The Uselessness of Paul Krugman
The liberal economist ignores basic rules of the market in service to the progressive agenda.
There’s nothing liberals love more than apologizing for the misdeeds of others. Recently in the New York Times Magazine, Paul Krugman took it to an extreme with his 6,670-word article titled “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?”.
Don’t bother reading it. It’s clear that he still doesn’t get it and definitely isn’t looking for any real answers.
Just the length of the piece is comical. We imagine poor Paul gazing out the window of his New York Times office searching for just one more quote, one more study, one more insight to help redeem his profession and his reputation in the wake of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Because in Krugman’s ivory tower and on the Times editorial board, economics still matters and no debate about stimulus packages or health care plans or financial regulation would be complete without his unique and important insights. He’s too big to fail and worth every word. And who could edit him anyway? He won a Nobel Prize.
Over here in reality, most of us already know that he and those that follow in his footsteps have no reputation to salvage. As the chief hand waver for the liberal establishment, Krugman is ready at a moment’s notice to pen op-eds and cite studies that support any policy that his progressive paymasters dream up, even if it defies the most basic economic principles.
Economics is a subject that students love to hate, and I was no exception. Much of it is so theoretical that it is not just a waste of time, but in obvious conflict with the real world. For example, in Macro, I was taught that having both low inflation and low unemployment was impossible, even though thankfully America has accomplished this for most of my working life.
Still, two economic concepts did penetrate the fog: “supply and demand” and “incentives matter.” They are intuitive, easy to understand and apply, and deadly weapons against progressive economic policies.
Take ObamaCare, an easy target. According to the Democrats’ dubious accounting there are 30 to 45 million uninsured. But once the government starts to offer quality health insurance priced below-market, why wouldn’t every single American have an incentive to sign up? Especially when their employers decide that it is easier to pay the fine than to provide care? Incentives matter.
Then supply and demand enters the picture. More patients means more demand for doctors, which would normally be a good thing for the profession. Yet the government is capping and cutting reimbursements, which reduces the supply of medical care. It’s Jimmy Carter all over again, but with lines at the “free” clinic instead of the gas pump.
Does it end there? No, it never ends. Patients still want care, so they buy supplemental private insurance policies. The best doctors exit public care and patient wait times increase and quality deteriorates. And although the government should be happy to get a few patients off the rolls, just ask anyone in the UK or Australia what the general attitude is to private insurance and care.
Apply supply and demand and incentives, and its obvious that progressive policies disrupt markets, kill jobs, and destroy wealth. History is full of examples, and we don’t need to turn to the wreckage of the Soviet empire. Amity Shales wrote an excellent book, the Forgotten Man, that describes how President Roosevelt’s policies during and after the Great Depression harmed the very people they were supposed to help for at least a decade.
What’s maddening is that Krugman and his kind aren’t completely ignorant of supply and demand and incentives. They know that with the right economic policies in place, America – in other words, you — can be on the right side of the social justice fight. Your carbon and soda tax dollars can pay GE and the green jobs czar whatever is necessary to turn America — yes, you again – into a country of green global citizens supporting multiculturalism and diversity.
Progressives wielding junk science is nothing new, but economics is a particularly attractive target because it is a soft science masquerading as a hard one. It is a social science, like sociology or anthropology, and an economist is simply someone, anyone, who studies the economy in whatever way they choose to do so.
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Tristan Yates is a management and investment analyst and the author of Enhanced Indexing Strategies. His articles and research have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance, and many other publications.
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57 Comments
1. Mike Murray:Practitioners of the so-called “hard” sciences, ones based primarily on quantitative — rather than qualitative — analysis, are presumed by far too many people to be above reproach. The gullible believe them to be (as was Det. Friday on the televisions program Dragnet), after “just the facts.”
If only it were so. It seems that politics has always polluted every nook and cranny of academic endeavor. And it also seems that, for Democrats in particular, party affiliation trumps all.
Even in disciplines such as physics and astronomy, “service to party” is a noxious intrusion. See: Intelligent Dishonesty (by design) http://emmeffemm.com/id30.htm.
