Well, two denizens of it, at least: Dan Drezner and Brad DeLong, over – who else? – Dan’s comments about Paul Krugman. Great, now I’m going to have to separate the two: I should have never have put them right next to each other on the blogroll…
(pause)
What, you want a substantive comment? Sorry, but I don’t get involved in economics disputes at this level, and I leave math to my girlfriend. In other words, I don’t have a freaking clue who’s right and who’s wrong.
Fascinating to watch, though – especially the bit where Donald Luskin welcomes DeLong into the Krugman Truth Squad, an honor that I suspect that the latter is going to send back to Luskin, point first and at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed.
Nah. It’s not that bad. If Tom Maguire can survive being involuntarily drafted into the Krugman Truth Squad, so can I…
The thing is, I usually tend to regard Drezner as a very sensible and level-headed voice. I don’t agree with a lot of what he writes, but then again, I don’t have the economic credentials to debate him on that front.
“Nah. It’s not that bad.”
Glad to hear it, but I’m too fond of the line to delete it. 🙂
As you should be. “Point first, and at an appreciable fraction of lightspeed.” Well done. Can I steal it?
Feel free: I may have hacked apart a Pratchett quote to assemble it anyway. 🙂
While Brad DeLong is around, perhaps he can tell me why my comment was deleted on his blog.
And perhaps someone else can tell me why dissenting opinions are so poorly tolerated on left-leaning blogs in general. (And by those I mean Eschaton, Billmon, and others I have had comments deleted from, and now DeLong. I see a wide variety of viewpoints elsewhere–take a look at Tacitus sometime.)
In my deleted comment, I simply quoted Krugman, and then quoted the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ definition of “discouraged worker,” to show how close the two were, even if Krugman didn’t use the actual phrase. DeLong’s beef with Drezner is the equivalent of arguing that “people looking for jobs” is not the same as “unemployed workers.”
Apparently facts are off-limits, Brad?
I’m not qualified to assess whether DeLong’s always on target, but his commentors are…a little frothy.
“guzzles from the public trough?”