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Paul Krugman, a few years ago, wrote at length to extol the magnum opus of science fiction grandmaster, Isaac Asimov, theFoundation Trilogy. Prof. Krugman’s reflections thereon are of keen interest. I met Asimov once, 40+ years ago, at a world science fiction convention. I even got him to autograph my Science Fiction Book Club copy of “The Foundation Trilogy.” This compilation of three novels is an SF classic. I, then and since, found it too dull to read in full. (Asimov’s I, Robot then was much more engaging to this long-ago SF geek. But nothing Asimov wrote really rivaled Heinlein’s...

Here we go again. One of the High Priests of the so-called "reality-based community" has for the umpteenth time pronounced Obamacare a great success, asserting that people who believe otherwise (like, for example, the majority of the American people) have either been deceived, or are liars. Paint-by-numbers acerbic Leftist, reactionary smear artist, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls Obamacare horror stories "imaginary disasters," made up from whole cloth to scare people and undermine a law that's working and helping people.  We've spent quite a lot of time refuting variants of this argument in recent years, producing detailed responses to President Obama, Harry Reid, and two...

resident Barack Obama, in his State of the Union speech, called for a minimum-wage hike and for government-mandated paid family and medical leave. "We are the only advanced country on Earth," said the President, "that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers." On the minimum wage, Obama issued this challenge: "And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the...

Paul Krugman has become an embarrassment to the economics profession. Despite his Nobel Prize and despite his previous high regard in the profession, his twice-a-week editorials in The New York Times are causing even progressive economists to treat him as somewhat of a kook.Since 2011, the United States has followed what Krugman correctly calls a policy of “austerity.” For example, the federal budget deficit has declined from 8.4 percent of GDP in 2011 to a predicted 2.9 percent of GDP for all of 2014. All along the way Paul Krugman protested that such policies would prolong the recession and even...

French economist Thomas Piketty, author of the surprise best-selling Capital in the 21st Century turned down France's top award, the Legion D'Honneur. "I do not think it is the government's role to decide who is honourable", said Piketty. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called it "the most important economics book of the year - and maybe of the decade". Krugman likely says that because he believes in Piketty's socialist solutions to income inequality. Thomas Piketty's Capital Review Piketty's book is a massive 696-page slog. Fortunately, Harvard Business Review offers this synopsis: Piketty’s “Capital,” in a Lot Less than 696 Pages.The...

I’m tempted to feel a certain degree of sympathy for Paul Krugman. As a leading proponent of the notion that bigger government stimulates growth (a.k.a., Keynesian economics), he’s in the rather difficult position of rationalizing why the economy was stagnant when Obama first took office and the burden of government spending was rising. And he also has to somehow explain why the economy is now doing better at a time when the fiscal burden of government is declining.

In a chilling 2010 column, Paul Krugman declared: “peak oil has arrived.” So it’s really not surprising that the national average for a gallon of gas has fallen to $2.77 this week – in 10 states it was under $2.60 – and analysts predict we’re going to dip below the two-dollar mark soon. U.S. oil is down to $75 a barrel, a drop of more than $30 from the 52-week high. Meanwhile, the Institute for Energy Research estimates that we have enough natural gas in the U.S. to meet electricity needs for around 575 years at current fuel demand and...

Actually the Democrats have been race baiting for decades. And it’s not going away. Using fear and race-polarizing agitation to drive minority voters to the polls is going to be the increasingly overt face of the Democratic Party. They can’t win any other way. What’s new is that the mainstream media has suddenly discovered all of this.Through the years, these same news outlets have wasted no time at all in spotting anything that even hints of Republican race baiting. Take the presidential campaign of 1988.Willie Horton was a black murder convict who raped a white woman and stabbed her boyfriend...

The Times columnist suggests a government crackdown for selling conservative books too quickly. Big-government aficionado Paul Krugman is calling for “public action to curb the power” of an entity he can’t quite bring himself to call a monopoly, even as he nonetheless compares its “abuses” to those of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company. The subject of his ire? “Amazon.com, the giant online retailer, has too much power, and it uses that power in ways that hurt America,” Krugman whines. “Does Amazon really have robber-baron-type market power? When it comes to books, definitely,” Krugman insists. “Amazon overwhelmingly dominates online book...

Big-government aficionado Paul Krugman is calling for “public action to curb the power” of an entity he can’t quite bring himself to call a monopoly, even as he nonetheless compares its “abuses” to those of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil company. The subject of his ire? “Amazon.com, the giant online retailer, has too much power, and it uses that power in ways that hurt America,” Krugman whines. “Does Amazon really have robber-baron-type market power? When it comes to books, definitely,” Krugman insists. “Amazon overwhelmingly dominates online book sales, with a market share comparable to Standard Oil’s share of the refined...

