IT'S NOT ABOUT ECONOMICS, JUST ABOUT THE PRESIDENT:

Krugman and DeLong on Social Security (Arnold Kling, 1/10/2005, Tech Central Station)

"I figure I might as well lay down what the party line is on Social Security:

...'What party?' you ask. Ah, that *is* an interesting question...

-- Brad DeLong

Recently, left-leaning economists Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have each tried to write seriously about Social Security. The purpose of this essay is to examine what they had to say.

Paul Krugman is an economics professor at Princeton, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal (arguably a more prestigious award than the Nobel Prize within the profession), who has achieved public notice with several books and a New York Times column. His essay that I will be discussing appeared in Economist's Voice.

Brad DeLong is an economics professor at Berkeley, a former official in the Clinton Treasury Department, and an early adopter of the Internet as a communications medium, including one of the leading economics web logs.

Friends in the Dartmouth Economics department swear that both these guys are, or were Iin the case of Mr. Krugman), reputable economists, but I can never get rid of the image of Brad Delong just bathed in flop sweat as the Bush attorneys shredded him down in FL when he was pretending to have done precise calculations on how many Republican ballots should be shredded.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2005 9:05 PM