Who is the Real Con Man: Ryan or Krugman?

Writing about Republicans in U.S. House of Representatives, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says Paul Ryan is “basically, the best con man they’ve got.” He goes on to characterize the modern Republican Party” as “a post-policy enterprise, which doesn’t do real solutions to real problems.”

We think the reverse is true. It is Paul Krugman who is the con artist with no real solutions to our most important economic problems. Paul Ryan, by contrast, has put forth bold policy proposals that have been favorably scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and are actually closer to mainstream economic thinking than Krugman’s.

New York Times readers may be surprised to learn just how out of touch Paul Krugman is with his fellow economists:

· Whereas Krugman has repeatedly claimed that there is no entitlement-spending crisis, more than 1,000 economists – representing the left and the right and 11 Nobel Laureates -- have endorsed legislation that would require the federal government to regularly report on the extent of the crisis.

· While virtually all economists these days understand the harmfulness of high marginal tax rates and most probably prefer a progressive flat tax, Krugman is out on the fringe – claiming that a top rate of 90 percent would cause no serious damage.

· While Paul Krugman regularly praises the Rube Goldberg health reform we call Obamacare, President Obama’s own chief economic advisor has endorsed an approach that is much closer to the health reform advocated by Paul Ryan and John McCain.

Although the New York Times regularly brags about the fact that Krugman has a Nobel Prize, his fellow economists increasingly view him as somewhat of a kook – serving more as a shill for the Democratic Party rather that someone who writes about serious economics.

For example, since 2011, the United States has followed what Krugman calls a policy of “austerity.” All along the way he has protested that such policies would prolong the recession and even push us into a “low-grade depression.”

In fact, the opposite occurred. As Jeffrey Sachs, who is every bit as left wing as Krugman, wrote the other day “rather than a new recession, or an ongoing depression, the US unemployment rate has fallen” and economic growth has picked up.

So did Krugman admit his errors and ask for his readers’ forgiveness? Not at all. In an incredible act of intellectual dishonesty, he asserted his predictions were right all along. As Sachs notes:

Krugman took a victory lap in his end-of-2014 column on “The Obama Recovery” … [making] the incredible claim … that everything has turned out just as he predicted.

University of Chicago economist John Cochrane writes that Krugman’s economic view of the world is not taught in any major economics graduate schools, is not taken seriously at academic conferences and is not considered acceptable by any professional economics journals.

Paul Ryan’s Roadmap, by sharp contrast, is grounded in reality. His proposals include comprehensive entitlement reform -- scored by CBO as balancing the federal budget permanently over the long run, with both taxes and spending at their long run, postwar, historical averages of 18.6 percent of GDP. The plan proposes tax reform with just two rates, 10 percent on family income up to $100,000, and 25 percent above that.

The Ryan Roadmap would allow private Social Security accounts – similar to the reforms that have been enacted in more than 30 countries around the world. According to the CBO, this reform would eliminate the long term unfunded liability in Social Security deficits, and leave workers with better benefits than they would have under the current system.

The Roadmap would also achieve permanent, full solvency for Medicare. Although Ryan has called this approach “premium support,” it is actually little more than a liberalization of the highly popular Medicare Advantage program, under which about one-third of all seniors have enrolled in private health plans, putting Medicare on a sound economic footing.

The Roadmap also proposed health reform before Obamacare was even adopted, ensuring universal access to essential health care for all Americans. By contrast, the CBO has scored Obamacare as leaving 30 million Americans still uninsured 10 years after full implementation! Ryan’s health reform involves a Universal Health Insurance tax credit for all, set roughly at the cost of enrolling people in Medicaid. Every family would be assured of Medicaid-like insurance as a backup safety net and they (and their employers) would be free to purchase more options and better options with their own after-tax dollars.

Without the Obamacare mandates, everyone could choose insurance that meets individual and family needs, rather than the needs of politicians and special interests.