Most disturbing to me was a comment I read in a local newspaper. It was embedded in a column written by a retired Christian minister. In it, he revealed that he preached many things from the pulpit that he really didn’t believe. It was his job, you see.
But now that he was retired, he opted to let his liberal “freak flag fly.” He decided to take a few jabs at Christianity — as a service to local Democrats (who clearly viewed spiritual adherents as conservatives).
I say, he owes his former congregation one huge refund.
Sep 15, 2009 - 11:39 pm 2. GB:I am an Australian and the linked article from the “The Australian” does not really say why people have insurance here. If you (family)earn over about $Aust 100,000 p.a., there is a Medicare surcharge on top of the normal 1.5% Medicare levy on taxable income. The logical thing to do is pay the private insurance(about $1,200 p.a.). If an emergency happens you will get admitted to a public hospital, and there is no charge-you have already paid taxes and levies. However, the staff will try to get you to nominate an insurer so they can make some extra moolah, from insurer, and send you a bill for “extras”. If you are smart just tell them you are a public patient and there is no cost.
Sep 16, 2009 - 2:03 am 3. vivo:The private insurance is used when you might want surgery NOW, and the public hospital has waiting list. You will likely have to pay a small part of cost but it will be done very soon.
This illustrates that each party will work out for themselves which incentives work for them. The bureaucratic mind seeks to coerce compliance, while free enterprise mind-set is to negotiate a compromise. Australia has a fairly good health system, though the reputation of the service in Queensland is below average, partly due to many imported doctors with questionable competence.
I guess Tristan Yates doesn’t like Krugman.
Every article I have read written by Krugman has been enlightening and realistic. You can tell he’s not participating in a popularity contest.
Sep 16, 2009 - 2:57 am 4. Frank Logan:Vivo, you are the perfect example of “Liberalism = Ignorance”
Sep 16, 2009 - 5:02 am 5. Kazooskibum:#3 You must be kidding. Krugman is anything but realistic. He is closer to Marxism than capitalism and proves it with every article he writes.
Sep 16, 2009 - 5:33 am 6. Tristan Yates:Mike Murray – I wish I had the time to write a really good junk science article. My favorite factoid is that we share 99% of our DNA with chimps according to a few junk science articles in the 90s that were flat out wrong – yet everyone still believes this. (Paging Dr. Zaius…)
GB – Thanks for the comments. Gap insurance, as its sometimes called, is one aspect that hasn’t entered the debate, but to me it seems inevitable. I’m not a health care expert but have friends and colleagues in the UK and Australia and know that would never give up those supplemental private policies.
Vivo – I’m sure the “share the land” stuff is very popular among his constituency. He’s hoping they let him write the next Five Year Plan, finally severing what’s left of the “evil” link between work and wealth.
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:03 am 7. Earl T:Photo of Krugman holding a cat says it all! Sorry, REAL MEN with real ideas do not hold “kitties”! Just call him “Nancy”, call his ideas “Marxist” and be done with him!
There is clearly nary a callus on either his hands or his brain, to show that real work has ever been done by both. Just another effete snob preaching his arrogant visions/wishes for what ails the lowly proles!
“If only they could understand how intelligent I am,” wishes this weenie Princeton prof!
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:09 am 8. RE:I’m surprised the Noble Prize committee further squandered its credibility by awarding a prize to this buffoon.
After giving prizes to Arafat, Carter, and Gore I’m beginningto view the Nobel prize as the equivalent of a ‘razzie’.
Golden_Raspberry
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:09 am 9. TheRant:This Nobeloriate stole the work of others who really did the work. These great scholars who should have won the Nobel Prize are Alan Wilson, Masahisa Fujita, Barkley Rosser,Tonu Puu, Thisse,Michael Sonis and Dimitrios Dendrinos(my husband)who actually did the inequality. These are the heroes of the field not Krugman who is a phony!
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:16 am 10. Thomas Fink:3. “Every article I have read written by Krugman has been enlightening and realistic.”
Realistic, yeah thats the word. Realistic like roasted chicken flying into your mouth. Every time you perform your empty hero worship I send you a quote from somebody who actually predict the financial crisis and makes fun of Krugman. This is from Februar 25:
“The U.S. risks “falling into an economic abyss,” says Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman. He says we’re “on the edge of catastrophe.”
