Spot on Paul.
15
Trump is a hater of everything and everyone except himself and the minions who ride his coat tails and make his personal fortune possible. Before you believe we need a better wall, remember that not only do walls keep people out, they make it much easier to keep people in.
9
Can we PLEASE stop calling these (Republicans) people Conservatives? It is a misuse of the English language. They are Radicals.
22
To say that Trump is experimenting with Libertarianism is like giving a monkey a typewriter and claiming that the chimp is experimenting with Proust.
15
Since food stamps obesity has increased among the poor, further reducing their job prospects.. there is a fine line, helping needy.. making people unemployable.
2
What an awful strawman of libertarianism.
3
As we know well, it isn't "gub'mint" programs that are inherently evil, it is "gub'min" programs that provide benefits to the 'undeserving'. You know, 'those people'. The 'bloc vote'. You know.
5
does this work?
If it goes on long enough, this shutdown could be a pretty good, first kick of the libertarian mule with considerable educational value. How's the junior Senator from KY taking it so far?
3
My daddy told me when I was twelve; "Son, Republicans are not for us, they are for the rich." That was about fifty years ago. But, millions of zombie morons still don't get that.
It's not a plot, even, it's just the force of greed withing humanity. But, Repubs say greed is good, lying is legal, might makes right - awh, America.
Defeat republicanism.
12
Law suit, HA HA HA. The courts are closing too you fools.
3
Bravo, Mr. Krugman, for outing the GOP agenda: consolidating wealth upward to the 1% and spewing toxins downward on the 99%. And all that GOP baloney about supporting personal responsibility and productivity is just cover. By 2020, the GOP will be hailing the heroes of living within their means/environments, no matter how small/toxic. I can imagine Koch sponsored billboards celebrating images of skeletal Minnesotans who can survive on 1000 sugary calories a day while living in a Koch manufactured trailer sitting on a Koch toxic waste site or Fox news reports of Flint, Michigan, residents getting GOP Medals of Courage and Thrift for uncomplainingly drinking the lead contaminated water --- of course by then, their brains will be so lead addled, they wouldn't know to complain. Ahhhh .... there is no end to the iniquity.
7
The libertarian bent to the G.O.P. exists only to get votes so the G.O.P. can reduce taxes for the wealthy. The common motive among Trumpists, libertarians, Tea Party wing nuts, and so many of the ignorant is greed. Their greed, however, will lead to the devaluation of the very dollars they seek to keep. Wealth in the form of dollars can exist only if our federal government is reliable. The "full faith and credit" of a strong, efficient, and largely not corrupt federal government is the best insurance that the almighty dollar remains the most powerful currency in the history of the planet, and a foundation of the United States empire.
3
Contaminated food doesn't sound palatable to me. But the criminal-in chief at the White House doesn't care about any of it. He thinks, "It's just business". Who does that sound like? As his lieutenants fall to justice, I hope the law finally catches up to their leader.
6
some libertarians write panegyrics about the Laissez-faire Eden that will blossom forth when the invisible hand is set free to bless us all. When those arguments break down, however, they usually retreat to the claim that it is always wrong to violate property rights. Their justification for property rights is incoherent, however, especially on the issue of how property was originally acquired. For more on this see below. https://www.academia.edu/5393180/A_Critique_of_Libertarianism
5
Hey, here’s a libertarian saying something that actually makes a lick of sense:
“The complete interdependence of modern society seemed to have escaped him entirely.”
—Robert Anson Heinlein, “The Roads Must Roll.”
4
Good article; and proving that conservatives don't even know what government is, let alone what it's supposed to do. Government is nothing more or less than social administration. If you want laws, rights, rules, and, ironically food that's safe to eat, (if you can call high fructose poison food) hospitals able to do their jobs, etc., this is how it happens.
Meanwhile, I notice all these libertarians don't say a word about government contracts? They don't mind taking government salaries, either. Libertarianism is pure hypocrisy, with a varnish of pure ignorance and a stench of pure greed.
4
BRAVO. About time to expose the stupidity and hypocrisy of the libertarian ideology, which has become the cover story for looters and oligarchs. Proper transparent government provides services that need a reliable continuum - historically impossible with privatization and monopolization of infrastructure and services, and now impossible because of an imperial shutdown. - A former Ayn Rand Libertarian
5
My view of libertarians are they are either...misinformed, utterly disconnected from reality, impressed with the word but totally ignorant of its meaning, or simply republicans with a label substitute. They want hands off things until those things impact them, and at that point they want action, quick, now.
They lack empathy, imagination, creativity, feelings - they are in it for themselves and don't care what happens to the rest of us. Disgusting.... and, yes, sad.
4
I worked for the Dept. of the Interior during the Regan years and they had an active policy of putting their people, mostly unqualified, into positions way down the chain of command, not just the political cabinet level jobs. Trump is using the wall as an excuse to drive qualified government employees out of all the shutdown agencies and later replace them as patronage jobs to his base (Tammany Hall?) or leave it vacant (cats away, the mice will play).
This is another form of corruption.
8
Farm subsidies / SBA.......really are cronyism. Better off without either. FDA one of the most important agencies and vital. Paul is wrong on the current GOP philosophy, he's mired in the Romney/Bush era. The GOP of today, is to take from Blue states, and redistribute to red states. The GOP of today is to pander to rural America at the expense of environmental issues and other concerns. Yes, the GOP will give away to the ultra wealthy, but the GOP base those that elect Presidents, does not reside in Manhattan. They reside in Youngstown, Altoona, Jasper, etc.......so gun control, off the table, healthcare and medicaid are tricky which is why the GOP will waffle and fold on these issues.
1
I remember the 94 shutdown. I was living in deep-red Idaho. It was amazing to watch what lack of federal paychecks could do to one’s worldview.
If the furloughed federal workers didn’t used to be Democrats, well, they are now.
3
So ... what will happen to us, the Social Security retirement recipients? No check either? Highly worrysome ...
1
The shutdown will end when trumps base doesn't get their food stamps, their farm subsidies (entitlements) and subsidized health care.
2
"For example, federal checks to farmers aren’t going out — but libertarian organizations like the Cato Institute have long denounced farm subsides as just another form of crony capitalism."
Ironically, the Cato Institute has published detailed critiques of the Wall as well, particularly its steadily increasing cost:
https://www.cato.org/blog/cost-border-wall-keeps-climbing-its-becoming-less-wall
3
We are headed for a Constitutional crisis. I mean another Constitutional crisis. Red Yale Professor of Law Bruce Ackerman's article in yesterday's NYT on a president's claim of national emergency and the use of military money and/or personnel to build something on American soil.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/no-trump-cannot-declare-an-emergency-to-build-his-wall.html
1
FYI:
"The average SNAP benefit per person was about $126 per month, which works out to about $1.40 per person per meal.Oct 16, 2018
A Quick Guide to SNAP Eligibility and Benefits | Center on Budget and ...
https://www.cbpp.org/.../food-assistance/a-quick-guide-to-snap-eligibility-and-benefits"
Yes, those greedy food stamp recipients, sitting home living it up on all that free food!
4
Thanks. To supplement this article, during my 50 years in Washington I witnessed the tragic results of primarily Republican policies on the American people. See
https://www.careforcrashvictims.com/blog/elections-why-we-all-should-care/
2
3,000 F.A.A. aviation safety inspectors have been furloughed. Aviation safety is being compromised and no one is doing anything about it and no one seems to care!
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/politics/shutdown-faa.html
3
Two of the biggest lifelong Libertarians influencing our politics is—duh—the Koch brothers, who believe that the government should stay out of private business affairs. Laissez-faire capitalism, for them, means the ability to pollute our envirnoment with impunity and destabilize the entire geopolitical scene with runaway climate change.
Will Wilkinson, VP at the Niskanen Center, is one of the few (classically) Libertarian public voices speaking truth to power in today’s Big Libertarian Experiment. Wilkinson rightly points out that true Libertarianism is actually integral to modern democratic principles:
“But the idea that there is an inherent tension between democracy and the integrity of property rights is wildly misguided. The liberal-democratic state is a relatively recent historical innovation, and our best accounts of the transition from autocracy to democracy points to the role of democratic political inclusion in protecting property rights...This [democratic] demand for political inclusion generally isn’t driven by a desire to use the existing institutions to plunder the elites. It’s driven by a desire to keep the elites from continuing to plunder *them.*”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/opinion/tax-bill-gop-democracy.html
Thus, what Krugman describes as “Trump’s Big Libertarian Experiment” must be understood as a thorough debasement of true Libertarianism. A more accurate headline would be, “Trump’s Big Corporate Fascist Experiment.”
2
This from Trish Gilbert, executive VP of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association is especially worrisome: "[Air Traffic Control] inspections aren't occurring. Training's not occurring. The quality assurance teams aren't on-site to make sure that all of those things that are normally in place in this very complex system. In addition, we are at a 30-year low in staffing of fully certified controllers. So we're already working overtime in most of our facilities, especially in our very high, complex and heavy traffic facilities. So now when you shut down the pipeline, meaning hiring is stopped and training is stopped for the most part, you don't have that new pipeline coming in to relieve this this very short-staffed workforce. In addition to that, we have about 2,000 eligible to retire right now out of a very small workforce - 10,500. If they were to decide to retire immediately following the shutdown, then we feel the effects of being short-staffed. The effects for the flying public on that when we are so critically staffed is capacity. They'll start to see delays when we're not able to staff our radar rooms in our towers across the country. They'll put less planes in the air. They'll keep them further and further apart, so the passengers will then start to see delays."
I hope there will only be delays and not blood on the hands of those are causing this.
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/07/682845294/air-traffic-controllers-association-calls-shutdown-unacceptable
4
As I understand it, Republicans regularly refer to the economics put forth by Adam Smith in his 1776 work, "The Wealth of Nations". As I understand it the piece originated the idea of the "magical hand of the market place" bringing all to order and proper value. Governments were seen as a drag on economic development.
Of course, Republicans use it in the service of the super wealthy - who find government to be very taxing. The super wealthy are the GOP's top priority - perhaps their only priority - all flows from that.
4
Organizations created by people are corruptible, whether they be government or private. People need someone watching their organizations from outside to be sure they don't slide into shady practices. But people also need to modify their belief in individualism. We do better in communities, with cooperation as well as oversight. Individualism is good for creativity, maybe, but not for society's survival.
4
Paul, it might be helpful to remind readers about perverse incentives that are involved when Private Means deliver Public Goods. The experiment with privatizing prisons meant more incarceration and more recidivism..increasing private profits. Social outcomes: rehabilitated criminals, highly educated population, less crime better public health, better health outcomes - all require dedicated professionals not staff pushed to make profits ..at any cost. USA imports food from over 180 countries. Citizens should understand the risks of having ACME.Com trying to manage that flow of food and doing the important work with the FAO and other countries to set and enforce international standards.
3
It’s such a relief to read such wise, thoughtful comments. Bravo, keep it coming.
6
Chipotle had a problem with contaminated lettuce that the FDA neither prevented nor solved. But Chipotle solved it because it was critical to their business. Merck withdrew Vioxx because they knew there was a safety issue. The FDA had no clue there was even a problem. No, my friends, this government shutdown will indeed reveal just how useless all these governmental organizations are. Nothing bad will happen except people won’t get a redistribution check that they probably didn’t need to begin with. Subsidies for farmers? No need. SBA making loans – sorry, we have banks. I agree the current Republican party is not really libertarian, nor even classically liberal in the tradition of Locke and Smith. This Libertarian remains hopeful – and this shutdown is exciting!
(Of course, we Libertarians also wouldn’t build the wall – borders should be open.)
1
@Hopeful Libertarian Libertarians assume that people are all good. They aren't. None of us are. That's why we need checks and balances.
9
If the government shutdown lasts for the month of January, will my taxes for 2019 be prorated?
No service, no tax.
7
Closing the government does not decrease expenses. For instance, most of the Federal civil service personnel will get 100% of their regular pay regardless of whether they did or did not have to report to work. That is how it has ended in every previous shutdown and Congress just voted to do the same in this instance.
2
I believe that regulation is good for the economy. Would you fly on a plane if they weren't regulated for safety? Visit a doctor if he wasn't licensed? Go to a restaurant or a grocery store if they weren't regulated for food safety? Buy a car? Take a pill? Ask Tylenol (who lost $665 million in sales when someone inserted poison in their pill bottles) what the value of public perception of the safety of your product means in terms of sales.
16
When a mother figure such as Pelosi said "no" to Trump's wall, we knew he would throw a tantrum. But Trump who never took no for an answer is not one to rethink his demands. In fact he doubles down and is more than happy to shoot himself in the foot to get his way. Let's hope he continues shooting himself so that his base can see their cult leader for who he really is and his party for who they really represent.
8
The people who depend on all those handouts ought to shut up and go to work for big corporations. They may pay peanuts and sign workers' rights away. Walmart and the likes have been telling their staff to apply for foodstamps. But if these programs go away, the companies may have to give something more to keep their employees alive.
There is nothing wrong with feudalism. It flourished in Europe for centuries. All wealth is now being concentrated on a dozen or so companies, who will have to care for the entire country. Feudalism seems to be the future of America.
2
@Inveterate
One contradiction of capitalism is that its own greed will destroy it.
Henry Ford (though a despicable anti-semite and neo-fascist) recognized that if his own workers could not afford to buy the cars they built he would not be in business.
You cannot depend on Walmart to pick up the slack voluntarily unless its sales decline. Far better for the workers to organize and exercise their own power.
3
I had this feeling of deja vu, and now I get it: we're watching "It's a Wonderful Life" enacted in reality before us.
What would the nation be like if Henry F. Potter got his way, if decency and community were replaced by nasty selfishness, if the good that money can do were overshadowed entirely by the greed of the powerful? We've had forty years of this hinted at for us, and we didn't listen. Now we see it.
This is the GOP and everything it wanted: cruelty, deprivation, bitterness, and fatalism, all something they saw as good tough measures to slap the happy right out of an undisciplined, childish people. The powerful entrenched, the ones at the bottom locked there, and the streets lined with casinos and bars. Pottersville.
7
In a perverse sense Trump whipped into shape by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, sprinted toward the shutdown with a warm embrace in front of the cameras with Chuck and Nancy. Raw politics enforced by ideologues ignorant of consequences goaded Trump into harming his base. This problem or issue, not a crisis could have been dealt with before Trump lost the House. Now, Trump owns the shutdown and McConnell may regret not bringing the House bills to the floor for votes. The do nothing Senate on the verge of irrelevance.
The irony in this perversion rests on the loss of negotiating room left for Trump. He is precluded from offering immigration reform in exchange of his wall out a fear of being skewered by Coulter.
His lone off ramp is to throw the issue into the courts under a declaration of national emergency rapidly losing luster and short on rationale.
6
“the truth is that libertarian ideology isn’t a real force within the G.O.P.; it’s more of a cover story for the party’s actual agenda.”
What I get most out of this column is that Republicans when speaking to the public at large are actually not so much speaking to the public at large but rather to each other in code.
The other important point in the column is that "Food Stamps" is first and foremost an agricultural subsidy. That is by providing Food Stamps, over half of which goes not to urban but to rural America but that is an issue for another time, more than feeding the poor the Government is subsidizing the growing of food by providing customers. That is why Food Stamps is part of the farm bill and why and why a big GOP constituency, big AG, loves Food Stamps.
A final point about Food Stamps. The best way you can tell someone is either really stupid or a big fat liar (Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell) is when they talk about balancing budget by cutting Food Stamps. As currently constituted Food Stamps takes in more revenue then is spent, the last time I saw the figures $1.02 for every $1.00 spent. Obviously because of diminishing marginal returns you can't just give everyone Food Stamps, but cutting Food Stamps as currently constituted would actually raise the deficit. That is because unlike tax cuts, as Krugman often mentions, either goes to people who live outside the country or who spend on items from outside the country, 99%of Food Stamp money is spent in here.
8
Anyone who thinks enforced food safety is unnecessary should go to India and eat in a restaurant anywhere but a first-tier hotel for foreigners. Your odds of getting sick are very high. Ditto in Alexandria, Egypt, and other places I've experienced where profit is important and product is, well, less so.
Remedies? Seriously? How will you prove anything? Especially when all the restaurants have the same cavalier attitude toward washing food and hands. You ate the salad? More fool you.
117
There’s just enough method to the Trumpkins’ ongoing madness to make you wonder if you can’t see the outlines of a sinister (and much less clueless) plot behind an idiotic orange stalking horse, huh?
4
For once, I have to admit that I disagree with Paul Krugman.
Libertarians who are intellectually honest merely claim that the private sector would regulate all this things better than does the government. A shutdown doesn't test that hypothesis at all, as the government is still there, it's just that TSA agents are no longer paid whereas their contracts force the government to pay them.
When the leaders of organization A claim that organization B would do the same job better, and then simply decide to no longer pay the employees of organization A even though their contracts stipulate that they have to be paid, without building organization B, then of course they are NOT testing their own claim at all.
What intellectually dishonest "libertarians" and establishment Republicans are claiming today, however, is that simply suspending the payments of government employees de facto means "small government", so, they tell GOP voters, a government shutdown is a GOOD thing, they are once again betraying their own voter base through horrible lies, as a shutdown costs the government billions in taxpayer dollars a week.
Finally, let's not forget what this is supposed to be all about: a wall. In other words, a gigantic project, that costs taxpayers a fortune, whereas there are NO independent studies showing that it's the best way to protect the southern border (and many that show that it isn't). So this is a PERFECT example of incompetent, "big government bureaucracy"...
8
@Ana Luisa
Libertarians are never honest.
They put a shiny veneer on the immiseration of the working class during the Gilded Age, when monopoly capitalism was out of control and the private sector proved conclusively that it could not and would not regulate itself.
Collude, yes. Regulate, no.
6
If agencies like the FDA are every privatized, it's a virtual certainty they'll take the form of companies like Standard & Poor's and the ever-growing market for private arbitrators. Paid by the organizations they're supposed to police, woefully biased in those companies' favor, and immune to liability when they make a mistake and the common person suffers.
8
@CS from Midwest
Did you know that the FDA is funded by pharmaceutical companies through the prescription drug user fees?
When an empire is running out of its wealth, the easy thing to do is debase the currency and run deficits. We are no different from the Spanish, Arab, Dutch and most recently, the British empires that have receded in the past.
3
Conservatives love to shout "cut government programs" except when they profit from it. Ever heard of a Republican turning down Social Security or Medicare ? I agree that many of them are celebrating the federal payroll temporarily dropping as well as lost food stamps and farmers' checks, but what goes around comes around - Nov. 2020 is not that far away.
7
Its unlikely that the partial shutdown will last much longer, a few weeks at best. New pressure will come from business leaders, the ultra rich, the travel and airline industries and anyone usually travelling by air. With both TSA and the air traffic controllers not being paid, their in-sick calls and job replacement searches will drastically increase, forcing an essential curtailment of much of the air traffic in the US. Even a hint of this, coupled with the other shutdown emergencies will have Congress squiring for a solution. It may well be Trump's threat of a national emergency being realized.
3
The appeal to the Trump base of this small government is basically "we won't make your little Susie go to school with those people."
4
Evidently Libertarian's idea of a social experiment is having a pet wolf over ever so often to thin the herd so there'll be more of what everyone wants to go around. As for the victims of their pet wolf inflicted carnage, who ever needed them, anyway, the losers.
4
We lived in a small West African nation for 25 years. There were no collectable taxes because the tax collectors kept what they could extort from poor people, no safety nets such as social security or medicaid/medicare, no fire fighters, no functional road departments, no regulation of pharmaceuticals, an unprepared and unarmed military, no paid federal, regional of local police forces, no judges who were not bought by the highest bidder, no standards for the public hospitals, no communication systems, no running water in major cities, no electric power that functioned more than 4-6 hours a day, and not a single government official who was not on the take.
What we did have were cholera epidemics that killed 5000 people, annual measle epidemics that killed children under 5 years old , villages burned to the ground by wildfire, a school system which did not pay its teachers and finally a 12 year civil war which killed over 200,000 people and a [post war ebola epidemic which killed 12,000 more.
The proper use of taxes was not even a dream.
Now in the USA, the "leadership" under its current president and his sycophants are playing personal and infantile grade school games with your and my tax dollars and the congress is helping them do it. Amazing! I feel like I am back home in my 3rd world village .
243
@Paul K
Thank you for putting this in explicit perspective. Would that some open minded republicans should read it. Not holding my breath...
28
@Paul K
my favourite explainer of this - 'Why Some Countries Are Poor and others Rich' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-4V3HR696k
1
Contaminated food... you must be kidding. Does Mr. Krugman truly believe that the only reason food producers, grocery stores and restaurants are not deliberately serving contaminated food is because the super heroes at the FDA, with the letters emblazoned on their jackets, are swooping in to prevent evil?
No, in actuality the FDA checks less than 1/10 of 1% of food that is sold. And that function could very easily be outsourced. Same with most government functions. Until about 18 years ago, Airport Security was privately run.. and thus resistant to political standoffs and shutdowns. Now with the Feds running the TSA, citizens are much more likely to face difficulties. Krugman and his followers like to believe that government is God, that it is the only entity that can get things done. The God we can't live without.
Well, the Federal Government has been out of commission for almost 20 days now, and most of us are doing just fine. No spike in crime. No mass infections. No dip in economic output. No lull in record breaking hiring. No let up in our rising GDP. No transportation bottlenecks. Just look at the example of Spain. They had no government for over an year. And guess what, Spain had the highest GDP growth in the European Union that year... better than countries with functional governments. This goes to show how most duties governments have unnecessarily taken on are not only non-essential, but counter productive.
2
@Ayaz
It's not because the FDA only takes samples and doesn't verify everything that somehow verifying wouldn't b necessary.
And outsourcing something as basic as our food safety means that "we the people" are no longer taking care of it, but a private sector company, whose first goal is NOT to keep our food safe, but to make money.
What we do ourselves, we do better - and cheaper ... ;-)
As to Spain: in European countries a government shutdown is illegal, remember? Having no government means having no NEW bills signed into law, not ending the payments of federal employees whose job it is to implement existing laws, as is the case with a US government shutdown ...
7
@Ayaz
Except that the government has not been fully out of commission for those 20 days.
And 20 days is hardly long enough for the worst to kick in.
Outsourcing government functions to the private sector works only with government oversight. Without it, maximizing of profits takes over above all else.
6
Any man who can't control the airspace around his own airplane is no man at all.
2
If Krugman is really so concerned perhaps he should advocate that the democrats compromise?
2
@jaco
By giving in to blackmail?
It's not "compromise" to agree to give a thief half your money.
3
Watching the unraveling of American democracy and civil society is quite a sad show. As the real problems in America continue to mount (crumbling infrastructure, spiraling national debt, opioid epidemic, gun violence, endless war, climate change, environmental decay, unaffordable education, housing and medical costs) nothing is done to address these issues. This is leading to an unfathomable future for the US.
While Trump is a great wrecking ball to democracy, the forces that put him in power share the blame and shame for destroying America. Libertarians' dream of some glorious past that they think is a panacea for modern life, ignores the predatory nature of capitalism and the toll it has taken on America. America survived the 20th Century thanks in part to the economic playing field being leveled by the Great Depression, and WWII. These events helped restrain the forces of market capitalism, creating the least income inequality in American history. But those days are long gone, as 21st Century income inequality in America surpassed the gilded age excesses. "Free Markets" is a dog whistle for greed, exploitation and an unfettered grab for money and power. America now more resembles Russia than its allies (France, Germany, etc). Corruption and rule by the rich is now the American way. Trying to take back America from the forces of greed, power and corruption will take years if it is even possible given the entrenched nature of the "Free Markets."
17
@Lawyers, Guns And Money
Well said
2
You know, maybe this government shutdown isn't so bad, if it gets some of the Republican base to wake up and realize how much they depend upon the government "that is the problem."
Ronald Reagan started the disingenuous mantra and Republicans have chanted it ad nauseam, getting elected on a platform of smaller government, while growing the government's size (and intrusion into our privacy) and bloating our national debt.
There's a direct line from Reagan's con job to the con man currently residing in the WH. No one should be surprised by this.
Meanwhile, we become more and more like 18th century pre-revolutionary France. The middle class is squeezed to death, the starving class grows, and the wealthy (and the Republican Party) don't give a damn.
13
Regulations, morals, freedom, health care, seat belts, vaccines, food stamps, who needs them. An unregulated society is a dead society. If you eat a contaminated piece of meat that tastes good at least you have enjoyed your meal before you go to the hospital.
4
This article brings to mind what David Frum of The Atlantic once said about Libertarianism:
“It’s a completely closed and airless ideological system that doesn’t respond well to reality. They are like Marxists in that they have prophets like von Mises and Hayek, and they quote from their holy scripture, and they don’t have to engage.”
It’s sad to say, but maybe the shutdown will last long enough for everyone to see what the country, and they personally, miss when government “gets out of our lives”.
8
@Michael
Well, regardless of what David Frum wrote in the Atlantic, Libertarians are nothing like Marxists.
Libertarians ignore the history of unfettered capitalism and advocate for a system with no checks on the power of corporations to subjugate the masses.
Marxists study and learn from history in order to find ways to change the balance of power from capitalists to working people.
3
"Maybe the party believes, like Trump, that these workers are mainly Democrats." If they weren't Democrats, they will be soon!
8
Exactly. And, the Democrats need to go back to that other famous line, "are you better off today than you were four years ago?". I am not sure enough people would answer in the positive to re-elect the President. That is because along with the line, the Democrats need to do precision targeting. Targeting of each person's, group's, location's results.
3
"Republicans always say that government doesn't work, and every time they get elected they prove it."
Al Franken
16
Mr. Krugman , I like your cynical description of the consequences of this unjustified government shotdown.
If something monstrous like this happened in Europe all government workers would be on strike for solidarity against such a paradoxical situation and the country would be totally paralyzed..
5
Let's just see how the GOP controlled (i.e. "red states") hold out for Trump's wall. I'd give it another week. Why do the GOP members of the Senat want to hurt their own constituants who are percentage wise more dependant on farm subsidies, food stams etc?
2
@Bob
They hurt them because their constituents have no understanding whatsoever of causal relationships.
If their cult leader says their hard-earned tax dollars should be used to further enrich the ultra-rich, they believe it.
2
Isn't it a little disingenous on Krugman's part to imply that the effects of a sudden disruption to existing policies & departments (e.g. a government shutdown) would be the same as if there was some measured phase-out of them or if they never existed in the first place?
I can't speak for Cato or Libertarians, but I don't believe that they're advocating for the overnight dissolution of these bodies, and thus it feels like an unfair comparison.
1
As a small business owner, I deplore those Govt handouts to the weaklings (among my competitors) who would otherwise exit the market. When I was building it, my three sons, myself, and my mom-in-law were all putting 16-18 hour days in, while a "to remain unnamed" competitor catty-corner from my location was getting all kind support from the City of Brooklyn and the State. We drove her out of business due to our low prices (thru hard work) and superior service. This is the ONLY way to run a market economy. Anything less is socialism.
2
@Yulia Berkovitz This is true for product and goods markets, like what you have. This is not true of food safety - if your competitor had higher prices because of better quality of food and went out of business, it is a loss to society and progress.
For medications, we are seeing a winning strategy to make a lot of profit is to not cure patients, but make them chronically dependent on more medication. Worse, some companies push for addiction. Is this what libertarianism is supposed to be about. Keep your ideology to your own limited world. The wider world is more complex - what works in product markets, do not work for services (like healthcare, food safety, environmental protection, eduction, etc.)
8
Great testimony of how working hard pays off. I can cite others who put in 18 hour days and were not successful. Utilizing federal, state or local government subsidies, whether personal or business, should not be stigmatized. A modern country operating under a true libertarian form of government has never been documented and I believe not a possibility.
5
The steel companies will greatly benefit from steel slat walls particularly with tariffs in play hurting their market. One has to wonder if he has his steel buddies in mind now that he has changed the wall to steel slats. They are non-government workers.
