Robert Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University in England and author of a three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, so presumably he knows something about economics. Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize winning economist and former chief economist for the World Bank, so presumably he knows something about economics. But according to Skidelsky, writing in the New York Review of Books, Stiglitz’s latest book, Making Globalization Work, is a windy, unreliable blend of preaching and economics that longs for an all-powerful international order that will force “bad” rich nations to behave themselves and be nice to helpless, deserving poor nations. Stiglitz “lacks the eloquence, urgency, and passion of the preacher, while he has too often abandoned the rigor of the scientist,” Skidelsky concludes.
Skidelsky convinces me, without even bothering to say so, that Stiglitz really hates globalization, and wants to make the world one great big Sweden, to be run, naturally, by Nobel Prize winners. But then Skidelsky, after excoriating (I think that’s a word) Stiglitz for his populist, protectionist mentality, turns right around and accuses Stiglitz of not being populist enough. Stiglitz, it seems, is so selfish that he can only offer “continued retraining and improvements in skills to fit American workers for life in a competitive global economy,” instead of (apparently) pumping for outright protectionism. “There can be too much competition,” Skidelsky intones, sounding as though he’s angling for a job with Obama or Hillary, though he probably isn’t.*
Skidelsky is pretty vague about the details, but apparently he’d like to see a blend of Keynes and Friedrich Hayek (good luck with that), or at least some set of policies that reflect “their greater concern with the problem of securing macroeconomic stability.” I can’t argue with that as a prescription for covering your ass, but it doesn’t provide much practical guidance.
It’s striking that economists have such a hard time believing in the most fundamental concepts of their field. In the West, capitalism has made it possible, for the first time in history, for ordinary people to live “human” lives—lives that are not determined by brute necessity. What we call “globalization” is the first step in spreading that freedom to the rest of the world. But both Skidelsky and Stiglitz are far more interested in talking about globalization’s failures than its successes, and the “solutions” they propose involve a retreat from globalization rather than an advance. It’s almost enough to make one a skeptic.
*Like Princeton economist Alan Binder, Skidelsky seems to be particularly shocked by the fact that outsourcing is now affecting skilled as well as unskilled workers. Apparently, it was OK when only dummies were losing their jobs.