Hold on a minute. Krugman’s warning bell sounds for all the world like the one we used to ring regularly. We used words like “abyss”… “catastrophe”…. “disaster”… “Armageddon.”. We needed to yell like that to get readers’ attention. Most ignored us anyway; they thought we were kooky alarmists. Besides, they were sure everything was great and getting better all the time.
Now, we no longer have to use words like ‘apocalypse’ and ‘armageddon.” Thank God. Words like that are hard to spell. Besides the facts shout loudly enough. We don’t need to get anyone’s attention. What’s needed now is quiet reflection.
Krugman is screaming because he thinks the U.S. bailout plan is not bold enough. He’s right about that. You’re not going to offset General Market’s $50 trillion in damages to with $1 trillion in boodoggles. Krugman thinks you need to spend a lot more.
The aforementioned Bill Gross of PIMCO agrees. He says “trillions” will have to be spent.
And so, dear reader, the war goes on.
And it’s getting more and more expensive. General Market does his damage. And the cost of fighting him mounts. Goldman Sachs says the U.S. Treasury will borrow $2.5 trillion this fiscal year.
How are they going to borrow that kind of money without driving up the price of borrowed funds? ‘Borrow from yourself,’ say the simpleton advisors. They’re urging the Fed to buy the Treasury’s paper itself. That way, America won’t be beholden to foreign lenders – notably, the Chinese – and bond yields won’t be forced up by the buying pressure.
But wait a li’l cotton pickin’ minute. Where does the Fed get trillions of dollars to buy U.S. paper? Oh, we forgot…it just creates it ‘out of thin air.’
Two and a half trillion is nothing but a little ‘2’ and a little ‘5’ followed by 11 little zeros. Heck, the Fed has all the zeros you could want. If not, it can always borrow some from Gideon Gono. He just took 12 zeros off the Zimbabwe dollar; maybe we’ll be able to use them in the US.”
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:29 am 11. misanthropicus:Bill Bonner
Krugman is for economy what Diamond Jarred is for cultural anthropology – both have the same inflexible deterministic (completely excluding the idea of free-will, initiative & individual creativity), outlook of the human enterprise. (Stalin’s Lisenko and Michurin are their complement in biology).
As a conclusion of historical research, this is wrong – as basis of further guidance for this, and other societies’ development, this is in short term at best a sterile approach, in longer term a destructive enterprise. (Hasn’t communism showed its worthiness as political doctrine?)
Is it a suprise that someone with Obama’s inclination for diregisme finds inspiration and justification in Krugman’s and Diamond’s theories for further inflicting himself in America as a dictator?
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:33 am 12. Richard:Instead of a long whiny post about why Paul Krugman is clueless and useless (another negative example still yields no insight on the positive direction), get something by Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Mark Steyn or John Stossel in here. The last thing that Pajamas Media should be spending their precious space on is more brickbat throwing at liberals. Noone here cares about Paul Krugman anyway.
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:39 am 13. misanthropicus:RE #3/vivo: [...] Every article I have read written by Krugman has been enlightening and realistic. [...]
Vivo, your post in this matter is identical with the congratulatory telegrams Brejnev used to receive after reading to the Supreme Soviet the Quinquinal Plan. Can’t you get a funnier master telegram?
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:41 am 14. Anonymous:You can use those praising Robert Mugabe for leading Zimbabwe on the luminous road towards progress and prosperity – with luminous comrades Obama and Krugman leading us, we sure are engaged on the same trajectory.
RE #8/RE: [...] I’m surprised the Noble Prize committee further squandered its credibility by awarding a prize to this buffoon. After giving prizes to Arafat, Carter, and Gore I’m beginningto view the Nobel prize as the equivalent of a ‘razzie’. [...]
Don’t ignore that El Baradei’s merits in giving us an atomic war were equally rewarded with a Nobel Prize.
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:43 am 15. misanthropicus:RE #8/RE: [...] I’m surprised the Noble Prize committee further squandered its credibility by awarding a prize to this buffoon. After giving prizes to Arafat, Carter, and Gore I’m beginningto view the Nobel prize as the equivalent of a ‘razzie’. [...]
