Krugman lies. In other news: water is wet

That’s funny, I haven’t heard a rejoinder from commenter “Jeb” about the “actual people” turned away from the polls in Florida during Election 2000. Maybe he’s at Home Depot picking up wheelbarrows for all the affidavits. That said, Don Luskin (natch) has all the Krugman backlash and Patterico has his letter to the public editor of the NY Times. However, don’t expect Krugman to comport his opinion to the conclusions of his own newspaper. Here’s how former NYT ombudsman Daniel Okrent described Paul Krugman’s reaction to people telling him he’s wrong:

When he says he agreed “reluctantly” to one correction, he gives new meaning to the word “reluctantly”; I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism.

My main criticism of Krugman is that, for an economist, he almost never feels the need to use numbers and statistics in his articles. Instead, he employs squishy generalities that are hard to pin down, so that he always has an escape route. By contrast, check out the WashPost’s Robert Samuelson who has an excellent article titled “Retirement at 70.” He presents a thesis (the government can’t support aging retirees), urges for a later retirement age, and lays out the allegations of age discrimination in the workplace. Samuelson is not an ideologue, but instead somebody who lays out a lucid argument with supporting data. Is that so much to ask? I think not.