Posted on 11/22/2002 11:42:28 AM PST by Timesink
Their unending screechy jihad against anyone else enjoying the same thoroughly UNearned fruits as Pinch Sulzberger is a matter that, I hope, is enriching the Times' heir's shrink.
"In the space of a few minutes, he noted, Bush had made three major misstatements--about how much he had promised to spend on prescription drugs for seniors, about how much of the surplus his tax cut would eat up, and about whether Social Security got a better "return" than bonds."
When I read the above quote, it became clear... Krugman is and economist in the same sense that Galbraith is an economist, which is to say obsolete, off-base, and proven forever totally wrong in his conclusions. I don't know and don't care about unimportant hairsplitting by Krugman about Bush's figures regarding the his prescription drug plan. As far as I am concerned, a enormous new entitlement for prescription drugs is totally wrong headed, and will ultimately balloon into a budget busting, price soaring, tax increasing, out of control monstrosity, just like all of the other socialist programs mismanaged by the Federal government.
But to say that a tax cut that has barely been even implemented "would eat up" a projected surplus that was based on Clinton's fraudulent economic figures, is simply stupid. How did a tax cut that will put MORE money into the hands of the populace, and consequently MORE money into the economy, thereby growing it be a bad thing? Why? Because we are talking about a man who isn't really an economist. He is a Democrat/socialist/leftist political hack with a set of phony economist's credentials. The surplus is an overcharge, too much tax taken out of the economy; a burden on the real, capitalist economy of the United States. I am talking about he economy of real people who actually EARN wealth and pay taxes. Crowing about a big "surplus" by big government Democrats, is like bragging about a trophy scalp, and waving it in front of the face of a bald man. Krugman apparently looks upon the so called "surplus" the same way any sane capitalist economist looks at private sector economic profit. He thinks the government is the country, and the budget is the economy. Success to him is more and more money to spend on more and more socialistic bureaucracy, more giant government programs, more votes and political power purchased. He has completely bought into the fraud of Keynesian economic theory, regardless of the mountains of statistical evidence that it does not work, and is in reality a drag on economic growth.
And, the question whether Social Security, history's single greatest social/economic ponzi scheme, gets a better "return" than bonds, well... again, we are talking about a different definition of "return" in this man's twisted economic vision. Social Security promises fantastic "return", just not to its intended recipients. The fantastic return is to corrupt, big spending, vote buying, socialist Democrats. They are getting incredible amounts of money to spend on more and more of their counter productive, wasteful, and failed social programs. It's the people who actually PAID the Social Security Taxes who are being cheated, but getting maybe 1% return on their money, instead of 3-to-5% they would safely get from even the lowliest Pass book bank account. Forget the stock market, the lowest paying, most secure possible investment would be an enormous improvement on the pathetic return Social Security delivers to its involuntary, retired, "beneficiaries". This little tidbit of analysis makes Krugman out to be less than incompetent as regards economics, but more likely it makes him out to be a dishonest political shill for the now declining fortunes of the Democrat party. If this makes him " the most important political columnist in America" then the author must have a very low opinion of political columnists.
His ideology and his connections get his political viewpoints published under the guise of academic work.
IMO, Paul Krugman is an enemy of the Constitution of The United States of America.
He lost all of his academic and political credibility long, long ago.
It wasn't just tech companies that were selling people a bill of goods though. In hindsight it's painfully obvious that a significant portion of the stock market boom during the Clinton era was fraudulent. A lot of it was in fact manufactured in order to keep him in office.
This surprised me also. In fact, this was the first reason that led me to dislike her writing: complete lack of style and/or coherence. Unless she changed recently, I challenge you to find a paragraph with more than two sentences in it. Her train of thought consists of completely disconnected cars. Her "style" reminded me, after so many years, of my daughter's emotional outbursts when she was going through puberty.
Perhaps, Confessore could not find anything positive at all and to praise Dowd had to fall back on this elusive notion, style.
You're right, though, without a solid micro background any Macro work is pretty useless. This guy knew his Micro pretty well and also worked for the Fed. I learned a lot and had a great time in the class. Unlike most econ classes where they seem to want you to memorize things, this teacher taught us the classical model, then told us to act as if we were a part of the Fed... What would we do if faced with this situation... etc.
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