Free Republic

New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman is questioning Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s claim that Obamacare caused him to lose his cancer specialist. “It’s a garbage story, it really is,” said Krugman in a back-and-forth with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on CNN after the State of the Union on Tuesday. Coburn, who announced earlier this month that he’ll resign from office at the end of the year as he battles his fourth bout with cancer, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that his oncologist was no longer covered under his health care plan.

<p>It’s sometimes difficult to make fun of Keynesian economics. But this isn’t because Keynesian theory is airtight.</p> <p>It’s easy, after all, to mock a school of thought that is predicated on the notion that you can make yourself richer by taking money from your right pocket and putting it in your left pocket.</p>

Conservatives appear to be really upset that liberals are actually taking on the facts in the anti-Obamacare ads they’ve been running. How dare you question whether the people in these ads are giving an accurate picture — they’re suffering! --SNIP-- So here’s what you need to understand. The Affordable Care Act isn’t magic — it produces losers as well as winners. But it’s not black magic either, turning everyone into a loser. What the Act does is in effect to increase the burden on fortunate people — the healthy and wealthy — to lift some burdens on the less fortunate:...

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman will retire from Princeton University in June 2015 and move to New York, he announced on Friday. […] Krugman credited the move to location and to his increased focus on public policy, specifically income equality …

Looking forward to Obama’s State of the Union session, New York Times economic court jester Paul Krugman beats his usual drum about the importance of deficit spending (no, that’s not a joke, it’s what passes for liberal economic wisdom) and then tries to make a case for the left’s latest meme of “inequality” over jobs. The usual suspects on the right will, as always when questions of income distribution comes up, shriek “Class warfare!” But there will also be seemingly more sober voices arguing that he has picked the wrong target, that jobs, not inequality, should be at the top...

The reality of rising American inequality is stark. Since the late 1970s real wages for the bottom half of the work force have stagnated or fallen, while the incomes of the top 1 percent have nearly quadrupled (and the incomes of the top 0.1 percent have risen even more). While we can and should have a serious debate about what to do about this situation, the simple fact — American capitalism as currently constituted is undermining the foundations of middle-class society — shouldn’t be up for argument. But it is, of course. Partly this reflects Upton Sinclair’s famous dictum: It...

On April 28, 2013 Paul Krugman clearly said that 2013 was a test of market monetarism:But as Mike Konczal points out, we are in effect getting a test of the market monetarist view right now, with the Fed having adopted more expansionary policies even as fiscal policy tightens.Yesterday (Jan 4, 2014) however, Paul Krugman, said:…I don’t take seriously the claims of market monetarists that the failure of growth to collapse in 2013 somehow showed that fiscal policy doesn’t matter. …

Jonsey wrote: John, Merry Christmas (God forbid, I should say Happy Holidays or Sarah P might have a heart attack). In your article, you forgot one thing: Paul Krugman won a Nobel prize for economics and you didn't. He is one smart gentleman. Do have a glorious Christmas and may your heart be softened may you speak of and about the President. Happy Christmas Eve. Maybe I'll say a prayer for you at Midnight Mass. – Who Made Krugman the Expert? Cronies Did Dear Comrade Jones, I don’t forget that Krugman has a Nobel prize. I discount the award to...

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told a gathering of Democrats, “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it.” Ellison was discussing his ‘Inclusive Prosperity Act’ measure at the July 25th Progressive Democrats of America roundtable in Washington. “People like, George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sax, Dean Baker, Robert Poland, Larry Summers have said they all support a transaction tax,” Ellison said. “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it,” Ellison continued, “The government...

Paul Krugman makes for an unparalleled intellectual foil.  If he didn’t exist we’d have to invent him.  Recently he has been vintage Krugman, slinging derp. “Derp” is new slang, or perhaps jargon, with which to ridicule opponents.  It is making its way among the left wing hipsters, blogsters, and twitsters. Krugman has rescued derp from Progressive Blogistan for our general edification.  What is derp, you (you hick!) might ask?  Krugman: “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...

Remember when President Obama was flying around the country this year, warning that the budget-cutting sequester would destroy life as we know it in America? The President was hyperbolic about it, preaching doom and gloom across the land if we didn't turn away from the disastrous path Congress put us on. And Obama, too. He signed the bill that would send us over the sequester cliff if a new budget wasn't approved. The Pentagon wouldn't be able to pay its bills, he said. Federal food assistance would be denied to 600,000 low income women and children. Teachers would be laid...

