House of Eratosthenes

Krugman is a Princeton economics professor who won a Nobel Prize in Economics. So the alternative explanation for Krugman’s column today — that he is just stupid, and very bad with numbers would seem to be far less likely than that he lies in order to deliberately mislead Times readers and the general public.
:
He admits in his column today that extending the Bush tax cuts that President Obama wants to continue for another ten years is expensive. Those tax cuts are for individuals earning less than $200,000 a year, or families earning less than $250,000. In his article, Krugman does not provide any numbers for the cost of extending the tax cuts for those earning less than the target amounts. Those tax cuts are by far the biggest share of the cost of extending the Bush 2001 tax cuts. Despite that, Krugman lets loose this whopper with relation to the cost of extending the 2001 tax cuts to the highest earners:

“And where would this $680 billion go? Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. But that’s the least of it: the policy center’s estimates say that the majority of the tax cuts would go to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent. Take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income; he’s going to get the majority of that group’s tax break.”

Quite simply, if you take a group of 1,000 randomly selected Americans, and pick the one with the highest income, he is not likely to get a majority of the tax benefit of that group. Far from it.

I don’t need much convincing. Speaking of a tax cut as something that “costs” money is Item #7 on my list of things that gave you away as an imbecile; Krugman’s columns typically start from that premise, and then work forward into bristling thickets of nonsense, because he’s a Keynesian. “Tax cut” isn’t even an honest expression of the way Keynesians think about the issue; “allowance increase” would be a more accurate term. The money, all of it, belongs to the state and we’re voting on how much generosity the state should show in allowing us to keep a little bit of it for awhile.

I do not know why we seriously try to perceive economic matters in this way when reality has so thoroughly schooled us it is the wrong way to go. I do not know why, when Paul Krugman jots down his codswallop, a link to it is yanked up to the top of the Memorandum scroll where it seems to slam up against a big bell with a loud “Ping!”

I do not know why he still has a New York Times column. But I suppose I should be glad that he does; it’s a useful window into how the professionals at the Old Gray Lady see the world. Money is wonderful stuff…except, it has this tendency to coagulate around rich people, who don’t really deserve to have any more of it than the next guy. Except for us, and our friends. For the time being.

I recall back in the eighties there was a lot of negotiating between the White House and the democrat-controlled Congress about taxes and the social programs funded. The democrats could have this increase…if Reagan could have this tax cut. George W. Bush ended this by letting his own Congress go ahead and have pretty much every spending increase they wanted, sidestepping the debate to save up on his “political capitol.” I can see why Bush would have wanted to do this, since Reagan didn’t realize any enduring political victory from all the back-and-forth — but it was cute watching democrat congressmen show all this hyperventilating angst about the “DYAFASIT”…only half of the time. As in, oh, now we’re talking about federal largess that might actually land in my district, so suddenly the deficit doesn’t matter.

Addorable. Like I saw one right-wing blogger jot down about some other left-wing idiosyncrasy, “I could just pinch your cheeks. Really, really, REALLY hard.”

Krugman needs a vise around his head, like that guy in Casino.

And this country’s economy is going to get much better, once money has been placed under the control of the people who make it and put real wealth behind it. The question is whether that is even possible anymore.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Paul Krugman is a Liar?Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

Paul Krugman is a Liar?
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010