3
Those who think gov't is the problem should try living in Somalia for a bit.
13
Was Hitler a libertarian? It is easy to poke fun at the impractical libertarian ideas of society policing itself. But it is also important to remember that these ideas arouse as a response to totalitarian governments that abrogated to themselves the power to regulate and direct the markets. Stalin, Hitler, Mao in the past, and people like Erdogan and Putin today, epitomize the power of the government to shape the economy and stufle the culture. You’d say that these regimes are not democratic but it’s not true: Hitler was elected, Stalian and Mao had support of large majorities, and so do Putin and Erdogan. Democracy is not about the power of the majority to impose its will on everybody else: it is about protecting the rights of the majority. And seeing the comments filled with hatred and vituperation toward Republican voters, I am beginning to think that maybe it’s not a good idea to let Democrats take all three branches of government. How long before the purges begin? So we are much better off with a divided and paralyzed government. Rotten food is bad but tyranny is worse.
"money for food stamps will dry up. But Republicans have long been deeply hostile to the food stamp program. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has denounced the program for “making it excessively easy to be nonproductive.”
McConnell would know all about how easy it is to be nonproductive since he and his wife have sucked off the taxpayers for years.
12
@Jacquie
Don't forget that he and his wife have been enriched by their corporate donors.
1
Let me get this out of the way: libertarians are at worst, greed-centric, and at best, short-sighted.
Second: Why are there comments open for some and not other Opinion pieces? Who decides this? What are the criteria? Seems like a free speech issue? Get which article I'm talking about?
5
kinda like the Rapture. except it's the trumpets who are the Left Behind. I'm not worrying about them starving, tho; they're heavily armed.
Could I suggest that we rename the GOP/Republican party as the Grand Old Party of Hypocrites? We can refer to them as GOPHers!
6
GOP dismantling of regulations that protect the American public would be almost acceptable if the GOP did not simultaneously use “tort reform” to declaw individuals citizens’ ability to hold major corporations accountable in a court of law before a jury of peers. Here in NC the legislature has capped punitive damages at $250,000 so that when a poor neighbor of a nasty polluting hog farm gets a $43 million punitive damage award from a jury, the neighbor can only collect $250,000 from the Chinese owned Smithfield Farms, the world’s largest pork producer. Smithfield can stroke that check all day and keep polluting eastern NC with their hog feces stench.
5
Paul, I generally disagree with you but respect your intellect. Your columns usually make me think and consider why it is that I do not support your arguments. This one simply made me wince. It is well beneath you, filled with smugness and devoid of supporting arguments.
Furloughed government employees must be looking for the exits by now, their paychecks are not going to show up this week, and only a fool would bank on Trump seeing sense in the near future. The Republicans (i.e. McConnell) seem hell-bent on following him off this cliff.
My question is: if the shutdown goes on for months (or years if Trump’s fantasy becomes real) will there be anyone left to return those positions? The economy is currently at employment so there are jobs available (though that gravy train has to be coming to an end soon given this “leadership”) so what is keeping these people waiting much longer? Are they prevented from quitting?
1
So freedom fries now means they have E. coli? MAGA!
1
Wake up.
Trump couldn’t care less.
3
Does Paul Krugman's bad baloney smell like socialism?
@Jorge
Oh, that evil word! Is it socialism when you drive on public roads, collect SS payments, receive Medicare at age 65, attend a public school? You need to be clear in your mind which institutions should be shared and which should be privately owned. I assume you don't want to pay for your own army.
2
Trump is a libertarian like Putin is a liberal democrat. This is a calumny.
A simpler formula for this paradox might be the cutbacks in auditors at the IRS compared to the revenue they bring into the enterprise. That fact converts Krugman's contradictions in Libertarian ideals into the hyprocrisy of the Republican Party as "capitalists" fancy themselve "entrepreneurs" even as they extend profits into interests based on specious trusts, not moral laws. How inherited wealth becomes more and more powerful while minority- and working-classes send their children to fight and die in wars promoted by selfish interests. It's a crisis in world-view for gated communities as much as at the Southern Border.
2
The anti-government propaganda began immediately after the first income-tax law was passed. The rich were incensed that one dime of their money should go into anything that wasn't part of their "charity," where they would decided who and what was "worthy." That it turned out to be a good method to shift their tax burden to the middle class was something they have used to recruit the entire Republican Party. And the Tea Party is the perfect set of dupes to promote something that is against their own best interests.
6
Mr. Krugman, why no mention of Charles Koch? He's paying for the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist, Americans for Prosperity, the Freedom Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heartland Institute and was the Libertarian candidate for President. He's the leading opponent fighting the belief in climate change and has "purchased" over 30 state legislatures with hand-picked candidates and campaign funding as well as letting the Federalist Society pick the short list for Supreme Court nominations. He's the head of the snake destroying our Republic from within.
11
I agree with all, Paul. Yes, if men were angels, then libertarianism might become feasible.
I have friends and family who lean to libertarianism, but all have jobs in the government and get retirement and healthcare from it. It's an inconsistency with which I have learned to cope. So trump's government shutdown antics don't surprise me.
Running a government is a dynamic balance. Government protects us, and also provides, or enables, goods and services that we need to conduct our commerce and from which we get a general sense of well being.
There is an irony: the existence of some government function could enable individualist functions that libertarians so worship. For example, an exceedingly large, but exceedingly advantageous, national healthcare plan could enable small business to hire more people, as there would be a larger labor pool now that it is unencumbered by healthcare decisions, and a national healthcare solution takes businesses out of managing healthcare which is a waste of time and money for them. But neurotic libertarians are fixated on the idea that national healthcare is socialism which is automatically harmful. But not having healthcare is, uh, harmful.
Maybe to satisfy some concerns of libertarians is to have more fluidity in running the government. Some programs could sunset, some could be dynamically improved, the way we believe that capitalism replaces inefficient companies with efficient ones. Services could continually improve.
1
Libertarian philosophy on free markets require consumers to also have perfect information. With perfect information, consumers will slowly move away from tainted food (even though some will die as guinea pigs for the rest of us to get that "eventual" perfect information).
My question is: how will consumers get that perfect information when we have Fox News? And it's not just Fox News... Companies make big bucks by distorting facts that in business law we have whole sections on "Buyer Beware" (Caveat Emptor). Business lawyers know Friedman's libertarian philosophy is hogwash...but they may see an uptick in business with libertarian-ism.
But even with perfect information, consumers and investors can be irrational. Even Alan Greenspan talked investors' "irrational exhubrance" that foment asset bubbles. And many of us know people in our daily lives who are irrational consumers...
Since we don't live in a perfect world, and we are not perfect like Venus from a Clamshell or Jesus to be psychically clairvoyant with a PhD from Harvard to decipher corporate schemes to profit from us, we need regulators to make sure our food won't kill us, our medicines won't addict us, our schools have standards, and we won't get cancer from canoeing in a beautiful lake laced with hydrofracking chemicals.
9
Trump has no use for any organization that exercises oversight. He's not a libertarian. He's a self-serving nihilist.
8
The folks in Trump Country have always demanded that big government get off their backs and the heck out of their lives. Well, Trump Country, how do you like them apples?
3
You have slighted Libertarians. They would not stand for our Foreign entanglements, limitations on reproductive rights, anti-immigration stance, the incarceration of non-violent criminals, to name a just few.
Like many others, you show almost total ignorance of Libertarianism. As it is practiced in the US, it is similar to Classical Liberalism.
"And if you have libertarian leanings yourself, you should ask whether you’re happy with what’s happening with government partially out of the picture. Knowing that the food you’re eating is now more likely than before to be contaminated, does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?"
A Couple or Three Thoughts:
1. I fear that to some it just might smell as much like "victory" as napalm.
2. Seems here that the political nomination, "conservative," is even more a misnomer than "incredible" is a misused word for "credible" and wonderful."
3. "Libertarian"? Someone who doesn't like to play with others -- 'informed' in part and no doubt by the circumstance that finds so many others regarding him/her as bad company. (See, for great example, Paul, Ron and Rand.)
2
"The government is the enemy until you need a friend." -William Cohen
6
So a libetrarian experiment is about the same as terrorising your own people to get what you want. The nation as a hostage.
From across the ocean I wonder. Our unions would have organized a huge strike, stopped all economy and go to the streets if something like this would happen. Farmeers would block traffic and no plane would fly. Are you sheep over there?
7
@matteo
Compared to Europeans, yes.
Looks like Steve Bannon is still in charge - let's have a look if this type of "none-governing" will be successful(?)
1
It would be useful, I think, for the various folks claiming to be libertarians to read the Wikipedia entry on the term. It’s a jumble, and does a poor job of saying something simple—that there’s long been a tension between individual freedoms and the necessity of government—because it’s insistent on making “libertarianism,” a separate intellectual category, but it does have some nice stuff I’d not known.
Like, for example, that European “libertarianism,” was, often as not, leftist. An oppo to capitalism and catholicism, in fact. And that in this country, that’s largely disappeared: thanks to that dolt Ayn Rand, libertarians are nothing if not committed to laissez-faire capitalism. Who cares if the guys who INVENTED the idea of capitalism say such a system always ends in economic tyranny?
Their worse prob, though, comes out of the whole “rugged individualism,” nonsense. You know...I get to gun-tote, clear-cut mah property, dump the tailings into your well water, and hey, take me to court. Cuz ah have done built this with mah own two hands.
Yeah, sure. The day after you learn how to smelt your own high-grade steel and build a tractor. Oh, wait...don’t you need tools for that?
If you’re wondering where I got these notions, try Robert A. Heinlein.
“The complete interdependence of modern life seemed to have escaped him entirely.”
5
So we should look upon the Trump Shutdown as a gift. All that urban and suburban tax money that goes to pay farm subsidies, ethanol subsidies, rural infrastructure, AmTrak, opioid aid, food stamps is being sucked up by those self-sufficient individualists in rural America.
Let this experiment continue. It is probably optimisitc of me to hope the Democrats have learned to play this game. They are not the real party of government. That would be the Republicans who shift blue state money into their states to subsidize cuts to state and local taxes in their states.
I hope Democrats hang tough with Trump and his hostage-taking. He’s taking his base hostage. Republicans have succeeded over the years in shifting the tax burden to Democrat states while defunding Democrat priorities. Democrats allowed this to happen without much of a fight. Maybe they should look at the facts and realize what suckers they are to pay the bills of people who say they don’t like government.
Time to defund the Republicans.
3
Surely the consumption of BSE-laden meat, by the Trump family for decades, explains much of today's headlines?
1
Even better know your food.
Hi Paul,
Say, have you been following the climate change issue much? From what I’m reading, we best all get used to food that hasn’t been “inspected”.
So sad.
We are all in the same boat and we should all be trying to row in the same direction. The next time a hurricane hits Florida, Mississippi, Texas or any other solid red state the federal government should take its time in giving them aid. We'll see how much they believe in big government.
“ I love the smell of salmonella in the morning. It smells like
Vomit, and possible Death”. Thanks, GOP.
2020.
4
If your life depended on Donald Trump would you test him?
1
Hyperludicrous fearmongering from an economist clearly out of his element here.
2
Modern sewage systems in our bigger cities cost billions of dollars in tax money to build and maintain. Every time you flush your toilet, you benefit from "socialism." Libertarians, you can show your resolve and the sincerity of your convictions in one simple way. Refuse to flush your toilet.
6
@Curt M.
I guess you don't see the water and sewer bill for your building.
1
Still I say that you can't hate your government and love your country.
2
“Knowing that the food you’re eating is now more likely than before to be contaminated, does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?”
It’s called living on the edge, Mr. Krugman. Don’t knock it until you try it!
Give America Cholera Again!
2
Paraphrasing Marie Antoinette "Let them eat contaminated cake"
111
It could be that the Trump tantrum over a wall is what the country needs to come to it's senses. It could be the Trump made crisis is the emergency that unites us against incompetence, corruption and the Republicans. As the government shutdown continues it will soon be evident that government services are needed and that no family can be totally independent. Republicans would likes us to fend for ourselves, but only the rich will be left untouched and it will be evident.
3
I'm always concerned when people try to make a point with antidotes or scare tactics. In this case the headline seems to imply we are all going to be eating contaminated smelly food. The FDA is still in action. There have reduced some but continue to act in those areas there considered the most risk. The shutdown is not total. Doesn't Mr. Krugman know that? Some parts are seen as essential and keep working. The FDA is one. This wall conflict and government shutdown has two ideas. The Democrats are counting on history repeating itself, Republicans always cave. Trump says "I want the wall." Democrats say, "Not one penny." Another NYT writer today wrote about other means of boarder security. He used Israel's method as an example. But they don't send a border patrol agent. They call in an air strike, as he described. There is another method used on the Pakistan and India border. Some money could be given for a wall in some areas and other money to fund the development and use of other methods. The "not one penny" proclamation is creating a no compromise attitude for both sides. But the democrats are more intent on bringing us the Lawyer Cohen production next week. Now that is something smelly. Maybe when that is over, they can get down to business. Sometimes I think it would be better to shutdown congress and keep the rest of government running.
1
"And as it happens, many of the spending cuts being forced by the shutdown fall heavily and obviously on base voters. Small business owners are much more conservative than the nation as a whole, but they really miss those government loans. Rural voters went Republican during a Democratic midterm blowout, but they want those checks. McConnell may have trash-talked food stamps in the past, but a sudden cutoff would have a catastrophic effect on the most Republican parts of his home state."
(There are also many stories about farmers who are getting pounded by the closure of Department of Agriculture and Small Business Administration offices, and the loss of those services and funds.)
This is the best argument I have heard for keeping the shutdown going for a couple of months.
Let those conservatives who disparage "big gummint" see firsthand, up close and personal, what the "gummint" provides for THEM, by making those services and other benefits disappear for a while. That is probably the ONLY way those people are going to understand what they are disparaging. ("I want the gummint to keep its grubby hands off my Social Security and Medicare.")
Then they can tell their Representatives and Senators to get the "gummint" open again.
Sometimes, letting people have what they wish for is the only way to make that point.
Reminds me of the old adage: "Be careful what you wish for, BECAUSE YOU MIGHT GET IT."
4
So Trump should do what the establishment does every day, i.e., espouse libertarian small government principles while quietly pandering to big business crony capitalists, and showering different parts of his coalition with pork to keep them happy? Interesting argument. I'd rather a president, however imperfect, stand on principle.
1
If the government OF THE PEOPLE is not the solution, then what is? A egocentric, self-indulgent, arrogant plutocratic kleptocratic class? The reason the kleptocrats hate government of the people is that its role is to protect the people from the kleptocrats from corralling everything for themselves and destroying the world to satisfy their unrestrained unsustainable avarice.
Government isn't anymore corrupt than the private sector - and vice versa. The interface between government and private interests is where truly corrupt behavior happens. Indeed, government corruption for its own sake is rare compared with private sector and government-private corruption. Monopolists love regulations - regulations that fend off competition and maintains their monopolistic status quo and, of course, "redistributing income up the scale." They love tariffs that are passed through to the tax payer class while they benefit from tax cuts exclusive to them - irony that even with a tax cut corporate America wants further protection though tariff-taxes on the rest of us.
When ANYONE calls for a free market, we need to ask "free for whom?" "Free to be corrupt?
Why aren't Republicans, especially libertarians, the ones not suffering the most by the effects of their policies? Doesn't seem fair.
2
Looking at the National Parks. Perhaps the GOP has an ulterior motive: after this protracted shutdown is over, during which the parks have inexplicably remained open, and thus open to trash, crime etc.-- the GOP dominated government can vote to immediately privatize the national parks and turn over "stewardship" to their right wing cronies. The justification-- the lousy work ethic of the government employees who let them decline. By the time the faux news supporters of trump and the GOP realize the results of a folly such as this, it will be to late. "To the victors go the spoils."
1
Now that the "beneficial" effects of Trump's policies are becoming apparent it will be interesting to see how long his base will stick with him.There are still plenty of people out there wearing MAGA hats and blaming someone else for Trump's policies that amount to cutting off your nose to spite your face.
2
Nothing will change until wealthy people feel the pinch. Why is Congress getting paid? And the president (who once said he would take no salary if elected)? Until they miss a paycheck, nothing will change.
5
@aginfla
Most members of the House and the Senate are wealthy.
A measly $174,000 a year is penny ante for many of them.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/hawkings/congress-richer-ever-mostly-top
I would think that Republicans would be very concerned about the coming pain for their constituents, but that would require a belief that their constituents would blame Republicans for their pain. If history is a guide, they won’t. Instead they will focus their ire on Democrats, liberals, immigrants and other brown people, just as they have been trained to do by Fox, Rush and their charlatan pastors.
3
One advantage of going from a thought experiment , which is what libertarianism is basically to an actual experiment is that real time consequences of the libertarian philosophy can be engraved in our political memory. We can now see that farmers are expendable as is the safety of our food supply. We can now see that small businesses are held in contempt as are the poor that need help just to eat.
There is a silver lining to such an experiment and that is the political react6ion it can give life to. I am sure that farmers will not forget when they chose to vote and may well see in republican government a callus party asking for votes offering nothing in return bur suffering.
People cam be fooled some of the time , but not all of the time, and Trumps big beautiful wall fools few americans, for they know that this is a project to waste money that could much better go for schools, to farmers and the poor...Americans know that this an abuse of taxpayer money...which interestingly is what libertarians are much concerned about. Come the next election one can only wonder if those sacrificed for a wall will be happy to vote for the current republican party !
1
Trump isn't a Libertarian, any more than Prof. K is. Trump's actions aren't Libertarian, any more than Prof K's thoughts are capitalist.
1
The sheep are finally looking up. The ascendancy of the oligarchy is coming to an end. It won't be pretty...the fight to restore Democracy. But the force of the voters of this Democracy cannot, will not, be denied.
"You cannot fool all of the people all of the time." This chicken is coming home to roost. Power to the people.
5
The competition for The Most Hypocritical 'government-is-the-problem' Republican is tough. I'd nominate Mitch McConnell (35 years on the federal payroll as a Senator) and his wife, Elaine Chao (eight years as Bush II's Secretary of Labor; two as Trump's Secretary of Transportation).
1
"Knowing that the food you’re eating is now more likely than before to be contaminated, does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?"
We all know that libertarians are fabulously wealthy, you know, because they are libertarians and know how the world really works. So they all have food tasters and aren't worried about contamination.
1
Let's not forget that the crowd cheered when a rhetorical question was posed at a republican debate in 2016 whether people without insurance who find themselves in an accident should be left to die.
Nietzsche may have been spot-on in two regards that are unpleasant to . One, humans have a need to punish people and gain great satisfaction at its spectacle. Two, who should be punished changes historically, from left-handed witches to Non-white , poor people today. Will they be willing to punish themselves for the sake of being able to continue propping up contingent regime of punishment ?
We will see...
2
Definition of a Libertarian: Someone who wakes up one morning and decides to drive on the other side of the road and then sues you when he runs into your car. All rights and no responsibilities!
4
For all those fools who think they do not need the FDA, EPA etc.. what makes you think that you would survive an infection of any kind, or in case of the EPA that your lungs would do find breathing polluted air or that your children would survive polluted air or contaminated water, or that antibiotic that you take would really work and not kill you, if the FDA did not check it. Greed is the name of the game but remember that Greed is one of the seven deadly sins.
3
Reagan also said the scariest four words in the English language was when someone from the government showed up and said " I'm here to help". I guess that didn't exactly apply to Reagan personally in the 30's when Reagan's drunk and chronically unemployed father got a New Deal job, probably influencing Reagan to be a Democrat until later in his adult life.
4
"Knowing that the food you’re eating is now more likely than before to be contaminated, does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?
Replace 'food' in the above statement with 'money' and you've just described the entire world of finance and its many beneficiaries, including Times advertisers, east coast Democrats and private club academics.
We get it: Slow play Volcker reforms long enough for bailouts and corporate welfare to clear the headlines; libertarian tinfoil jokes for everyone else.
I wish for Libertarians , Republicans, and Trump supporters to live in the world they desire just don't take me down with you.
2
Almost impossible to end a government program once it is started. Wouldn't that be a reason to not start them willy nilly in the first place.
Grover Cleveland, the Republican anti-tax man, is loving this shut down. His famous quote:
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Not only do many Americans get the impression that we can do without the government people now out of work, but people will think twice about working for a government that will treat it's people so badly.
Many people have already been leaving government lately because of under funding (such as at the IRS), or because their work is "inconvenient" to the current ruling ideology (such as at EPA).
See "The Fifth Risk" by Michael Lewis for a full explanation of the national ignorance about our governments.
2
@Patrick Hunter you mean Grover Norquist. Grover Cleveland was a 19th century Democratic president
1
The quintessential Republican president is having his fun before the axe falls. He does not care about the suffering of anyone. Nor about what his stupidity is doing to the country.
I am concerned about epidemics that contaminated food could cause. And, of course, everything is enhanced by climate change.
It's back to the old adage of "freedom to pollute." And no entity is more in homage to that ideology than the GOP, the Greedy Old Party
2
Friedman's theory of why we do not need the FDA was based on his belief that the market would correct via closures or bankruptcy of the offending restaurants. Next time a libertarian drives by or through a Chipolte, Jack in the Box, or McDonalds please remember that Friedman was wrong. Just as most of his theories are wrong.
3
There seems to be a lot of rhapsodizing about Ronald Reagan today, some of it might even be deserved. He did, after all, promote humane immigration policies for the most part and advocate “amnesty” for "decent", honorable folks who crossed our border without the proper documents. Hey, he long lived in California; maybe he knew we stole it from Mexico in the first place. He claimed to believe walls must come equipped with doors.
But he also, sorry to say, demonized the government and fired the air traffic controllers. So, who knows where he would stand today. Of course, it doesn't matter, does it? We are in the age of Trump. Ignorance, racism and lies are the coin of the day. Ronnie may not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he had an inherent decency that is scorned these days in the Trump White House and the Party of Lincoln.
There are many songs one might sing to tell the story of these days in which we now live. I guess I'm too old to listen to Rap though it might have much to tell me – one's music has to come to you organically, from a time when your ears were open to it. I harken back to the days of Woody, Leadbelly and then Dylan, perhaps some Nina Simone, Stevie Earle, Phil Ochs. Is there a Joe Hill or Mother Jones for our time? Whenever I suffer to listen to Trump, I'm reminded of the truth of Dylan's line: “To live outside the law, you must be honest!” I know I ramble, but what else is there while I wait for Mueller.
1
McConnell talking about food for the unproductive should have to explain what he does for his salary
3
@larry - If McConnell doesn't want food for the unproductive, why do the 'unproductive' keep having
babies?
1
There is nothing "libertarian" about a so-called president who depends on extremist right wing white Christian Evangelists for a huge amount of his support. Pompeo's speech in Cairo tells us that Trump has no mission other than to hold on to his base of racists and religious fundamentalist hypocrites that want to convert the US to one-religion state. Libertarianism is just another mislabel for what Trump is all about: Power, Greed, and his Massive Ego.
2
I do agree with Mr. Krugman that the shutdown is engineered by GOP leaders to appease the establishment and the base, and passing the credit/blame (depending on who's talking) to Trump. Trump's little tantrum is indeed a perfect cover for the conservative agenda.
However, I think that the GOP would rather achieve this goal legislatively so that the results are more permanent. I believe that this is really a giant smokescreen for the Mueller investigation. I don't think it's a coincidence that this whole thing started before Flynn is set to be sentenced, Cohen is set to testify, several Russian agents were indicted, and the Syria conflict was gifted to a Russian takeover. I also think that Trump, with his absent knowledge of how government functions, thought that shutting the government down would shut Mueller down (it didn't).
Trump also HATES Pelosi, who just got sworn in as Speaker. I don't see passed him to shut the government down as a nod solely to her - note that one of the most publicly advertised cuts he moved to make was funding for CA wildfire recovery, conveniently located in her home state.
So again, while I agree with Mr. Krugman that there is an element of GOP engineering in this shutdown and that they do want to see government unravel to appease special interests - I think that this is alllll about Trump protecting himself from Mueller and hurting the woman who's getting in his way.
Hopefully Mueller will start releasing some material evidence soon.
One method for GOP libertarians to deal with growing federal spending deficit is via acting as budget hawks and electorally pushing for cutbacks in federal spending to close the budget gap. But, the GOP is a broad party composed of many competing interest groups. And, some of these GOP interest groups are more interested in funding their own service organizations for drug rehabilitation, poverty relief, and other private health care services. As a result, there is growing concern with the federal government liberally funding these services and their staffs' employment opportunities in rendering these services.
Thus, the segments of the GOP concerned about a growing budget deficit of about $1 trillion, as expected in 2019, has shrunk, as new funds flowing into these private service opportunities have grown.
In short: historical GOP supporters of groups like the Rudman Commission and other proponents of balanced federal budgets have lost ground within the party, to GOP supporters of increased federal spending to fund private sector services to the poor and others. The GOP deficit hawks' message is being drowned out by GOP advocates for increased federal funding of privately provided social services.
[01/11/2019 F 1:05pm Greenville NC]
The overwhelming majority of rural Americans want urban Americans to subsidize them through socialist programs. Let's be honest about what this is.
Years ago I went to the opening of a new rural hospital in a small town. (I work for the Department of Health and Human Services and the taxpayers of the urban US subsidize health care in rural areas to make sure people there have access.)
The pastor who spoke took the opportunity to denounce Washington, tell everyone he wasn't going to let anyone tell him how to pray and thanked Jesus for everything. (Though,
being a Jewish agnostic, I shifted a little uncomfortably in my seat.)
Other speakers talked about how much money the town had raised from its residents to replace the old hospital. No one mentioned the millions of dollars in construction money they had received in an earmark from Congress that their Representative had gotten passed.
I don't begrudge anyone the support they get from the Federal government. But I do get tired of hearing the rugged individualists in rural America accept every penny they can get their hands on from urban taxpayers while pretending that they deserve it unlike those moochers in the urban
US.
4
What pundits and the public haven't really come to grips with is that Libertarians, and Mitch McConnell in particular, don't want our normal democratic processes to work.
Like many white Southerners, McConnell was shocked and appalled when a majority of voters elected a black President in 2008 -- that was carrying this democracy business a step too far!
In 2008, McConnell became a Reaganite, a Nancy Reaganite, that is, and vowed to "Just Say No" to anything Democrats tried to do, which in effect shut down the normal operations of the government. He hasn't budged an inch from that stance since then.
Republicans have realized that they have a minority "small government" agenda which a majority of voters don't support and never will.
No one but the GOP elite, the Koch network, and the WSJ editorial page really wants to destroy the social safety net programs, and kill or curtail the federal agencies that protect our air, food, water, and public health. Americans depend on these "big government" programs for a decent, healthy life.
McConnell could work with the House Democrats to open the government, but he won't. He's been at work shutting down normal representative government since 2008 because his "small government" agenda can't be achieved under Constitutional, democratic, majoritarian rules.
What the GOP now seems to want is Russian-style oligarchy with a strong man President and fake elections. They had exactly that up to the Mid-terms and they still couldn't govern.
2
By gutting the EPA, contaminated food and sources of industrial pollution have a high chance of going undetected.
Will people in affected neighborhoods be able to make the link between cancers and a possible source? I would bet in most cases, not. They will be sick, and continue voting for the same people who made the cause of their early deaths possible.
This is the game Republicans are playing: deregulate and hide the consequences.
The malevolent corporate shareholders who are behind this play of course will import their food and/or buy from exclusive farms that guarantee the entire food chain. Nothing ever has consequences for them.
2
Whether it was Reagan's saying it that gave it wings we'll never know, but the idea that "government is the problem" is the most consequential idea of the 20th Century and beyond. Nonetheless, in the forty intervening years since those words flew from his lips, a significant portion of the populace has come to see government as a useless appendage, an impediment to the American Way.
Trump is the perfect embodiment of this idea and it is the well-spring of his support among his base. What people love about Trump is not his ideas, libertarian or otherwise (in fact he has no ideas), it's his behavior, which is directed at every step as an insult to the idea of government.
