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Wednesday, 03/12/03

Brad DeLong replies to Mickey Kaus's attempt to poke holes in Paul Krugman:

So why doesn't Krugman say all this--that there are two dangers, that they work at different time scales, that today I'm going to talk about the second long-run danger, and that better fiscal policy for the United States would involve bigger deficits today (and for the next several years) and big surpluses tomorrow ("tomorrow" starting five years from now)? That would keep Mickey Kaus (and, I fear, hundreds of thousands of others) from being puzzled.

Well, he only has 700 words.

My view is that the op-ed column length is the work of the Devil. It is too long to make one simple important point--so an op-ed column has to at least pretend to take a comprehensive view. But it is too short to really take a comprehensive view of anything. IMHO, the op-ed column length is one of the many, many things that degrades the quality of our political discourse.

Word. 12:09PM «


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