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In late February, the City University of New York announced that it had tapped Princeton economist and New York Times blogger Paul Krugman for a distinguished professorship at CUNY’s Graduate Center and its Luxembourg Income Study Center, a research arm devoted to studying income patterns and their effect on inequality.
About that. According to a formal offer letter obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, CUNY intends to pay Krugman $225,000, or $25,000 per month (over two semesters), to “play a modest role in our public events†and “contribute to the build-up†of a new “inequality initiative.†It is not clear, and neither CUNY nor Krugman was able to explain, what “contribute to the build-up†entails.
It’s certainly not teaching. “You will not be expected to teach or supervise students,†the letter informs Professor Krugman, who replies: “I admit that I had to read it several times to be clear ... it’s remarkably generous.†(After his first year, Krugman will be required to host a single seminar.)
About that. According to a formal offer letter obtained under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, CUNY intends to pay Krugman $225,000, or $25,000 per month (over two semesters), to “play a modest role in our public events†and “contribute to the build-up†of a new “inequality initiative.†It is not clear, and neither CUNY nor Krugman was able to explain, what “contribute to the build-up†entails.
It’s certainly not teaching. “You will not be expected to teach or supervise students,†the letter informs Professor Krugman, who replies: “I admit that I had to read it several times to be clear ... it’s remarkably generous.†(After his first year, Krugman will be required to host a single seminar.)
This is the same Paul Krugman who, in addition to just being chronically wrong for his entire life, wrote this, presumably with a straight face, barely a month before accepting the position:
There is also a counterpart on the upside of the income distribution: an obvious desire to believe that rising incomes at the top are kind of the obverse of the alleged social problems at the bottom. According to this view, the affluent are affluent because they have done the right things: they’ve gotten college educations, they’ve gotten and stayed married, avoiding illegitimate births, they have a good work ethic, etc.. And implied in all this is that wealth is the reward for virtue, which makes it hard to argue for redistribution.
The trouble with this picture is that it might work for people with incomes of $200,000 or $300,000 a year; it doesn’t work for the one percent, or the 0.1 percent. Yet the bulk of the rise in top income shares is in fact at the very top.
[....]
This is, by the way, why the Occupy slogan about the one percent is so brilliant. I would actually argue that the number should be even smaller. But one percent is an easy to remember number, and small enough to make it clear that we’re not talking about the upper middle class.
And that’s good. The myth of the deserving rich is, in its own way, as destructive as the myth of the undeserving poor.
The trouble with this picture is that it might work for people with incomes of $200,000 or $300,000 a year; it doesn’t work for the one percent, or the 0.1 percent. Yet the bulk of the rise in top income shares is in fact at the very top.
[....]
This is, by the way, why the Occupy slogan about the one percent is so brilliant. I would actually argue that the number should be even smaller. But one percent is an easy to remember number, and small enough to make it clear that we’re not talking about the upper middle class.
And that’s good. The myth of the deserving rich is, in its own way, as destructive as the myth of the undeserving poor.
Of course, Krugman is the so-called "1%," but he's still keeping up his schtick. And his sycophants of course slavishly defend him, with some unintended hilarity. As noted in the comments of the Gawker article:
Let's not get into a thing about what "irony" means, but suffice to say I don't agree it's "ironic" that a man who cares about income inequality is accepting a salary in proportion to what his credentials merit...
That was apparently written with a straight face.
This economic genius Krugman devotee was pounced-upon, appropriately:
So it's proportionate in a system he and the institute believe is unequal and disproportionate. Excellent premise to stand on...
Right, but a CEO managing a multi-billion dollars company does not "merit" pay in the millions of dollars.
So basically what you are saying is that ppl should get paid for what they are worth or what they contribute. For example, a person who works at McDonalds should only get paid minimum wage since (1) that the skill set they bring to the table and (2) that's the ballpark of what other fast food workers make... Makes sense to me!
What kind of salary would be proportional to the merits of the credentials of a high school dropout working at Wal-Mart as a shelf stocker?
And then there's twitter:
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