Moneybox: Krugman vs. Brooks

Now playing: Slate V, a video-only site from the world's leading online magazine. Visit Slate V at www.slatev.com.
Moneybox Krugman vs. Brooks The Times' columnists are brawling about Charles Murray's new book. They are both wrong. By Matthew Yglesias Posted Friday, Feb 17, 2012, at 09:16 PM ET Paul Krugman and David Brooks are titans of the columnist scene, the best and most influential pundits the left and right have to offer. They're also co-workers at the New York Times, an institution that seems to prohibit its op-ed writers from directly engaging with one another. The result can be amusing. On Jan. 31, for example, Brooks hailed Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 as almost certainly the most important book of the year. On Feb. 9, Krugman, without mentioning Brooks by name, denounced the book as "the heart of the conservative pushback" against Occupy Wall Street's focus on income inequality. The real source of working-class woes, according to Krugman, are not the personal virtues cited by Brooks and Murray, but simple economic decline. Things reached the point of true absurdity this week when Brooks wrote a column about "The Materialist Fallacy" adhered to by unnamed "liberal economists" who've created a situation in which "the public debate is dominated by people who stopped thinking in 1975." It's too bad Brooks and Krugman can't—or won't—engage directly, because if they did, they might see that they're both making good points about each other's wrongness—and that there's little reason to give credence to either the liberal or the conservative narrative of decline. Let's start with a good point from Brooks, who rightly says "I don't care how many factory jobs have been lost ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Is Sloth Meat Really Tender and Delicious? More Liberals Are Homeschooling Their Kids. Big Mistake. Have French Parents Forgotten How To Discipline Their Children?	Advertisement
Manage your newsletters subscription: Unsubscribe | Forward to a Friend | Advertising Information
Ideas on how to make something better? Send an e-mail to slatenewsletter@nl.slate.com. Copyright 2011 The Slate Group | Privacy Policy The Slate Group | c/o E-mail Customer Care | 1350 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 410 | Washington, D.C. 20036