![]() It has not been a fun thing to admit.Īs a final note, Bartlett's latest book, The Benefit and The Burden, should be mandated reading for young conservatives seeking to understand our movement and how the government should seek to shape tax policy. The blind hatred for him on the right simply pushed me further away from my old allies and comrades.įor the record, I've come to the same painfully embarrassing conclusion about Krugman. I had previously viewed Krugman as an intellectual enemy and attacked him rather colorfully in an old column that he still remembers.įor the record, no one has been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the economy’s problems than Paul Krugman. Annoyingly, however, I found myself joined at the hip to Paul Krugman, whose analysis was identical to my own. I even wrote another op-ed for the New York Times in December 2008 advocating a Keynesian cure that holds up very well in light of history. ![]() On the plus side, I think I had a very clear understanding of the economic crisis from day one. I tried to repair the damage as best I could, but in the end the book was a mishmash of competing ideas with no clear narrative. Unfortunately, my publisher insisted on publishing it on schedule. The book needed to be rethought and rewritten from scratch in light of new developments. Keynesian ideas had arisen from the intellectual grave. We needed Keynesian policies again, which completely ruined my nice rise-and-fall thesis. Having just finished a careful study of the 1930s, it was immediately obvious to me that the economy was suffering from the very same problem, a lack of aggregate demand. This created another intellectual crisis for me. I finished the book just as the economy was collapsing in the fall of 2008. The fact that Keynesian ideas were correct as well as popular simply made my thesis stronger. ![]() It didn’t affect the argument in my book, which was only about the rise and fall of ideas. But facts were facts and there was no denying my conclusion. A particularly intriguing segment of the story deals with how he came to change his opinion on Keynesian economics.Īfter careful research along these lines, I came to the annoying conclusion that Keynes had been 100 percent right in the 1930s. He covers his time working in movement conservative circles (with the obligatory stints at National Review, the Heritage Foundation, and the Wall Street Journal) as well as his gradual break with the Republican Party. Bruce Bartlett's mini-memoir over at The American Conservative is well worth your time. ![]()
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