Paul Krugman is discussed across four episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, never as a guest. He is invoked by Bob Zadek and by the economist guests Peter Suderman, Stephen Moore, Steven E. Rhoads and Thomas DiLorenzo as an example of a left-of-center or Keynesian economist whose conclusions the speakers treat as politically motivated rather than scientifically derived.
The 2011 debt-ceiling debate
In the August 13, 2011 episode on the Standard & Poor’s downgrade, Zadek introduced Krugman while criticizing the language of the fiscal debate. He said Krugman uses the word “extremist” in every piece that he writes, and compared him to Ronald Reagan, whom Zadek described as an extremist when he ran for Governor of California and when he ran for President Is the US the Next Enron? (2011). In the same passage Zadek paired Krugman with Howard Dean, who Zadek said argued that taxes on the wealthy should be raised, and questioned how an economics textbook would define who is wealthy, calling the question subjective.
The episode’s substantive argument about taxation came from Suderman, an associate editor at Reason magazine. Suderman said that allowing the Bush tax cuts on the top two income classes to expire could reduce the deficit by about a trillion dollars over the next decade, against a projected deficit he put at seven trillion dollars over the same period, or more likely twelve trillion. He concluded that a trillion dollars in deficit reduction from taxing the rich does not get you halfway there Is the US the Next Enron? (2011). Zadek responded with the observation that the economy will not produce more than 19% of GDP in taxation, a figure he called astonishing and a rule of nature. Suderman added that countries with higher total revenue relative to their economies achieve it by taxing the middle class and through regressive taxes such as the VAT.
Krugman as a failed forecaster
By the October 6, 2018 episode with Stephen Moore, Krugman appears as a predictor whose warnings did not materialize. Moore said that people like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers said the election of Donald Trump would be a complete economic disaster, and that the economy was instead in its best shape in 40 years Stephen Moore on Trumponomics (2018). Moore’s broader argument was that Keynesian economics had been tested under Barack Obama — through federal borrowing he put at $10 trillion, an $800 billion fiscal stimulus bill, Obamacare, minimum wage increases, tax increases on the rich, and Federal Reserve easing — and produced the weakest recovery from a recession since the Great Depression. He contrasted this with supply-side economics under Trump, citing the lowest unemployment rate, a stock market up over 42% since the election, seven million more jobs than people to fill them, and after-tax wage and income gains for middle-class workers. Moore also said that roughly 75% of economists today, especially those trained at Ivy League schools, have been taught Keynesian economics.
Left-of-center economics as a category
The July 11, 2022 episode with Steven E. Rhoads contains the show’s most extended treatment of what Krugman represents. Zadek raised the phrase “left-wing economists,” which he said Rhoads had used in referring to Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, and objected that left-wing is a political construct while economics is a scientific one, comparing it to a left-wing view of gravity The Economist’s View of the World (2022). Rhoads corrected him, saying he had used the term left-of-center rather than left-wing, and Zadek accepted the correction.
Zadek then offered his own characterization: a left-of-center economist such as Krugman acknowledges what the lesson of economics is but is not happy with the result, and therefore pays less than 100% attention to the economics because of other, political goals. Rhoads described the left-of-center position as concern about the dollars people start with — the distribution of income — and said such economists believe some people have too few and others too much. He argued that economic growth helps everybody, that the 1% invest most of their money and that investment leads to new inventions, and cited an unnamed well-known economist’s estimate that 98% of the benefits from innovation go to the public and 2% to the innovator. Rhoads said left-of-center economists tend to want to tax away as much as they can get away with, which he called unjust, and that they prefer direct cash transfers to the poor over programs with large administrative costs.
The recession definition
The September 12, 2022 episode with Thomas DiLorenzo turns on a specific factual dispute. DiLorenzo said Krugman taught economics at Princeton for many years and used textbooks similar to his own, and that those textbooks have defined a recession the same way for generations: when the economy shrinks for six months in a row Lies, Damned Lies & the Inflation Reduction Act (2022). DiLorenzo said that when CNN asked Krugman whether the country was in a recession, he said no, even though the Commerce Department had just reported that real GDP had fallen for six months in a row and therefore fit the definition. DiLorenzo said Krugman knows better, and grouped him with Larry Summers as two of the most egregious examples of economists who provide plausible rationales for bigger government. He described Summers, a former Treasury Secretary who taught at Harvard and served as its president, attributing inflation to the January 6th protests in Washington, D.C. DiLorenzo’s general claim was that beginning in the 1930s economists found more money, fun and prestige in government agencies and advisory roles than in teaching undergraduates, and became more interventionist out of self-interest.
Zadek framed the same episode around a symbiotic relationship between economists and politicians, comparing economists to scientists who present themselves to government with claims about how to achieve goals such as economic growth, and said government selects whichever economist’s view it prefers Lies, Damned Lies & the Inflation Reduction Act (2022).
Across episodes
The treatment of Krugman changes in emphasis across the four episodes while the underlying charge stays fixed. In 2011 Zadek attacks his rhetoric, singling out the word “extremist”; in 2018 Moore attacks his forecasting, citing the predicted Trump disaster that did not occur; in 2022 Rhoads supplies a definition of the left-of-center economist’s motives, and DiLorenzo attacks a specific factual claim about the recession definition. The constant across all four is the assertion that Krugman’s economics is subordinate to his politics. No episode presents Krugman speaking for himself, and no guest defends him.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts contain no biographical detail about Krugman beyond DiLorenzo’s statement that he taught economics at Princeton for many years, and no discussion of his academic work, his columns, or any book he wrote. They do not state when he was born, where he was educated, whether he has held government office, or what prizes he has received. Nothing in the excerpts indicates that the show ever sought or obtained an interview with him, and no guest is identified as a defender of his positions.