Here’s Paul Krugman:
Donald Trump won the electoral college at least in part by promising to bring coal jobs back to Appalachia and manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt. Neither promise can be honored – for the most part we’re talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but to technological change. But a funny thing happens when people like me try to point that out: we get enraged responses from economists who feel an affinity for the working people of the afflicted regions – responses that assume that trying to do the numbers must reflect contempt for regional cultures, or something.
I’ve made this same argument in a half dozen recent posts over at Econlog. And I also get people complaining that I have no empathy for the adversely affected workers.
I promote neoliberal policies precisely because they are good for the working class.
PS. I believe that readers will find my new Econlog post to be of interest.
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This entry was posted on December 20th, 2016 and is filed under International economics, Praising Krugman.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.
