Dean Baker Does Some Fact Checking On David Brooks

Dean Baker read the David Brooks article that I posted yesterday and he decided to take it seriously and point out the errors in the Brooks essay. Brooks is very smart and clever but his job on the NYT is to balance the work of Paul Krugman. The result is that we get a conservative and a liberal on the op-ed page. Krugman is a Nobel Laureate economist, and Brooks is an amateur sociologist, historian, who has a talent for writing articles that appear to be deeper and more learned than they are. He is just a more sophisticated version of Rush Limbaugh. He just makes things up. Unfortunately, he is very successful. I have several well educated friends who love his columns, and his slot on PBS every Friday. They like him because he is smart, and he gives the impression of being moderate. I can't convince them that he always works his way to a conservative answer to the questions that he raises.