Could there be anything more cynically dismissive of the importance of government than to shut it down on the basis of a lie and an empty campaign promise?
4
If Trump wanted to further the aims of Russia he would not do anything differently. How long will his "base" support him?
4
I sincerely hope that people who were not affected by Mr Trump and who supported him in the election will now begin to see that they had the wrong idea about this man. Whatever that idea was.
1
Of course, as you suggest, the problem is most libertarians and Republicans don't see or think about what the government does for them, so they see it as a problem not a solution.
No meat inspections might kill some folks quickly--E.coli in the hamburgers, but most of the mischief, like Mad Cow disease in the herd will not be detected for 20 years, when thousands are found fasiculating in their beds.
But, there will be a certain grim delight in seeing those farm states and rural areas which voted Trump in suffer as the farm subsidies, road infrastructure start to crumble.
What I'm really looking forward to is seeing the South weep and wail as the federal government, which has been carrying those states on its back for generations, starts to withdraw its support.
The vibrant coastal economies can hold out much better than the fly over Red States.
Let's watch this deluge sweep over the MAGA crowd and enjoy it.
1
I love reading the comments on all these stories. We're all preaching to our own choir here. With the exception of a few dissenting voices, our echo chamber here is every bit as resonant as any on the Fox News side of the fence. Yes, we're all outraged, yes, we're all dripping schadenfreude at the effects of all the lies and hypocrisy finally landing right at the feet of the conservative base, but we don't have clue about how to bring meaningful change for everyone. Holding a mirror up to people who embrace willful ignorance, vote against their own self interest, yet slavishly follow the pied piper down ever increasing paths of delusion isn't working. The only solution is to get behind serious politicians that demonstrate some level of knowledge and expertise, and more importantly, demonstrate that their interests are aligned with greater common good not necessarily defined within the narrow limits other own parties. Work hard on the ground, in your neighborhoods, in your social circles to vote those people in and the current bunch out.
1
The Laffer Curve and the theory of Tickle-Down Economics were appealing - at least if you were among the very rich. Politicians liked the theory enough to adopt the it under Reagan and then to keeping pushing it. But it was all cynical. Core political support for the theory, particularly from the rich and the conservatives, developed logically: if the government takes $10 less from you next year, under the new lower tax plan, than you would otherwise have paid, then you, my worthy politician, will receive $1 of it in gratitude. Since running for re-election is any politician's primary occupation, this makes perfect sense.
1
"If the shutdown drags on for months... ." TSA agents have begun not showing up for work. Miami had to shut down one checkpoint for lack of workers. Air traffic controllers are angry about missing paychecks. Pilots are already complaining about threats to air transportation safety.
It's time for all the government workers who are being forced to work for no pay to stand together and take action. It's time for NO FLY FRIDAY. If the government isn't reopened in the next few days and people paid, the unpaid government workers should shut down the nation's airports on Friday, January 18. Everyone, call in sick. Let's see how unnecessary government workers are. Let's see what happens to transportation, businesses, and the economy when workers make clear that this will NOT go on for months. Bad weather causes havoc for the air transport system. Wait till you see what happens when all the airports in the country shut down for a day.
Trump doesn't care about the shutdown because it doesn't affect him personally. He has never missed a paycheck or had to make do. His daily life goes on as usual. Perhaps a demonstration of the results of the chaos he is creating will get his attention.
2
I assume that the government workers who take care of Air Force One are still working and getting paid time-and-a-half overtime.
2
From a NYT article some days ago:
"Realizing that their potential fire liability is large enough to bankrupt them, the utility companies are spending tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions. Their goal: a California law that would allow them to pass on the cost of wildfires to their customers in the form of higher electricity rates. After an earlier lobbying push, legislators have already voted to protect the companies from having to bear the cost of 2017 fires, and utilities are seeking the same for 2018."
Libertarians, what is your position on this? At what point are corporations the ONLY people, my friends?
3
"... the philosophy of the [GOP's] base is, in essence, big government for me but not for thee."
This is exactly right.
Remember when Mitt Romney said that 47% of American voters are Democrats because (in Jeb Bush's words) they want "free stuff"? He was completely incorrect. The percentage of Americans who want free stuff from the government is not 47%, it's more like 80 or 90%, and includes the voting base of both parties.
As an actual libertarian, I am kind of digging the shutdown. I'd like it better if welfare checks stopped going out too.
1
One (well, two, actually, since they’re brothers) of the biggest lifelong Libertarians influencing our politics is—duh—the Koch brothers, who believe that (besides the obvious: low taxes) the government should stay out of private business affairs. Laissez-faire capitalism, for them, means the ability to pollute our envirnoment with impunity and destabilize the entire geopolitical scene with runaway climate change.
Will Wilkinson, VP at the Niskanen Center, is one of the few (classically) Libertarian public voices speaking truth to power in today’s Big Libertarian Experiment. Wilkinson rightly points out that true Libertarianism is actually integral to modern democratic principles:
“But the idea that there is an inherent tension between democracy and the integrity of property rights is wildly misguided. The liberal-democratic state is a relatively recent historical innovation, and our best accounts of the transition from autocracy to democracy points to the role of democratic political inclusion in protecting property rights...This [democratic] demand for political inclusion generally isn’t driven by a desire to use the existing institutions to plunder the elites. It’s driven by a desire to keep the elites from continuing to plunder *them.*”
Paul Krugman, giving us another fine column, showing us exactly what freedom of the press is, and how important it remains.
5
Thanks Mr. Krugman for exposing yet again the fallacy of the Republican platform. This presidency and the Republican party are making it more obvious than it's ever been before. I'm still holding on to the shred of hope that this is the last gasp of a dying agenda and party.
2
Someone else already said it, but libertarians wouldn't last a day in the world they claim they want.
2
@ZOPK55 Some would last. In a libertarian world, the top one percent get to own everything. Aren't we just about there already?
Totally specious argument. Of course after a govt program makes some people completely dependent on it, you just can't pull the rug out. Take food stamps, only a small percentage the cost of the program actually get to the recipients. Compare that to high rated charities that distribute 80-90% of their receipts.
"Even where there’s a government-free solution to a problem, you might worry that it would take time to set up. Maybe you believe that private companies could take over the F.D.A.’s role in keeping food safe, but such companies don’t exist now and can’t be conjured up in a matter of weeks. So even true libertarians wouldn’t necessarily celebrate a sudden government shutdown."
Reading comprehension is important for one to have if they want to read the Times.
5
@C. Sense, your comment is not fact-based, it is thus a lie. Ask grocery stores (big corporations all) how they feel about food stamps-- they could not survive with out the actual people who use them in their stores.
Paul Krugman and many of those commenting on his article don't seem to know what Libertarianism means.
Wikipedia describes it as "Libertarians seek to maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association and individual judgment."
The US Libertarian Party's website says "Libertarians strongly oppose any government interference into their personal, family, and business decisions."
It's not about wide-scale government shutdowns, and only a libertarian zealot would oppose food inspections.
1
Ronald Reagan was partly correct, but it is not government that's the problem, it's bad government that's the problem! We are now witnessing the worst President and administration in our country's history and a Conservative/Republican party that has given our country over to the wealthy and big business.
It is extremely important for voters to realize that it is the Democrats who can return our country to the people !
11
Dr Krugman is on to something here that no one in the media ever see because they are too wrapped up in old taling points. I have a conservative/libertarian friend who always says that we should/could basically eliminate the federal govt and just let states run things, each their own way. Too much money going to fed employees who do nothing! So when Republicans and their idol Trump shut down the govt they are idologically under no pressure to open it back up and as for fed workers (and others) suffering the consequences, well, they don't want them there in the first place. They claim that that is what the Founders really wanted! I suppose TSA and airport control operations and so many other things could just be run by individual states or why not municipal governments.
By the way, it seems the same philosophy applies to foreign Ambassadors who represent the interests of the COUNTRY. Many of those positions are vacant for the same short-sighted reasons.
3
Anyone who eats food prepared by others - like at fast food, grocery store steam tables, coffee chains, and restaurants - should be concerned about the health of the people who prepare it. Most of those people are not well paid and have limited access to affordable health care. Many of those employers limit weekly working hours specifically to avoid having to pay for health insurance.
4
The only way to destroy the road to anarchy and reaction that trump has set us on is to institute a program of real reform. Not Clinton or Obama reform, which was mostly deception (reduced wages, increased super-profits, 250% during their terms, end of bank supervision (Glass-Steagal), but real reform, which only Bernie Sanders can give us.
2
Ah yes -- Libertarians. Those people who courageously resist any encroachment by the government on their personal freedom on the theory that the private sector can oppress you more efficiently.
8
Paul essentially says that the GOP is pretending to be libertarian. And he is correct. His characterization of "govt. for me, not for thee" is spot on with respect to the GOP. But he then attacks libertarianism, and absurdly at that. In reality, both the left and right pretend to be libertarian while insisting on a "liberty for me, not thee". Free to choose to have abortions, but not to choose to own guns. Free to choose your own bank, just not your preferred currency. Free to walk in the park, just not at night. Ad infinitum.
Religious extremists of any faith have no right to impose their beliefs upon the vast majority of us by rationalizing allowing the world to go to hell (global warming, pollution, government shutdowns, growing income disparities, etc.) because it will hasten the Second Coming, Messiah, etc. That's a feeble excuse for being too lazy and complacent to come up with creative solutions to the challenge of improving our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren and beyond, in addition to being antithetical to the tenants of America's founders.
2
What it smells like Paul, is fear mongering on your part.
Libertarian is just another word for hypocrite. People who value downsizing as long as it does not negatively affect them personally. Everyone else be damned.
5
This has to stop
1
Jim; “Libertarian” and “anarchist” were synonyms, initially. I imagine very few contemporary “right” libertarians would even be aware that Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, et al. existed. I suspect that “libertarian” became a useful word partly because it freed up “anarchy” to mean lawlessness and mayhem, and who wants that? The other "Libertarianism" was formed by lessor European nobles, who desired pay no property tax. Guess which VON Mises and ideologues at Cato and the Koch subscribe? Good work American Libertarians, attempting to bring back the feudal system!
2
McConnell, Senator of the state that contains the 3 poorest white majority counties in the United States will be eating stone soup with his constituents . That stone soup will be served cold and uninspected
6
Ayn Randism works really well with airplane safety. People will just stop flying planes in which they get killed.
9
Mediocrity begets immorality. Americans cannot see how mediocre they are. They think because Americans invented the Internet all Americans are amazing...what a joke.
1
We are our government. Our stupidity is the problem.
3
@David F We? Don't blame me -- I'm from Massachusetts.
1
I get a kick out of the statement that all are foods will get poisoned with out government on the job. How come so many e.coli out breaks. How did the drinking water in Detriot get so bad. Where is all those government agency's. Where is Government accountability Who ever gets fired in any of these government fiasco’s.
IThe R and the D don’t hold anyone accountable.
Klugman should show us all what has he done to better mankind. What part of the private sector does he work in. With out big government where would he extract his wealth from. Didn’t he predict the day after the trump election that the whole economy would collapse.
@Mp
When Enron went bankrupt, did that prove capitalism doesn't work? Whenever someone dies in a car crash, is that proof that laws and regulations and safety devices are all pointless?
The failure to prevent food and water contamination in some cases does not imply, much less prove, that no cases were prevented. A competent congress, in fact, would respond to the Flint disaster, and the recent romaine lettuce outbreak, with more funding for prevention and better federal oversight. (The Flint fiasco was Michigan's responsibility, not the EPA's.)
As for Krugman, the answer to your question is staring you in the face. You may be unaware that the New York Times is a private company, and that Princeton is a private university, not that that's of any consequence. As for what he's done to better mankind, he won a Nobel prize and has been explaining economics (mostly) to the public for 18 years in this column. Since we're keeping score, what would you like to see posted on your side of the ledger?
9
Another brilliant, clear and penetrating piece by Paul Krugman - bravo!
3
Running water
Three bedrooms
A public school for every quarter
A store on every corner
A public defender, appointed to every pauper
Affordable Jet Blue
Any one of you can board a flying saucer
Access to cough drops and pork chops
Sports facilities in the vicinity for free
You must be kidding me this ain't the place to be
america
Minimum wage they could pay you
You could praise
You could choose who you pray to
Regardless who you choose as your God
Workers comp if you get hurt at your job
Food stamps, benefit cards
Ain't lousy
Child labor laws
Section 8 housing
I spy gas and oil power
WiFi and lots of phone towers
The post office and the bus station
And the train station and the fire and the sanitation
Departments
Eviction laws will buy you 6 extra months in your apartment
The public park and the park bench
The streetlights in the darkness
It's all awesome, and it's all since
america
Okay the streets aren't paved with gold
At least they paved tho
Weaker than the euro, stronger than the peso
But you get what you pay for, so be grateful
Think you the only file in the caseload?
This is a crazed, unsafe globe, case closed
Complaining oh so much
Where else do people even think they're owed so much?
We are the 99% locally
We are the 1% globally
Take a trip where women fertilize their ovaries and diagnosis is "hopefully"
It's sobering
Cut the "woe is me"
It's a work in progress and it may always be
But even overseas opportunity is known to be in
America
-homeboy sandman
If you're worried about food contamination, you could always try the Irish diet: Boiled potatoes with a bit of butter and cream, use blood if you have it. Throw in whatever veggies and herbs you might have at hand. That was the standard diet before the blight.
Libertarians are a short knock off from senseless. Put these things in perspective: No white American has ever experienced government sponsored genocide since this nation's founding. Call the movement what it is: A lame excuse for unlawfulness.
Take the Bundy family as a case in point. Ill-tempered, ill-mannered, and unsophisticated thievery. They are grass thieves. Grass thieves who got at least one man killed.
What is the libertarian grievance? The government charged them a fee to lease public grass, your grass, at below market prices. The government also got upset when the Bundy family started grass fires which destroyed grass, your grass, and refused to pay the fine.
These over-privileged white religious degenerates are a blight on our society. I don't know about you but I've had enough. We need a political revenge on libertarianism. Rand Paul's neighbor spearheaded the initiative with a little too much zealous but he had the right idea.
What protected Rand Paul after getting attacked by his neighbor? The government...
5
Maybe something good will come out of all the destruction of President Chaos:
People who only get their news from the propaganda channels, esp. Fox "News," might realize that government has value to them personally, after all.
4
"And as it happens, many of the spending cuts being forced by the shutdown fall heavily and obviously on base voters. "
Sad that the base will never read that, because it comes from the laptop of a liberal writer in a mainstream newspaper.
3
“ their actual reaction to the shutdown”
I initially read this as “annual” rather than “actual.” It still made sense.
Dr Krugman, saying the necessary...keep it up!!
It's unfortunate that real people are really suffering, or I would be gloating more.
1
... does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?
Yes, like the book of "The Jungle" of Upton Sinclair.
2
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to eat.
7
Such intellectual dishonestly Mr. Krugman. No libertarian would suggest that by dismantling the state overnight without warning, that by the very next day we would have a functioning libertarian society. Nobody thinks that is the way the world works. Such fallacious arguing is below the New York Times. I won't even dignify your column any more with further comment.
To date a good number of Trump supporters don't seem to care if they or even their children have to risk eating contaminated food or breath polluted air S long as it makes liberals mad.
2
Republicans don't want freedom for everyone, they just want freedom for themselves and their wealthy associates! They want the freedom to economically enslave everyone else.
4
Libertarianism is a philosophy developed by men who never got over their mothers telling them they had to make their beds.
3
When the food stamp benefits dry up, freedom is going to taste like starvation.
3
Food borne illnesses? Nancy's fault. Flu Outbreaks? Chuck's fault. Collapsed cases? The Democrat's fault. Thousand's hospitalized for mystery illness? Mexico's fault. Donald Trump will be able to credibly sell these ideas because he will believe them. He can not accept the idea that anything bad would result from any action of his. His brain can not comprehend that he should take the fault for anything.
2
My take home is that we can no longer sit back and allow a libertarian conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
1
What a completely absurd article. To a hard shutdown of some parts of government is libertarian is the same false equivalence of equating Progressive politics to Stalin - apparently they both embrace the idea that central government is the solution to societal woes and the opportunity for the greatest number of citizens. Is there really a need to debate Krugman on the efficacy, efficiency and perfection of government? Shark - Jump - written on my ipad from the Motor Vehicles admin where I will now waste 1/2 a day correcting their administrative error
@Chris
If you think bureaucratic ineptitude is the sole province of the government, you haven't dealt lately with an insurance company or the phone company. I've spent 3 hours talking to 14 people at AT&T, and still haven't untangled their snafu over my new phone, ordered 2 weeks ago.
The Midtown DMV was created in response to what used to be a legendary nightmare at the downtown DMV in the 1980s. People used to routinely take a day off work and wait in lines outside, as though for concert tickets (back in the day). Democracy slowly responded, and the "express" DMV was set up for routine service.
Perfect? No. Every organization is the product of man. At least the government has no reason to cheat you.
@James K. Lowden - James, I dont rely on any individual company to provide great service, I rely on a competitive market to drive behavior. It's why I equate the growth in oligarchical structures in American business as very bad - media companies, cell service, tech, airplane manufacturing, big banks, etc
Government is just as bad or worse as it has monopoly power and no accountability for service quality or finance
This country is now officially pathetic.
1
Better still, know your farmer and know your food.
One of my favorite Hamilton quotes from the Federalist papers is:
"Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint." If we can admit to ourselves this simple truth, libertarianism evaporates.
6
I suspect many on the right will see the fact that many people depend on government entitlements and say that is the problem with entitlements. They make people dependent on handouts. If they hadn’t been getting these, they would find other ways to survive and wouldn’t be in this mess.
I think to many, they won’t suddenly realize that these things are important to people, but will blame those people for relying on government handouts in the first place.
An unfunctioning government generally help Republicans who will say “See, government is a waste of your tax dollars” (even if they are the ones who cause the disfunction. The last thing they want is for people to see how government benefits them. To them, that would be the start of the slippery slope to socialism.
Republicans seem fairly calm about the nonpayment of federal workers. So do Democrats, newspapers, labor unions. I’m not seeing the word “slavery”; a few ‘forced labor’ comments, and ....what....a complaint under fair labor laws.
But love those heart-wrenching stories..... they sell. Oh goodness, time for more coffee.
2
@Jo Williams
I agree. What's the difference between servitude and being forced to work without pay for the pleasure of keeping your job?
If a job is "essential", then payment is essential. If congress didn't have the liberty of forcing 800,000 people to show up at work under threat of being fired, it would be much less sanguine about failing to fund the government. Just shutting down the airports would probably be enough.
2
If the FDA completely dissolved I would not worry about contaminated food. Not for a second. I believe in my fellow man and his greed. If he sells contaminated food to me and my family, I have rememdies. We have legal standards. We have Courts. We have greedy lawyers. There are inherent checks and balances, we don't need the government for that.
If the government keeps spending $1 Trillion Dollars a year more than it takes in, then I'll worry.
31
@Bill
Once you our you loved one eats salmonella contaminated lettuce and nearly dies, good luck going after, or even finding, the agra-business across the country who caused it.
354
@earlyman correct. The first thing those large corporations responsible will do is use their lobbying power to legislate liability caps on what they have to pay in settlement costs. That’s the way the real world works. We’re not living in some libertarian utopia.
194
@Bill it is important to keep in mind that contaminated food can kill you before you even have a chance to pursue remedies. The critical elements for us now leaving much longer than our ancestors involve personal and public hygiene (e.g. safe food, sewer systems), medicine and healthy environments (e.g. pollution controls). I recommend watching the Trashopolis series, its quite informative.
175
I like to pay taxes, I get civilization in return.
541
@Michael W. Espy
Exactly. I know many people that are perfectly happy to say that they will take care of themselves and their own, why pay for government. I would rather ask the question: what sort of neighbourhood would be better to live in, one where people find cooperative solutions and help each other, or one where you always have to be looking over your shoulder for the other guy that has no interest in helping me and would probably like to take what I and my own have.
38
@Michael W. Espy
Exactly right. Paying taxes is the fundamental act of patriotism for the vast majority of Americans. People who love their country pay their taxes. (Yes, I’m talking to you, DJT.)
41
@rumplebuttskin Both philosophy and experience teach us that individual liberty is only preserved within a system that provides checks on both the power of the individual (in the form of responsibilities and rules) and on that of the state (in the form of individual rights). Taxes are not taken from us at gunpoint but an exchange for a structure that mitigates our individual vulnerabilities thus allowing for the (imperfect) enjoyment of our individual liberty.
33
I have a flight scheduled for next Thursday. Saw the articles about pilots protesting unsafe skies and TSA workers calling in sick. At least I bought flight insurance.
But no longer ensuring the safety our food? Trusting corporations to "do the right thing?" This shutdown could literally kill people...
4
It is easy to trash government as being the problem without making the minimum effort to understand what government means to all of us. The Republicans believe things such as farm subsidies, small business loans and yes even Social Security and Medicare are programs that should be directed at the "deserving" which I am convinced they take to mean white rural people while they conflate the "other" to mean black urban residents and any other group that does not meet the test of being white, rural religious, gun loving and anti-gay. This from the perspective of a 77 year old suburban white guy.
6
If you accept that (a) reasonable people can differ, and (b) there isn't enough to go around, then you need laws, and if you need laws, you need a government to administer them. If you don't accept that reasonable people can differ - that is, if you believe someone out there is (or if you believe you are) omniscient - then you are delusional and you belong in the Trump White House. If you believe there is enough to go around, you don't understand human nature because, sadly, we humans are burdened with astonishing - truly Biblical - levels of personal greed. As long as there are people with millions upon millions of dollars, who wake up every day obsessed with accumulating more and who will do literally anything to accumulate more, while others literally starve, there will not be enough to go around.
The preamble to the Constitution - our founding law - says this country was formed to "promote the general Welfare" and the Commerce Clause (Article 1, Section 8) says congress has the power "to regulate Commerce". Why is the right so infuriated by the notion that we are all in this together, and that we should have laws which recognize that?
If the framers of the Constitution wanted to create a free market jungle they would have said so. In fact, they said just the opposite.
2
Welcome aboard the cruise ship, SS United States, the Libertarian Line flagship! The buffet may have E. coli, salmonella and norovirus, but we'll never tell!
1
Libertarianism - the ideology of college sophomores everywhere.
3
The Republican Party is built on lying. It’s a core principle. After Watergate and Iran-contra, Republicans had to criminalize the Clintons. That is why we had eight years of investigation and a pointless impeachment. But they succeeded in criminalizing the Clinton and building the false equivalence. Bush comes in steals the election and lies about WMD, blows apart the Middle East, kills and dislocates millions of people and spends trillions of dollars. But they have to punish Obama. Republicans delegitimize him through Fox News and Donald Trump birtherism. They try to grind the economy down to make obama look bad, and unleash the Benghazi investigations on Hillary Clinton to once again criminalize her and to destroy Obama. Tie in unstoppable votes to repeal obama care. All of this built on lies and serious policies. The 2016 election was built around the destruction of Hillary Clinton and not about building America. Republicans were focused on crippling Clinton when she became president. Donald trump with Fox News were their weapons. In come the Russians. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Russian was happily welcomed to cripple Clinton when she became President. Trump is the logical outcome of five decades of Republican lying. Russia is part of the Republican Party. These people can destroy America.
3
Why doesn't it strike more people that what the Republicans are doing, and have long done, is playing a hypocritical game that pretends to promote libertarianism and laissez-faire government, but only does so vis a vis the weak, the powerless and the disenfranchised? All the while, it is using government and tax policy to feather the nests and subsidize the powerful, the wealthy and the entitled.
This isn't libertarianism. It's a cynical and calculated pretense for systematically denying the benefits of government to anyone and everyone who can't pay their way into the political system. It isn't an experiment, either. It's an established, tried-and-true governing practice. And it stinks.
2
We need to remind those republicans that Freedom Fries aren't really free!
3
How often does it need to be said? Trump does not care about anyone or anything but Trump. Until Mitch tells him that he has squeezed everything he can out of his sorry behind and doesn't need him anymore, Trump will continue to wallow in his self adulation. Until the generals give him the choice of quietly exiting or being frog-marched out of the White House Trump will continue to believe in his own brilliant self. Until the White House is surrounded by torches and pick-forks while the Secret Service stands by looking at its shoes, Trump will continue to believe that he is America.
1
The fundamental fallacy in Republican/libertarian/right wing ideology is the concept of a "free market." There is no such thing; never has been. The problem is that markets get rigged, more or less, depending on the political process in place.
You bet it's a cover story! And a big lie!
2
I have always said that the biggest problem with big government is that it does its job too quietly and too well. Republicans and Libertarians (and everyone else) is largely blind to the fact that everything in their lives is dependent on functioning government services. If you do not believe me, move to Somalia.
4
You know, I’m beginning to understand Brexit. Now can NY vote to exit the US?
2
It is a great time to experiment with going vegan - while skipping the lettuce! Maybe the libertarians should be asking why we are still subsidizing unnecessary and environmentally harmful products like dairy, including training young people to consume it through school lunches? Even Pat Buchanan's Trump-like presidential campaign called for an end to such subsidies, and that was before we knew just how urgent the climate change situation is.
I suppose that I do have libertarian leanings mainly because systems should be designed to minimize incentives for cheating (a k a crime). That means I am skeptical of gigantic minimum wage hikes, but it does not mean that I condone idiocy, or think people should be left on their own to determine if their food is contaminated or if their phone is spying on them. There are lots of things individual consumers simply cannot do well, and government should fill many of those gaps - whether it is "open" or "closed".
Thank you for pointing out the basic fraudulence of Republican politics.
4
The GOP base is very much like the Russian proverb of the talking fish. The guy catches a talking fish that tells the Russian it can also grant the Russian one wish, but to also remember that whatever the Russian wishes for, his neighbor will get twice. So the Russian asks the fish for one of his eyes to be poked out.
That is GOP Trump base philosophy. they just want " Those People " to get less . That tells you what drives the Trump base - racism.
4
One of the most cogent descriptions of current trade offs I have read.
2
Seems more Democrats would be making this very point, right now. Maybe even get a tiny bit mean about it-- point out that many voters who demonize government might be failing to consider what a country without a fully functioning government-- a government that works to protect and serve its citizenry-- looks like...
This crazy, entrenched Republican position is bogus, and this could be a great "teachable moment."
But Democrats don't seem to get this.
It seems to me that many election seasons are awash in rhetoric that does NOTHING to help Americans become better informed, better voters. I have heard more talk about transgendered bathroom access in the last few years than about the role of government, the need for taxation, the many, serious problems with deregulation.
Politicians on the left should be talking about this fundamental stuff. Voters need to be educated, and this great piece by Krugman provides a nice example of what this kind of public education project might look like.
1
libertarianism: the ideology of proudly independent 12 year olds waiting in their tree fort for mom to bring them lunch
6
Mr. Krugman,
You hit the nail right on the head. The republican philosophy is "It is good for me but not for you." I car pooled with a woman who benefited from social safety nets but was opposed to them when others had a need for them. Her argument was "I was really in need others are not."
5
Already well known; but thanks for repeating it.
I used to buy into Libertarians until I took a careful look at the people who are involved in that political movement. They are on the fringes of political and economic thought and reality. A very sinister racial supremacist element has also taken up residence within certain Libertarian groups. They do not believe in taxes or borders or a minimum wage of any kind. Many want to end ALL foreign aid and there appears to be a subset of that group that has a special bone to pick with the state of Israel i.e (antisemitism). They deny this but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is a racist, antisemitic libertarian duck. I think it is odd that many libertarians have latched onto Trump particularly considering his policy of trade protectionism, but there is a white nationalist element to Trump's message so that would probably explain it. In my view full blown Libertarian Governance would unleash a form of chaos that would make America dirtier,poorer,more segregated less educated and very unsafe. When I think of Libertarians I often think of that quote from Crowley the well known occultist he famously said "Do what thou wilst". There must be rules and laws and protections in place particularly for the most vulnerable among us. Libertarianism is illogical and cruel and harsh. It definitely will not Make America great again.
