Krugman's Blind Faith

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 06/05/2012 | IBD Staff

[IBD editorial writer]

When does respect for an economic theory become fanaticism? For an answer, check out Paul Krugman's increasingly desperate attempts to defend Keynesian economics against its obvious failures. The New York Times columnist doesn't claim publicly to be a religious man, but he sure acts like it when it comes to his beloved John Maynard Keynes. Any evidence that Keynesianism doesn't work must be wiped away, even if it means conjuring up mythical numbers to do so. Case in point is Krugman's latest campaign to argue that President Obama has been an austerity-driven tightwad. At the same time, Krugman says President Reagan was a closet Keynesian.

[allendale]

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Krugman is clearly a lunatic. Since he is a public figure and has a bizarre influence on public policy, it would be appropriate for him to divulge just what medications are influencing his thoughts.

[taxcutisapayraise]

Gov’t/Krugman’s (read: statists) understanding of Keynesian economics: “Government spends now, saves never.”

[jdsteel]

For a long time my tag-line was “Paul Krugman is always wrong”. The height of madness is that he received a Nobel Prize....just like Obama.

[jersey117]

We have been getting one bad economic report after another on a daily basis. What will it take for these fools to stop defending the indefensible? Eventually, they are going to have to face the fact that their first black “president” well — no he couldn’t.

[N. Theknow]

According to Krugman, the reason we are in this hole is because we did not dig it deep enough.

[Travis McGee]

[sickoflibs]

RE :”Case in point is Krugman’s latest campaign to argue that, despite an $830 billion stimulus and trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits, President Obama has been an austerity-driven tightwad. At the same time, Krugman says President Reagan — whose supply-side, free-market economic policies powered a huge recovery after the 1981-82 recession — was a closet Keynesian.
“If you actually look at the actual track record of government spending (and) government employment,” Krugman said this weekend, “Reagan is the Keynesian and Obama ... has been the anti-Keynesian.”

The writer accepts the premise that Krugman believes the theories he preaches, that somehow (huge) temporary deficit based stimulus spending will jump-start the economy which will then sustain itself someday. I see no reason to believe he is serious when he repeats this.

His economic theories always align themselves with progressives economic social justice objectives, You run up huge debts getting voters addicted to government spending and eventually they will support taxes, especially progressive ones. He said the trick to national health care is to expand the entitlement and the rationing will come later because of budget contraints.

He is a Marxist dressed up as an expert economist by the liberal MSM, nothing more.

[y6162]

Krugman just makes stuff up.

[oh8eleven]

What will it take for these fools to stop defending the indefensible?
They'll never stop. I thought the same thing about liberalism back in the '70s-'80s-'90s.
No matter what it touched - education, finance, politics, personal responsibility, crime, etc., it FAILed.
I kept thinking ... now they'll finally see the error of their ways. Wrong.
That's how you know Liberalism is a mental disease.

[Common Sense 101]

Blind Faith?

Try economic ignoramus and socialist-loving political hack...

[FroggyTheGremlim]

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

That phrase is absurd.

Is someone who plays a Big 4 lottery number, say, 1234, over and over again INSANE?

Is someone who prays the "Our Father" every evening before bed INSANE?

I could go on ...

[Spok]

Krugman clings tenaciously to leftist dogma regardless of how economically destructive it is: the ends of social redistribution of wealth justify the means of tortured reason and academic Doublethink.

[InterceptPoint]

According to Krugman, the reason we are in this hole is because we did not dig it deep enough.

Day in and day out you cannot find another commentator on things political and economic that is more consistently wrong than Krugman. He has a nearly 100% wrong rating. He's the "Best", without peer.

[riverdawg]

“Is someone who plays a Big 4 lottery number, say, 1234, over and over again INSANE?”

from Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, p. 108:

“There is not a more certain proposition ... than that the more [lottery] tickets you adventure upon, the more likely you are to be a loser. Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer you approach to this certainty.”

Of course, playing the same number isn’t what is insane; it’s playing the lottery over and over that’s nutty.

[I am Richard Brandon]

There was a reason that the Brits had the extreme punishment of ‘Hanging, Drawing and Quartering.’

It Punished
It Killed, with no chance of resurrection
It acted as a Warning to others.

Krugman! Step forward.

[Pollster1]

There are few scientific results more useful or more uniformly covered than Newton's Laws of Motion. These are still taught to the vast majority of Americans, because they are both fundamental and useful. Yet, on November 6, 1919, when Sir Frank Watson Dyson reported to a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society concerning "A Determination of the Deflection of Light by the Sun’s Gravitational Field, from Observations Made at the Total Eclipse of May 29, 1919", scientists seriously reconsidered the accuracy of Newton's Laws. They eventually accepted Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which had been supported by the measurements during that eclipse and was confirmed with increasing accuracy by later measurements through the 1970s. That's how real scientists and other real thinkers react to information that does not match the theory. We still teach Newton's Laws, because they are useful in many situations, but educated Americans know better.

Global Warming "scientists" and Keynesian economists have a different approach:

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

The writer accepts the premise that Krugman believes the theories he preaches, that somehow (huge) temporary deficit based stimulus spending will jump-start the economy which will then sustain itself someday. I see no reason to believe he is serious when he repeats this.

His economic theories always align themselves with progressives economic social justice objectives, You run up huge debts getting voters addicted to government spending and eventually they will support taxes, especially progressive ones. He said the trick to national health care is to expand the entitlement and the rationing will come later because of budget contraints.

He is a Marxist dressed up as an expert economist by the liberal MSM, nothing more.

Well said. Compared to "Economic justice," the truth shrinks to insignificance. Krugman, in his own way, feels just as morally justified as the jihadists. The ends justify the means.

[DoughtyOne]

The only way excessive government spending for stimulus could be productive, would be to hand those funds out to private sector SB oriented individuals, who could start up new businesses.

Those businesses providing goods or services, could be self-sustaining and last indefinitely.

Instead the government burns off funds on special projects, then wonders why those jobs don’t continue on as the funds run out.

Actually, that is the true goal of the Leftists. They want to spend us into oblivion, so they can pick up the pieces after the fall, blaming the whole think on capitalists, when no true capitalism is being utilized to further their goals.

Krugman is either an idiot, or a dedicated Leftist. Okay, it’s likely he’s both.

[RightWingNilla]

I think you hit the nail on the head.