Paul Krugman has been beating up on him a lot recently:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/the-truthiness-is-out-there/
OK, this is awesome. Dylan Byers at Politico gets Erick son of Erick to respond to my observation that, although he rants about the rising prices of milk and bread — which somehow has something to do with pundits riding the Acela — the truth is that milk and bread prices have been flat for about five years, and in particular have gone nowhere despite all that money the Fed has printed. And Erickson’s response is, hey, it isn’t true, but people feel that it’s true. ...
Notice, by the way, the implication that I don’t appreciate the problems real people (who don’t eat quiche or ride the Acela) are facing; actually, I do, but those problems are lack of jobs and stagnant wages, not rising prices. And if you want to solve problems, getting the nature of those problems right matters.
But then, only elitists want to solve problems; true men of the people just vent, and what matters is perception, not truth.
Update: Josh Barro says it’s all about the derp.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/regions-of-derpistan/
Josh Barro has made a very useful contribution to policy discussion by adapting the term “derp” for a certain kind of all-too-prevalent stance in economic debate, which Noah Smith somewhat euphemistically describes as “the constant, repetitive reiteration of strong priors”. In other words, people who take a position and refuse to alter that position no matter how strongly the evidence refutes it, who continue to insist that they have The Truth despite being wrong again and again. ...
Some have moved to Outer Derpistan, a land of utter intellectual barbarism; here we have Erick Erickson declaring never mind the facts, he has feelings, and Niall Ferguson declaring that we really do have inflation, but the feds are spiriting it away in their black helicopters and burying it in Area 51.
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