The best part about Krugman is reading real economists try to figure out how to deal with him. Mostly they try not to engage, but every now and then you'll see several try to band together to "patch up" some statement he's made that's out of line (in their minds). Always a mistake.
It is not a hard science, but out of all of the soft sciences, I think economists understand just how tenuous their situation is. This is probably because they are using very hard tools to get a handle on a very fuzzy situation.
ADD: One of the bad things over the past 10-15 years has been the use of economics as a political weapon. It was bad enough when professors got stuck in one system or another and you had to wait an entire generation for new ideas to take hold. Now you're seeing a lot of laymen using economics as a way of arguing politics. Doesn't matter to me one way or another what kind of politics people have, but at least if you're an academic you have some notion of the realities of this field of study. In political discourse it's all just throwing dog poop around and supporting your team. That's going to make the serious study of economics even more difficult in the years ahead.
It is not a hard science, but out of all of the soft sciences, I think economists understand just how tenuous their situation is. This is probably because they are using very hard tools to get a handle on a very fuzzy situation.
ADD: One of the bad things over the past 10-15 years has been the use of economics as a political weapon. It was bad enough when professors got stuck in one system or another and you had to wait an entire generation for new ideas to take hold. Now you're seeing a lot of laymen using economics as a way of arguing politics. Doesn't matter to me one way or another what kind of politics people have, but at least if you're an academic you have some notion of the realities of this field of study. In political discourse it's all just throwing dog poop around and supporting your team. That's going to make the serious study of economics even more difficult in the years ahead.