If Krugman was copying Marx and Engels, Einstein was basically copying Newton and Maxwell.
That is not to say that his work is great economics... I do not trust economics... I like the prize becasue he is an eocnomist which is nto on the vicious Friedman side... the other stuff is real science?..don0t kno...and in any cas economist should decide...but Krugman was not copyediting Marx and Engels, that's not true.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
That said, I must point out that Krugman's emminence depends entirely on one's awe of the Nobel committee, where awe signifies nothing less than arrogation of one's own critical faculties to a bunch of people.
Most certainly Marx and Engles predicted "urbanization," the a result of mass confiscation of property, means of production actually owned and distributed as goods and services. The UK and US governments have been dedicated for some time to eliminating competition among property owners. Check out Einstein's political standing, in the time fold.
Most certainly Newton expressed gravity in mathematical language. He was also a religionist and alchemist embedded in the UK parliament. Your association of Krugman to that personage doesn't particularly validate Krugman's, shall we say, impariality to determine metrics of government functions.
I've no idea what Maxwell to which you refer. They all look dodgy, too, in terms of democratic and "scientific" rigor.
What I'm suggesting is that the Nobel committe selected Mr Krugman as an exceptional figure, as was the case with Gore, purely based on his media reach, circulation numbers. And that's pathetic. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
Arguably the most important advance in physics in all of the 19th century and very probably a prerequisite for the formulation of special and general relativity.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.