Paul Krugman is REQUIRED READING every column!

[Inland]

Seriously, read this guy and five minutes later you are as smart as anybody. TAKE THE FIVE MINUTES THREE TIMES A WEEK. Buy The Great Unraveling, which collects the old columns and see how right he was about everything! (Or borrow it from your local library. It's been out for a while)

Today's column
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hp&oref=login

Check out this excerpt from the column on Bush's latest SS scam, about cutting benefits for "the rich", now defined as $36,000 a year:

*******
Before I take on this final insult to our intelligence, let me deal with a fundamental misconception: the idea that President Bush's plan would somehow protect future Social Security benefits.

If the plan really would do that, it would be worth discussing. It's possible - not certain, but possible - that 40 or 50 years from now Social Security won't have enough money coming in to pay full benefits. (If the economy grows as fast over the next 50 years as it did over the past half-century, Social Security will do just fine.) So there's a case for making small sacrifices now to avoid bigger sacrifices later.

But Mr. Bush isn't calling for small sacrifices now. Instead, he's calling for zero sacrifice now, but big benefit cuts decades from now - which is exactly what he says will happen if we do nothing. Let me repeat that: to avert the danger of future cuts in benefits, Mr. Bush wants us to commit now to, um, future cuts in benefits.

This accomplishes nothing, except, possibly, to ensure that benefit cuts take place even if they aren't necessary.
***

[BlueEyedSon]

1. YES YES YES!

[kliljedahl]

2. Just finished reading it & was ready to post

You beat me to it.



Keith’s Barbeque Central

[adigal]

3. Krugman and Herbert are the best

columists writing today - bar none. Dowd is also great, but sometimes too hard to "get." Father Andrew Greeley is also very, very good, as is Leonard Pitt.

[JerseygirlCT]

4. Love that guy.

[Chomp]

5. Kick

A quite fantastic writer.

"What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed"

[On the Road]

6. I am So Glad He is Syndicated

Middle Americans in cities all across the country are reading this column and seeing the Bush plan expressed in language they can grasp rather than accounting jargon or Republican doublespeak.

Bush's second plan is even worse than his first, and it's not even getting the benefit of the doubt.

[AP]

7. The book is called The Great Unraveling

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393326055/qid=1115645397/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-8183042-8461616?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

And I like Krugman a great deal, but there are a few things I don't like about him.

(1) He wrote that the US missed a great opportunity to work with liberals in Venezuela to get rid of Chavez, and his evidence to support this claim is that the protests against the Chavez government began with labor union participation. The truth is that the labor unions are partners with private industry in Venezuela and nobody who spends 10 minutes googling could say with a straight face that they're progressive or that the strikes in Venezuela had anything to do with protecting the interest of the poor or of people who work.

(2) He talks about tax revenue very monolithically -- it needs to go up. He uses Canada as an example: they have twice the tax burden Americans have and they're not falling apart. So the US needs to raise the tax rates across the board. My opinion is that the US tax code has been written to shift the burden on to people who work and off people who make their money off of dividends and buying and selling stocks.

We don't need to raise tax rates across the board. In fact, increasing the EIC, decreasing tax on 98% of earned income, and raising rates (progressively) on dividends and cap gains over 400K, and taxing inheritance at the personal rates of recipients (higher than earned income) will not only raise the revenue needed, but will raise it a way that will encourage the most productive wealth-creating activities in which America participate.

[Inland]

8. Fixed it.

I was thinking of a book by B. Friedman that I glimpsed on my shelves yesterday.

As to Krugman, his tax hike ideas are articulated as reversing the Bush tax cuts, see, eg, today's columns. I don't remember him addressing leaving out dividends in any manner except to note that it throws money at the rich without providing much incentive to investment.

As for Chavez, who knows. I don't like him much myself and see him as the better side of a critically divided polity, but inferior to everyone getting together with love and kisses and deciding to be moderates and build a stable, middle class based economy.

[AP]

9. Regardless of whether you like Chavez, Krugman based his argument on

somethign that was so inaccurate that it should embarass Krugman to have the claim in print.

[TahitiNut]

10. "In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

"To avert the danger of future cuts in benefits, Mr. Bush wants us to commit now to, um, future cuts in benefits."