1
Commenter Will below nails it. "Of course, this required perfect information. Unfortunately, no good case was made how a perfect information economy could be achieved nor how consumers could afford to acquire perfect information."
"Cynical but not too cynical" meaning there is a shred of hope. The libertarian creed or philosophy though, especially as it applies to economics, is naive, even silly, but dangerous just the same. It reeks of anarchy, narcissism, and appeals to the Ryan like flim flammers of the world.
Perfect information indeed. We are getting a lot of that now from Trump, McConnell, and the GOP. Dreck!
The Republicans have no political ideology. They operate solely on greed and avarice.
1
We don't need to be completely Trump-obsessed, but we do need to be Trump-concerned. While praising the intelligence of the American electorate, Trump secretly knows that they can be led around like bulls with nose rings - only instead of bullrings, he uses their beliefs and prejudices to lead them wherever he wants.
If DJT doesn't destroy our fragile democracy, he has published the blueprint and playbook for some other demagogue to do it later. If a democracy like America's is going to exist, there will have to be a paradigm shift in human thought throughout the world.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a linguistic "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
BIG GOVERNMENT! BIG GOVERNMENT! Oh, the evils found therein.
But...the Reublicans never say how small they want the government to be in a nation of more than 340,000,000 people that also controls a massive amount of the world's wealth and resources. Small government sounds like a friendly neighbor in Kansas or Oklahoma, a government that helps you only when you must have it but otherwise leaves you alone.
How small? They never say.
What they mean, of course, is cut all the stupid things that don't directly help us in Kansas or Oklahoma, but you MUST keep the rest. During the tea party uprising in 2009 and going forward, there were people marching in the streets of DC carrying signs that said, "Keep your government hands off my Social Security and Medicare!" Really?
I am currently traveling in the central American nation of Panama. There is amazing growth in Panama City from years ago, but striking poverty and disorder can seen seen less than a kilometer from the dozens and dozens shinning office towers that mark the skyline. It readily occurs to any observer that the difference between Panama and other developing nations and the United States is...regulation. A set of laws and a government that creates the space for business enterprises but also sets the legal and ethical boundaries.
Republicans don't want small government. They want government that only serves their interests. They want to privatize most govt. services so they can profit. Small government is a sham.
Like everything else he writes about, Krugman presents a distorted, "Krugman's eye view" of Libertarian views. Anything not Krugman approved is to be disdained. Is there anyone more narrow minded than Krugman? Trump is a pinnacle of objectivity in comparison.
Now a little Libertarianism is good for everyone. Where Democrats and Libertarians most diverge is in their thoughts on centralized vs dispersed power. Though I can think of plenty of things that Democrats and Liberals would like to see legalized and freed from red tape. I bet you would like to be secure in your homes and value your privacy as well.
One of your best. Thank you.
4
Like everything else he writes about, Krugman presents a distorted, "Krugman's eye view" of Libertarian views. Anything not Krugman approved is to be disdained. Is there anyone more narrow minded than Krugman? Trump is a pinnacle of objectivity in comparison.
A little Libertarianism is good for everyone. Where many Democrats and Libertarians most diverge is in their thoughts on centralized vs dispersed power. Though I can think of plenty of things that Democrats and Liberals would like to see legalized and freed from red tape. I bet you would like to be secure in your homes and value your privacy as well.
1
I recall a tour of the Tenement Museum in NYC when the docent told us of a time in the mid nineteenth century when good, god-fearing, Yankee farmers with spoiled gray milk would lace it with lye to kill off the rancid smell and to whiten it. They then distributed it only in the poor neighborhoods where unsuspecting mothers purchased it and fed it to their babies with very poor and mostly fatal results for their children. Never underestimate the depravity of greed.
2
"No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."
-Article I, Section 9, Clause 7
3
Contaminated food, isn't that what food tasters are for? Oh you don't have one? Well, you really should get one; last year mine spared me the most horrible case of food poisoning I've ever seen!
2
Libertarianism is an ideology fostered by plutocrats to dupe the rest of us into supporting their self-serving policies...but what they deride as “collectivism” I call “We the People.”
3
For years I have asked the question: “Where does Libertarian end and Anarchy start.”. I guess the answer is Trump.
This shut down will sort of be the USA without, I hope I get this right, SOCIALISM. Well, at least a chunk of it not in play. Just a thought.
That's cute PK you want your food inspected but are all libertarian along with the rest of the Dem establishment when it comes to immigration.
Trump's cult of personality has erased any need for subsidies and handouts to farmers and small business owners. They will happily accept their economic ruin while Trump executes his planned coup d'etat and proclaims himself dictator. Trump's "state of emergency" is merely the first step.
The cult of personality is a powerful force, more powerful than many people realize or care to accept. People will gladly starve to death for the Leader. They will throw away their lives for the Leader. They will forsake their religion, their principles and everything they believe in for the Leader. The Leader is not the means to an end. He is The End.
Millions upon millions of former Republican voters now worship Trump as a literal God. Whatever they used to believe in is irrelevant. All that matters now is the cult of personality. Trump is the dawn of a new religion, and Trump holds more sway with his followers than Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed hold with theirs.
The cult of personality will make people accept inherently contradictory beliefs. If Trump says two plus two equals five, his followers will believe him and make death threats against anyone who disagrees. If Trump embraces Communism, his followers will give their lives in the service of his glorious workers' paradise. If Trump comes out of the closet and announces to the world that he's gay, his followers will embrace all LGBTQ causes and march in the streets with rainbow flags. For his followers, Trump is bigger than God.
@Ryan I don't think so. Trump's dropping approval numbers supports this.
1
I wish Congress would get paid.
@Independent
I meant, I wish Congress would not get paid during the shutdown.
Cabinet members, too.
Running this place like a casino. And we know how that turned out.
1
Thank you thank you thank you, Paul Krugman. You nailed it.
3
Well - a - day, Sir Professor. You sure are a telling it like it is man. Should your tenure end there is a place for you on the standup stage. I just hope that the present comedy does not turn into a nightmare.
Ayn Rand would be proud. Donald Trump could be the greatest freedom fighter since John Galt. But will he eat the romaine?
1
Libertarian ideology is a bit like venereal disease. If you don't treat it, it will kill the host--US! Ineffective, heartless and very unnecessary.
1
@Sage If only men had stuck with sheep like the Republican party has.
The Stevens (Bannon and Miller) should be dancing in the streets about now. They're finally achieving what they stated when this administration begain - the elimination of the administrative state.
1
The old adage is that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged. Can we now say that a liberal is a conservative who is government check has stopped appearing on time?
Trump needed a distraction from the news that Manafort gave polling data to the Russians which is COLLUSION. What a surprise - I mean it took less than 2 years for proof of any collusion to be found when so many were so complicit in trying to hide it. So what now do the merry band of complicit Republicans led by Trump and McConnell do, they create a diversion, a distraction and it allows them to be cruel and mean at the same time - priceless if your a immoral, unethical, selfish, greedy, narcissistic kind of person. And to think it's all about fighting for a lie - that a wall will solve our nations border security, or that it was a campaign promise, or because it would ruin Trump's presidency. News to Republicans - this is what you voted for. Now the price to all of those wonderful farmers starts to becoming kind of high. And that's because Republicans in Washington never raised a crop, don't know when seed is purchased, when things to prepare for the next planting season have to be done. Stupid is, stupid does. Trump and McConnell might ask how long TSA workers can go without a paycheck? Guess what, they don't have much savings because they are not paid much to begin with. When they go, the airlines stop and a very large business and travel stops. Which means planes going to Florida stop. Tourism Stops. Planes taking business people to generate business stops. What then? Will stock market will go up? I don't think so, but Putin will be laughing in Moscow. Had enough yet?
2
@Mark Very good point about Trump and McConnell trying to keep the Russia collusion/conspiracy out of the media headlines.
The three tenets of Libertarianism: 1) You're not the boss of me! 2) It's mine! You can't have any! 3) Look mommy! I did it all by myself!
So, in other words, the toddler president implements toddler political theory.
4
Regarding those stalwart libertarians at the Cato Institute: How exactly do they earn their paychecks?
1
The libertarian wing of the GOP has to be pleased with the incompetence and incompetents Mr. Trump has introduced into the federal government... it helps to prove their point that government is the problem.
Thank you Mr. Krugman,
I didn't know it took that many letters to spell "hypocrite," but your description of the current Republican grifters is elegant proof that it can be done!
My personal definition of a libertarian is "an anarchist in a suit and tie".
2
Are you suggesting that the Republicans are hypocrites? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.
1
We wouldn’t know the value of what we have until we loose it.
Well, I certainly hope they continue to inspect staple foods, like Big Macs, for safety.
1
"Somehow, though, they’ve [Republicans] never followed through on the radical downsizing of government their ideology calls for."
Hypocrisy.
I'm surprised that neither the article nor any comments has mentioned Nancy MacLean's breathtaking exposure of the libertarian fraud, Democracy in Chains. The dystopia by stealth the libertarians via the GOP seem intent to plunge America permanently into needs something akin to Mueller's Russia investigation. And fast.
1
Methinks you got one thing wrong in the description of R -Republican goals. They do not want government welfare programs for the poor - private charity will suffice - if not, workhouses can come back.
Funny thing, I've never met a libertarian who couldn't afford to be one.
1
When I hear about libertarians complain government protections (re-branded to all as ‘regulations’) I wonder if they realize there are actual completely libertarian countries they can move to right NOW and experience the purest of government free life.
They want no food inspection, no public education (only those who can afford private religious schools get education), no healthcare at all unless pay-as-you-go. Or as Ron Paul famously said get healthcare from your church. Though cancer treatment is limited...limited to useless, prayerful wish-thinking.
We also have to chuck social security and medicare. Don't forget to forget about infrastructure. Only if rich Uncle Pennybags thinks a road is needed then a road is built. Oh, and don’t forget no public law enforcement. Rich people don’t need the police since they can purchase their own security. Of course, without any public accountability law enforcement merely becomes a do nothing nepotism job. All this leads to ridiculously low taxes to the point of almost nothing. And you get what you pay for.
The name of this wonderous, libertarian paradise? Pakistan. Yup no public schools, unaccountable and corrupt police, no public investment in infrastructure, no elderly retirement benefits or healthcare. Wait, you only want a jesus based libertarian xandu? No problem. Move to Hati!
There you have it! please move now to your free from-government-protections and don’t let us know it goes.
2
Freedom in the faith of the one chambered round never stopping on me. And the extolling of such in the GOP as bringing "good choices".
A good assessment. But I would suggest that the republicans' fake libertarianism is rather a front for what they are really after-- the fascist subjugation of democracy to corporate hegemony.
1
Republicans- Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.
1
who needs clean air water and health food anyway?
The Rs don't beleve in governing or government
They want to destroy the village to save it
1
The key will be, in how the Dems message this to the public.
It has been my observation over the years that for libertarians the buck never stops at the top. It always gets passed on to anyone but them.
Smaller is better to them because it means fewer eyes to get in their way, fewer means to hold them accountable. They absolutely think they themselves should be the sole arbiters of agenda, that their views are all that matter.
In a nutshell they are greedy self serving types with little understanding of human need beyond their own. Libertarian is just another word for hypocrite.
1
When two elephants fight, its the grass that gets uprooted. In this show of arrogance and egos its the lives of many ordinary Americans that is adversely affected. I only wish that this crisis comes to an end soon to the relief of many.
72
@YoursTruly Let's do away with false equivalences, shall we? True, there are two sides refusing to give an inch of ground; but there is only one side taking hostages.
18
@YoursTruly When Trump says lets negotiate, but the wall is not negotiable, that means only one thing, no wall.
12
@YoursTruly
No, I hope it continues long enough for many who believe the repugincan lies and don't see that they are about helping the very rich while hurting the rest, will now see the truth.
With luck this will permanently wound that party and cause a rebirth of freedom with compassion and justice for all.
11
The anti-government rhetoric ascendent on the right for decades has turned the American people into the most hellacious employers imaginable.
Ask a right wing zealot if they would appreciate a work environment where they are repeatedly told they are freeloaders and almost every year lose 2-3 weeks pay to unplanned shutdowns.
Ask them if they would appreciate constant criticism of the benefits they have won through collective bargaining. Ask if they would enjoy being constantly denigrated by almost half their employers board of directors.
I doubt they would enjoy working there. Yet this is the way they treat their own employees, the federal, state and local workforce.
The icing on the cake is that so few of these zealots even understand what the government does. They just know it's bad.
The problem with Republicans is they have a mindset that makes them incapable of change. When you can not glean lessons from the past and/or use facts and information in the present to formulate new ideas, you are doomed to tread water at best.
The GOP appears to live in a bubble, because their fact set has not changed since Reagan (or in some older cases like Trump, Eisenhower). This is also why we should stop insulting actual Conservatives that seek to moderate change and start calling Republicans what thet are: Regressive. They seek to return to their ideal, which is somewhere between the 1890s and the 1970s.
Unfortunately for all Americans (including them as partial benefactors), the world is changing at the fastest pace in history making this strategy a disaster. When we need to look forward to positioning the country to be effective in the future, they are doubling down to fight wars that ended years and sometimes generations ago in the larger world (think universal health care, need for broad effective public education, immigration reform with technology instead of walls, cooperative trade, government/private cooperative science funding, etc).
1
At some point the American people need to realize that conservative/libertarian pundits are just on-air hucksters selling a product. Instead of selling Vegematics, Ginsu knives or non-stick cookware, they are peddling right-wing bile for a profit. And the profits derived from their corporate advertisers are huge.
Forget truth or journalism, Rush Linbaugh openly proclaims himself to be an “entertainer” and not a “journalist” (mainly to make it more difficult to sue him for falsehood).
Ann Coulter similarly declares herself a “polemicist”.
Forget for a moment the subversive influence of Russian money and hacking on American politics. Our own homegrown corporate advertisers are eagerly subverting America by underwriting glib purveyors of corrosive right-wing propaganda, who will slyly proclaim the gospel of unbridled greed and not of social responsibility.
Of course drug companies don’t want the FDA. Why would they want oversight to keep the public safe, when safety costs them money?
Why would banks want regulation to safeguard the financial system and consumers, when regulation interferes with short-term profits?
The Koch brothers don’t want pesky interference from the EPA in regulating their mega-refinery in Minnesota. Their family homes are in Aspen, Palm Beach and Manhattan, so why should it concern them if effluent rolls through St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans?
Don’t dare call this something so plain as “greed”. Wrap it in a bow and call it “libertarianism”.
391
@Michael McLemore
Not to put any undue ruffles in your pretty little bow, but 2016 Libertarian Candidate Gary 'What is Aleppo' Johnson said he wanted a stronger EPA to help keep industry clean.
Furthermore, most libertarians I read are as anti-corporate as Bernie flippin Sanders and they are most certainly not welcome on FOX or in the debates, ftm.
"No state, industry, or business has the right to pollute the lungs of the children downwind, or the soil and water of the farmers downstream." - some Libertarian guy talking about the property rights of the kids downwind.
I mean, if it's relevant what actual (L) candidates are calling for, anyway.
2
@Michael McLemore Ginsu knifes were actually pretty good. Vegamatic was great for humor.. ever splat a tomato with one?
1
@Michael McLemore Libertarianism is selfishness masquerading as idealism.
20
There is a persistent thread of popular hatred of the federal government that goes back to the US Civil War. Reagan's statement that government is the problem draws the border between right and left leaning into the battle over the idea of a United States. There is truth to the waste underneath $600 toilet seats in the military budget. There is also truth to the loss of 600 family farms in Wisconsin last year. I have more heart in the fight to save the family farm than to line item veto inefficient spending. If that makes me a leftist, OK. I suppose the problems are so complex that we all buy into overly simplistic analysis of what's right and wrong. How else to explain 63 million votes for TRUMP in 2016?
4
Human Beings are simultaneously both individuals with rights, and members of societies with responsibilities. Libertarians, aka bullies, could care less about the second part.
And Republicans since 1980 have bet that that Americans could not handle the complexity of those two sides of basic human nature. Two. They were apparently right.
2
The article contains many misleading sarcastic comments like “… Donald Trump is… implementing at least part of the drastic reduction in government’s role his party has long claimed to favor” and dozens of personal attacks on Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump is not a phony politician who promises the moon and delivers dirt, kisses babies for photo ops, focuses on reelection on the day of being elected, creates foundations or fake organizations to extract money for personal use and engages in reprehensible personal conduct while in office.
Trump brought the immigration issue to the forefront of American consciousness from being the forgotten third rail that politicians were afraid to touch.
Highly educated, sophisticated, free-thinking and loyal patriots with technical competence and political awareness like me see the value of each and every issue that Mr. Trump has had the courage to bring to the forefront of American psyche.
Trump did a mistake by saying the Wall will be paid for by Mexico. He should have used deceptive euphemism to mean the payment as an indirect cost savings derived from a decreased number of freeloaders crossing our border. Though this was a mistake, the Wall is an absolute must for the protection of America as we know it.
The Schumer Shutdown of the Government is brought about by the Democrats who find it politically expedient to give the country away for grabbing power. Mr. Trump will be proven right and he will prevail in the long run.
1
@Appu Nair
Oh please.
The United States would not, literally would not exist without immigration.
Far from being a threat, immigration is the very building block of our society, our unique culture.
Economically, immigration is crucial to our survival. This is as true now as it was in the 19th century. Our birthrate is low. Moreover the continuous infusion of new people, new ideas, contact with new cultures keeps America refreshed. We don't want to be creaky, hidebound, caste-ridden and trapped in the past.
And somehow, the mighty USA has survived without walls.
@Sophia
True; but today the writings of George Hardin is apropos:
“If we divide the world crudely into rich nations and poor nations, two thirds of them are desperately poor, and only one third comparatively rich, with the United States the wealthiest of all. Metaphorically each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in, or at least to share some of the wealth. What should the lifeboat passengers do?
First, we must recognize the limited capacity of any lifeboat. For example, a nation’s land has a limited capacity to support a population and as the current energy crisis has shown us, in some ways we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of our land. So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60.
Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being “our brother’s keeper,” or by the Marxist ideal of “to each according to his needs.”
Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as our “brothers,” we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60.
The boat swamps; everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.”
1
My beef with Libertarian philosophy is that it assumes a level playing field and that success is determined by your own abilities and effort. The world is a chaotic system, in many ways. I mean by that that very small changes in starting positions can create large differences in outcomes. Traffic could delay someone’s ability to get to a job interview on time, thereby creating a belief that they really didn’t want the job, or that someone else who got there before them got the job and they are out of luck. Or consider the person who just completed his training in making tack for wagons, just as Henry Ford becomes big.
My success in running my small business was as much due to luck factors as my abilities or drive. Without connections that I had made earlier (one’s that occurred beyond my control), I would not have been as successful. Yes, I had the ability and the drive, but the specific contacts I developed helped me greatly.
Our government has helped even out some of these factors, and that is its greatest success. But it still has a great distance to go to in creating a more even playing field.
2
The much maligned "Cloture Rule XII" that requires 60 votes for bringing a bill to the floor. A quick Wiki search says that the rule was instituted in 1806.
Could it be the framers saw the Constitution is biased against people living in high population states? By requiring that 60% agree that a bill be debated, it ameliorates the power of low population states to band together and force a minority view on the majority.
The Senators are a reflection of this bias. This wall, objected to by most urban citizens, is an edifice of this Constitutional bias. McConnell, from a low population state, can delay a vote to reopen government just out of pique. It is time to force a vote in the Senate!
Do we need a constitutional convention to re-establish equal representation in the Senate?
1
Shoulda slowed down a mite. It was 1917, and amended in 1975.
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Filibuster_Cloture.htm
Bravo for this piercing of the libertarian veil! It appears that many of Trump's base from farmers to parts of the government who help protect all of us, like indeed the military and those at the border, not to mention federal employees everywhere, depend on their checks, partial or all, for income. How terrible to recall Reagan's words about the government, taken from I believe that angel of destruction who said govt. should be drowned in the bathtub. I guess that's were RR got the idea. Liz Cheney on the news recently talked about how RR's Star Wars had ruined, economically, the Russians and that had led to the wall and Communism collapsing. As tho it were poof that easy. It was years of pushing the Russians in all areas and of course their Comecon, the economic model they used that used no models, basically, to buiild and conquer. Perhaps RR, Putin, and Cheney and Trump et al are in fact oligarchs who believe as who said, the state, I am the state. And some of my buddies.
1
Classic Krugman misdirection. Anyone willing to wager that "Money for food stamps" will dry up?
A) The illusion that there is money for anything, including aircraft carriers, is a conjures trick. e.g. the fictitious social security trust fund.
B) Being hostile to the food stamp program does not equate to be pro-starving poor people.
I think the correct term is neoliberal. Libertarians are philosophers, neoliberals are action oriented.
With all due respect, Dr Krugman, the Farm Bill is a WW II anachronism that needs to go away. Our current Ag policy does not alleviate hunger, it is one of the causes of hunger. It prioritizes commodity production and corporate farming; it pays lip service to produce and perishables.
SNAP? Take a look inside an EBT shopping basket - it's all processed food. Does it provide nutrition to people who have no food security? If empty calories, processed sugars, starches and preservatives mixed in with your protein defines nutrition... perhaps. Does it subsidized the production, or excess production, of the commodities that make up the elements in that EBT basket at the expense of more nutritious foods? Do the products in that EBT basket contribute to Type II Diabetes, hypertension and other obesity related diseases prevalent in low income communities? If the answer to the last 2 questions is yes, that is one expensive subsidy with minimal social benefit driving an entire market segment of processed foods and low income population medical services.
But every 5 years we renew the same programs, with the same results. Plus a few more bells, whistles, and tree ornaments. Monsanto does great, so does Bayer and ADM. The family sweating 300, or 3,000 acres? The Farm Policy we have is 70 years old, it is inefficient, it is ecologically destructive (draining aquifers below replenishment levels), and it needs to go away.
1
That's exactly like Republicans who criticize social programs like food stamps as socialist, but call their representatives in outrage when big time "free market" programs like Medicare or Social Security or unemployment insurance or farm subsidies or tax breaks for Amazon are placed on the chopping block.. I like Paul's idea. Let the Republicans chew on this for a while and see how much they like how it tastes.
2
I'm looking forward to the papers detailing what happened before/during/after the shutdown, assuming it ends some day. I hope some of the furloughed scientists have their names on many.
1
It's a rare treat to hear Mr. Krugman acknowledge the existence of the libertarian ideology. But I have to think that his mind is in free-wheeling when he says that "the truth is that libertarian ideology isn’t a real force within the G.O.P.; it’s more of a cover story for the party’s actual agenda." What? The "truth" is NOT that libertarianism is a cover for the G.O.P. but that the G.O.P. is a cover for libertarianism! What we're looking at now is the G.O.P. stripped naked, exposing the horror of greed-is-good capitalism in the raw. Perhaps Mr. Krugman is innocent of the historical picture disclosed in books like Meyer's Dark Money or MacLean's Democracy in Chains. The libertarian Koch machine and its gaggle of billionaire buddies is at the center of the leveraged takeover of the G.O.P. establishment.
1
Lest we forget that a few weeks ago 45 was seen cozying up to Rand Paul.
1
The thing about libertarians, is that their ideas are never meant to actually be implemented in policy.
If it is attempted and is a disaster (surprise), this has nothing to do with the merits of libertarianism and is because it wasn't libertarian enough. The same is true with all previous attempts at implementing free market policy. The tax cuts weren't big enough! Of course!
Joking aside, there will be libertarians across the country writing this week and next about how "the government shutdown is actually proof of over-reliance on the state." It's all very predictable.
2
Government agencies are not there to serve customers, but rather have a moral mission to protect and empower the public, to preserve the environment and save endangered species, to protect the health and safety of workers, to protect the health and safety of its citizens, to make sure food and drugs are safe, to help create an educated populace, to advance science and research, to build and maintain a public infrastructure to promote the arts and to help people with natural disasters when they strike, to support a social infrastructure where our weak, disabled, and elderly are not cast as burdens on the society. Once public funds that used to go for government protections and empowerment are delivered into private hands, it is hard to get them back, if it is possible at all. Once government capabilities are destroyed the private companies i.e. Black water, Halliburton, Bechtel cooperation and others become the only alternatives for carrying out those functions, it is difficult to rebuild government capabilities. What has happened is that corporations have become private governments_ they govern us but without accountability, we pay for them and we will be paying more in the future not at prices set by legislation( taxes) but by what ever the market Will bear.
4
the red states are the taker states, supported by government dollars and the effort of the blue states
the swill milk scandal of a previous century, which was a leading argument for the need to regulate suppliers who are incapable of regulating themselves, is replaying in China today, with plastic in food and environmental chaos
if people were angels, we wouldn't need government
i don't trust the government, but i trust the private sector infinitely less
6
Does nobody get that libertarians don't want a wall either because yes a wall is big government.
Look folks, Trump is not very smart. In fact, he's kinda very stupid, and he's always doing the sorts of things that stupid people do.
Right now he's holding the entire US government hostage to the negotiation over financing a pet construction project. Not a word about preparing for the economy of the future, and certainly no thought to what it meant that America once had friends around the world. Like I said, rather stupid.
10
@Jonathan. Tests that measure intelligence or aptitude for college are criticized for being narrow and not measuring other kinds of intelligence. "Street smart" is a shorthand way of expressing this. Not always, but often enough, when I want to regard someone as stupid, I come to learn that he or she is smart in a way I could never come close to like playing poker, or sketching caricatures, or practicing demagoguery. I think That Man is dishonest, selfish, and semiliterate, but I also believe that it is hazardous to write him off as stupid.
1
Perhaps that is the silver lining of the enormous black cloud of this shutdown: that the American public will see in very real terms the benefits and protections of good government—and the need for sufficient revenue to fund them. I just pray that lives will not be lost in the process.
5
Ah, yes, the government is the problem until it's needed. Note that the red states expect federal aid after every natural disaster, but balked at helping blue states like New Jersey and New York after Hurricane Sandy hit.
I would buy the Republican / libertarian argument if the red states didn't get more back in federal money than they pay in annually. Seems they are very content to take from the federal government, but not to give!
3
Paul you're wrong on one thing. Wsj has celebrated the layng off of 380000 federal workers, and announced they obviously aren't needed anyway.
Mitch McConnell has made himself excessively, easily
nonproductive. Will he be willing to starve the people
of Kentucky by denying their food stamps (SNAP)?
He and his old lady will soon be enjoying their
government pensions, medicare, Social Security along
with their unbelievable wealth.
1
"Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has denounced the program for “making it excessively easy to be nonproductive.”
This from the guy living it up with his wife's inherited wealth.
8
The GOP has failed for decades to encourage and promote our better angels. Prof. Krugman notes: “the philosophy of the party’s base is, in essence, big government for me but not for thee.” The vast majority of us do not have the degree of narcissism that Trump expresses, but most of us like to think and believe we are better than someone. The Republicans have used people’s need to feel superior to someone by fostering racists views … people don’t speak English or they are lazy and don’t deserve support or they are bad people (rapists, criminals, smugglers…) or …. It is a sinister, extremely cynical view of one another the GOP uses to reduce funds for the neediest while “redistributing income up the scale.” We need visions and goals that unite us as Americans. The majority of Americans needs to be challenged to express their pride in this nation. We need our better angels to improve our image of one another and our country.
2
It is my belief that the "country and its citizens, are currently rejecting both democrats and republicans. If you'd like to label that libertarian, so be it. Both parties have gone to their corners and taken their beliefs to radical levels. The majority of the country does not accept radical in any form, liberal or conservative.
The people of this country love immigrants but loathe illegal immigrants.
It's not about borders, it's about too many illegal immigrants no matter how they arrive-walking, cars, planes, buses, ships or even swimming. Fix it.
