Arguing with Economists: 7 Principles

Noah Smith, one of my favorite economics bloggers, produced a list of 7 principles you need to know when arguing with economists.  Many of them are generally applicable to arguing with “experts” in general.  Well worth a look.

My favorite principle is one that I will call “The Krugman Principle.”

Principle 7: The message is not the messenger.

Example: “Well, that argument is being made by Person X, who is obviously just angry/a political hack/ignorant/not a real economist/a commie/stupid/corrupt.”

Suggested Retort: “Well, now it’s me making the argument! So what are you going to say about me?”

Reason You’re Right: This should be fairly obvious, but people seem to forget it. Even angry hackish ignorant stupid communist corrupt non-economists can make good cogent correct arguments (or, at least, repeat them from some more reputable source!). Arguments should be argued on the merits. This is the converse of Principle 1.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been told that “Krugman is just a hack!” or “Krugman is just a Liberal!” or, my personal favorite, “Krugman worked for Enron!” to which I respond “that may be so, but that doesn’t make him wrong.”  [Side note: My favorite one of all time was when one of the Twitter trolls actually called Krugman a communist.  A communist?  Really???]

In point of fact, Krugman is more often right than any other pundit in America.

I quite like this retort.  It comes in handy every day on Twitter.