Here’s his latest.
Thesis: rich people are driving the Tea Party, and they are selfish and self indulgent. Inference: we should hate them.
“Evidence”: taxes were higher under Clinton and we balanced the budget. Oh, and that the super-rich are just bad people. Let me underscore that. They are nothing like you–whoever you are plebian scum if you are a Teabagger, and bless your heart if you agree with me, as any sensible person would–and me, guru to the world.
Commentary: Krugman rarely goes more than 2 columns in a row without demanding a stimulus of some sort, which is equivalent to a demand for deficit spending. What he wants, in other words, is to borrow money from the Chinese and wealthy elites, and raise taxes on people who make money in America.
Contrary to what he leads people to believe, the super-rich BENEFIT from our deficit spending. They lend us the money. Not infrequently, they create the money to loan us from scratch, via their close pal the Fed.
The people Krugman is demonizing pay the vast bulk of taxes ALREADY. The top 10% pay some 70% of the taxes, and that percentage WENT UP under Bush. The rates went down, and actual net dollar receipts WENT UP. This is what is predicted by Supply Side (aka Anti-Keynesian) Economics. The deficit went up because WE SPENT MORE MONEY. If I’m going too quick, just reread what I wrote. Prior to the tax cuts, they just kept their money elsewhere, or they didn’t invest it at all. And it is worth reiterating that 40% of Americans pay no incomes taxes at all.
What we need are jobs. Only the private sector can create sustainable jobs, and if Krugman were anything but a hack he would publicly admit it. Krugman very literally uses every chance he gets to use his bully pulpit to propagate ideas which are not only not helpful, but DAMAGING to our economy. We got to where we are by listening to devious people like him.
The reality is that American businesses are sitting on a huge pile of cash. They COULD invest it in sustainable private sector jobs, but only if they can be assured that our President isn’t going to run us off the Left side of the cliff. They lack that assurance currently, as Jack Welch, among many others, has recently commented. I was talking with a very successful financial advisor yesterday, who said the same thing: the people with the power to hire people are scared.
Krugman, of course, wants to make this into an us versus them debate. It is the angry rich–who are in a world of their own–and everyone else. The common folk, like him. Well, not exactly like him–somebody has to be IN CHARGE–but you get the basic idea.
The reality, again, is that the Tea Party is Main Street. It is common sense. It is recognizing that you can’t tax your way into prosperity, that you can’t denigrate business and create jobs at the same time, and that we are going bankrupt rapidly, again as a result of policies Krugman advocates every chance he gets.
He mentions D’Souza’s claims about Obama, but he makes it clear that only THEY could possibly give them any credence. People like him–and his sophisticated readers–can simply go pish posh, who could possibly be that dumb? It must be racism. It must be that “Angry White Male Syndrome” (AWMS: you heard it here first), which will presumably be in DSM-V, and which is just hate, hate, hate. And since you can hate the haters, this is a win-win situation. You don’t have to understand them, since they are “haters”. You can just let lose with every pet prejudice and latent vicious impulse you want, and you will be FULLY justified. If you ever doubt yourself, just top off at your local ideological gas station.
To be clear, if this were a debate, D’Souza’s proposition carries with no opposition, as unrecognized, unrefuted, and still quite viable.
All in all, if Mr. Krugman were capable of shame, this would be a good time to feel it. Since that proposition is quite dubious, let me suggest that he debate the actual people who oppose him, rather than cast them as cartoons, and use those crude caricatures to divide us one from the other, and all of us from anything even approaching a reasoned, dispassionate analysis of our problems.