It's not about stock prices or free give-aways, its about a fair shake for everyone. It's not about 70% tax rates, its about what you do with the money the government wants to take. Remember we ran up 20 trillion in debt since W became president. Does anyone actually believe or think the 20 trillion was spent prudently? Seriously? So now someone says we want to spend more on something else and in order to do that they propose 70% tax rates because we remain liable for the crazy 20 trillion we just spend foolishly (Democrat and Republican congresses and presidents).
The American public has had enough of the radical approach (democrat or republican). If that results in Libertarian, so be it.
The Federal workers now working without pay who were not Democrats, soon will be.
3
The Food and Drug Administration was started by President Theodore Roosevelt partially as a response to Upton Siclair's great novel, 'The Jungle' The depictions of tubercular cows and unlucky workmen who fell into the meat vats being ground into hamburger and cold meat will stay with me forever. We need these agencies . I, for one, do not want to eat meat from tubercular cows or a dead worker named Jurgis....
1
True! The democratic and republican stablushment are not interested in small government. But the democratic elite will always go for much bigger government than their republican counterparts.
But this opinion piece is a bit silly in trying to equate an unplanned government shutdown with a libertarian experiment. Dumb stuff really.
I know it is impolite in the US to ever mention anything historical, however how can we ever forget all those staunch libertarians running hat in hand to the government and the hapless taxpayer after they destroyed the banking system back in 2008? Instead of allowing for the hallowed market to sort out the disaster, we were told they were 'too big to fail'
Then, as a final insult none of these crooks were prosecuted and the execs of these criminal organizations were given huge bonuses instead of being asked to find a cardboard box. Why? Because we could not afford to lose the 'talent'
4
I'm still trying to square the daily free prime rib lunches American Enterprise Institute gives their employees with what they claim their "self-sufficiency" philosophy is. It really is a "socialism for me but not for thee" system.
Funny thing, but I've never met a libertarian that couldn't afford to be one.
3
Krugman presents a distorted, "Krugman's eye view" of Libertarian views. As per usual, anything not Krugman approved is to be disdained and belittled. Is there anyone more narrow minded than Krugman? Trump is a pinnacle of objectivity in comparison.
A little Libertarianism is good for everyone. Where Democrats and Libertarians most diverge is in their thoughts on centralized vs dispersed power. Though I can think of plenty of things that Democrats and Liberals would like to see legalized and freed from red tape. I bet you would like to be secure in your homes and value your privacy as well.
Krugman presents a distorted, "Krugman's eye view" of Libertarian views. As per usual, anything not Krugman approved is to be disdained and belittled. Is there anyone more narrow minded than Krugman? Trump is a pinnacle of objectivity in comparison.
A little Libertarianism is good for everyone. Where Democrats and Libertarians most diverge is in their thoughts on centralized vs dispersed power. Though I can think of plenty of things that Democrats and Liberals would like to see legalized and freed from red tape. I bet you would like to be secure in your homes and value your privacy as well.
Without government and taxes, no one would be able to operate a business.
Try starting a businesses in Yemen or Libya and see how far you get.
2
A typically concise and insightful article by Krugman. If only our national dialog were always conducted on such a rational approach to the facts.
To steal and rewrite a line from the old classic "Mama's Bank Account", Libertarians are nothing but Objectivists with the brains knocked out.
One correction: Mitch McConnell isn't even a pretend Libertarian (or Objectivist), he's a blatant elitist. He's against food stamps but fought with every ounce of his being to protect billions in oil subsidies just a few years ago.
Whenever someone says "we need government regulations removed!" (something Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand believed not only unnecessary, but destructive) I think of two things:
1) How the greatest Republican since Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, fought the disgusting, filthy, and dangerous way food and drugs were prepared and sold, because they were deadly and infectious. He was all-in on government regulation of food, drugs, and monopolies that cheated and exploited workers--the Trust Buster.
2) All the changes that make our cars so much safer than when Prof. Krugman and I were children. I STILL remember Popular Science with a cover in the '60's "How you'll survive a 40-50 mph crash" something that happens because of crush zones, collapsing steering columns, lap and shoulder belts, air-bags, child safety seats, and protected gas tanks. When, under Reagan, the 5mph bumper rule was dropped. VW immediately rebuilt the Rabbit so at 5mph, it suffered frame damage and had to be totaled! (See Consumer Reports) THAT is what they do without government oversight--VW did it again faking diesel emissions!
3
Libertarian ideology contemplates that it will cause short-term disruption...but if we can just stomach it long enough, we’ll reach the promised land of “spontaneous order” where everything will click into place as the magical power of freedom, sweet freedom, takes over. Yeah, sure.
2
Krugman presents a distorted, "Krugman's eye view" of Libertarian views. As per usual, anything not Krugman approved is to be disdained and belittled. Is there anyone more narrow minded than Krugman? Trump is a pinnacle of objectivity in comparison.
A little Libertarianism is good for everyone. Where Democrats and Libertarians most diverge is in their thoughts on centralized vs dispersed power. Though I can think of plenty of things that Democrats and Liberals would like to see legalized and freed from red tape. I wager you would like to be secure in your homes and value your privacy as well.
Look.
Why would a food producer provide unsafe or adulterated food to their customers?
They would lose those customers, either by death, or temporarily due to illness.
Why would a drug company do the same?
Why would an airlines cut back on maintenance and safety?
Bad publicity would shut them down.
As the Great Helmsman said today:
It is just common sense.
[sarcasm alert]
When I arrived back in Paris three days ago from the US, I was actually quite relieved to find one of those cards from the TSA to notify me that the contents of one of my suitcases had been inspected. I am sorry and outraged for all the federal workers who quietly keep the US running and ensure our safety in so many areas and who are not being paid because of the madman in the White House and his congressional enablers.
3
Contaminated food smells like freedom to the unethical, amoral businessman who wants to sell it without government interference. Sort of like the guy who used to own Trump Steaks.
3
Question: Is the white House staff being paid? I move it not be paid if it is.
2
I’m no fan of this shutdown but this column is deeply disingenuous. We all know you just cant stop a program on a dime when a society assumes the government is handling it. That does not prove their government was the appropriate solution to begin with. In fact, this spectacle might prove its not.
I wish more pundits would hammer home more often how disproportionately money pores into Washington's redistribution machine from blue states like NY and CA and gets sprinkled right back out again to red states like Wyoming.
2
@Larry Bennett
Saint Pelosi has passed all the necessary paperwork to get the government running again.
Trump and the Republicans own the shutdown 100%. It could be over in 10 seconds. Why isn’t it being reported that way.
Forget the wall, it is irrelevant to the human suffering the spineless republicans are allowing.
Trump and his republicans are starving people with limited funds - and yet he remains overweight. Why isn’t the press focussing on the obvious contrasts between the king and his subjects? They do for other third world administrations.
All these small government folks are generally hypocritical as they take federal handouts around the back of the barn.
As usual, Krugman confuses libertarianism with anarchism. One day he may get the distinction right. Not yet.
1
"Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has denounced the program for “making it excessively easy to be nonproductive.” "
Gee, and all the while I thought it was his Senate paycheck, supplementing his NRA paycheck, that was making it excessively easy for Mitch McConnel to be nonproductive.
1
FOCUS : FOOD SAFETY ESPECIALLY RETAIL MEATS What possible benefit would major retailers benefit from providing contaminated products in the face of reduced inspection ???
DUH !! Lots of sick people !! The FDA has never been adequately funded to provide adequate inspection of this industry. Witness the number of recalls we experience. Little change will be experienced in this industry due to the shutdown...retailers can't afford it....
The Repub's should be celebrating the fact in one weeks time they've being able to convince all those laid off Dem Fed employees into calling the president with their unconditional support of his shutdown.
Krugman presents a distorted, "Krugman's eye view" of Libertarian views. As per usual, anything not Krugman approved is to be disdained and belittled. Is there anyone more narrow minded than Krugman? Trump is a pinnacle of objectivity in comparison.
A little Libertarianism is good for everyone. Where Democrats and Libertarians most diverge is in their thoughts on centralized vs dispersed power. Though I can think of plenty of things that Democrats and Liberals would like to see legalized and freed from red tape. I bet you would like to be secure in your homes and value your privacy as well.
Plutocrats can be counted on to be predominantly white and predominantly uninterested in anything but token membership in their country clubs by non-whites... and after all, aren't their clubs intended to be microcosms of an ideal society.
How many Trump supporters, no matter what their means, life expectancy, or addiction status, play golf? And dream of playing in exclusive clubs?
The country club as model for American society embraced by the Trump base, a model also embodied by the American Constitution, a document entirely uninterested in Democracy or people of color except as servants... like the waiters at the club.
Have you checked the staff at the Yale Club recently Paul?
1
Working without pay is indentured servitude. At some point, the federal workers need to walk off the job. That might be against the law but so what. Reagan fired the traffic controllers and suffered no penalties. What should have happened then, was the AFL-CIo and the autoworkers, and the police unions, and the teacher unions, and every other union the America should have walked out to let that President know that he can not get away with this. The same thing should happen today. Shut the nation down -- even just for a few days. Oh, and please wear a yellow jacket.
Oh, for a 21st-century Sinclair Lewis, who could remind us of how that tasty (well-done) steak gets to our table without any government meddling !
@Gordon Were you thinking Upton Sinclair?
Ideologues in Government are not the solution, Ideologues in government are the problem
I own a small business. My wife and I started with almost nothing and 40 years later and untold hours of uncompensated work later we employ 13 well paid artisans and remain ourselves among the millions of Americans for whom economic security remains a brass ring never grasped. I deeply resent being lumped in as 'conservative' when I have fought along with other small business owners, some more successful and secure than I, for increased minimum wages,affordable health care, paid family leave and environmental responsibility. The survey results included here tell a story more about a successful conservative big business campaign over the last 50 years to convince the American people that to be in business is to be practical, hard nosed and conservative. 40 years of slugging it out has made me hard nosed and practical and that in turn has reinforced my belief that a progressive economy lifts all boats and conservative one only encourages cannibalism. I know who's boat I want to be on and a better informed small business community will understand that. Progressive leaders including the newest members of the House need to reach out and embrace the small business community, where if they put their prejudices aside will find practical, hard nosed fighters who share their values and ambitions. Another thing missing here is this; the vast majority of small businesses don't qualify for SBA loans when they need the help most.
4
The top tier of rentiers can hire private armies, build moats, hire food testers.
And they give loans, not take them.
Invasions by enemy nation states are potentially slightly more of a problem, even with oceans on either side a pacifist underpopuated icebox to the north and a faiing state to the south.
Incoming missiles, however.
Why are Defense and Veterans by far the two biggest and most expensive government agencies? No libertarian objections to them, are there.
2
Corruption is inherent in humans, as witnessed throughout history. A government, based on principles accepted by the governed, mitigates the consequence of corruption through regulations, rewards and punishments, taxes and abatement and on, and on. It is the corrupt who abhor government, and for all the wrong reasons.
3
@JLM
And how does government magically avoid the same corruption inherent in human behavior?
@Bob Krantz
By being under careful public observation supported by the press.
Reading this column makes me wonder whether the wall is a ruse to effectively shrink government to the size that will fit in a bathtub, as unelected Republican guru Grover Norquist likes to put it. In Trump's threats to declare a national emergency to divert funds appropriated for other purposes to the wall, he has offered no path forward to re-opening government, even if he takes this step.
There is, in this country, a prominent streak of selfishness masquerading as freedom, a notion that successful people pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps without any help from anyone else. They think that Big Bad Government exists only to divert their hard-earned money to freebies for the lazy dark-skinned elements.
A silver lining to this government shutdown (not border) crisis would be if some of the opponents of government would finally realize that government can work for all of us.
2
Good analysis. For years GOP has complained about big government, and Trump has managed to coincidentally implement this strategy. If we take this moment to analyze what should be kept and what should be revamped, then something good may come from this. The reality will be restore everything and begin the fight again.
It is quite clear that governmental aid to the poor is a waste of money and it is deleterious for their moral. However, governmental subsidies and tax reductions to farmers, oil producers, arms manufacturers, financial giants, etc is the proper responsibility of government. What do you expect from a person who stiffs his workers, doesn't pay his taxes, uses a charitable foundation to pay his personal expense and fakes his medical record?
2
Mitch McConnell has a lot of nerve to be casting aspersions on those he deems "excessively easy to be non-productive". He seems well versed in laying down on the job these years past as a one-note obstructionist
2
I do believe that there should be a cleaning up of the executive branch from time to time, to shut down or realign social programs that have outlived their usefulness. Government is a solution, not a problem. But it is a blunt, unwieldy instrument.
One such program it that which distributes farm subsidies.
Nowadays this is a form of corporate welfare; most of the money goes to affluent landowners who don't need the money.
Some agencies on the other hand should not be tampered with, because there will always be a need for them: those that ensure safe and non-fraudulent consumer goods and services, restrict pollution, and protect labor rights. Only a libertarian on drugs should want to get rid of these programs.
1
I wouldn't say that the big money Repubs. are happy to line up behind the Trump tariffs. They would much prefer global markets in which to operate and extract monopoly rents.
I certainly agree that they don't give a hoot about free markets. They would be happiest if the antitrust division of the justice dept. never opens again.
1
“Rural voters went Republican during a Democratic midterm blowout, but they want those checks.”
What’s astounding is that they will continue to support the party that continues to make them suffer, rather than support or take a chance on the party that is actually ON THEIR SIDE.
As to giving Trump his wall, the Democrats are ironically helping the GOP continue with its experiment by NOT funding it. Maybe a compromise and horse-trading on such a small percentage of the overall budget could be helpful now?
It’s time to let federal employees start getting paid again. Rigidly adhering to principle only continues to hurt them, and they can just as easily blame the now-Democratically contolled House.
It takes two to tango. Just sayin’...
1
Mr. Trump has taken his insouciance toward the work of governance so aptly illustrated in Michael Lewis' The Fifth Risk to a higher level.
Now, instead of just not caring how the machinery of government is making sausages, he has tuned much of it off all together.
What could possibly go wrong? Mr. Trump sits childlike in a basement filled with gasoline holding something he believes to be a new toy, matches, while we hold our breaths.
This is a modern remake of the classic Hitchcock scene in the Birds with people screaming at a man lighting a cigarette to put out his match as gasoline washes over his feet. Stopping in the midst of lighting up, the match burns him and he drops it to utter chaos.
Art imitates life which imitates art. And the ouroboros is reborn.
My mother sat down and read all of Ayn Rands books in a very short time, she was a voracious reader. This I will never forget though because when she was done with the last one she looked up and said to me, "I'm for me first!" I've since known more than a few libertarians. She was spot on, condensing Rands entire output to one sentence that unfortunately describes all of the libertarians I've ever met. The virtue of selfishness indeed was evident in them all.
3
Although there is plenty of justified criticism of Trump, McConnell has not received his share of discredit. Without his support of Trump we could be in a much better position, certainly the government would be open for business.
It is ludicrous to think that lyou can hage a nation state without regulation. Just look at the damage to Joshua National Park without the presence of park rangers. We can only guess what regulations will be skirted with our food supply.
All this has led to the loss of respect from our alllies that, if Trump continues, will undermine Pax Americana. That could lead to a very “messy” situation.
Regan's line about government was a line in a script to him. It was a good snarky comment. The way it's worshiped is reminiscent of the way GOP'rs trot out Grover Norquist's 13-year old fever dream about never raising taxes, and more recently trump's Build the Wall Mexico is going to pay for it. It's an abhorrent statement or witty repartee but it's not any kind of real policy.
It would take actual thought and planning, budgeting, etc, etc to even begin to understand how removing government from a country would work. Spoiler alert, it wouldn't. Feds want to push bills to the states, the states want to push to the counties...
Government has been the backbone and yes, even the soul of our democracy. Nearly every country on earth has some sort of government, go ahead move to one that doesn't and live your libertarian dreams.
4
Mr. Kaufman makes many points that are worth a followup, but I’ll just take one easy one. Mitch McConnell wants to abolish food stamps because they encourage unproductive people, and he’s indisputably right about a huge number of their recipients: children. Millions upon millions of American children don’t work, don’t pay taxes, and in return are showered with freebies, courtesy of the taxpayer. Those who are willing to work, and the employers who would be happy to hire them, are literally forbidden to do so. And by whom? The government, armed with hundreds of antiquated regulations. If we’re finally getting serious about a true Free Market,then it’s about time we gave America’s kids the honest, hardworking future,and present, that they deserve.
5
@Tim Hunter Well thanks, Sean and thank your Fox friends. IF any of these well known right wing dogwhistles were true, what would you do with the people who aren't working and can't buy food? Please remember you're in America and not some Grover Norquist/Ayn Rand dream novel.
If the American experiment, established by our Constitution, was supposed to be a government of, by, and for The People, then saying "the government is the problem" is saying that The People are the problem. And, by extension, that the Constitution is the problem, that this form of government is the problem. Republicans have been trying to disestablish government of, by and for The People for a long time. How we have allowed this keeps me up at night. They are treasonous. They have been treacherous. They have failed in their oaths of office. they have done the exact opposite of upholding the Constitution. With Trump's shutdown, they've succeeded in eradicating some of The People's government. Now, Democrats in Congress are what stand between us and two equally terrible paths forward: government by dictatorial temper tantrum or further eradication of our government of, by, and for the people. I actually think that Bannon, the Koch Brothers, and the ultra-right Supreme Court justices bought and paid for by the libertarians (freedom! government of, by and for a very few wealthy men!) have achieved with this shutdown what they have been hoping for all along. This is the long con they've been running. This is their long game. They don't want the shutdown to end, they want it to deepen and spread. And they might get their way.
8
Government is not the problem. Republican government is the problem.
12
@Buttons Cornell
Yes, they get in office and go to work to prove that Government doesn't work and is the problem. Government works fine as long as Republicans are not in charge. The sabotage any effort to resolve or solve a problem. They complain about the debt and deficit until they are in office and then they blow the budget to smithereens with invented reasons for war so they can enrich themselves. They are the problem, not Government.
1
Much rests on whether one has sufficient imagination to consider what the personal consequences would be if your child got sick, or consumed tainted food or adulterated medicines or if you lost your job either because of illness or your company replaced workers with robots and computers. Thus libertarians are in many ways more to be pitied than despised. In my experience libertarians often are bright enough but are either too young to have any real world experience with which to test libertarian theories, or they simply lack the emotional intelligence and imagination needed to put oneself in another shoes and by so doing empathize with their actual circumstances.
4
Almost unfailingly, the stoutest Republican supporters seem to be the biggest beneficiaries of government: the military, farmers, pensioners or small business owners.
Growing up in a military family, I remember subsidized gas, medical treatment for free and school trips paid by the DoD.
Yet anytime there was a Democratic president, it sounded like there would be a coup when our military parents met at picnicks and had a few beers.
If anything, Trump and the GOP have finally shown common decent folk what the democratic experiment in America has become: a system that looks alot like feudal systems of the past. Including walls!
601
@Eric
At the end of the day, we are just talking monkeys easily convinced that some "other" is en-route to trespass on our land and resources. So the troop coordinates (over beer and pick nicks) to conjure solutions to imaginary threats.
The right wing media with its unchecked and unchallenged falsehoods - because they are entertainers and not journalists - continue the narrative that is so easily believed.
Obama's coming for your guns! Eight years on and that is still a real belief.
31
@Eric Oh, yes! It is much overlooked, this phenomenon you describe. Those who have sucked at the government teat the most have nothing but derision for the culture of dependency sucking at the teat engenders. Of course, they are not sucking at the teat in the military; they are "serving." And getting paid better for it than any private industry will pay.
17
@Eric Yes! Talk about cognitive dissonance!
2
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has denounced the [food stamp] program for “making it excessively easy to be nonproductive.” Is that irony? Under McConnell, the obstructionist, who is less productive than the senate? Why are they still being paid as "essential workers"?
2
Those who believe, like Ronald Reagan, that government is the problem, are about to discover that the absence of government is an even worse problem.
786
@Larry
Reagan said, "The scariest words ever spoken are: We're from the government and we're here to help."
No. The scariest words for desperate people to hear are, 'We're from the government; Sorry Bub, you're on your own.'
36
@Larry: Here's some weaponized help from a Federal Judge, Steven Roth during the hearing of the Detroit School desegregation case:
“Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of 45 minutes, one way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way. ...kindergarten children should be included in the final plan of desegregation.”
Fortunately the damage Judge Roth caused was minimized by the Supreme Court. Unfortunately Roth's actions just about killed the Detroit Public School system.
Sorry but the damage is long remembered by working class folks and Reagan was right.
1
@Larry
The old saying "If you think education is expense, try ignorance" is about to be demonstrated one more time.
18
Republican mantra (even Libertarian) is to be left alone, so long as THEIR way of life is left alone, and they are subsidized by you for living that way.
That may mean a MASSIVE military to be a deterrent, or to go invade some other country to keep the oil flowing. That may mean subsidizing all sorts of industries, businesses and the like, because they cannot compete at all on a truly free open market. That might mean support for all sorts of social programs, health programs, education programs and the like as well, because bootstraps only take you so far.
I would use the word hypocrisy, but that would entail that many know what they speak of when describing what Libertarian, or Socialist. or another ''ist'' form of government actually means.
We are all in this together or we are not. There is no in between, but many would have you believe it is possible.
It is not.
372
@FunkyIrishman. No disrespect to Prof Krugman, but your comment is even better than the the professor's column today.
To which I would add we are either a socialist country already, or at the very least a country of rent seekers filled with the massive self-delusion of rugged individualism "made it entirely on my own-ism".
The silver-lining of the morass of the shutdown is that it reflects back to us, what we really are. It forces us to confront the actual image in the mirror. The only question left is how do we respond.
9
@Sparky
Thank you friend, I appreciate that. I make often the comment that the United States is decidedly as center left country with many Socialist tendencies. I am always jumped upon whenever I do, however we all know how much we are knitted together, that we will not make it, if we do not work together.
We are getting there. Keep the faith.
12
@FunkyIrishman
Your first paragraph is now in my cannon of quotes to remember and use.
Thanks!
4
One of the big obstacles I've observed is that conservatives, in general, have to experience negative consequences directly to understand the link between cause and effect. Liberals, in general, are better at imagining negative consequences and taking preventive action before they directly experience it.
It has to do with empathy and solidarity, I think. Liberals see someone suffering, and they think, "We should find out what caused that and fix it so it doesn't happen to the rest of us." Conservatives see someone suffering, and they think, "That guy must be a terrible person. He totally deserves what happened to him. It can never happen to me because I'm a good guy."
It is only when the negative thing does directly happen to the conservative that he may reconsider. That's when it is important to find a scapegoat- illegal immigrants, minorities, Jews- to blame in order to obscure the causal link.
905
@DB
Liberals see someone suffering and put in place a program that makes them suffer more and then extend the benefits to advantage themselves.
In the 1960's Medicare was established to cover hospital costs for the elderly of all income levels. Medicaid was established to provide for the elderly poor or those who had depleted their assets who needed nursing home care. Today, wealthy Democrats "Medicaid plan" their assets so the government will cover their living expenses so they can preserve their wealth for their heirs.
Liberals imagine troubles for themselves and figure out how to get others to fund their desires.
1
Today, medical expenses are stratospheric. Meanwhile, the conservative movement strangles the welfare state so that nearly everyone in the middle class (regardless of political affiliation) who wants to live on more than $900 a month must go through legalized fiscal contortions to be able to pay for adequate care.
54
@ebmem
You can preserve some of your wealth while on Medicaid. I think the allowance is $40 a month. A spouse can keep their home and around 60k.
27
There is no such thing as a free market. Let me repeat it again for effect: there is NO such thing as a free market. Whether one calls it libertarianism or neoliberalism, the idea is pretty much the same: if we just unleash the power of human greed, the market will equal everything out, and we'll all be freer because of it.
Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. Our government gives huge incentives to large corporations with the idea that wealth will trickle down into middle class jobs and prosperity. But guess what? Those corporations keep most of the incentives and profits for themselves and their shareholders. The comparatively minuscule recent tax cuts for the middle class pale in comparison to the huge corporate cuts that added $2 trillion to our national deficit. The only thing stopping corporate excess and monopolies is government.
Many libertarians cry "starve the beast." Well, they shouldn't complain if they get food poisoning because their food wasn't properly inspected by a government they loath. And neither should President Trump complain, if, like most Americans, his next Big Mac doesn't agree with him.
562
@jrinsc, exactly right with an academic exception. Adam Smith and his ideas of free market competition assumed that there would be large number of companies competing with each other with their sole means of competition being consumer satisfaction, price and employee efficiency. Anyone who couldn't compete went out of business, hence "free market". The government's only role is to enforce anti-trust laws to keep businesses small and competitive, and assure that the competitive triangle of business, labor, and consumer are kept in balance. Fundamentally big business is bad, always!
What real "free markets" DO NOT include is the idea that a small number of huge companies pay the government to create a competition free environment. The term "free market" has been stolen to mean that companies can do anything they want to succeed, including creating laws with profitable loopholes, laws to inhibit labor participation in the competition, and laws that inhibit consumers from using fraud laws to suppress shoddy products.
In reality there is no "free market", as @jrinsc said, except to mean that big companies are free to do whatever they want to be profitable.
65
@dpaqcluck
Adam Smith believed corporate entities needed to be regulated. something always left out.
65
@jrinsc
How quickly we forget, of course sometimes it isn`t that we forget but rather our memory is clouded by the smoke from the fires set by vulture capitalism. Upton Sinclair The Jungle should be required reading for all congress critters and all incoming Presidents. The Jungle is a mirror to where todays American Nobility, the 21st century Robber Barons, would like to take us. A disposable population for profit.
51
The problem here is that dedicated, hardworking federal regulators simply are not able to grasp the depth of corruption of pharmaceutical and other companies that want (1) rapid approval without having to show even equivalence to currently available agents,(2) ability put ads on commercial tv that misrepresent the disease and, often, current therapeutic outcomes, and (3) be able to charge "market rates" for their fantasy drugs.
In a collision of dedicated ethical regulators and highly paid and incentivized corporate pigs, with a Republican government recruited from corporate interests, guess what the outcome is.
2
@Joe Solo
The drug companies create the ads and the "promise" of relief. Like Lasik Eye Surgery, promising 20/20 vision without glasses, and after the procedure doesn't deliver, the doctor says that the patient had unrealistic expectations. Oh yeah, why?
1
Trump did not get where he is by worrying about small details. He is a big picture guy, he fills the room so there’s no oxygen for others.
He probably doesn’t even want a wall, but he needs the war about it. So US politics is reduced to Trump, Wall and Shutdown. Three things which play well to his anti-government base.
Democrats need to work harder at getting their policy messages out, at present they’re too quiet and irrelevant.
1
But we already know that a good majority of Republicans are racists and hypocrites. They want the wall to keep the hoards of criminals out of our country even though they have been given information that border situation is not a crisis. Nope, they want to spend money unwisely on an outmoded, expensive and ineffective idea of security. They were all for Trump, until now when they FINALLY realize that his ideas (like the thoughtless imposing of tariffs) are dopey and simplistic in the extreme. The article also noted federal bail out funds farmers needed due to being harmed by Trump's tariffs. Someone should do a study on the full cost of the tariffs. I feel sure we are losing more than we are gaining.
2
Trump knows the wall is a complete waste of time and money. Its value to him is that he can use it as an excuse to shut down the government. He didn't have to do that when the GOP was in complete control. Now he is using the shutdown as a diversionary tactic to protect himself from the investigations, to keep Democrats occupied. It's the usual smoke and mirrors with Trump. People and human suffering mean nothing to him. He only protects himself. Democrats need to stand strong. Eventually Trump will self-immolate.
5
One of the most remarkable characteristics of today's Republicans is their ability to take either side of an argument, depending on who's making the counterpoint. That's one of the main reasons for Trump's appeal, because he can manage this flip-flop in a single speech.
Thank you, Mr. Krugman, for pointing out the hypocrisy.