Don’t ignore that El Baradei’s merits in giving us an atomic war were equally rewarded with a Nobel Prize.
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:44 am 16. uburoisc:God-almighty, Krugman would have us spend more money that the Treasury prints and the Fed purchases, and destroy our entire economy in the process, before we would cut unessential spending, because to a leftist, the only cuts possible are to the military. Nothing will bring the US down to the third world like another idiotic stimulus bill.
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:48 am 17. Outback Jon:Thanks for this article. There’s a guy on a motorcycle website who quotes Krugman as if it were the Bible. I’m sure this won’t faze him, but it might be fun to watch his reaction.
Sep 16, 2009 - 7:14 am 18. Dale:6. Tristan Yates: “I wish I had the time to write a really good junk science article. My favorite factoid is that we share 99% of our DNA with chimps according to a few junk science articles in the 90s that were flat out wrong – yet everyone still believes this. (Paging Dr. Zaius…)”
A comparison of chimps genetic blueprints with that of the human genome shows that our closest living relatives share 96 percent of our DNA:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_chimp_genes.html
How large does the discrepancy in shared genetic material have to be before you just conclude that scientific research is “junk”? Three percentage points, apparently.
Why do I get the sense that you’re a hack?
Sep 16, 2009 - 7:37 am 19. Dale:11. misanthropicus: “Krugman is for economy what Diamond Jarred is for cultural anthropology – both have the same inflexible deterministic (completely excluding the idea of free-will, initiative & individual creativity), outlook of the human enterprise. (Stalin’s Lisenko and Michurin are their complement in biology).”
Firstly, It’s Jared Diamond. Secondly, there is nothing deterministic about his writing. In Collapse, Diamond argues that we do have the intelligence, the capacity and the creativity to solve the environmental and societal challenges we face, we just lack the collective will to undertake the massive reforms that are necessary.
But I’m sure you wouldn’t know that because I’m sure you never read the book, instead you just dismiss Diamond, because he’s a lefty and is smarter than you.
Sep 16, 2009 - 7:46 am 20. Parabellum:I never could understand how one could be a Liberal and an Economist at the same time.
Makes no sense…
Sep 16, 2009 - 7:52 am 21. Bohemond:“Mike Murray – I wish I had the time to write a really good junk science article.”
You might start with what is generally regarded as the foundation of the green movement: Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring:” shameless scaremongering backed by “peer-reviewed studies” (which turned out to be horseshit)- resulting in millions upon millions of deaths from malaria and yellow fever.
—————-
Dale: I have read Diamond. Guns, Germs and Steel’s thesis is effectively deterministic. Collapse is not directly deterministic, but certainly has that tinge, because of Diamond’s handwringing conclusion (repeatedly hammered home) that humans are too stupid to be enlightened collectivists like himself; or in your words, “we just lack the collective will to undertake the massive reforms that are necessary.”
Never mind that Easter Island’s relevance to the 21st-c global economy is about nil.
Sep 16, 2009 - 8:24 am 22. Sebastian Shaw:Paul Krugman is shrinking like his employer, the New York Times, as his rigid ideology colors his numbers; therefore, eventually he will just disappear like water turns to vapor.
Sep 16, 2009 - 8:45 am 23. MO23:If, at the end, the “smart guys” finally screw up so bad as to destroy the system, who is left to deal with the consequences? I read a fiction novel a few years ago called A Distant Crossing that deals with the same theme. There are consequences to these guys mistakes. It may take a while, like water rolling downhill, but eventually we will all deal with them.
Sep 16, 2009 - 9:03 am 24. VACPA:The definition of an economist = A highly educated individual who, if he doesn’t know your telephone number, will estimate it.
Sep 16, 2009 - 9:16 am 25. Calvin Ball:Lysenko lives!
As Lev Landau got into trouble for saying, Lysenko means that there are no virgins.
Sep 16, 2009 - 10:27 am 26. Mike Sheard:Reminds me of the “smart” person in our office a few years ago. So smart she didn’t realize no one liked her and she got canned due to inability to work with others.