Knowing the way our political press works, it's easy to predict that Barack Obama's presidency is just about over. Journalists will soon treat him as the lamest of lame ducks, and suggest nothing consequential will happen in the last two years of his presidency. Instead, they'll obsess over who will come next. So the timing is perfect for Rolling Stone magazine to reassert itself as Obama's most shameless house organ. They've published a 4,000-word tribute by liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisting that "Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American...

Don't know what Dorian Warren's been smoking, but we can guess what he's been reading: Rolling Stone, and in particular a recent column in which Paul Krugman claims that Barack Obama is one of the most "successful presidents in American history" [ed.: not a typo]. On today's Morning Joe, MSNBC contributor Warren said he'd be happy to call his Vegas buddies to bet that "history will be very, very good to Barack Obama." Warren was responding to Joe Scarborough's suggestion that history will lump Obama and George W. Bush together for their lack of effective leadership. View the video here.

When it comes to Barack Obama, I've always been out of sync. Back in 2008, when many liberals were wildly enthusiastic about his candidacy and his press was strongly favorable, I was skeptical. I worried that he was naive, that his talk about transcending the political divide was a dangerous illusion given the unyielding extremism of the modern American right. Furthermore, it seemed clear to me that, far from being the transformational figure his supporters imagined, he was rather conventional-minded: Even before taking office, he showed signs of paying far too much attention to what some of us would later...

Paul Krugman sees America as a stratified society, with the top tiny layer controlling a staggering amount of wealth, and the rest of us consigned to a life of Sisyphean struggle.  He rails against Our Invisible Rich, who he believes prosper at the expense of all of us, and waxes about how the golden sunbeam of knowledge of these rich parasites on our nation could kindle the proletariat to action. I can’t compete with Krugman in academic honors, or experience in the hallowed halls of the Ivy League, or in the busy newsrooms at flagship newspapers.  When I read such...

“What I love most about FreedomFest are the debates!”– John Mackey (CEO, Whole Foods Market)Many of my free-market friends have attacked Paul Krugman, the inflammatory New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner, for deliberately distorting the facts about the economic recovery, austerity programs in Europe, the federal deficit, taxes, school choice, etc. Krugman has been especially critical of the “Austrians” for predicting double-digit inflation and another recession.In response, Steve Moore, Peter Schiff and Robert Murphy, among others, have challenged Krugman to a formal debate. But Krugman has adamantly refused…Until now!I have just confirmed the Dream Debate of the Century...

If you ever have the strange desire to watch a couple of liberals devolve into an intellectual wasteland of platitudes and hypocrisy, just mention “Hobby Lobby”. During a recent TV special with Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-People’s Republic of Massachusetts), Paul Krugman waded into the realm of idiocy (it was a short trip for him) while discussing corporate personhood, and the GOP’s desire to “push us back to 1894”. Of course, this raises a few questions: If corporations aren’t people, then why should we expect businesses to exercise “economic patriotism” in their tax dealings? I mean heck, I guess we shouldn’t...

Paul Krugman has once again decided to call a few “fools and knaves” who disagree with him by some nasty names. In fact, the Nobel Laureate’s habit of lashing out with vitriolic playground language is pretty well documented; and, quite frankly, it demonstrates an astounding lack of self-awareness when it comes from a Keynesian who has turned being wrong into a career option. But in this rare case, I might actually let his painfully ironic comments slide without condemnation.

I’ve had some fun over the years by pointing out that Paul Krugman has butchered numbers when writing about fiscal policy in nations such as France, Estonia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. So I shouldn’t be surprised that he wants to catch me making an error. But I’m not sure his “gotcha” moment is very persuasive. Here’s some of what he wrote for today’s New York Times. Gov. Jerry Brown was able to push through a modestly liberal agenda of higher taxes, spending increases and a rise in the minimum wage. California also moved enthusiastically to implement Obamacare. …Needless to...

Professor Paul Krugman is leaving Princeton. Is he leaving in disgrace? Not long, as these things go, before his departure was announced Krugman thoroughly was indicted and publicly eviscerated for intellectual dishonesty by Harvard’s Niall Ferguson in a hard-hitting three-part series in the Huffington Post, beginning here, and with a coda in Project Syndicate, all summarized at Forbes.com. Ferguson, on Krugman: Where I come from … we do not fear bullies. We despise them. And we do so because we understand that what motivates their bullying is a deep sense of insecurity. Unfortunately for Krugtron the Invincible, his ultimate nightmare...

Have you been following the news about Obamacare? The Affordable Care Act has receded from the front page, but information about how it’s going keeps coming in — and almost all the news is good. Indeed, health reform has been on a roll ever since March, when it became clear that enrollment would surpass expectations despite the teething problems of the federal website. What’s interesting about this success story is that it has been accompanied at every step by cries of impending disaster. At this point, by my reckoning, the enemies of health reform are 0 for 6. That is,...