5
Professor Krugman is correct as usual but he may be giving the Republicans too much credit, in the same way Trump's behavior is being overanalyzed: if we posit that Trump was a big cocaine user - his own statements seem to support this - in the disco days of the 80's (just 'youthful exuberance', mind you), then the idea he over-uses Adderall today makes more sense and explains his erratic behavior, sniffy nose, etc.
Likewise, Republicans may not be the doctrinaires they are portrayed to be. They do not intellectualize before they take actions that manifest their greed: just the opposite; they hire intellectuals to manufacture justifications for their addiction to personal gain and the power to keep the gravy train on track.
Nancy and the House of Sanity need to keep pumping out bills that restart the government, and very publicly deliver them to the Senate for passage. No Wall, just the government programs we paid taxes for and expect to have implemented.
It may take a few weeks, but (most of) the voters will get the picture. At that point it would be terrific to hold elections for Senate in Kentucky, Iowa, and a few other 'red' states.
Maybe their house of cards is getting very shaky.
2
Allowing private sector to manage itself is like giving a dog a large heap of food and then tell it to eat responsibly. A famous fiscal minister (at least in Sweden) once said something like "the market forces are good servants to the people but poor masters" of course he was a socialist and back then I thought it was just communist talk but these days I tend to agree with him, at least to some extent..
3
Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" was an effort to protect the rights of workers, but readers were most interested in learning that the food they were regularly eating was contaminated. So the tack of this column is a good one.
Democrats should have seen this shutdown coming, sooner or later, from the day Trump was elected. Pelosi and Schumer are doing the right thing in standing strong. They need to continue to do so. Let Trump and his fellow GOP hypocrites do something for the pay they are currently receiving: they can self-immolate.
Since Trump actually believes the memory trick of talking about a wall, planted in his mind by others, means he really needs to persist in efforts to build it, he may also believe that shutting down the government will shut down the Mueller investigation. He is in for a rude awakening.
Trump sees us all as bargaining chips and toys; we are equivalent to inanimate objects, nothing more. When will enough of us finally absorb this message? When will we finally admit to ourselves that enough is enough? Wondering how long it will take for that time to finally come is the most frightening part of all of this.
And you may recognize these Upton Sinclair quotes:
“The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the knowledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down.”
“So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul, and setting his heel upon them.”
3
Ah, Libertarians... I got a real kick out of the arrival into our campground a few years back of an enormous class A motorhome exhibiting an equally enormous Libertarian sign on the side of their coach. The irony of their camping in a STATE park was completely lost on them.
6
Yes, as the real effects of a government shut down begin being felt by Trump and Republican supporters, they may finally be awakened to the real agenda behind the scenes: redistributing wealth upwards. That's it. That's all it ever was and will be with the Republicans. It's not about MAGA, or the Wall, or freedom, or terrorism, it's about recreating feudalism, with the 99% as serfs and the 1% as lords.
There's only one law Republicans believe in: The law of the jungle, and if you're not rich enough, you're fair game for their insatiable greed. And if you're for smaller government, then you're making these predator's jobs easier.
1
Mitch McConnell is the problem. If there's ever a way to make a situation worse and more divisive, that man will find it. His legacy will be as the person who prostrated Congress before a ruler who thinks with his gut. So sad!
4
The idea that all government workers are democrats is of course baloney. However it is true that when the GOP attacks government workers personal honor and personal integrity, calling them and treating them all as incompetent dishonest and venal for the offenses of a few bad apples, that does tend to anger people. Add injury to insult by not paying people, causing them and their families significant personal harm, and you can see where they might decide to oppose the GOP based on the GOP insulting and injuring them.
1
Libertarianism, like communism, is a fantasy that cannot work in the real world. Communism, however, was given a trial and was proven to be unworkable. Libertarianism is touted by its adherents and by so called "think tanks" with the knowledge that it will never be given a trial run because they know that it would be a dismal failure. It is a fantasy kept alive as a stalking horse for wealth transfer up the feeding chain. Trump, McConnell and Ryan know(well, maybe not Trump) that a modern society cannot function without a government and a safety net that is paid for by tax revenues but as long as they can divert the true believers with dreams of being liberated from the big bad government they can continue to steal the wealth of the country. They are liars and should be ashamed.
No, Mr. Krugman, it's unfair to equate this situation to a smelly Libertarian experiment. Given the current political and economic infrastructure, it would take years, if not decades, to establish a reasonable form of Libertarian system, not days or weeks. The situation at hand is simply smelly, disgusting politics at the expense of real people, no matter their background. Neither side is willing to negotiate for the simple reason of political calculation. Otherwise, really, what's the share of a few billion dollars of wall funding in the grand scheme of things? Considering that a single F-35 jet costs about a hundred million a piece (and the entire program costing in the trillions), so what if we pay a couple billion on a wall that already partially exists? So please, don't get people confused with academic political nonsense.
If enough people die from contaminated food, other people will stop buying from that company and it will go out of business. The perfect free market solution. Works every single time. And those dead people made a free choice to eat the contaminated food.
See how easy this is?
One aspect of government spending that should be seriously curtailed is the military/industrial complex. We would save lots of money, and, more importantly, it would make it more difficult for the US to kick its way around the world, murdering people for reason or no reason, just because it's so easy.
2
I love this column. Dr. Krugman hits on the essential problem: most Republicans constantly lie in order to enrich their donors and themselves.
2
I am beyond disgusted right now. Trump, the GOP, the Libertarians, they're all from the Dark Ages.
These anti-social, nasty, mean people are deliberately taking down a great nation.
I was on the phone with an assistant to my Alderman today. There are people who now won't have food. Contractors aren't getting paid, may themselves wind up in big trouble.
The idea of O'Hare running understaffed or with stressed out controllers is insane.
One person gets sick from bad food, one plane gets so much as dinged -
And the sheer damage to the psyche.
I want to scream.
2
It's been a simple objective of the republican party since Reagan. Destroy the public institutions that protect and advocate for the average American leaving them ripe to exploit and rip off.
2
Good on you, Paul, for pointing out that Republican policy is more Calvinist/Social Darwinist than truly libertarian. The Calvinist underpinnings of the ideas as to who deserves to have the spoils provide a convenient justification for the way oligarchs feel they can treat everyone else ("if you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"), even if they've forgotten the religious origins.
There is an "every person for themselves" cast to Republican ideology until the person IS themselves. Hypercapitalist for the gains, socialist for the losses. I don't see Republicans complaining about government regulations that allow them to keep their gains after making them. Their rhetoric is just one long search for reasonable-sounding-to-the-low-information-voter justifications for I-me-mine greed.
News flash, conservatives--government is not the problem, it's the only thing standing between you and a lot of pitchforks and torches
2
We voted for this. We deserve it. We had our chance and instead of running the Republicans out of office we barely made a few gains. We are well on our way to third world status. Even in CT we almost elected a Trump wannabe governor. We are doomed.
1
Is libertarian another word for insane? What incentive do they think people will have to be civilized if there are no rules, or authorities to enforce them? Do they want a world ruled by the most ruthless? What is their vision? I think they are anarchists.
If Trump succeeds in getting his wall by declaring and emergency and ending the shutdown then this will be a fatal weakening of our democracy. The Executive can't appropriate funds and still have an American System. What is to be done when we elect a President who acts like a wannabe dictator.?
2
Hopefully, this excellent insight by Krugman will make its way into the minds of more American journalists across the whole media spectrum. The Republican Party has been playing this Libertarian con for decades, but now, thanks to the most transparent of con artists to enter politics, Donald Trump, the Party is feverishly scrambling to patch up the façade. Ironically, the Trumpster might have only prevailed via the persuasion and direct aid of a desperate authoritarian state. The 2018 Blue Wave was just the beginning of the end of their grand masquerade, and I think the 2020 Blue Tsunami is now making its way to land. Let the facts roll out each and every day on this historical political farce, journalists!
1
trump and his GOP enablers are calm about not paying government employees because many of these people are represented by public sector labor unions. So, bonus (!) while the government is shut down they get to stick it to what's left of the labor movement. They could care less about these employees or their particular situations. Disgusting.
"Does contaminated food smell like freedom?"
If Trump wins by extorting Democrats this time around, he will use the same tactic again and again to the detriment of the country. That is a good argument. That food might be poisoned because of the shutdown also implicates Democrats. That is a bad argument.
I'm amazed you think that radical libertarianism is just window dressing for the Republican party. The Koch brothers machine has taken over a large swath of the Republican party and are driving the narrative. Trump is a aberration. Radical libertarianism is a fungus that will be hard to eradicate.
The Republican Party is the party of the selfish rich. This is the party's all-important donor base. As for Republican voters, they are just credulous rubes who are easily swayed by fear mongering and fooled by deception. Paul gets it. Too bad so many millions don't.
2
Libertarianism isn't about shutting down ALL government services and waiting for the purge to take over as Krugman portrayed in this column. In an actual Libertarian system, these services and protections would be done privately. These replacements would be more cost effective yet more efficient than the current government systems, but with the added benefit of not being at the whim of politics. It's politics, not ideology, to blame in the shutdown. To claim Trump has any Libertarian leanings is utterly laughable. Krugman seemingly wants to associate a terrible president many hate with the beliefs of Libertarians who often criticize his shoddy, poorly thought out economic ideas.
Maybe Trump should do something sensible, like faking an alien attack on Earth to bring all countries on the world together as Krugman once suggested in his column.
@Quint - Yeah, most Americans say "I'd like to put a third-party profit-taker between me and my essential services to drive up costs and decrease oversight." Not.
2
All of the chickens are coming home to roost. All of the GOP lies and half truths are being exposed. Trump is on track to beat Herbert Hoover as a piñata that the Dems will use for decades. After Hoover the Dems won 5 presidential elections and became the party of the permanent majority in congress. Go ahead, Donald, make my day.
2
"Does contaminated food smell like freedom?"
Hard to say.
Do confiscatory taxes, restriction of religious practice, and bans on politically unpopular speech smell like Progressivism?
Libertarian is just another word to avoid taking responsibility for anything, a lazy and greedy man's way to let the larger community provide one's needs. In other words, they're leeches.
If you want to hear someone crazier and more hypocritical than Trump listen to Rand Paul sometime.
1
I have over the generations from time to time heard Republicans explain how eliminating governmental protections such as FDA inspections would work. If you became sick or died because of bad drugs or bad food, you (or your heirs) would simply sue and that would solve the problem. Oddly enough these people were almost always fervent that courts should not be able to "intervene" in such matters. Heck, they didn't even want courts to protect rights clearly specified in the Constitution, such as the right to vote. I can recall when many Republicans called jurists who wanted to keep Blacks (and in the case of some, like Rehnquist, also wanted to keep hispanics from voting) "strict constructionists". There is a contradiction here.
3
Anarchy is oligarchy.
The rule of law—law crafted by dedicated public servants, who are elected by sober and informed citizens—is the closest we can come to freedom.
Governance that provides basic order and rules and a safety net for when people fail (either from behavior that is unwise or from ill fortune) is part of the rule of law.
There are also necessary things that the government can provide (without a profit motive) better than either charity of for profit organizations. Roads and basic science are good examples.
Other things are best left alone by government—things like sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.
These should be principles that we all can live by, but it seems like the so-called conservatives believe quite the opposite. They believe in unregulated guns, flows of money to unregulated trusts, defunded public goods, and violent repression of sex, drugs, and free expression.
213
@Tom B,
I agree. You said it beautifully: anarchy is oligarchy. That's why the Koch Brothers promote politicians of both parties. Keep Congress divided by party. Select divisive power-mad politicians like McConnell the Macaw and Donald the Trump. Keep them fighting.
Read the book: "False Dawn: the Delusion of Capitalism." As the author, John Gray puts it: Democracy is the enemy of Capitalism.
We --- not just the US but in the world need to recognize that capitalism is a tool. It works for us, for society. Left unchecked it leads to oligarchy. Laws are fine but stiff regulation and control of litigation must come into play if fines and criminal prosecutions are to be effective. Let Exxon sue but limit the appeal to prevent corruption of our courts in favor of the powerful. Capitalism is the enemy of Democracy and freedom and all the values we hold dear.
20
@Tom B
"Anarchy is oligarchy."
This.
As a man who wasn't particularly liberal or leftist once wrote: "The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly. The rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
24
Roads are designed by private companies, built by private companies, “financed” (coercive taxation) by private individuals/the individuals who are a part of a corporation, and are then used by private individuals. Where is the government middle-man (who conveniently always takes a cut for themselves,) absolutely required in this situation?
In the same vein, if “basic science” is so vitally important and self-evidently necessary; why does the government threaten not only involuntary detention, but the initiation of violence (up to and including lethal force,) in order to obtain funding?
I see a lot of parallels between the current administration and Brexit - for politicians "Government" is no longer about the welfare of the country and its citizens. All the Republicans and the Tories care about is remaining in power. When you run a country you can distribute its wealth to your friends - that's all that matters to our current crop of politicians.
The civil service use to be a career - now it's just a gig economy.
2
The clueless non interference in the shut down by Mitch McConnell claiming that it is between Trump and the Democrats, and such lights as Graham proclaiming the shutdown must not end on any other terms than Trump winning, its hard to take the GOP as more than an atavistic force. Is this way libertarianism operates?
3
Money for foodstamps will dry up? That's going to be very bad for the 40 million Americans who rely on SNAP (yes, more than one in ten of us). But just as bad for the main corporate beneficiaries like Walmart, Amazon, and McDonalds. God forbid they start paying a living wage and stop relying on me and other taxpayers to subsidize their fortunes (you're not most welcome Walton and Bezos clans).
7
@sgoodwin - we spend $150 billion a year on safety nets for the working poor, whose employers don't want to pay a living wage. Walmart employees alone get $6 billion of that money, meaning every year we subsidize the Waltons by $6 billion.
@sgoodwin What makes you think that Walmart et al are suddenly going to start paying the help a living wage, SNAP or no SNAP? Of course, if we had a higher minimum wage--which realistically should be $17/hr.--then they would have to shell out more. But that would be the first step on [cue eerie sinister music] The Road to Serfdom!
The logical consequence of ultra-lean government must be no government at all: no comfortable Senate seats, for instance. But of course there are other reasons to shy away from this ultimate solution: for it is clear that a failure of state-run authority will automatically lead to the birth of alternative authority, like local militias or even the Mafia or the N'Drangheta in Italy. A society made up of over 325m people must be governed, and preferably not by venture capitalists (OK, most of them are not as obtuse as Mr Trump, but few of them are candidates for sainthood).
Most Republicans in fact prefer to criticise the status quo while avoiding anything which would change things too much, for they are generally the first to profit from the world as it is.
3
Look, societies that work best understand you need both capitalism and socialism. Capitalism does create great products but there has to be the potential to profit from those products and not all of societies needs can result in profit. Case in point are the air traffic controllers. How would you structure our air traffic system with finding a way that we have an organization that makes sure the skies are safe while providing a profit for doing that? Clearly, you can't have dozens of companies in the air traffic control business, the losers would perish due to lack of market and the winner would be a monopoly. Better to socialize the task, have the tax base pay for a government agency to do the job because there really isn't any money in getting into the air traffic control market. Now, you really do not want socialized cars or consumer goods, but the take away is that society needs both and it's always in flux around how much of each it needs. As painful as it is for those affected, hopefully the one take from this fiasco is that we, as a society, understand the important role government has in our lives.
8
This is exactly right. Dr. Krugman could have gone a bit farther and pointed to the hypocritical stance on social and even religious issues that the GOP maintains, which are certainly NOT libertarian. These include separation of church and state, drug legalization, prayer in school, and on and on. Even here, its the hoi polloi that make a big deal about it. The guys really pulling the strings don't care as long as those checks keep flowing to the people who are already rich and powerful.
13
@Lldemats How can Republicans be for separation of church and state when the proclamations of Senators and Congressmen about their praying for this or that are louder than the prayers themselves, and more or less every other word during the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh was 'God' or something equally pious?
Clearly a well-functioning government is more important than the actual size of government. It can clearly be too small, but also too big. But as you say, to the Republicans it doesn't really matter, as long as they can help themselves to handouts, while denying others essential services.
9
Everyone should read Adam Smith to see how market capitalism transforms greed into benevolence when a very specific set of economic conditions is satisfied. However, when those fairly strict conditions (perfectly competitive markets absent market failures) don't hold, there is a possibility for dishonest, predatory, or socially harmful behavior by capitalists. As a consequence, we need the rule of law and effective regulation. Democrats generally forget the first half of what Adam Smith said about the invisible hand and Republicans mostly forget the second half. We must understand both aspects of market capitalism to harness it to society's needs, rather than allowing blind ideology to run too far in either direction.
12
It's possible to start from a fairly narrow conception of government's role and still come out pretty liberal. Let's say you believe, as a do, that government exists solely to prevent, resolve, and mitigate human conflict. That may sound really thin, but the truth is that a lot of government programs are for exactly that. Take the farm subsidies. They started in response the Dust Bowl, when farmers were using unsustainable practices. To stop that from happening again, we started providing them with financial assistance. In exchange for that, we started cutting them checks. In essence, bribing them to start farming smarter. And in order to get the non-farming states to go along with that, we eventually tied those subsidies to food stamps.
Food safety standards help keep things from ending up in our court systems.
and so on...
10
@Gabriel Holmes
Well said (written). The genesis of many of these programs are linked together in some form of agreement/compromise that is lost in the present common understanding. Those not understanding the cost and the benefits of such are always eager to trash them and are usually the first to cry foul when the consequences emerge. Hence our present predicament.
How long would the shut down last if the air traffic controllers did not show up for work, and close down air traffic?
8
We have a $700 Billion defense budget. If we really need a wall then use the defense funds to build da’fence...
6
The reality in America is that excellence, the concept of doing ones best because it is the right thing to do has never truly been valid. Doing the Right Thing places individuals and business are a tremendous disadvantage in the market place. Getting things cheaper is always the goal and making things cheaper is ALWAYS at the expense of excellence.
While most of us believe that we are honest and of high integrity, this has never been true when making money is the primary goal. Government holds us to the lowest possible acceptable standards and that is for our own good.
10
My family is now eating only food that is cooked to at least 165 degrees. Most people, unfortunately including Trump, have no idea what 98% of the government except the Defense Dept. does. Unless, of course, they need the service.
6
"Maybe the party believes, like Trump, that these [federal] workers are mainly Democrats"
In my experience most federal employees are strongly republican.
3
@Nullius
It probably depends, Nullius. If you met mostly defense or military workers they might skew Republican, and there are a lot more of them. I spent by career at Labor, and even the most conservative among us voted for Democrats.
1
Thank God for Paul Krugman’s courage and genius.
I feel terrible for those who have or will directly suffer the consequences of the Republican Party’s decision to shutdown the government. In the end, of course, most of us will all be affected because most of us don’t live in millionaire bubbles. So if our neighbor goes hungry, we will feel their pain one way or another.
Throughout this entire process I can’t stop thinking of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s admonishment when the Democrats were trying to block the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh: “Win an election.”
As arrogant as Graham was, he was technically correct. In our form of government, “ELECTIONS MATTER.”
Well, the Republicans lost the House in November. But even before that, they failed to secure $ 5 billion for the wall when they controlled the House and the Senate.
That’s because the Republicans didn’t really want to spend the money. They were more interested in the wall as an issue.
Now that they don’t have the votes, they have their issue. And they will squeeze the 99% of us who are directly or indirectly affected by government programs. That’s how they roll. That’s who they are.
It’s up to the rest of us to exercise our rights and VOTE their anti-government, anti-American philosophy into extinction.
30
@Tell the Truth
So True! VOTE and vote smartly. Don't waste a vote on third parties.
Remember Gore lost Florida by 537 votes and the Supreme Court handed the election to Bush in a 5-4 vote? Hillary Clinton lost three key states by 80,000+ votes in 2016 and now we have Trump wreaking hourly havoc. Both won the popular vote - Hillary massively by 3 million votes! Voting makes a big fat difference.
If we had put Gore and Hillary in office, the Supreme Court would be 7-2 Dem appointed instead of 5-4 GOP appointed. Hence no Citizen's United, etc. We wouldn't have Trump and 18 years later we would be in a different place on climate change thanks to Gore's prescient and belittled warnings.
The press has to stop equating dopey email server stories to Trump's blatant corruption and "inventing the internet" and debate sighing stories with Bush's lack of experience.
I am afraid that most Americans do not truly understand the thin veneer of civilization and take the highly functioning US government for granted. We are truly on the precipice.
PS - Read the NYT story today on farmers continuing to support Trump and the wall over their own well-being.
2
When the romantic libertarian quotes Thoreau: "That government is best which governs least..." '...nay it governs not at all,' he or she forgets--doesn't realize?--that Thoreau was delivering an argument about why he should not be paying taxes to fund an unjust war.
We Americans cannot even tie ourselves to truth and facts and reality enough to avoid electing conmen to government. we are not ready for the awesome individual responsibility required for libertarianism to work.
Had we a nation of philosopher-monks perhaps libertarianism would work. Right now and in the foreseeable future--not a chance.
15
Yes, let the markets decide. For starters, every vote should be equal and not favor a voter in Iowa over a voter in NY. Soy and Tobacco farmers should compete globally and not be subsidized. The SEC should be disbanded and forget about GAAP .. and let's see what happens to financial markets.
Then suddenly 'peoples lives' will matter. Because the people will be the 1%.
11
Surely the best are able to self regulate the best. Let's put it to the test the old American way - via Football. Since it's the playoffs, we can do the test via the cream of the crop.
This weekend, send the referees home, and let the teams self-regulate. Each team can send or not send a group to perform the regulatory duties found to be needed by the old administrative state once called the NFL.
The teams decide what amounts to fair play and on each occasion, whether or not play has been fair. In the case where one or both teams finds play to have been unfair, they can decide what if anything to do about it.
I wonder if the decisions made in games on the coasts will differ from the decisions made in games in the heartland. Wow, I can't wait! This is a great idea!
9
Then hockey will no longer be alone, and we can watch the fight in case a game breaks out.
4
Libertarianism is one of those 'ideals' like meritocracy which would be great if humans were always honest, empathetic, and generous; however, while those traits appear in abundance for most humans, we same human also have the dualistic ability to be tribal and fail to be honest and empathetic to others deemed 'not my tribe.'
I think most of us would love to live in a libertarian meritocracy, but we are not yet ready for it. Instead we are stuck with the messiness of democracy--or what's left of it.
Finally, a true libertarian meritocracy would require everyone starting at the same place--wherever that might be. Additionally wouldn't it be absurd to reward someone like LeBron James, Tom Brady, deGrom, etc, ... too much because they were born with the physical gifts and mental fortitude to let them dominate a sport.
Too many of us think we hit a triple when we were born on third. Our commander in chief exemplifies such an attitude--except he'll claim he hit a home run after walking to first and the person behind him hits a home run.
14
That tired old baseball analogy ignores the fact that someone earned the walks/kits/steals that advanced the runner to third and further that’s it is only logical for the player at third to advance on that basis. The opposing team has no right to complain if the winning team places a substitute player on the base.
@From Where I Sit
Steals third is very appropriate in Trump's case. Other than that your rebuttal is meaningless.
1
@From Where I Sit The analogy is tired. And what you do with it is tedious.
1
I had serious Libertarian leanings up until a few years ago when my family and I moved to Bangalore, India to work for three years. It was an eye opening experience to see what actually happens when you don't have a strong central government regulating things like the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat.
Bangalore was once known as the Garden City and is considered the Silicon Valley of India, but corporate greed, unchecked expansion, and government corruption, along with no meaningful environmental laws that are actually enforced, has turned it into a nightmare-- or maybe into what Libertarianism looks like in the real world, outside of Ayn Rand novels.
The river beside our street was so polluted it had layers of chemical foam that would reach ten feet in height and blow across the road, stopping traffic.
The nearby lake would literally catch on fire, burning for days. Open sewers ran into nearby water sources. Forget tap water, it would make Flint, Michigan's water crisis seem desirable by comparison. Food safety? Roll the dice and take your chances.
Within a year any trace of Libertarian beliefs were wiped clean from my mind and I longed for strong government regulations to protect me and my family.
This U.S. shutdown isn't even a minor taste of what it truly means to live without powerful and enforceable government regulations and protections.
174
Maybe you too young to remember rivers in the US that burned? Things like that were before & the catalyst for PEA etc.
12
@John Moran Interesting, I am from Norway which is social democratic. Hence quite far to the left of the US. When I was younger I had very negative views of our systems and was very pro capitalism. I imagined the US as almost a dream society. Moving to the US and living there for a year as well has keeping up with American politics over many years has made me move hard to the left.
I realized social democracy is in fact a very good system. It is just that I kept focusing on the stuff that did not work well, but I took for granted everything that worked well, while not realizing that the things that did not work, was often far worse outside of Norway.
For instance I used to think our government was an inefficient bloated mess. I imagined that in a far more capitalist societ as the US, bureacracy would be far more streamlined. I had the direct opposite experience. In fact I realized our system was amazingly modern and efficient. And I have come to conclude that it is in fact BECAUSE we are not afraid of big government. That has allowed the creation of broader but simpler systems.
Just one example. One could say we have a "big government" health care system. Yet that system is incredibly more simple than the health care system I experienced in the US. The far more privatized system in the US seems infinitely more complex. It seems like instead of a few big regulations, the American system has ended up with a myriad of small regulations that create a lot of complexity.
23
@John Moran I'm glad that real-world experience of the Libertarian "dream" opened your eyes to the awfulness of the lived reality of such a philosophy. What I'm interested in knowing (since most Americans won't have a chance to move to India or another country without strong government protections) is: could you have been persuaded that Libertarianism is a cruel, unworkable joke of a system WITHOUT having to move? Could you have read anything, or have been shown data about regulations and public health, or watched videos about people suffering at the hands of corporate greed that would have opened your eyes to the lies, immorality, and straight-up failures of Libertarianism as a workable political/economic philospphy? The Kochs and other Libertarian billionaires flood the zone with their propaganda and convince A LOT of people that "Bangalore" is the dream. How would you suggest that we, the people, get out the word that, for almost everyone, it's a nightmare.
6
A good part of the GOP and Trump supporters seem not to grasp the government's role in their lives. The famous quote "keep government out of my medicare" says it all. This at least in part may explain why the GOP base is consistently voting against their own interest and are easily manipulated. Democrats need to improve their messaging pointing out the important role government and taxes play in daily life. This shutdown may give them this opportunity in the next election.
23
As I former libertarian; I will say it doesn't work. That is why I now am a centrist Democrat, cause they seem to be the only who care.
36
In Australia we just had an extensive investigation into our financial system, by way of a Royal Commission. It has found a multitude of abuses, committed by our banks, who put increasing share price and executive remuneration, before customer service.
At one time financial advisers who work for our banks, were going to be required to work in the best interests if their clients. The noise of how evil such a concept was, revealed these institutions were more interested in profits, than providing services to customers.
A few odd results were that some banks charged fees for no service, and some banks continued to charges fees to customers who had passed away.
When one leaves the private sector to self regulate their business, there will inevitably be abuses by the private sector. The disinfectant of some meaningful government supervision, does keep the free market in some sort of check.
28
"Knowing that the food you’re eating is now more likely than before to be contaminated, does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?"
Exactly. One of the most thing I appreciated of being in the EU is a strong consumer protection and safety regulations. But I guess, it's to "socialist" for some. Let's wait and see how the UK consumers will enjoy post-Brexit "freedom".
55
This is a replay of the early 1900s--lots of poison, no protection against poison in cheap food. So the rich believe they will avoid this, but I would bet that ALL food will have lots more poison. The solution is simple: get a big ranch, lots of employees and grow your own food. The best place is New Zeeland, as is favored by Peter Thiel and the liberatrians/anarchists (sarcasm)
14
@toom This big ranch we're going to get is going to be staffed by employees? Wouldn't it be cheaper to staff it with slaves? And don't forget that big wall topped with electrified concertina wire to keep us safe. Although to make us truly safe we might need our own security service to manage the slaves. Sounds like paradise. Ideologically pure.
