The Krugman style

I have to say that I admire Krugman's style, by which I mean his willingness to put his boxing gloves on when he sees foolishness. If people are talking nonsense, and the issue is important enough, they deserve to be called out and that is what he does, here on healthcare and here on borrowing and economic growth.

And he is absolutely right about the way to conduct the debate - robustly. Many academics are far too thin skinned. They want  glory and the publicity: they can give it out, but when they are  caught out and have no answers they can't take it  and cry foul. Nobody forces anyone to publish anything. But once you do, you are fair game and if you have got it wrong then that is just the way it goes. We all get it wrong some of the time, that is how science works.

As Krugman says:

"Let me say it, by the way – who cares, right? I mean who cares about my feelings or Carmen Reinhart’s feelings or Ken Rogoff’s feelings? We’re having a global economic crisis which is not over, which we have handled abysmally. We have massive long-term unemployment in the United States. We have massive youth unemployment in Southern Europe."