Krugman Upended By His Own Logic

In a recent New York Times column, Paul Krugman made the assertion that “self-proclaimed libertarians deal with the problem of market failure both by pretending that it doesn’t happen and by imagining government as much worse than it really is.”

According to Krugman, the “self-proclaimed libertarians” are either stupidly or maliciously engaged in “projection” – attributing base motives to their political opponents that underlie their own highly prejudicial reasoning.

Kudos to Per Bylund, a research professor at the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University, for flipping the situation around and pointing out how all you need to do is to replace “libertarian” with any of the words that Krugman might use to describe his own thinking to see a wonderful example of projecting your own intellectual failings onto others of the opposite persuasion.

As Bylund observed in today’s Mises.org: “Keynesiasn/progressives/(whatever) like Krugman deal with the problem of government failure both by pretending that it doesn’t happen and by imagining the market as much worse than it is.”