If the food is contaminated, I'll sue the company producing it. Problem solved. Protect property rights, not government make-work jobs.
Republicans do indeed focus on things that further enrich the rich, then again, so do the Democrats (for which Elon Musk is thankful). There's no difference...
2
@Zhou "I'll sue the company producing it". How will you do that in the absence of any governmental mechanism to enforce compliance with a law suit? And how will you prove contamination in the absence of any recognized standard to show it is present?
115
@Zhou
You may want to gamble with your health or life, but most people don't. That "government make-work job" may just save you from yourself.
Good luck with your lawsuit in Hong Kong. They're not too big on "rights" these days.
I do applaud your honesty about the true focus of Republicans.
I don't agree with your statement that there are no differences between the Democrats and the Republicans. (By the way, Elon Musk contributes to both parties.)
The Democrats are the ones who clean up the messes that the Republicans have left.
33
No you won’t. You won’t have a case against the government because in your libertarian dystopia the government has no duty to protect you. As for the sellers and distributors on the channel to the libertarian market, a series of releases and arbitration agreements - a private judicial system - will greatly reduce if not eliminate your remedies. Finally, good luck with finding a lawyer. None worth their salt - especially a libertarian - will take this on contingency. But not to worry: libertarians represent themselves.
8
And how many supposedly little things like food safety go away before the GOP finally understands. I know some of the the more "centrist" types, like Susan Collins are uneasy, but beyond a few more, who will follow her? No one?
And a question, is Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid affected the more this craziness goes on?
17
I am basically a liberal Democrat, and I have no philosophical or practical objection to some degree of income redistribution from the wealthy to the poor. But I demand honesty and truth. Cutting the top tax rate is NOT redistribution from the poor to the wealthy, it is reducing the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor. If we demand honesty and truth from Republicans, we should also demand it of ourselves.
5
@Mark Nuckols
Wrong!
Cutting tax rates on the wealthy are stealing from the rest of us. We make contributions every hour of every day which are hoovered up by the wealthy and the powerful. Meanwhile we cannot afford the cost of living, which has skyrocketed vs wages and benefits. The cost of an apartment is exorbitant. The cost of health care is exorbitant.
Meanwhile the commons suffer. Infrastructure suffers. Sidewalks are a menace. There is lead in the water.
Rich people who do not pay their fair share of taxes are stealing from the people in so many ways it's impossible to count them.
But count them in years lost, in lives cut short, in lives blighted.
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@Mark Nuckols
all the government programs that help business mean that the wealthy owe some money back. when 5000 workers of a large corporation all drive the company trucks on free public roads built with tax dollars, when those roads need repair, it sure should be taxes on the company that helps pay, along with the gas tax we all pay. Your mistake is in thinking that the income of the company owner was earned by him and him alone, but in reality, the taxpayers helped him plenty every step of the way. You just did not see it all.
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@Mark Nuckols
pre-tax inequality is not a "natural" state like the laws of physics but the result of a man-made economic system, including rules that regulate the market, education, ... and social norms. When this system does not offer a fair playing field, when it rewards disproportionately only a few (winner take all), progressive income tax is one way to compensate for the built-in inequality of the system. Going back to a system of norms (post WW2) where the difference between employee and CEO salaries was only 30x instead 300x would be another one.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/22/heres-how-much-ceo-pay-has-increased-compared-to-yours-over-the-years.html
6
If we learned anything from the late U.S.S.R., it should have been that ideology does not make a good substitute for facts when determining economic policy.
Leader McConnell's belief that food assistance is a disincentive be productive is uncomfortably evocative of the "useless mouths" demonized in 1930s Germany. But that's why his party has tried various ways to punish recipients, including a number of policing programs that cost more than they could possibly save.
One of the best examples of this kind of economic snark is the right's bogey-tax: estate taxes. Of course we expect self-interest, but just once I'd like to hear some acknowledgement that the introduction of Medicare in 1965 has been an ongoing gift to heirs. (No tactful way to say that every cost Medicare picks up for a senior becomes available for his or her future estate.)
20
As a former active Libertarian Party member many years ago, I am happy to see a Nobel economist criticize libertarianism.
Although libertarianism and full-blooded socialism are two consistent popular political philosophies, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the proponents of the latter have almost entirely vanished from college campuses.
Paul Krugman is correct that Republicans use libertarian rhetoric, but aren't libertarians. This is normal; the "serious" politicians, as opposed to third party candidates, are forced to take disparate positions to get a majority, then use positive words like liberty, justice, equality, security or whatever to make their views seem coherent, rational and appealing.
In reality, Republicans are no more anti-government than the Democratic politicians. We can easily see this by looking at a graph of government spending. Without looking at the years, can you tell when Democrats or Republicans held power? I doubt it. Nor by looking at the deficits.
Krugman has offered a pragmatic critique. Yet, since libertarianism is basically an ethics, his criticisms do not address its core. This requires a critique on ethical grounds, not pragmatic ones. That Paul Krugman thought it worthy to critique libertarianism shows an increasing interest in this political philosophy.
8
What do you believe is a specific libertarian goal? No police? No fire department? No emergency rooms? No roads or bridges? No schools? Basically, each individual is on his or her own, and our neighbors can go scratch. Survival of the fittest, right? During the sixties, left-wing radicals espoused anarchy, and were rightly condemned; libertarianism would create anarchy.
26
@Miriam Chua Libertarians seem to be thinkers. If you pay attention to the natural consequences of what they advocate, it becomes clear that they only seem to think. They do not think.
11
@An Arab you are correct that Krugman’s critique is mostly utilitarian, dealing with the unhappiness caused by the loss of govt programs. There is however a strong critique of libertarianism on purely ethical grounds, because of the incoherency in its justification of property rights. For more on this, see the link below.
https://www.academia.edu/5393180/A_Critique_of_Libertarianism
Best class I had in my liberal arts college was a course on the role of government vs that of the private sector. There are just some things that gov is better configured to do.
Great course, great prof. Hope they still teach it somewhere!
32
@Steve Kazan - Adam Smith said there are certain functions "no society worthy of the name" would leave to the free market. I have to assume that health care and education would be two of those functions.
Some 20 years ago, I worked with a libertarian. He and his liberty-loving friends bought a bunch of toy guns and went to a low-income housing project, and started handing them out to any kid who wanted one. They were soon surrounded by angry mothers, who chased them away. Wish they'd had iPhone cameras then.
14
I am sorry to see that Mr. Krugman has such a need to trash libertarians -- especially since he presents them as being involved in irrational scenarios, and then trashing them for the political actions Mr. Krugman imagines these imaginary libertarians would take. He did the same thing several years ago, and I complained about it to him in a private email. I had thought that my arguments had actually been convincing since it had been quite a while since that incident -- and now, here he goes again. What's wrong with his disparagement of libertarians is simple: No rational libertarian I know (yes, I acknowledge the existence of irrational libertarians) would urge instant implementation of a libertarian world view in the situations presented. Personally, I would never implement libertarian policy in a way that would further harm those individuals injured by the crony capitalism fraud that is being replaced by libertarian policy. So any attribution of such faux pas to libertarians is a defamatory fraud. Full disclosure: I was the first chair of the Libertarian Party of SF, managing and executive editor of two libertarian periodicals, and ran against Willie Brown for assembly nearly 40 years ago, coming in third of four with over five percent of the vote.
1
@Marshall E. Schwartz
"Personally, I would never implement libertarian policy in a way that would further harm those individuals injured by the crony capitalism fraud that is being replaced by libertarian policy." But the essence of libertarian policy is not to implement policy but rather the freedom of the individual in the marketplace. This freedom includes the individual's right to scam others and the individual's duty to do due diligence so as not to be scammed. Scammers by definition have no compunctions about harming others, so libertarian freedom includes the freedom not to worry about harming others. Those libertarians who wish to worry about harming others are free to do so as libertarians, but they must grant the same freedom to those who do not care about it.
Libertarians who saw a way to derive personal or business benefit from the hasty implementation of their world view might well decide to promote a hasty implementation. They would be better libertarians than Mr. Schwartz because they would not be trying to impose one definition of "rational libertarian" on all libertarians. His strong and admirable moral principles are not part of the essence of libertarianism. Libertarians without such principles will use him for cover.
12
@Marshall E. Schwartz libertarianism is that there shall be no rules other than those that I need
1
@Marshall E. Schwartz
Libertarianism is a self-centered blight on society.
1
Lead and mercury are not vitamins in the drinking water, nor are chlorination and fluoridation evil nor is listeria is a salad dressing. And immunization is good and fresh air shouldn't just be for your 50,000 acre ranch.
29
Let's just say for a moment that it's true most of the furloughed and unpaid federal workers are Democrats as the President says. Why would that be something to brag about? No need to answer, it's a rhetorical question.
19
@Edward P Smith I'd like to add that Trump also boasts that most of the furloughed employees are behind him on the wall. The two groups are mutually exclusive, Mr. President!
2
@Edward P Smith because he’s hurting the right people.......
If all these workers were privatized, they’d have greater worker protections.
Government fails to protect them; the private entities will save them if they worked for private entities as privatization is the savior du jour, de la saison and de la generation, aussi (pardon my fancy french) for all Republicans.
Speaking of Reagan Times, Republicans’ raison d’etre at the time was to to shrink g’ment to fit all federal workers into the size of a bathtub or one of those 80’s yugo cars, no?
This can be considered another glaring government failure, right? Dems will also catch blame and it will stick to Dems like it always does.
How is it this many real people with real mortgages and real bills and real debt are this vulnerable to a partisan battle anyhow? We are all to blame.
I see this stunt as fabricating another exhibit to rationalize privatization.
That’s how broken we’ve become.
4
@Jane III: Sorry the blame falls right at Trump's doorstep. Period.
16
@Jane III
"If all these workers were privatized, they’d have greater worker protections."
Surely you jest. No other developed nation is as hostile to its own workers -- the majority of its citizens -- as the United States. Moraine's Edge must be another planet.
1
Private companies must follow codified law. In this country, they can’t legally compel people to work for free for services rendered once the terms of employment have been agreed to. That’s illegal.
As employers, the Federal Government should abide by the same principle. And it should be codified so this never happens again.
We all need to fight for all federal employees to get their paychecks whether or not there’s a shutdown, even contract workers who work for the federal government.
As an example, I am forced to look TSA agents in the eyes knowing that they will miss their first paycheck today. They are on the front lines of keeping me safe. They are now on the front lines of missing a mortgage, and ruining their credit and being forced into usurious debt. We all need to defend their rights to what they earned and make sure they get paid!
So yes, right now, workers in private sphere possess greater legal rights to their earnings. Who knew?
Let’s change that to include all workers.
1
Thanks for calling out the Libertarians on this. They are the shadow figures pulling the strings of the puppet Republicans.
21
Certainly along the gradient of no government to all encompassing giant government there is a sweet spot that produces the best most sustainable results. For now, we can't learn anything by example from a government that is so deeply corrupted by voter suppression, campaign finance bribery and the incestuous relationship between government officials and the business of lobbyists. Sadly, the framers of our government who knew the corrupting influence of religion did not anticipate the rise of huge moneyed interests that would have the power to overwhelm the legal protections against bribery.
18
All elements of Federal law enforcement aren't being paid.
Possible drastic impacts are frightening to imagine.
11
Mr. Krugman: does the US government allow any voluntary, market-based institution to complete with the FDA? If not, then your byline is flawed prima facie. Further, maybe we can get together and make Consumer Reports magazine illegal. I guess that would make you statists really happy.
You are right on one thing, though: there is not much intersection between the present Republican Party and Libertarian thought. Consequently, I am not, have never been, and probably never will be a Republican.
The Libertarian tradition of thought has this line: one ought to allow voluntary association and commercial interaction (among adults) to the extent possible, maximizing the sphere of civil society and minimizing the use of coercion by the state. Of course, crony capitalism, whether for industrialists or farmers, is out of bounds. The idea is to permit the highest degree of personal freedom (e.g. gay marriage, abortion choice, freedom of speech) AND the highest degree of economic freedom (e.g. don't take my things to fund your favorite projects), subject to two very strict limits: no force and no fraud. Libertarians believe that living under these conditions creates the highest opportunity for persons to flourish in their respect values, whatever they are. We also believe that persons who are living well are most disposed to helping others in need, as many do.
Why is this SO difficult for you, Mr. Krugman?
2
@Joel Sanders This is completely specious reasoning. There are any number of non-state food groups that compete to set, e.g., organic, standards for food... for their participants. And they can restrict anyone from using their seal of approval without meeting their requirements. What they can’t do, and the State can, is to require tainted products to be removed from distribution. Having the power of the State depends on law that transcends private agreement. And in the case of food, drugs, highways, airlines, and a number of other avenues of social life, that strikes me as a valuable thing. Why is this SO difficult for you, Mr. Sanders?
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@John California
Thank you for commenting. On the one hand, you seem to be one of The Many who defend Paul Krugman at all costs. On the other hand, you are correct -- the state may intervene to protect persons against physical harm, including being poisoned by tainted food. This would withstand the Libertarian standard of state intervention. However, this does not make Krugman's "Big Libertarian Experiment" any less disingenuous. For example, how did it work out for the state to criminalize voluntary adult drug use? This led to the largest percentage of incarcerated persons in the world, with incalculable secondary consequences. I guess this would strike you as "a valuable thing", but I don't agree. To summarize: Mr. Krugman cannot dismiss an entire tradition of political thought (which made the Declaration and Constitution possible) without a deeper engagement of the ideas. His critique of "Libertarian" principles is truly specious.
@Joel Sanders I agree that people should be allowed to use any type of drug they choose, with the caveat that the drugs (like those that are legal now) be approved by the FDA, that they contain what they say they contain, rather than, say, rat poison.
4
Arguing from the angle of individual agency, there is reasonable ground to frame facets of conservatism with libertarianism. Krugman references a Times article where a low-income high unemployment community in Kentucky, largely dependent on income assistance, is conservative. Largely rejecting progress stances on abortion, gay-marriage, environmentalism, but values did not account for the right leaning margin in previous elections. We can examine polling, economic variance, policy analysis, but why not just spend a day in a fellow man's shoes?
My granddad, immigrated to US from the Global South, worked 70 hours a week, bought 2 homes on his own merit. By nature and lived experience, portends to see the world rather anthropocentrically. He disdains government intervention and social policies at large.
My brother, as his professor tells him, sees the world from a 'community and societal perspective'.
Progressive economic policies anchor on a societal optic. My granddad, in every human encounter (say meeting a CEO or a homeless person), every social problem, anchors mainly on an 'I can' 'me' perspective - resolutely libertarian. His libertarian optic, informing his conservative views, is diametrically opposed to my brother. He doesn't embrace a 'what is the societal implication of my decision, my opinion'? ACA, SNAP, housing subsidies, public health, food and safety, and even National Parks are not libertarian.
My granddad would a Republican.
1
>>> " ACA, SNAP, housing subsidies, public health, food and safety, and even National Parks are not libertarian."
But so-called libertarians want government to protect the property they imagine they "earned" on their very own, without societal assistance, don't they?
27
@Green Why couldn't your granddad just remain in the 'global south' & become wealthy? because most of the GOVERNMENTS in those countries haven't made aquiring wealth possible for most, no matter how determine & hard-working.
2
@Douglas
Douglass: there is no requirement to "earn" one's property for it to be legitimately owned and deserving of state protection. The requirement is that it was obtained in a non-coercive and non-fraudulent manner. e.g. your parents could will their house to you.
I once heard a conservative economist give a speech in which he denounced the FDA for its suppression of competition in the pharmaceutical industry. I asked him what would protect the consumer if the market replaced the Feds as regulator of new drugs.
He responded that, if my wife died from the effects of a toxic drug, I could always sue the firm that produced it. I found this notion deeply comforting. I might lose my wife, but the drug company would have to compensate me with a pile of dollars, assuming I could prove its negligence. For this libertarian, a life and money weighed equally in the scales of justice.
61
@James Lee
James: what you are not counting are the lives lost due to FDA prevention of acquiring emerging drugs. The FDA burden of clinical trials takes many years and is biased to having no negative outcomes. There are no sanctions for preventing positive outcomes.
1
@Joel Sanders I agree that a person who is dying should be able to acquire an 'emerging' drug, meaning one that has not been thoroughly tested. But making sure that food & drugs are pure affects all of us every day, & is therefor of primary importance.
10
@Joel Sanders This is an interesting point, but totally orthogonal to questions about the validity of libertarianism. There are, in fact, special exceptions made for untested drugs for people in life threatening situations. Perhaps those exceptions are not always made when they need to be. That is an empirical question. But refining how those exceptions are made is a discussion about how government regulation should be designed, not about whether it should exist at all. Perhaps the government should let anyone take an untested drug who wants to. But we would still need government regulation to require businesses to differently label tested and untested drugs, and to make sure that the tests are valid.
5
Leaders of the moneyed elites aka conservatives and of the elites assigned to distribute wealth aka liberals do not seem to be able to see beyond their narrow interests and world views.
The political environment in the US has been like this since the 1990s, and now it is reaching its climax under Trump. The Chinese and Russians have taken advantage of the vacuum in Western leadership, and that does not bode well for the world.
12
Libertarian types will be overjoyed as many of the 800,000 take jobs in the private sector, draining government institutions of knowledge about how things work.
The damage of a protracted battle will be extraordinarily difficult to repair, and libertarians will do their best to hinder.
29
@Doug Fuhr
Doug: no Libertarian is "overjoyed" at having legitimate functions of government not staffed. e.g. I would not like for my local police force to disappear, as this could endanger our community. The conversation should be about the proper scope of government activity under the Constitution (including the 9th and 10th Amendments).
Until Dec. 22 I was working on an endangered species project involving the last western catfish species in the United States ... that became extant in 2017. Tomorrow, by fortune or by fate, I will speak to colleagues in another country about a similar project. Running the largest super power in the history of humankind like a volunteer home owner's association has its downsides and that includes the smell of something "rotting in the State of Denmark"
32
"Freedom's just another word, for nothing left to lose."
I believe I've heard that before.
Nevertheless, it does seem relevant. At least in terms of how Trump and many Republicans "define" freedom.
14
Here's a libertarian proposal: A constitutional amendment stating that the government may use taxpayers' money only to purchase the goods and services it requires. Try that one out on the Koch brothers and see what happens.
11
The first libertarian I knew was a slum landlord who did not want the Government regulations concerning maintenance of apartments and the like. This seems like a common trait among the political group as I think libertarians are more interested in profit.
73
@Areader Yes, but our whole society has become appreciably more materialistic than it was, say, 50 years ago. Materialistic concerns take up a large part of most people's thinking & conversation, regardless of whether they're rich or poor or in-between. Sure, we need money to live on, but, as a steady diet, it's a really boring topic of conversation.
3
@Areader
When people say "it's not about the money", it usually is.
1
@Areader
I assume he was willing to give up the police and courts evicting delinquent tenants as well.
2
The gilded age of the 1890's seem like a wonderful time for libertarians. The productivity of the nation was high and gaining.
But, it came with dirty air and water, bad food and medicine, quackery and robber barons.
It was followed by the Roaring 20's where stocks grew without limits and borrowed money paid for it. That did not end well, either.
Finally, in FDR's first 100 days, government stepped in and wrote the rules that made life good for most of us.
The GOP does not know history and forgot what happened when there was a libertarian society. They are getting an education, finally.
88
@Rich Davidson
History is not kind to the Republicans in the periods you refer to, save for trust buster Teddy Roosevelt, so it is no surprise they prefer to forget it all.
2
@Rich Davidson They are being presented with the opportunity to get an education. It is not yet known if they will actually 'get it'.
2
During the government shutdown, let's un-fund the Secret Service.
I wonder how long those folks would stay at work (and not call in sick) if their paychecks stopped? And I wonder what Trump would do if they weren't there protecting him?
36
Actually, as part of DHS, the Secret Service isnt getting paid, but are considered "essential", so are forced to work without pay. I'm sure that has a bad impact on both their readiness and their morale. Just as TSA workers are calling in sick, it wouldnt surprise me to learn SS are doing the same. If I were trump, I would be concerened enough about my own safety that I would do all I could to resolve the situation. Of course, he probavby takes them for granted.
2
@vacciniumovatum
Best idea I have read yet.
Can the House cut off services to the White House and stop paying the utility bills?
@vacciniumovatum
The Secret Service is not getting paid.
1
The people I have met who (loudly) espouse libertarian ideas tend to be of three types - all of whom benefit from this philosophy at the expense of others:
1) wealthy heirs like tRump who don't want to pay their taxes since it reduces their ability to live large AND pass on a dynasty to their heirs.
2) those with the luck to obtain the particular skills and education that provide a secure job with high remuneration. (Yes, it is usually a lot of luck)
3) good looking women who are confident that they can latch on to one of those described in 1) or in a pinch, 2)
2) will complain bitterly when the job market shifts - as it did for many in computer science after the glory years of the 80s.
3) will complain if their lawyer doesn't get them a big enough divorce settlement and their looks will no longer give them a second chance.
A good economic system works equally for all people, not just those benefiting as members of the lucky gene club.
43
Mr Krugman: what confounds me is why conservatives/libertarians take the position they do re funding and support for all lives and infrastructure in this country -- given the fact that to create a tremendous underclass actually threatens them as well as all of us. Obviously greed is a cause -- but can you at some point write about what explains their motivations? I cannot figure it out.
26
@TerryO
Lack of imagination. They can't imagine how others may suffer. Can't imagine how they themselves might end up if they get what they think they want. Can't imagine themselves losers instead of winners.
They're in for some big surprises.
1
@TerryO . I think some of them have the sincere belief/delusion that they will be Self Reliant Real Americans, like Daniel Boone or something.
1
@TerryO consult James McMaster Buchanan, and the acolytes he surreptitiously spawned.
1
If the shut-down lasts long enough we might also find out that many of the 800,000 furloughed government employees are not needed. this could be Mr. Trump's air-traffic-controllers moment. Maybe the 'Big Libertarian Experiment' would really kick in if he started calling them back selectively and after, say, six months, never call back those who had not yet been needed.
2
@Ronald B. Duke
They are needed, just not urgently, so not deemed essential. Unless, you think we don’t need audits to collect taxes for example.
17
@Ronald B. Duke
Your methodology is going to be undermined by the first major disaster that can be linked to the shutdown. I know because this happened in Ontario when our populist government cut down on the number of water inspectors. There was a rash of deaths in a little place called Walkerton. The populist government didn't survive the next election.
34
@Ronald B. Duke
We are already at some risk because there is a serious shortage of air traffic controllers. This won't help.
For those who despise government regulations, I offer 3 observations:
1. I lived near Muskegon, MI, prior to the EPA, when 3 foundries were constantly belching smoke and foundry dust into the air. Breathing the air was equivalent to smoking 2 packs of cigarettes a day.
2. I lived in Cairo, Egypt for 3 years. I purchased 4 pairs of prescription eyeglasses before finally giving up. None of them were right - and no regulations meant that I had no recourse.
3. I lived in Accra, Ghana for 3 years. No construction codes meant that the brand new luxury apartment building I moved into suffered numerous problems with plumbing, resulting in mold, flooded floors and sudden loss of water pressure.
In Cairo and in Accra, there was no social safety net. Beggars were a constant. Often they would be horribly disfigured and with no family what were they to do?
I am happily retired now, back in Western Michigan, thoroughly enjoying the clean air, safe food, and clean parks.
Obama said it best - it's not the size of government, it's the effectiveness of it. And if it's not working, that's on us - we're the ones who put those people in office.
2020 can't arrive soon enough.
552
@TM Exactly the correct response to libertarians. They like to talk about what "would" happen, as though lack of government were a theoretical that can be calculated. There are plenty of real world examples of what "would" happen. There are historical examples too, but they "would" be different, of course.
53
@TM
Although I`m also anxious to see 2020 I say don`t rush it. We have a lot of foundation work to get done before we can build a new era.
12
@TM
It makes you wonder if there is a correlation between thinking government is too big and never having traveled outside the US.
33
Boy howdy, but it's easy to spout the libertarian line when the FDA, FTC, SEC, EPA, etc. do what they do, day in and day out. Government succeeds quietly!
Many post smack about what seem like excesses, while they enjoy safe food and drugs, modest limits on fraudsters, clean air and water, etc.: Now, maybe, we'll see what happens when those who mouth off get the freedom they have demanded for decades. With a months' long shutdown lives will be lost, but those who disparage the regulatory state might get their come-uppance.
The coming months, if they involve a partial shutdown, will highlight the value government offers. Opportunities like this one don't appear often. This writer, for one, hopes it represents a crisis which won't be wasted.
49
The libertarian philosophy is this: while you're young and healthy and productive, you can help make money for your boss. However, once you are old and no longer capable of making a contribution to someone else, it is your obligation to simply die.
If you look at all the proposals of the Republicans, this seems to be the guiding force. Privatizing Social Security so that investment firms can get a piece of the action, privatizing Medicare so that insurance companies can get a piece of the action, and privatizing the military, so that private paramilitary companies can get more than their fair share of the action.
It's theft in plain sight. We can't believe it, because it's so obvious.
118
@Mark
Blackwater, Betsy DeVos' brother's company, and Halliburton already get a big share of the military dollar.
2
@Mark Thank YOU! It is the same libertarian garbage that engages in age discrimination, telling older highly experienced workers that they cannot be hired because they are "over-qualified." What the heck does that mean? I think it really means "we want to hire skilled, younger workers at the minimum slave labor wage and we know that you won't accept that so goodbye to you!"
1
@Mark Libertarianism is a disingenuous justification for selfishness. This "philosophy" reduces the world to a cruel and brutal place.
The problem I have with libertarian utopias is that 'the market' isn't going to work to address all conflicts. So you need to hire enforcement, since government isn't doing it... or are we keeping the courts? And if the courts rule for you, and the other party just refuses to pay, now you have to go get your payment. Good luck with that. It all seems likely to devolve into a 'might makes right' series of standoffs, until people band together into unified groups to collectively agree to a set of rules, and work together with those rules. Sounds a lot like government. Or you can just hire some soldiers and go take what you want. Dare the other guys to take it back. Sounds a lot like anarchy. Libertarians always seems to me like trying to cherry-pick what they like about government, what benefits them, and then dump the rest, the stuff that costs them but they can't see the benefit for. Maybe they'll understand better if they get some contaminated lettuce next time they go grocery shopping...
43
The people who support libertarianism are like those who support biblical literalism (fundamentalism).
The libertarians want to get rid of some laws and regulations but not all of them. Just the ones they don't like. Usually these are laws which make corporations and businesses sell clean and safe food, treat employees fairly, pay taxes, etc. The libertarians don't want to get rid of laws which help business, corporations, and the well-to-do. They want to be sure that Boeing, Lockheed, and others get cushy defense contracts, the petroleum companies get subsidies, Big Pharma gets to charge a lot for drugs, etc.
It is just a new name for the same old playbook -- make things tough on the weak and poor -- those with dark skins, immigrants, etc. All the while being solicitous for the well-off and powerful.
Religious literalist do the same -- pick out the Bible verses which support the desired message. Ignore those which don't.
So many things don't change. We get give them a new name.
61
@Aubrey
Excellent analogy, although we can also use a good old-fashioned term to describe these ‘libertarians’, ‘conservatives’ and religious types —— hypocrites ..... of the highest despicable order.
52
@Aubrey
I pretty sure you're wrong about Libertarians and cushy defense contracts and subsidies for big industries. Doesn't Rand Paul want to significantly reduce our military - and most things at the national or federal level?
And then, there's the weak and the poor and the dark skin and... I think you've got some sweeping generalizations and pre-conceived notions going.
1
@carl bumba
Yes why should we need a very large state army when there so many good Libertarian conservatives who increasingly prefer private armies. I wonder which private army Rand Paul support's? - I think we should be told.