As far as economists go, in my book, if you didn’t wave your hands that the system was about to implode before 2007 then I’m not taking your advice that the recession “is probably over.”
Sep 16, 2009 - 10:32 am 27. Fred Beloit:We see a man who tried to earn wealth and prestige take daring risks with his assets only to lose them. We say “That man failed, he was a failure.
Sep 16, 2009 - 10:34 am 28. Dale:We see a company doing the same with the same result. We call that company a failed enterprise because it went broke.
Social Security and Medicare are both going broke. The Krugmans, Vivos, and Dales of the country say: “Me likie. Give us more of the same now…or rather in 2013.”
27. Fred Beloit: “The Krugmans, Vivos, and Dales of the country say: “Me likie. Give us more of the same now…or rather in 2013.””
No, moron, the Dale of this country says “Next time, let’s not start a bull**** war in Iraq or give tax cuts to the wealthy, and use the money we saved to bolster Social Security and Medicare instead of spending it on killing Iraqis who posed no threat to us or spending it on wasteful no-bid contracts for GOP cronies at Halliburton, KBR, Bechtel and Blackwater.”
Sep 16, 2009 - 10:46 am 29. misanthropicus:RE #19/ Dale:
1) Since the Jarred Diamond/ Diamond Jared typo & switch would surely disqualify me to work for ACORN, please don’t make it public -
2) It is true, I didn’t read “Collapse” and I will not ever do this. I hold the unshakeable belief regarding that work that it is a Santa Monica debate society type of effort – include me out when it comes to liberals’ concerns and worries -
3) As far as mister Diamond’s deterministic outlook, I’m afraid you are completely wrong. While I don’t know whether “Collapse” betrays such a world outlook, my wiew of Diamond’s deterministic views comes from “Guns, germs, whatever”, effort which displays a deep deterministic view/ explanation as to how societies have evolved (devolved?) along history.
Certainly, geography (with its attendant meteorological, botanical and zoological consequences) are very important “setters” of a society’s historical trajectory. However, these objective factors alone cannot explain the vast differences one finds between societies across the planet’s meridians and parallels (extreme example: Japan, a dramatically poor island and their cultural & societal achievement vs. … the Arab/Muslim world which, despite of phenomenal revenues are hopelessly stuck in an un-creative and self-destructive middle age; your New Guinea friends vs. Finland, etc.)
Examples illustrating the inefficiency of these robotic deterministic views (like Diamond’s) are endless and irrefutable – and, understandably, very irritating for orthodox liberals/lefties, whose so comforting postulate of “all cultures are equal” is upset by keener analysis of this world’s evolution.
As far as “I’m sure you never read the book, instead you just dismiss Diamond, because he’s a lefty and is smarter than you”:
Looks like my “You can use those praising Robert Mugabe for leading Zimbabwe on the luminous road towards progress and prosperity – with luminous comrades Obama and Krugman leading us, we sure are engaged on the same trajectory,” upset you pretty much.
What can I do – it’s became obvious since the beginning of Obama’s electoral career that his world view is heavily (and destructively) deterministic, and that he also sees America’s particular evolution as a shameful chapter which must be closed in an left-friendly way.
Disclosure: Be advised that in case you want to continue praising the Krugman’s, Diamond’s, Mugabe’s, Marx’s and Obama’s deterministic wiew of world’s evolution, I’ll respond by quoting David Landes, Victor Hanson, Patrick Moynahan and Edward Banfield (amongs a few others) -
Best regards and again, please don’t ruin my career prospects with ACORN -
Sep 16, 2009 - 10:47 am 30. roberto:“vivo”: according to what seems to be the state of your brain, you should be considering a change of nickname to “muerto”…
Sep 16, 2009 - 11:01 am 31. venividivici:I’m surprised you didn’t link the John Cochrane response to Krugman’s most recent inanities.
http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/#news
Second item down (”Why Did Paul Krugman Get It So Wrong?”).
If Krugman isn’t a hack, he’s certainly hack-ish.