That's absolutely correct. How can anyone not comprehend the scam? Just how ethically and intellectually disabled must a person be to fail to comprehend the insanity of this administration?

What's more important is that Mr. Bush's 'plan' makes certain in the near term what's really only a possibility in forty years: a reduction in Social Security benefits.

Why? Is it that Mr. Bush wants Social Security to fail? Is it that the possibility of a shortfall isn't enough?


There can only be one reason for a sane person to burn down their house today in order to prevent it from burning down next week: insurance fraud.

[Inland]

16. Bush made the same argument about the trust fund.

"It's just IOUs from the gummint. Some day in the future asshole politicians could just refuse to pay it, and steal the money. So my solution is to beat future assholes to the punch by being an asshole today and stealing it myself.

"Stealing it today will keep it from being stolen in the future. Problem solved. No, not the problem of social security. My problem with finding money to give away in tax breaks for the rich and fund my wars. Did I say 'wars'? I meant 'war'."

[slipslidingaway]

11. Question on a statement in the Krugman article.

This is the paragraph and the question is, is the $8 trillion dollar figure accurate???

"I'm not being unfair. In fact, I've weighted the scales heavily in Mr. Bush's favor, because the tax cuts will cost much more than the benefit cuts would save. Repealing Mr. Bush's tax cuts would yield enough revenue to call off his proposed benefit cuts, and still leave $8 trillion in change."

[Inland]

19. Yes, if you measure it the same way.

When Bush wants to maximize something, like the possible shortfall in SS, he takes a 75 year perspective for a total.

When Bush wants to minimize something, like his tax cuts, he takes a five year perspective for a total. Bush will never admit what his tax cuts cost for more than five years out.

If you took Bush's tax cuts for the same seventy five years that SS is being evaluated, and totalled the cost--yeah, you would have more lost to the tax cuts than the social security deficit, for sure.

[slipslidingaway]

21. Thanks for the reply on the very long view. n/t

[Avalux]

12. Once again, Krugman speaks the truth!

I love this guy. :loveya:

[Catshrink]

13. How about sending him the "Andy Story?"

[Pawel K]

14. Krugman's columns are great, I just wish he would do a little better in

debates. Not sure if anyone saw him debate O'liely but I was kind of disappointed in his performance there. I can't really blame him though as he was under a loto of pressure.

[spindoctor]

15. Krugman does fine in debates

Provided their is such a thing. The cable news point/counter point baloney is not debate.
In debate you actually have to listen to the other party.

[CatWoman]

17. what did you want him to do? grab a scoop of shit and sling it at O'Reilly

it appeared to me that's O'Reilly's "technique" and I was proud of Paul for not stooping to that level.

[Pawel K]

20. That's exactly what I wanted him to do

O'Reilly could have been exposed for the fraud that he is right then and there, but Krugman chose not to do it for whatever reason. You could say that he didn't want to stoop to that level but when someone continually insults you avoiding the actual topic you have to shut them up before any meaningful discussion can take place. O'Reilly used that debate to make him look better to his idiot viewers. Don't get me wrong, I started reading Krugman's columns a little while ago and respect him greatly; just wish he would have finally shut up O'Reilly right then and there since O'Reilly is a coward and an opportunity to come face to face with him is rare.

[CatWoman]

22. I'm glad Paul showed restraint and class

and by doing so, IMO, exposed O'Reilly for the loudmouth fraud that he is.

You don't always have to be an asshole in order to point out what an asshole someone else is.

[Pawel K]

23. Yeah, but you can also expose someone without being lound

and without being an asshole. I do understand where he is coming from and don't really hold it against him; however, when the rare chance to expose O'Reilly comes along it can't be wasted. That coward won't face anyone in an fair public forum and this was the perfect, wasted, opportunity. Look at David Brock, O'Reilly compares him to nazis on a regular basis but is too much of a chicken shit to come face to face with him.

[Inland]

18. They were trading in different coins.

Bill wanted a place to bluster and use aggressive body language, and he did. Nobody can stop him from "winning" his battle to be the biggist jerk in the room.

Krugman simply made sense. It's all you can do.