, "Inequality and politics", I have found the work of McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal eye-opening... For an analysis of the relationship between income polarization and political polarization, see this paper.

Unfortunately, we fear that the work was not sufficiently eye-opening for the Professor to actually read the final version, because the authors report, in their abstract hidden on page one, that:

We find that partisanship has become more stratified by income. We argue that this trend is largely the consequence of polarization of the parties on economic issues and the development of a two-party system in the South. The trend is much less a reflection of increased economic inequality.

Oh, my. The Southern re-alignment, when a bunch of rich (white) Southern Dems became rich (white) Southern Reps, confounds the data. Why, one might ask, does Prof. Krugman link to an article that directly contradicts his own magazine article?

Actually, there is a reason - in a preliminary draft, Poole, et al, alluded to the possibility that the Southern realignment was important, but did not run the numbers. We suspect that, as part of the refereeing process that applies to academic research, someone suggested that they take the Southern realignment a bit more seriously. Imagine everyone's surprise - it was back to rewrite when the numbers came through.

Here is a bit from their first abstract:

We find that over this period of time partisanship has become more stratified by income. We argue that this trend is the consequence both of polarization of the parties on economic issues and increased economic inequality.

Oh, well. Krugman enjoyed their early work, as the column from January 2002 shows, but didn't keep up. Since he is not a specialist in this area, we are not surprised. And yes, we note that the final paper was published in Jan 2003, after Prof. Krugman's article. Whether it circulated for a while before publication, or whether they updated the version after he linked to it (the Old Switcheroo!) we cannot say. But we can say, it is pretty funny. Here is more.

Jane Galt points out the importance of immigration in the inequality debate (yes, we did too, but without research). Comparing the immigrant friendly US with European countries that are run like hereditary country clubs seems odd. In fact, a word search on either "immigration" or "immigrants" shows that Prof. Krugman simply does not address this at all in his article. (Or, you could read the article. Same conclusion).

He does say this, after comparing Sweden favorably with the US:

...[The United States is] the richest major nation. But because so much of our national income is concentrated in relatively few hands, large numbers of Americans are worse off economically than their counterparts in other advanced countries.

Hmm. If we have lots of immigrants, why are we comparing them to long-time Euros? Perhaps their "counterparts" are the folks they left behind. In a serious, interesting review of income inequality, the Prof. Rosenthal lauded earlier by P. Krugman says this:

Let me return to the results on the distribution of income between citizens and non-citizens. These results further suggest that the problem of inequality may be less than it is often made out to be. Those with low incomes are disproportionately unnaturalized immigrants. They are almost certainly substantially better off than in their country of origins. The slight bump up, from 1973 to 1996, in the fraction under $20,000 that I reported above, may be in part a response to immigration.

Well, yes. To paraphrase George Bush's favorite philosopher, the poor will always be with us, especially if we keep letting more come in (and we should). Prof. Rosenthal devotes an entire section to the impact of immigration on inequality statistics; Prof. Krugman does not mention it. Who is credible?

Comments

[Jim Glass]

"... one of the earnest K-supporters has an interesting suggestion - serious Krugman critics should restrict themselves to what Prof. Krugman writes, not what he says"

Why? Oh, I could see not criticizing what Dr. K says in a private conversation over a few beers.

But we are talking about his practiced comments being made on a book tour that has the express purpose of making money and spreading his ideas. So why shouldn't people hold him to what he says?

Hey, does Krugman restrict himself from criticizing what other people say (rather than write)? Or even, on numerous occassions, what other people haven't said?

[TM]

I can't explain it either. It was over at Drezner's site, the 6:40 comment.

[TM]

On further reflection, maybe it is just an endorsement of "Arnold's Rules" - debate questions in advance, please.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/02/debate.questions/