EXCLUSIVE: Pro-Market Economist RIPS Krugman Claim That ‘Too Much Choice Is Hurting America’

NewsBusters ^ | 3/3/2021 | Joseph Vazquez

[VeniVidiVici]

Probably because Krugman did not have the pleasure of visiting a grocery store in the Soviet Union circa 1980.

Back in 1999 we had an exchange student from Kyrgyzstan. First time he went to a grocery store with us he was in awe. Became his favorite place.

Funny story: when we ordered pizza we made sure his had no pork (he was Muslim). So we would normally get pepperoni and he'd get cheese or some vegetarian topping. One night I got up to get some water and there he was in the fridge chowing down on leftover pepperoni pizza.

He looked up at me, eyes bugged out, and said, "Don't tell my mom!"

[Albion Wilde]

too many choices have created a “cognitive burden” on America’s poor.

I must agree.

Take a tree as an example. In a windstorm, many of the smaller twigs or branches get blown away. Sometimes the entire tree cracks from the burden of branching too heavy to be supported against a storm.

Society is the same way. Some high-minded academic "designs" a social program greatly at odds with objective truth, or some financial genius finds a new way of manipulating money and regulations to make his class profit, and large swaths of the lower classes get wiped out.

Deregulation of divorce law into the gross distortion that is "no-fault" is an example of social over choice. The subprime mortgage crisis is an example of financial overliberalization.

Consumer businesses need to provide choices, but not lose sight of "core competencies" that will weather a storm.