CBO has scored the massive reductions in federal taxes, spending and debt under the Ryan Roadmap as producing a booming economy, the creation of millions of jobs, higher wages and incomes, and long term prosperity. Transparently, Ryan’s Roadmap involves a brilliant and brave exercise in leadership.

That is why House Republicans now want to elevate him to the third highest office in the land.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOXvhUd67-Q

DEFUND/DISMANTLE socialist collectives, foreign and domestic.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. - list of grievances; Declaration

https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/a

DEPOPULATE UNIPARTY con artists/socialists from the body politic.

http://www.usdebtclock.org

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm

6. But the grand nostrum will be a public debt, provided enough of it can be got and it be medicated with the proper ingredients. If by good fortune a debt be ready at hand, the most is to be made of it. Stretch it and swell it to the utmost the items will bear. Allow as many extra claims as decency will permit. Assume all the debts of your neighbors - in a word, get as much debt as can be raked and scraped together, and when you have got all you can, “advertise” for more, and have the debt made as big as possible. This object being accomplished, the next will be to make it as perpetual as possible; and the next to that, to get it into as few hands as possible. The more effectually to bring this about, modify the debt, complicate it, divide it, subdivide it, subtract it, postpone it, let there be one-third of two-thirds, and two-thirds of one-third, and two-thirds of two-thirds; let there be 3 percents, and 4 percents, and 6 percents, and present 6 percents, and future 6 percents. To be brief, let the whole be such a mystery that a few only can understand it; and let all possible opportunities and informations fall in the way of these few to cinch their advantages over the many.

7. It must not be forgotten that the members of the legislative body are to have a deep stake in the game. This is an essential point, and happily is attended with no difficulty. A sufficient number, properly disposed, can alternately legislate and speculate, and speculate and legislate, and buy and sell, and sell and buy, until a due portion of the property of their constituents has passed into their hands

9. The management of a great funded debt and a extensive system of taxes will afford a plea, not to be neglected, for establishment of a great incorporated bank. the use of such a machine is well understood. If the Constitution, according to its fair meaning, should not authorize it, so much the better. Push it through by a forced meaning and you will get in the bargain an admirable precedent for future misconstructions.

10. “Divide and govern”…

11. As soon as sufficient progress in the intended change shall have been made, and the public mind duly prepared according to the rules already laid down, it will be proper to venture on another and a bolder step toward a removal of the constitutional landmarks.

Rules for Changing a Limited Republican Government into an Unlimited Hereditary One
Volume (?)
1784-1796

Organizing the New Nation

THE ANNALS OF AMERICA

http://www.constitution.org/cmt/freneau/republic2monarchy.htm

Debates in the House of Representatives on the First Report on Public Credit 9–18 February 1790
James Jackson (Ga.)

But it is doubted with me whether a permanent funded debt is beneficial or not to any country.

The same effect must be produced that has taken place in other nations; it must either bring on a national bankruptcy or annihilate her existence as an independent empire. Hence I contend, sir, that a funding system, in this country, will be highly dangerous to the welfare of the republic; it may, for a moment, raise our credit and increase the circulation, by multiplying a new species of currency; but it must, in times afterward, settle upon our posterity a burthen which they can neither bear nor relieve themselves from. It will establish a precedent in America that may, and in all probability will, be pursued by the sovereign authority until it brings upon us that ruin which it has never failed to bring, or is inevitably bringing, upon all the nations of the earth who have had the temerity to make the experiment.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/875

Socialism Is Legal Plunder

Socialists, like all other monopolists, desire to make the law their own weapon. And when once the law is on the side of socialism, how can it be used against socialism? For when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.

Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task.

/Bastiat

October 17, 2015 $18,409,420,439,320+
October 9, 2015 $18,402,140,000,000+

In a little over a week $7,000,000,000+ (7 billion has been added to the debt clock)

CONgre$$? Debaters?

/debt slavery

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