Just a quick note on this post from Krugman which includes
So am I saying that you can have full employment based on purchases of yachts, luxury cars, and the services of personal trainers and celebrity chefs? Well, yes. You don’t have to like it, but economics is not a morality play, and I’ve yet to see a macroeconomic argument about why it isn’t possible.
Not only is economics a morality play; it is
the morality play. Yes you can have a British class system Downtown Abbey style economy in America; we already do to some extent. No you cannot reach full employment with such a system in modern times.
The problem would be one of structural unemployment. Most Americans simply lack the centuries of kiss ass skills bred into class system workers. The most important of these skills is a passion for working very hard for very little.
That's the macroeconomic problem with Krugman's dystopia. The microeconomic problem is much worse
Full employment in microeconomics is when the economy is employing all of its available resources. This simply means that the capital goods and capital resources are at their highest and most efficient within the economy.
It is difficult to be efficient with trickle down economics. If you spend most of your employment on products and services that only a small minority consumes, hard to also provide for the general welfare.
6:10 AM PT: Look people I am very happy that we have a slightly liberal voice at the New York Times. It doesn't make his ideas about economics any more correct. I am refuting the possibility of the economy he claims could exist. The evidence is completely on the side of that economy being a unicorn since we have been trying and failing at trickle down for three decades in America.
Other notes - we lack the culture here for Downton Abbey but we can do Downtown Abbey. There is no Nobel prize in economics. The prize given using Nobel's name comes from a bank. And before you continue this hero worship nonsense on an argument of ideas please remember that Stiglitz, whom Krugman is disagreeing with, is the real hero, not Krugman.