* While there was a brief burst of government spending early in the Obama administration — mainly for emergency aid programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps — that burst is long past.
* Reagan's “Weaponized Keynesianism” — Reagan’s big military buildup — played some role.
* Real per capita spending at the state and local level, which continued to rise under Reagan but has fallen significantly this time around.
* States and local governments used to benefit from revenue-sharing — automatic aid from the federal government, a program that Reagan eventually killed but only after the slump was past.
* In the 1980s, anti-tax dogma hadn’t taken effect to the same extent it has today, so state and local governments were much more willing than they are now to cover temporary deficits with temporary tax increases, thereby avoiding sharp spending cuts.
HIS CONCLUSION: If you want to see government responding to economic hard times with the “tax and spend” policies conservatives always denounce, you should look to the Reagan era — not the Obama years.
krugman’s soul is the personal property of satan... when he speaks or writes... brimstone will be evident.
LLS
Krugman can never be wrong. When the Obama stimilus package was an abject failue, it only proved that Obama didn’t spend enough.
Krugman: Living proof that figures don’t lie, but liars can figure.
funny how all these extreme left wingers (obama/krugman) try and associate themselves with Ronald Reagan....
Krugman is no Laffer.
But I expect no less than that from Krugman, who is still searching for Gabby Gifford's real shooter, Sarah Palin.
Reagan slashed tax rates and regulation, while taking on the unions. That is what lead to our economic recovery.
Because of this, Reagan ran for reelection on his own record of success, rather than still blaming Carter four years later.
This is nonsense on its face. Reagan received his degree in economics in 1932, in classic Adam Smith economic theory. Keynesianism took hold mid-New Deal and thereafter.
Reagan’s successor, George Bush, got HIS economics degree after coming home from WWII, and was trained in Keynesian theory. That is why he called Reagan’s economics “voodoo economics” because he had never read the classic “invisible hand” theories and didn’t understand them. It also explains why Reagan’s economy was successful and Bush’s was a failure, because he embraced increased spending and taxes as he had been taught. And the result was recession and stagnation, really until the republican house majority cut spending and reduced taxes again.
Krugman is a fool who was given a Nobel Prize to give his idiotic theories some credence.
....I cannot find fault with Reagan after that...
Whether or not Reagan was a Keynesian can be a topic to discuss; what is indisputable is that Krugman is an idiot.
They walk among us
Keynesian economics said the simultaneous increase in inflation and unemployment (stagflation) during the Carter years was not possible as it violated the tenants of the Phillips curve. The standard Keynesian remedy of government stimulus applied to the conditions of stagflation created an inflationary spiral giving the double digit inflation of the late 1970s.
The economic events of the time are well documented in a book, The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw. This book was later made into a three part PBS documentary that is currently available for viewing online. Link