Gestabloggari: Paul Krugman

Eg havi fingið onkrar afturmeldingar um at tær fittu og hampiligu bloggviðmerkingarnar eru hugaligari at lesa enn tá eg royni at rætta lygn og manipulatión hjá onkrum, ella gevi onkrum eitt spark sum ikki dugir síni ting.

Tað er ikki ætlanin at kalla fólk býtt. Tá eg hendingaferð geri tað, so haldi eg altíð eg grundgevi væl fyri tí. Men tað er ofta, at eg tali at, tá fólk lúgva og manipulera, ella tá fólk í týdningarmiklum størvum ikki gera sítt arbeiði til lítar, t.d. journalistar ella embætisfólk, fyri ikki at tala um politikarar. Eg haldi man skal siga tað, tá man sær manipulatión ella fakligan dovinskap.

Paul Krugman er ikki gestabloggari her, men hann skrivaði eina bloggu fyri nøkrum døgum síðani, sum eg eins væl kundi skrivað sjálvur, við bara at rætta nakrar detaljur so tær passa til tað eg skrivi mest um. Eg endurgevi hana her:

Macroeconomic Morality

A brief postscript to today’s column: contrary to what some people may think, I don’t regard anyone who disagrees with me as necessarily a mendacious idiot. Economics is hard, and people will disagree. Sometimes people will give advice with the best of intentions that turns out, in hindsight, to have been disastrous; that’s a tragedy but not a sin.

But here’s what is indeed a sin: choosing your position based on what is personally convenient.
I may make jokes along the way – I kind of need to in order to stay sane – but the stuff I write about is extremely serious; there’s a vast human tragedy taking place, and anyone who has the ear of the public has a duty to make a good-faith effort to get it as right as he can.

Yet all too many players in this game, very much including economists and public officials, very obviously haven’t been making that good faith effort. They’ve seized on dubious arguments, touted obviously weak evidence as definitive, looked for excuses either not to act themselves or for their friends not to act. And invariably the thrust of these bad arguments is to comfort the comfortable and give them license to afflict the afflicted.

I like to think that I have enough integrity to change my views when it becomes clear that they were wrong. Maybe, maybe not — although it’s probably worth pointing out that I didn’t believe in the liquidity trap and was pretty down on old-fashioned Keynesianism until 1998, when a hard look at Japan and an attempt to understand what was happening there led me to change my mind. Anyway, I try, because the ideas of economists and political philosophers matter.

And too many people aren’t trying, which is, as I said, a sin.