Sep 16, 2009 - 11:15 am 32. The Sahdow:Dale:
You insulted a lot of hacks by using the term on Yates. I have not been to this site for a while and am encourged to see that the quality of the articles has sunk to a new low
Sep 16, 2009 - 11:43 am 33. Thomas Fink:Since Marx the left states that economics have priority, that in fact you cannot understand the culture or the politics of a certain society without understanding its economics. I think this statement has some truth. But since Marx the left thinks that by simply making this statement they acquire an understanding of economics. But in reality it is only their false pretense for taking over the economy without having the slightest understanding of economics. Every state run business offers lower quality and service for higher costs. Thats why they need to eliminate a competitive environment and invade property by taxation (or abrogate it completely as in communism). This is the road to poverty and as Hajek put it to serfdom. Vivo, Dale and Obama do not want to know this. It is abhorrent to them that billions of people with trillions of interactions could just do it without their advice.
Sep 16, 2009 - 12:01 pm 34. RoughRider:Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Paul Krugman strongly resembles the character Carmen Ghia in the original version of “The Producers”
Sep 16, 2009 - 12:05 pm 35. MarkD:Enron’s creditors want that $50,000 they paid for his speech back. It obviously didn’t help.
His employment isn’t keeping the Times afloat either.
Am I the only one who wonders if following his advice woud yield the same results for a nation?
Sep 16, 2009 - 12:11 pm 36. Tristan Yates:Venividi – Thanks for the link, yes that’s an excellent article on Krugman, and Prof Cochrane is great, I’ve read him many times. I wish I had included it.
Dale & progressives – You have a free education in front of you via the PJM articles and intelligent comments – take advantage. You might be surprised that many conservatives & libertarians were democrats & liberals once before they started asking the right questions and thinking through the issues and realizing who the suckers at the table really are.
Sep 16, 2009 - 1:28 pm 37. Dave M.:Since former Enron adviser Paul Krugman didn’t mention Fannie and Freddie, I guess he did not give credit to the Bush Administation, Senator John McCain and other Republican members of Congress for predicting those two GSE’s problems. They didn’t miss it, of course they didn’t do anything about but they didn’t miss it.
Sep 16, 2009 - 1:51 pm 38. Dale:36. Tristan Yates: “You might be surprised that many conservatives & libertarians were democrats & liberals once before they started asking the right questions and thinking through the issues and realizing who the suckers at the table really are.”
The right questions? Like “Where’s the birth certificate?”
I know who the suckers are. The suckers are the poor southerners and midwesterners living in welfare states who continue to get hoodwinked into voting for philandering GOP “leaders” who preach family values and conservative values and who win elections mainly by fear mongering about abortion, death panels and teaching evolution in schools. These poor saps who are losing their homes, jobs, and health care continue to give their votes to these drawling hucksters only to see their tax dollars spent on jet flights for Sanford to visit his mistress and for Jindal to take helicopter rides to church.
Sep 16, 2009 - 2:18 pm 39. misanthropicus:RE #38/Dale:
1) Sad lot you are Dale, only of rants, imprecations and flaming capable you are – or maybe Roger has hired you as visual aid for the other PJM article about the unexplainable & impotent liberal rage.
2) Dale, also you complain that you cannot find anyone around able to debate you on Krugman views’ validity, which is the point of Yates’ article – my rebuttal (#19/Dale) to your prior attack on my comments on the similarity deterministic of views shared by Krugmam, Diamond and Obama is still un-answered. Can’t you really put together an act regarding that other than hollering?
To complement your problems, I have to inform you that I am not a “poor Southerner or midwesterner living in a welfare state afraid of [...]” (mysterious argument, since liberals get most of their electorate exatly from that categoty),) but a pretty well to do Californian, who is not afraid to lose his job, etc. etc. and who, as you has also voted FOR PROP 8 (to clear the conservative attitudes matter).
Sep 16, 2009 - 3:34 pm 40. venividivici:So, proceed, baby, proceed – show via your deterministic argumentation why your mental abilities give you better survival chances compared with the Dodo bird or the Archeopterix -
The suckers are the poor southerners and midwesterners living in welfare states
I love these Lefties from blue states who act as though it is THEIR tax money that gets transferred to red states. They’re like the “community organizer” that shows up in the last five minutes of some volunteer event, hammers one nail and gets his picture taken with the mayor.
