Paul Krugman
Paul is an idiot savant, without any special talent. No one in the economic press is as persistently and consistently wrong as he is. There are sites dedicated to debunking and mocking him in economic circles. He even manages to time his flip-flops to be stay wrong when situations change. So while Mini-Marx (Robert Reich III), often tries to keep up, he's just not in the same caliber.
Examples
Krugman : 9 items
The Broken Window Fallacy - The Broken Window Fallacy is a fundamental concept of economics (and logic) about seen advantages versus unseen costs. Henry Hazlitt summed up the art of economics as not merely looking at the immediate consequences but the longer effects of any act or policy, and tracing those consequences not merely for one group but for all groups
Memes-Krugman - Krugman may have once been an accomplished micro-economist, but he is a mock-worthy Keynesian macro-economist (an oxymoron). Since working for the NYT, he's taken off his economics hat and put on his polemic propagandist hat (politics trump economics).
Bernie isn't a socialist - According to the smartest Economist on the left (Paul Krugman), Bernie Sanders isn't *REALLY* a socialist, just because he was a marxist that ran for the top position in the Socialist parties, his allies like AOC are socialists, he cheered for the USSR, Venezuela/Chavez and Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega, and wanted to nationalize banking, and still wants to nationalize healthcare and education. He's a Social Democrat (like Denmark) don't know you? Oh, and even if he was a Socialist, it wouldn't really matter (to Paul). Krugman thinks he knows more about Sanders intent and philosophy than Sanders does. Trust Paul, he was the one who foretold the Internet was a fad that would have no more impact than the FAX machine.
Krugman on Legitimacy - "[Joe Biden] will be the first modern U.S. president trying to govern in the face of an opposition that refuses to accept his legitimacy..” ~ Paul Krugman... ignoring that Krugman himself called Trump "illegitimate" a few times, not to mention thousands of lefties at left wing media. They did the same to George Bush for a while. NYT sort of corrected themselves, by first stealth changing the quote to make it look not quite as bad, then when they did admit the mistake, they implied it was a few left wing outlets and failed to admit that it was them and Paul Krugman that had both questioned the legitimacy of Trump and Bush. Real journalists don't act like that. But Democrat operatives posing as journalists do.
Anti-semite apologist - Krugman tweeted tweeted that the only anti-semitism on the right bother him, while excusing the virulent anti-semites in the DNC who want to see the elimination of Israel, they displacement and/or extermination of the millions of Jews who live there, or that they're parasites. And he has no problems with those Democratic National Socialists in WWII Germany, or the ones of Joseph Stalin who drove out and exterminated millions of others. He's either completely ignorant of history (and the present), or a truly vile anti-semite himself.
Austerity lies - Krugman hates austerity, he likes government spending other people's money wantonly. When spending doesn't work, he lies about the causes. When the economy gets better, he lies about the causes. Both in the U.S. and in the U.K. He also lied about the austerity in France and Greece in 2012, Estonia 2012, UK in 2011, and Germany in 2014. Are you seeing a pattern? Paul Krugman is either sloppy or mendacious, and economics aren't known for being sloppy. If the NYT had a fact checker, they would fire him and wouldn't publish FakeNews (propaganda).
Krugman disagrees with himself on minimum wage - Krugman wrote in 1998 review of a book on living wage, "Any Econ 101 student can tell you... the higher wage... leads to unemployment". The 2008 economics textbook he co-authored said the same thing. He trashed the Card and Kruger study/book that implied unemployment didn't always rise with minimum wage. Yet when writing for the NYT, Krugman champions the living wage that he mocked his whole career. Then a year later, slips that France's high unemployment is likely because of their high minimum wage.
Death Panels - Paul admitted that there were Death Panels in the ACA, but argued it would save huge amount of costs and balance the budget. This was based on the economic delusion that putting politicians in charge of healthcare wouldn't politicize healthcare, and that any cuts wouldn't cause backlash that would the cause political pressure to revoke. Of course a decade later we know there was no real savings by putting Government in the murder for profit business (or they were outsized by other things), and Obama certainly had no intentions of balancing the budget. And that the left was wrong all along, and the right was, well, right.
Internet Prediction - 🔮 "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” ~ Paul Krugman. The smartest guy at the NYT, written in an article for Red Herring magazine, explaining why “Most Economists’ Predictions Are Wrong". Then proving it.
Conclusion
I generally hate personal hit pieces against people, but enjoy karmetic revenge if:
- (a) are actually exposing the truth (instead of just twisting it)
- (b) they shred bad arguments/points (correct the record) and back it up, instead of just personal attacks
- (c) they are against sacred cows... like Krugman (or Gore or Moore, etc) that the rest of the media considers off limits.
Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize as well, for showing the dispersed knowledge problem (proving why command economies: e.g. those with central controls including price/wage controls, statistically underperform more free/dispersed economies). Paul got his for a microeconomic proof of showing how some economies are more specialized than others, and for being liberal enough... right before Obama got his Nobel Prize for most creative use of drones. But since working for the NYT, Paul often contradicts basic economic theories, and replacing them with Democrat Talking Points instead.