KRUGMAN: The Fed May Have Just Made A Historic Mistake, And Done More Damage Than It Realizes Joe WeisenthalJune 22,2013REUTERS/Jason ReedThe most important story in the world is the change of direction in US interest rates, which coincides with the change in tone out of the Federal Reserve, which on Wednesday indicated that so long as its economic projections come to pass, it plans to slowdown on Quantitative Easing later on this year, with an eye towards totally ceasing bond purchases sometime in 2014. The markets puked on the news, and interest rates shot up, a move that was exacerbated...

I’ve repeatedly explained that Keynesian economics doesn’t work because any money the government spends must first be diverted from the productive sector of the economy, which means either higher taxes or more red ink. So unless one actually thinks that politicians spend money with high levels of effectiveness and efficiency, this certainly suggests that growth will be stronger when the burden of government spending is modest (and if spending is concentrated on “public goods,” which do have a positive “rate of return” for the economy). I’ve also complained (to the point of being a nuisance!) that there are too many...

Paul Krugman, an outspoken liberal economist known for his support of the Obama administration, today said the United States has become an “authoritarian surveillance state.” Part of a panel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Krugman offered his take on the bombshell NSA spying revelations: “…there are different kinds of surveillance states. You can have a democratic surveillance state which collects as little data as possible and tells you as much as possible about what it’s doing. Or you could have an authoritarian surveillance state which collects as much as possible and tells the public as little as possible. And...

OK, this is really shocking: a Heritage Foundation economist [Dr. Salim Furth] has been accused of presenting false, deliberately misleading data and analysis to the Senate Budget Committee.What’s so shocking? Not the false, misleading data and analysis — that’s SOP at Heritage. Remember the disappearing forecast of 2.8 percent unemployment under the Ryan plan, and various other Heritage escapades? What’s shocking is that they got called on it, in real time.The claim in particular, by the way, is widely popular on the right; it’s the claim that there isn’t any real austerity in Europe. Wonkbook goes through some of the...

"Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way.”      - Chris LoweI will admit right up front, I am not a fan of the views of Paul Krugman.  If Paul Krugman was to be given his way - and by and large he is being given his way - my children and grandchildren will be burdened in the future with paying back untold amounts of public debt just so his life and the lives of countless other Boomers can remain comfortable and embarassment free today.  This is the essence of his grand plan for a...

Paul Krugman has never been shy about proclaiming that he is right and everyone else is wrong — and not just wrong, but “knaves and fools.” Lately, however, one begins to worry that he might actually hurt himself, so vigorously has he been patting himself on the back for his opposition to “austerity” (defined as any cut in government spending, anytime, anywhere). On his latest victory lap, Krugman is celebrating two things. First, a group of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst discovered a small error in a widely cited paper by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff that showed...

For the past five years, a fierce war of words and policies has been fought in America and other economically challenged countries around the world. On one side were economists and politicians who wanted to increase government spending to offset weakness in the private sector. This "stimulus" spending, economists like Paul Krugman argued, would help reduce unemployment and prop up economic growth until the private sector healed itself and began to spend again. On the other side were economists and politicians who wanted to cut spending to reduce deficits and "restore confidence." Government stimulus, these folks argued, would only increase...

Deep Thoughts by Thomas Friedman But don’t worry, the term “admits” is a bit strong. It’s more like the weatherman who predicted there wouldn’t be a flood for a month straight clinging to an antenna on the roof of his house and trying to find reasons why he was right all along even while the sharks are circling his chimney. The standard fallback position for Tahrir’s international cheerleaders is to argue that we were expecting positive results too quickly. The term “Arab Spring” has to be retired. There is nothing springlike going on,” Friedman says. “It’s best we now speak...

As a result, the reign of the Governator aside, California has been solidly Democratic since the late 1990s. And ever since the political balance shifted, conservatives have declared the state doomed. Their specifics keep changing, but the moral is always the same: liberal do-gooders are bringing California to its knees. A dozen years ago, the state was supposedly doomed by all its environmentalists. You see, the eco-freaks were blocking power plants, and the result was crippling blackouts and soaring power prices. “The country’s showcase state,” gloated The Wall Street Journal, “has come to look like a hapless banana republic.” But...