That is to say, DeLong punks Krugman if “punk” means “point out the gaping logical and factual fallacies in an opponent’s argument.”
Berkeley economist Brad DeLong frequently links to Princeton economist and Nobel winner about town Paul Krugman with an enthusiasm that can approach hero worship. Today, however, Brad shows himself to be a man by effortlessly taking Paul to task when Paul starts in that mournful, old liberal rap about how everything has just gone to hell in a handbasket these days, with the “hollowing out” of the middle class, the death of the American dream, and yada, yada, yada.
Well, as Brad points out, that just ain’t so. “We have gone from having 80% of our males working outside-the-home as farmers and farm laborers down to 2%. We have gone from having a world in which nearly every female past puberty spends her life effectively chained to her children, her kitchen, or her loom to one in which I cannot think of a house I have been in in a decade that had a loom. We have already gone through the great transformation by which the general business of life–growing and processing our food, building our shelter, weaving our clothes, and telling ourselves stories for information and entertainment–has been extraordinarily, comprehensively automated. And yet we have found things to do.”
What Paul and the rest of the “weren’t the Fifties great” crowd won’t hear is that life has been getting better, better, better, all the time, with the last couple of years not being that fantastic. Per capita GDP has increased from $13,225 in 1950 to $41,890 in 2009, down from $43,842 in 2007 (calculated in 2007 dollars). For the price of 10-inch black and white TV set* in 1950 (1950 price: $229; adjusted for 2007 dollars, $1952) you can buy a flat-screen TV, a five-speaker “home theater” sound system, and a blu-ray dvd player, allowing you to sit at home and enjoy classic films, classic operas, classic whatever, for free, courtesy of your local library. (And you can download free porno from the Internet.)
Paul and the gang keep pushing that old-fashioned lunch-bucket liberalism, and they can’t figure out why no one’s buying. It’s because no one carries a lunch bucket any more.
*Follow the link for a fabulous Philco ad: “just plug in and play”! Hey! TV the easy way!
