I admit it: I have never been a big fan of Paul Krugman. I do not care for his vulgar Keynesianism or his vulgar rhetoric. His humourless sanctimoniousness, his angry ad hominem attacks, his lack of courtesy and his cavalier attitude to the facts are not to my taste. 

All this said, I cannot deny that he plays a useful role in the economists’ ecosystem: everyone needs a bogeyman. His proposal in 2011 that we should solve the economic crisis by faking an alien space invasion was a hoot. But whereas sensible people had a laugh and took his proposal as the logical outcome of Keynesianism pushed ad absurdum, he really meant it. If he didn’t exist, we would have to make him up. 

However, his recent slurs against the Cato Institute are a step too far even by his standards. 

120 years ago American factories electrified their operations, triggering the Second Industrial Revolution in which steam engines were replaced with motors. This general purpose technology (GPT) – a technology that can affect an entire economy, usually at a national or global level – created new advantages for factories and prompted the invention of new work processes, allowing for increased growth and productivity. Innovation researcher Erik Brynjolfsson outlines three major GPT since the 18th century: the steam engine, electricity, and the internet, and along with Andrew McAfee, has coined this era The New Machine Age and produced a highly praised book of the same name. In this New Machine Era, they identify growing decoupling of productivity and employment: productivity is growing, but employment is decreasing. Correspondingly, wealth is increasing, but work is decreasing.

Of course it's also true that an entire absence of regulation will kill people too. The trick thus is to get the level of regulation correct. This is something that does not, to put it mildly, always happen:

This is very much the year of the outsider, and the year in which the establishment machine politicians are rejected by angry voters.  Donald Trump is a complete outsider, yet in a series of bruising battles that make up US primaries, he has seen off every single establishment party-machine politician ranged against him.  Now there is only one more left against him, and that is Hillary Clinton whom he now faces in November. 

She is almost the embodiment of machine politics, and has the misfortune to face a populist outsider in a year when conventional politicians are mistrusted.  Furthermore, she is tainted as well as mistrusted, with enough doubts about her probity to dampen her support.  The chances must be very high that come November, Donald Trump will be elected the 45th President of the United States.

We're very taken by this quote featured at Cafe Hayek:

We find ourselves rather gasping in amazement at this particular complaint:

Apparently that difficult problem of what we should do about the British economy has been cracked. All doubt resolved, we've now got a plan. To which our answer is great, how excellent!