Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is doing an IamA | Hacker News Reader

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is doing an IamA

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69 pointsww52015 comments

This post contains a table with all the questions that got answered:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/t1ygb/iama_nobel_prize...

This got me thinking, I see this pattern a lot on Hacker News, where somebody important introduces themselves and then people engage in really thoughtful questions and answers. I would like to see something of this sort, but rather systematic, maybe a Answer HN type of thing? (like, Ask HN:) The only issue would be how to decide if one should (or good enough to) provide this service, in that case probably just answer to public demand?

I can't think of the name and some basic Googling failed, but there was a site where you created a profile and people could ask you questions. I'm pretty sure it was a YC company, and exactly what you're looking for.

I remember PG, patio11, Jason Shen and others on there.

Quora?

http://askolo.com

Yes I think he meant this one. But still, the comfort of not leaving HN is a huge plus for what I suggested.

C'mon now, there's no Nobel Prize in economics, only the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ;)

Looks like he is done answering: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/t1ygb/iama_nobel_prize...

This is Reddit at its best--good questions, good answers, and helpful citations provided by random passers-by.

My dad loves his shit

Edit: that was a joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8ZHYhKV0Wo

You should know better than to crack jokes on HN without carefully disguising it as a substantive comment. We like to laugh, but only if we can reasonably convince ourselves that we're actually engaged in serious thought.

They should also be funny and have some actual novelty.

There is no Nobel price of Economics, only, as cpach else states, a price that the Central Bank of Sweden created "in memory" of Nobel. Nobel did not consider economy a science.

Krugman is a shill of central banks, and in my opinion not very intelligent. He want everything to be central planned like in Soviet Russia by states, because people do not know how to spend their own money.

His ideas are:

States should spend without worrying about spending the money of their tax payers.

Once the money is gone continue spending with debt, don't worry about interest or inflation, as central bank you can create money out of thin air.

Continue "stimulating" the economy, raise taxes to 100% or declare bankruptcy of your debt if necessary, inflation does not matter, that people loose all their savings does not matter, that private economy disappears does not matter.

He is a neo-keynesian that says that the problem with Japan was that it stopped spending.

You know, that's not actually what he belives. In fact, I might go as far as to say, your entire argument is a strawman.

> States should spend without worrying about spending the money of their tax payers I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. That government spending is immoral? Yes I doubt he agrees with that premise, but I doubt many people do.

> Once the money is gone continue spending with debt, don't worry about interest or inflation, as central bank you can create money out of thin air.

Krugman is not calling for unchecked spending, as you appear to be implying. During the bush years, he frequently criticized policies that ran up debt. However, in his view the long term cost of a recession/stagnant economy is much larger that the amount of debt that might be bought to perform quantitative easing, or any other government intervention in times of financial crisis.

> Continue "stimulating" the economy, raise taxes to 100% or declare bankruptcy of your debt if necessary, inflation does not matter, that people loose all their savings does not matter, that private economy disappears does not matter.

Complete hyperbole. Where on earth did you learn about krugman? Because frankly this comment is awful. You start by calling him a shill, which quite clearly shows your biases, and gives you a reason to dismiss his arguments without giving them proper thought. You then go on to call him not very intelligent which is frankly condescending and very arrogant. And then straight after that you have a sentance that sounds exactly like a libertarian talking point. It has all the markers of being a great political attack: comparison to soviet union, allusions to loss of liberty/totalitarianism, and most of all, factually incorrect.

You call him a shill yet you come off as one, and you give no indication that you have ever tried to understand his ideas with an open mind. I do not subscribe to the Randian ideology, yet I can see why a person might. Can you do the same for krugman? When children are young, sometimes they get told to name five good things about a person before they express their dislike for then. Can you do that for krugman?

This is a gross mischaracterization of what Krugman believes. All of your statements about his ideas are wrong as can be easily verified if you read what he writes. A quote from the first link of a search of his writings that debunks your first claim.

But we won’t always be in this situation — or at least I hope not! Someday the private sector will see enough opportunities to want to invest its savings in plant and equipment, not leave them sitting idle, and the economy will return to more or less full employment without needing deficit spending to keep it there. At that point, money that the government prints won’t just sit there, it will feed inflation, and the government will indeed need to persuade the private sector to make resources available for government use.

And that’s why I don’t accept the idea that deficits are never a problem.

The last sentence is particularly relevant.

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