Paul Krugman

Economist

1953-02-28

Books by Paul Krugman

Économie internationale
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Quotes by Paul Krugman

Some people want the past repeated and have an interest in making sure we don't remember it.
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The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant -- that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them.
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[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite.
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The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column— in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally— was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: 'Shape of Earth— Views Differ.' Then they'd quote some Democrats saying that it was round.
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These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.Wait— Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting— the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending— has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.
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I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it.
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Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.
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Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.
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The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column— in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally— was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: 'Shape of Earth— Views Differ.' Then they'd quote some Democrats saying that it was round.
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The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant -- that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them.
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[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite.
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Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.
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Some people want the past repeated and have an interest in making sure we don't remember it.
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Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.
Read quote
These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.Wait— Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting— the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending— has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.
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I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it.
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I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried.
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