What unmitigated arrogance! Krugman's assumption is that our dysfunctional Congress, our unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats can more wisely spend our money then can we ourselves. Let the wise elite allocate our money after it is confiscated and it will be put to better use. Krugman assumes that dollars spent by government bring more economic value to the people than investments made by people themselves.
It is not just a question of whether to buy a flatscreen TV or spend money on school tuition, the power to invest one's money, money left to the people only because it is not confiscated by the government, is the liberty to make economic decisions based on the life experience of the people who actually earned the money. People who know better than Nancy Pelosi, or some bureaucrat or even better than Anastasia Occasional-Cortex where the most profitable return for investment can be made. If it were otherwise the Soviet Union would actually have buried us as promised.
I have recounted the story of writing a book review in college over the new, new thing captivating the left of 1962, The Affluent Society, by John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith's message was that people are stupid and so they squander their money on fins and chrome on their cars when they should be investing in sewers and more money for professors like himself at Harvard. Therefore he, like Krugman, would take the choice away from the individual and empower government to make these economic choices with our money.
Krugman's Marxist nostrums are not new, they are as old as tyranny and as old as Genesis, he and John Kenneth Galbreath would be gods.