Yo, dumbo, it’s the tax money from “red” individuals living in blue states (like me) that gets transferred into red states (NYC gets something like 50% of its city tax revenues from 1% of its residents, primarily Wall Streeters. Want to wager on how those individuals vote?) and, as you conveniently fail to mention, a lot of that money goes to the military, which is protecting the entire nation, even your worthless self.
And, FYI, the “right question” is “What am I going to do to make my life better, regardless of what anyone else can do for me?” From answering that question, a whole series of actions ensues, which either pan out into an improved life or don’t. If I had waited for the government to improve my life, I’d still be sitting in the dump I was born in, waiting for the check every month. Like my sister is still doing, unfortunately. So, take your self-righteous stereotypes and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine.
Sep 16, 2009 - 3:38 pm 41. Anonymous:Yeah, those poor unemployed in the Southern and Midwestern RED states. Here is July 2009:
July unemployment rates exceeded 10% in 15 states, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Michigan reported the highest jobless rate among all states in July at 15.0%. Other states with unemployment rates of more than 10.0% were Rhode Island, 12.7%; Nevada,12.5%; California and Oregon, 11.9% each; South Carolina, 11.8%; Ohio, 11.2%; North Carolina, 11.0%; Kentucky, 11.0%; Tennessee, 10.7%; Florida, 10.7%; Indiana, 10.6%; Illinois, 10.4%; Georgia, 10.3%; and Alabama,10.2%.
source: http://workexposedblog.com/2009/08/24/visual-u-s-unemployment-map-by-state-july-2009/
So, according to this, the BLUE states occupy the top 5 and 9 of the first 15. Facts suck sometimes don’t they?
Sep 16, 2009 - 4:46 pm 42. Mike Sheard:Yeah, those poor unemployed Midwestern and Southern RED states.
“July unemployment rates exceeded 10% in 15 states, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Michigan reported the highest jobless rate among all states in July at 15.0%. Other states with unemployment rates of more than 10.0% were Rhode Island, 12.7%; Nevada,12.5%; California and Oregon, 11.9% each; South Carolina, 11.8%; Ohio, 11.2%; North Carolina, 11.0%; Kentucky, 11.0%; Tennessee, 10.7%; Florida, 10.7%; Indiana, 10.6%; Illinois, 10.4%; Georgia, 10.3%; and Alabama,10.2%.”
source: http://workexposedblog.com/2009/08/24/visual-u-s-unemployment-map-by-state-july-2009/
So, BLUE states occupy the top five (and 9 of 15). Facts suck sometimes, don’t they?
Sep 16, 2009 - 4:51 pm 43. Jeff Carter:The Nobel prize for Economics is not political, I think. The University of Chicago has won most of them over the life of the award. Chicago is not timid in its defense of free markets.
They have been spot on in their analysis of the current crisis, John Cochrane, Luis Zingales, Gary Becker, others have written extensively and accurately.
Krugman got a smack down from Cochrane.
Sep 16, 2009 - 5:03 pm 44. Tristan Yates:Dale – Yes, please tell us unintelligent conservatives more about your progressive Utopia that ends poverty and misery for the low price of trillions of dollars in taxes, debt, and interest. I’m sure you have lots of examples where your “bold new” economic system has worked out really well for everyone and none where the idealism of people like you has paved the way for widespread suffering and misery.
Sep 16, 2009 - 5:42 pm 45. cubedweller:One need look no further than the economic/societal shambles of cities under decades of “progressive” government (Detroit, every city in New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington DC, NYC before Giuliani) to know that collectivism/wealth distribution and “entitlement” doesn’t work. Yet, the the left’s answer is always throwing more money down the hole, which ends up making zero difference. The left has kept the urban poor in that state by telling them they’re victims, they’re owed, and they just can’t cut it without the left’s benevolent wisdom. Just vote for them and all goodies will be theirs. Yet nothing changes for the urban poor — they continue living off crumbs thrown to them by their “progressive” betters in exchange for votes, instead of encouraging enterprise, innovation, and self-determination.
Sep 16, 2009 - 6:25 pm 46. Dave:There may not be a more transparently intellectually dishonest and myopic hack in America than Paul Krugman. He is an delusional ideologue masquerading as an intellectual/economist. The fastest way to get marked a fool is to defer to, admire, or quote the man.
Sep 16, 2009 - 7:55 pm 47. JB:I graduated from Princeton in the mid 80s. Later, would become a full professor at Princeton. I am embarassed.
Sep 16, 2009 - 10:04 pm 48. Tim:Gore like Arafat and Carter before him is proof that the Nobel prize is worthless.
So, take a worthless prize, throw in some BDS and we have Krugman.
Sep 16, 2009 - 10:50 pm 49. Dave Surls:“I love these Lefties from blue states who act as though it is THEIR tax money that gets transferred to red states”
Their money?
Are the feds taxing welfare benefits now?
Man, the government must be desperate.
Sep 16, 2009 - 11:17 pm 50. vivo:13. misanthropicus:
U always crack me up. U should try Leno, Conan or Letterman.
30. roberto:
““vivo”: according to what seems to be the state of your brain, you should be considering a change of nickname to “muerto”…”
I tried, but it was taken by someone called ‘roberto’.
33. Thomas Fink:
“Vivo, Dale and Obama do not want to know this. It is abhorrent to them that billions of people with trillions of interactions could just do it without their advice.”
Say again? Fuzzy math?
Question to pajammers: did anyone understand #33?
44. Tristan Yates:
“Dale – Yes, please tell us unintelligent conservatives more about your progressive Utopia that ends poverty and misery”
Pardon my interruption, but here’s my 2-cents:
Capitalism, socialism, communism, nazism, fascism don’t work.
Someone should invent a new system.
Maybe we should look into the Animal Kingdom. Look at those ants, bees and animals who live in colonies.
Just wondering . . .
Sep 17, 2009 - 3:38 am 51. BC:It’s always semi-amusing to hear right wingers use the exact same term when describing someone they don’t like, in this case “former Enron adviser Paul Krugman.” As usual, things look a teeny bit different in context.
Sep 17, 2009 - 5:52 am 52. Fred Beloit:#28
Why, Dole, I’m stunned, stunned that you called me a name in violation of PJM Rule #3. This is how you treat me after I’ve wasted precious seconds every year since I don’t know when trying to educate you in the field of reality. But please be so kind as to tell me just once more what the truth is concerning these insane accusations of yours that you repeat over and over and over again in spite of all the evidence presented to you over the years by many persons brighter than the both of us put together. Thanks in advance.
-Bush lied, people died.
-Bush caused Katrina to ruin New Orleans.
-ACORN is an organization of fine and patriotic Americans.
-Blackwater controls Haliburton controls offshore oil drilling controls flu vaccinations conctrols Wall Street controlls nuclear energy lobbies, etc.
Do this small favor for me, I beg of you. Thanks in advance.
Sep 17, 2009 - 7:28 am 53. Fred Beloit:(H/T BC #51)
Sep 17, 2009 - 7:33 am 54. misanthropicus:Former Enron board member Paul Klugman writes:
“…because I served briefly on an Enron advisory board…”
Thanks for the evidence link, BC.
RE 50/vivo RE: misanthropicus: [...] U always crack me up. U should try Leno, Conan or Letterman. U [..]”
This is what I am using you for, buddy – I am rehearsing my “Stupid Animals Tricks” with you as featured performer.
Sep 17, 2009 - 8:24 am 55. venividivici:Maybe we should look into the Animal Kingdom. Look at those ants, bees and animals who live in colonies.
People aren’t “ants” or “bees”. Clearly, if we were meant to live like that, it would already have happened and we wouldn’t have evolved with the capacity for individuation.
Sep 17, 2009 - 12:15 pm 56. PR:Apply some of your own logic to the problem: have we really had low unemployment and low inflation for most of your working career? I am no economist but I am highly suspect about how both employment and inflation are measured.
Sep 17, 2009 - 12:43 pm 57. deguello:Krugman and his ilk,like the French aristos just before the revolution,are living in their fool’s paradise. let them enjoy it while they can.they will end their lives in a right wing labor camp, after the new American revolution smashes the libtard old regime.
Sep 17, 2009 - 6:31 pm