11
It is remarkable how farmers, who are particularly reliant on federal government programs to buy seed, equipment, get loans, get crop subsidies, and market their food, still support Trump, even though these programs are shut down and he's started a trade war. One farmer in today's issue supports Trump, saying "we need some border security", even though it means he might lose his farm. What kind of politics is this where people support a President who intentionally ruins their prospects and their way of life?
It reminds me how dictators keep power through propaganda, rewriting history and painting its leadership as heroic. Fox News is like North Korean TV rewiring Republican brains to believe that Republicans, no matter how bone-headed, are always good, and Democrats are always bad, so much so they are willing to lose the farm, like North Koreans are willing to starve.
79
@Sherry
Farmers and lots of pretty decent , hard-working folks from working class backgrounds are not highly educated and they tend to be willing to 'follow the leader...'
When the leader they got flim-flammed by is not cut of the decent cloth, they don't know where they went wrong.
5
Mr. Krugman says: "For example, federal checks to farmers aren’t going out — but libertarian organizations like the Cato Institute have long denounced farm subsidies as just another form of crony capitalism."
Do we know if the $12 billion in taxpayer funds that Trump was handing farmers to ease the pain caused by his trade war have all been disbursed yet?
13
@b fagan
Heard the tale end of the Wisconsin soybean report on radio and some of the farmers are really mad because there were still funds but the application process has gotten gummed and bandaided.
8
@Grennan - thanks. I think it would have saved all of us $12 billion and a lot of farmers the cost of barrels of Tums if instead of a unplanned trade war he'd have just focused on Chinese industrial espionage and closed markets, and left most of our economy out of it.
6
@b Fagan
There are no longer a lot of farmers, period. (Only two million in the country.) We used to have truck farms around (and supporting) all our cities - now we're making ethanol and biofuel and livestock feed there. Hog farming is going the way of poultry - indentured servitude - cow/calf pairs are next.
3
I am in general in favor of China but cannot trust the safety of the food imported from there as you know; some people can take advantage of loose regulations and go to extremes selling even poison as food if palatable and just chronically hazardous. (This was apparently so in Japan too decades ago.) I'll have to put the US into my check list.
15
As I have observed, the long struggle between free enterprise and big government, it seems to me economic success has been experienced during periods of government-directed or steered investment in technologies toward a national mission purpose. E.g. post roads, canals, transcontinental railroads, public-schools, land-grant universities, research labs, many on university campuses, Panama Canal, airmail, Interstate Highways, trans-ocean cable, electric power grids, DARPA, internet, etc. etc. and a veritable revolution in the medical sciences in less than a century. I am certain that these technology leaps would not have happened without the collective investment of government.
I am old enough to remember life without indoor plumbing and when I take my morning shower in a temperature regulated home that has been renovated since 1870 that remains a peaceful place for thought prior to the white knuckle commute to work.
What do I think about? It is how our society is going to adapt to a World without fossil fuels that enabled the prosperity that we see about us. While I have been exposed to ideas like electric, no emissions Maglev transport, see www.magneticglide.com and using electric Maglev launch to place solar electric generation systems in space to beam energy to Earth that will be much cheaper than fossil energy, and electric powered atmospheric scrubbers to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for sequestration. I know that it will be economically disruptive.
12
In answer to to Bill from Michigan, the problem with food and water contamination is that it may take years to find out that the food or water is actually contaminated, and then additional time for the public to be informed. After all this time passes, the damage is already done and lives are irreversibly damaged. As an example, the FDA has very strict limits on the amount of mycotoxin and bacterial contamination in our food supply. While E. coli contamination may be detected due to severe acute health effects, the carcinogenic effects of mycotoxin contamination may not be detected in years. The Flint Michigan lead contamination occurred in 2014 and wasn't declared an emergency until two years later, when public health officials alerted the public in 2016. Although this was largely a local issue, the H.R. 4470, the Safe Drinking Water Act Improved Compliance Awareness Act, mandates that consumers be informed. So, personally I'd rather have the Federal Government be on the side of the public and not rely on greedy lawyers.
54
@Mike:
If you haven't seen it yet, see Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 which covers the Flint water situation in detail.......
Smells like Trump’s Teen Spirit to me. I hold to the remote hope that the shutdown could lead to the END of the Republican Party, at least for a long, long, long time.
45
Extreme capitalists and free market purists don’t understand the tragedy of the commons and externalities. For them everything is transactional. Quid pro quo. Nothing is done for joy; only for remuneration. The actual politicians that claim allegiance to that philosophy don’t even follow it but use it to enrich their clients.
34
Elect chaos.
Expect accelerating systemic breakdown.
Many pointed it out, months ago:
This will not end well.
For anyone.
67
Exactly so. It has been my experience that my libertarian friends are only able to be libertarian because they have been protected all their lives (at great expense, they would argue) by the very government they deride.
131
@Chris Hunter Libertarians either ignore the good that government does or use sophistry to justify their greed. The richer ones. like Trump, strut about as if they'd hit a home run when they were simply born on third base.
1
We are watching the meltdown of the Trump presidency. The silver lining is that Trump could be out of work sooner than he thinks. If he keeps doing what he has been facilitating all along by overstepping his boundaries, Congress will show him the door.
31
@DENOTE MORDANT
We can only hope..Perhaps this will have the same toxic cleansing effect the P. Grabber tape had leading to the consequence of the 2018 elections across the land.
Maine cleaned house after 8 years of a governor like Trump.
9
@DENOTE MORDANT
Sad to say, your belief that Congress will show trump the door due to this crisis is a perfect illustration of the saying
“The triumph of hope over experience.”
1
@Nancy
The GOP will dump #45 to save the party. The trade war is hurting Trump’s constituency. The shut down of the government is another massive problem for the GOP. The demand for the wall now threatens party cohesiveness.
1
We don't see the few inspectors who quietly keep our food safe, the EPA folks testing our air and rivers. The impact will be felt much later, and with no one to do the forensics, the story won't be told until well after the shutdown ends. I'm wondering how long the shutdown will last when visible folks start to go on strike. Will the federal employees who will perform the promised IRS, Food Stamp and farm distributions go to work, or ally themselves with their less visible brethren? With transportation, chaos will be most evident. After no paycheck on Friday, what if TSA doesn't shows or they picket Atlanta, OHare, JFK, SFO, IAD and DFW? Ditto for their compatriots in the Control Towers. Chaos. Who benefits? Perhaps we'll learn from Michael Cohen.
41
@SunnyG:
Federal employees are not allowed to strike. Many are still being made to work without pay.
11
What's fascinating about all of this is how the Gutless Obnoxious Popinjays refuse to take any responsibility at all for the problems. It's always the Democrats fault. I'm surprised that none of them have pointed a finger at Obama. After all, he didn't try to build a wall so it must be his fault that Trump is demanding money for a beautiful wall that will protect all Americans from the outside world.
It's fascinating to realize that McConnell, Pence, Trump, and the rest of the obnoxious crowd are getting paid by the government they want to drown. They are contributing to the very cycles of misfortune that they blame people for. Are they going to write letters for every federal employee who loses a home, falls farther behind on loan payments than they should, who can't afford to pay for medical care or the premium? No.
The GOP has no plans to share the misery it's causing. Trump doesn't understand or care. This is what happens when a complete incompetent is elected to run a country: chaos, uncertainty, and worse. The party that abhorred communism and the Russians now has a president who may be owned by the Russians. Even if he's not, the entire debacle that is Trump's presidency must warming the hearts of Putin and his "friends" each day it continues.
As Obama said, elections have consequences. This is one of them. I don't know about the GOP and the libertarians but I prefer to eat, drink, and breathe safely. It's why I like a functioning government.
130
@hen3ry
"It's fascinating to realize that McConnell, Pence, Trump, and the rest of the obnoxious crowd are getting paid by the government they want to drown."
When you go the rest of the way you finally get a true sense of how perverted these people are.
40
@Rima Regas you also get a true sense of how badly they want to control everything and how little they care if they destroy the rest of us in the process.
36
@hen3ry
As Mr. Trump told cameras today, "the buck stops everywhere."
Can't make it up.
2
I'm surprised that the air traffic controllers haven't all called in sick. They have the collective power to bring air travel to a standstill. I've long felt that a general nationwide strike would finally get the attention of our corporate overlords. After all, all they care about is money--just like Trump and the GOP.
66
@Helena i'd like for the entire TSA and FAA to call in sick, which means no one can fly, period, commercial or private. Sure, the public is being hurt now, but when the skies are closed because no plane can get into the air, watch people yell ten times as loudly to end the shutdown now, wall or no wall.
52
@Helena, I am all for a national strike, especially since the Federal workers cannot. If France could do it, why not us? Even if 30% of the population participates, it is will be huge and get the attention, as you say, of the corporate overlords.
34
Research what happened in 1981 when air traffic controllers went on strike. That’s why air traffic controllers aren’t gonna try striking again. I would be surprised at a strike by TSA in light of that as well.
8
My first lecture in economics dealt with free. The professor, then the Chief Economist at the Cleveland Fed, made the point that nothing was free: no free lunch; no free air; no free love.
The point that he made was that somebody always pays. For everything; maybe not you, not now; but somebody does. So every time that I hear this Republican rant about free markets, I begin to laugh.
64
2 kinds of free. Free as in speech (or markets) and free as in beer (or lunch). In the former (free as in unfettered) the cost is social, not exactly economic and not really hidden. In the latter the cost is truly economic and hidden from the consumer.
8
@Mr Pb
No such think as a free market. Never has been in the history of the US. Most market laws are written to protect the rich. And that was done at the time of the most limited government we ever had.
5
Free as in unfettered means you pollute the environment to make a profit and we pay to clean it up for you.
1
So the party of fiscal responsibility which is already running up the deficit insists on building a wall over 2000 miles of border, seizing private property along the way . When we stopped teaching Geography and Citizenship and dismissed literature as irrelevant to getting a good job, we created an electorate that could be gulled by such propaganda and conned into thinking that fear is our avatar: fear of otherness, fear of government, fear of taxes, fear of liberals, fear of fear itself.
110
@John Quixote Perfectly said. Fear breeds ignorance, which is taken advantage of by the oligarchs. Fear also breeds racism, which the GOP counts on to be re-elected in gerrymandered districts.
7
@John Quixote
“You Sir, are correct” Ed McMahon
1
Dr. Krugman doesn't want to admit that he (and establishment Democrats) shares a devotion to the free market with establishment Republicans. Trump's popular, Libertarian views were NOT well received by his party. The Republican establishment wanted Bush, or Rubio or, even , Cruz - anybody, but Trump. They did NOT willingly line up behind Trump's embrace of tariffs. Their desire to get re-elected drove them there. Does Dr. Krugman really think that Trump's base are major beneficiaries of farm subsidies? Those are based on acreage. Large land owners and agribusinesses may benefit. But the rural, working class see only trickle-down effects. Dr. Krugman wouldn't know this, but the working poor find it humorous when Democrats warn about federal employees having to "miss a paycheck". In these parts, being a federal employee is even better than getting a job in the mines (or "underground") - those were and still are plum jobs. (But when you're salaried, you do give up some dignity in being a 'working man' though.)
It does get tiresome educating the educated.
3
@carl bumba
When the working man depends on other people's paychecks being generous enough to spend on doing business locally, it can be tiresome getting him to support a smoothly working economy.
One person's plum is another person's pie.
2
@carl bumba, I don't think you need to educate Dr. Krugman. He's well aware that the big benefits go to agribusiness and other wealthy donors.
So do you truly believe an extended shutdown won't affect your area? What about the working poor who depend on food stamps, Head Start and housing assistance? You say the working poor find it humorous when Democrats worry about federal employees missing paychecks. How do you speak for the working poor?
11
@SandraH.
He needs a refresher course on what working class life is really like. For homeschooling, subsistence farmers like us (who are fortunate enough not to rely on social services), an extended shutdown won't hardly be noticed. Being in poverty while working full-time does help one speak for the working poor.
1
I’m waiting for Grover Norquist and the other small government proponents to relocate to Somalia, home of no real government. Why it’s not thriving without the yoke of onerous regulations is surprising.
236
It seems so unfortunate that the balance of powers, where regulation provides the incentive for right action in a free market, are obstructed by extreme polarizing influences.
8
It took the Civil War—1865–for the need for inspection of and government control of supplies to become apparent. Free market providers of rotten meat, underweight and moldy bread and sundry cheats and compromises causing death brought home the need. Civil service restricts free markets for the reason that the markets failed the health and safety of us all. And forgetting history is convenient only to thieves; in the cause of good government, history need not repeat itself. We require to be checked, and government and laws are the means. Note that President Trump had a radical rabble of the likes of Steve Bannon surrounding him. His cause, with theirs, is tied to that ancient thieve’s love: anarchy.
When will the beautiful power of unionization be realized in this country?
My family in India are bewildered how 800,000 workers can be without voice, without power, fragile as autumn leaves.
144
I am even more shocked at the rest of the country sitting on the sidelines, watching the spectacle of powerless Federal workers and contractors without pay. The Federal workers cannot strike, but why can't the rest of us, at least some of us, have a National Strike?
31
@Nayana:
There are unions for Federal Employees, but they are prohibited by law from striking. Many are still being made to work without pay.
16
The point of a strike is to assert the dignity of being human, of having worth, of being a citizen with human rights.
By saying ‘the federal workers cannot strike’ let others strike instead, we just perpetuate the fact that most of the people in this country are slaves.
6
The Trump voter in my family was a libertarian before switching to the Party of Trump and still believes that government is an interference. One conversation we had was about electricians needing to be licensed. He said electricians did not need to be licensed because if their work led to customers being injured or killed due to a fire, that information would circulate and those electricians would be forced out of the market. I asked him if he cared about the people injured or killed, he shrugged his shoulders and said that's just the way things are. I then asked him what if he was one the customers injured or killed. He looked rather shocked at that question and immediately dropped the subject. That is all that I ever needed to know about libertarianism.
528
@Lex
I once listened to a tale from a do-it-yourself Chicago electrician who had grabbed and connected two big wires that did not get along with each other. He was blasted backwards by a fiery shock, onto the concrete basement floor of a Chicago two-flat. Shot across the room on his back. He rested there for a while.
16
I’ve heard the argument often, in different forms and variations, and it always baffled me how they couldn’t see its flaws. It took me a while to understand the root problem behind it:
The basis of morality (no matter what flavor: utilitarian, golden-rule, duty-based theories…) is that our actions have consequences to others, and thus we need to take into account these external consequences before acting. Libertarianism (specially the Ayn Rand Objectivist brand) spins exclusively around the consequences of actions or policies to the acting agent alone (in your example, on whether the fake electrician would thrive or go out of business, without any consideration of the consequences to the people who’d hire him or might be harmed as a result of his lack of training).
That does not reveal Libertarianism just as a half-baked, inmature pseudo-theory, as it is often portrayed. That’s the definition of amorality. As simple as that.
I think that also explains the seemingly contradictory alliance within modern Conservatism of Evangelical Fundamentalists and the followers of an anti-religious rambling atheist like Ayn Rand. If you make pleasing a god (whose wishes can be conveniently postulated and interpreted based on your own interests) the primary object of morality, instead of your fellow human beings, the result can be very similar: actions or policies won’t be judged based on their effects on others, but on some amoral, navel-gazing interpretation of “justice.”
15
@Luis
Both libertarians and fundamentalist religious people have the same underlying hypocrisy: They will happily tell you about the rights they should have, to do or believe as they wish, but they are never so concerned about the rights of others to do (or believe) otherwise.
3
The article focuses on food inspections, but what about drug inspections?
Is the FDA inspecting pharma manufacturing houses? Are they inspecting precursor chemicals commonly imported from, say, China?
Libertarians (along with the rest of us) may be in for much more consequential disappointments than bad lettuce.
74
Does the shutdown mean that government will stop collecting tax money while services are suspended? Does it work both ways?
38
No, however, if incomes and business revenues are lower, then taxes going into the Treasure will be lower too
5
The taxes are still owed, but the IRS has mostly lost the staffing needed to enforce that anyway. So more people will get away with not paying.
4
@Tom B
And it will mostly be the better off who don't pay. Most of us working slobs will pay up for fear of the penalties we'd face if we got caught.
1
It’s the chaos this president keeps thrusting on all of us. We can’t keep up day to day of his lack of self control, his lack of understanding how government works, the principles of the constitution, the rule of law that has sustained us through the years. He seems to believe that he has the support to destroy everything that keeps us safe. The foundation that made this a great country is at risk. I’m old now and can not believe what I see every day from this American President.
117
One of the things that might end is the Indian Health Services. The government made contracts with tribes that in exchange for their land, the federal government would provide education and healthcare. It's not a welfare program. It is payment for millions of acres of land. If Indian Health Services ends, that's the same as reneging on a contract.
Trump may see tribes going to court to get what was promised to them in exchange for land and lifestyle. If the shutdown continues, lots of people may be taking Trump to court.
88
@Linda:
but Trump has stacked the courts....
3
@Linda
The USA reneged on its contracts with Native Americans long ago, so that would just be business as usual.
1
“In the case of the party establishment, that agenda is about redistributing income up the scale, and in particular helping important donor interests. Republican politicians may invoke the rhetoric of free markets to justify cutting taxes for the rich and benefits for the poor, or removing environmental regulations that hurt polluters’ profits, but they don’t really care about free markets per se.”
Head of nail, meet hammer.
The US used to be the world’s beacon of democratic values. No longer. The political system has been severely corrupted by PACs, Super PACs, self-funding billionaire politicians, skewed campaign funding rules, cynical electoral manipulation, self-interest and a lack of statesmanship amongst the political classes. You’d think a credible third political party would be able to drive a bus straight through the middle of this division. Two choices, left or right, just can’t be enough to sustain a democracy.
56
@Chris
"Repeal Citizens United" ought to be a potent campaign slogan starting this year.
@Chris
Amen.
PERHAPS SHOULD THE REPUBLICANS BE VOTED OUT, THE NEW TAX LAWS REVERSED, IN FAVOR OF THE MIDDLE ,AND
WORKING CLASS, AND ELECT A HONORABLE PRESIDENT,
PERHAPS INEQUALITY, AND OTHER MATTERS SIMILAR COULD
BE IN THE BEAST INTEREST OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, AND THE VALUES CHERISH.
18
@robert brucker
If the Republicans leave office, the Democrats are going to cut the child credit in half? That's a winning platform for Democrats. Taxpayers claiming the carried interest benefit have been reduced by 75%. Democrats are going to reinstate it?
@robert brucker
Very good. Nice to get your thoughts. Please continue.
@ebmem, you've been snookered. There was no carried interest loophole reform in the 2017 tax legislation. It was a sham--managers of private equity funds, venture capital funds, and hedge funds, the main beneficiaries of the loophole, typically carry investments for longer than three years, so the law has had no effect on the loophole.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/carried-interest-reform-is-a-sham/2017/12/01/05fd7646-d608-11e7-95bf-df7c19270879_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e153eb70adcc
Real reform would mean treating carried interest like earned income. That's the Democratic platform (not your false claim.) As for your claim that Democrats would cut the child credit in half--where did you come up with that one? It's far more likely they'd keep the child credit and reinstate the personal exemption, SALT and other deductions.
Do you really think Republicans are going to run on their tax bill? Why didn't they run on it in the midterms?
A relatively minor point:
"Maybe you believe that private companies could take over the F.D.A.’s role in keeping food safe, but such companies don’t exist now and can’t be conjured up in a matter of weeks."
Such inspection companies could only exist if they were funded by the food companies they were inspecting. Competition among inspection companies would then obviously lead to grade inflation: hire some other company that is more likely to give you a passing grade, who in turn will be happy to lower standards to attract more customers. This is not an avenue for effective replacement of the FDA.
Libertarianism is for chumps and fanatics, no one else.
210
@Dominic Holland:
Such "private" companies regulating food or anything else would be like private prisons: open to every form of corruption and malfeasance.
6
ratings agencies in the early sights, anyone?
1
@Dominic Holland
I worked 50+ years as public construction inspector, l learned that there is no such thing as a independent third party.
2
Only Mr Krugman would confuse this GOP with Libertarianism. Some Libertarians want to shred the government, but not the mainstream. Every party has its extremists.
Libertarians do not support corporate welfare, would not protect drug companies, levy tariffs, or restrict marriage. Most Libertarians want corporations to pay for their crimes against the people the land. Moreover, we are not a part of the GOP. The GOP is a corporate dog. The FDA protect large companies and stomps on competition and accountability.
Lastly Libertarians would never be in this position because we welcome immigrants and refugees with open arms.
10
Actually, Krugman didn’t confuse Libertarians and Republicans. He said that Republicans used Libertarian rhetoric but weren’t true Libertarians, and he didn’t accuse Libertarians of favoring Republican policies across the board.
60
@Nik But libertarians overwhelmingly vote republican. True?
1
@Nik The Koch (Choke) Bros are the Billionaire Champions of Libertarians. Do you like their agenda?
2
“Government,” declared Ronald Reagan in his first Inaugural Address, “is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Yup, Republicans say government is the problem and then they get in power and prove it. The Party of Problem Government.
103
@Jake Reeves Exactly! And to belabor the point a little further, Republicans, once in power purposely fill the departments with such incompetents the hope is everything falls apart and they can stand back and say 'see I told ya government was the problem!' In that way it's significantly more diabolical than it appears on the surface.
The fact programs like Social Security, Medicare, FDA and the like work well drives them absolutely nuts. So the idea is to starve them and replace with for-profit institutions. You see it most clearly in education. Starve the schools then complain students don't have access to good schools. Over-fund select 'charter' (for-profit) schools who can pick the best students then say for profit education is the only way to go.
3
Prof. Krugman says, "Meanwhile, the philosophy of the party’s base is, in essence, big government for me but not for thee."
I totally agree. It is indeed Trump and the Republican party who is disrupting the free market. The free market can be sustained only when it is run by smart and fair-minded people including top-notched economists and politicians. Otherwise, the socialism-monster would threaten and collapse the free market anytime. What I mean by 'the socialism-monster' is not the economies of Northern European countries such as the Netherlands, Sweden, etc. Some Americans call their economies 'socialism', but that's very wrong; their economies are indeed one of the most advanced capitalistic systems. How can't they be? Capitalism in a sense started from there, i.e., the business markets of the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, etc. Only when capitalism is truly advanced can well-rounded safety nets exist. In any case, genuinely socialist countries such as North-Korea and China do not protect human rights and thus prohibit freedom.
The real problem with Trump and his allies is that they offer the strongest momentum for socialism by killing the chance for developing truly healthy free market. Trump, with Putin, is turning the whole world back into the days of nationalism, ideologism, and colonialism. They all champion big , huge, monstrous government.
If there is any American crisis, it is not border security but gun violence. But Trump underwrites the NRA.
38
@Sunny
Actually, Putin underwrites the NRA which in turn underwrites Trump and Republicans.
1
As the saying goes, you never miss your water until your well runs dry. A very big part of me says this is the only way red states will learn how to stop biting the hand that feeds them: they've been blindly following a party that made no secret that it wished to "starve the beast". This is what it looks like. This new perspective has delighted me even as I worry for my friends, family and colleagues who are feeling the effects. I hope our nation survives this president and learns from the mistakes.
45
Senator Mitch McConnel said that the food stamp program is "making it excessively easy to be non productive."
Well, Mitch McConnel is not on the food stamp program and he manages to be one of the most "non productive" senator in the history of the US Senate.
Congratulation Senator!
606
@Wilbray Thiffault
"Well, Mitch McConnell is not on the food stamp program, and he manages to be one of the most 'non productive' senators in the history of the US Senate."
Correction: Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans are indeed on the food stamp program, the best one ever, and the government shutdown is not preventing them all from being paid. They will never give it up willingly.
38
@Blue Moon
Exactly right -- they are on the greatest, richest gravy train of all time: the right-wing profiteering express, and they ain't getting off.
18
@Wilbray Tiffault right now Americans should be storming Mitch McConnel’s office to force him to do his job and bring that bill that Congress passed to a vote-if Trump vetos it then he should do his job again and vote to overrideTrumps veto! Why do the Americans keep letting this man off the hook?
16
Ah Jez I was eating a chicken sandwich with a slice of tomato and some lettuce when I got to the last sentence. Thanks Doctor; think I'll pass on dessert.
24
@James Griffin...hmmm....I’ve heard of chicken, lettuce and tomato being recalled over contamination issues....but never chocolate cake. I say go right for the dessert!
The government shutdown has been fine. There haven't been any instances of contaminated food, and contaminated food can happen when the government is operating too (like the romaine lettuce scare in November). It's speculation to say that the government shutdown is going to significantly increase the risk of food contamination. Stocks (both US and foreign) also started going up again after Christmas when the shutdown began. Apparently, investors don't think that the government shutdown is going to hurt the economy. It is unfortunate that government workers aren't getting paid, but the vast majority of Americans are continuing about their lives the same as before. This fact supports the libertarian point that most of these government programs are not necessary.
1
@Aoy when food is contaminated, the FDA is able to locate "ground zero" with utmost efficiency--Food Science 101. Without the FDA--which was established under T. Roosevelt's administration--there is no coordination between the food chain and the population. You can wash your lettuce to your heart's content, but if it was grown in contaminated soil, the cells within are contaminated. So, yes, the FDA is extremely necessary.
105
@Cathy
The workers who locate ground zero of a food contamination event are essential. They are working.
7
@Aoy
The government shutdown has been fine...There haven't been any instances of contaminated food...[supporting the libertarian view that] most of these government programs are not necessary."
Thanks for clarifying - glad to know libertarians will be "fine" w/o airport security for as long as nothing has happened.
Will know who to hold responsible, along w/Republicans, for any terrorist attacks emboldened by knowledge or expectation of disabled airport security.
Good job looking after your fellow citizens' safety!
https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/8/18174184/tsa-union-government-shut-down-airport-security-trump
23
I am wondering if Mitch McConnell and his close Republican allies have been living off food stamps because it seems to me they all have been incredibly unproductive for years which he sights as a consequence of anyone using food stamps.
62
In a "pay-as-you-go" society, which is a Libertarian ideal, only those who are willing to pay for protection would be required to pay for the police, the military, and for the salaries for those who represent us. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies would be at the mercy of the patients (not the insurance reimbursement schedules) and retirement would be a privileged to be earned by the hardest job there is: saving. Without military, insurance, and cops, wouldn't we be living closer to our truer means?
6
@Max & Max
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies at the mercy of patients? There is no world, Libertarian or otherwise, where this will come to be. Libertarianism is a fantasy that lacks real-world relevance in the United States.
29
@Nova yos Galan
The Real World is the context. It is a context created by democracy operating under the assumption that government is directed by the demos, the people. If the people can't manage it, then they have to accept being victims of the wealthy. Funny how the wealthy are in the health insurance business....
The presumption that government is on the side of of the people is perfectly silly. "No free lunch," meant, don't count on promises. Some nations have been able to Socialize the social contract. The US is not able. Therefore, why not end all government services and start Tabula rasa. No property can be inherited. No Tax. Pay as you go.
2
The Top 5% in the USA are living a ‘pay as you go’ life since income and wealth inequality haven’t been thus extreme since the 1920s. So, look at today and the 1920s for how this perfect world works out for those in the 95%.
3
Well, at this point it certainly comes as no surprise that the narrowly tailored ideological conceit republicans like to think of as - laughably - 'Libertarianism' was little more than an economic grubsteak to the plutocratic interests. Indeed, it makes my head spin to think how quickly the so-called libertarians of the republican party would support rollbacks on women's reproductive liberties, not to mention the liberties of minorities and the LGBTQ community, not to mention how they would import the Christian Right's version of theology into the public domain. (Ah yes, get government off our backs, but shove God into every home.) The issue that looms broadly over all this, however, is the republican's intent to liquidate this nation's status as technologically advanced, industrialized liberal democracy. Apparently the maintenance/perpetuation of modernity is not compatible with right wing notions of 'liberty,' let alone libertarianism.
74
@Chris
BTW, Ayn Rand was furiously pro-abortion and pretty much anti-religion, something they like to ignore as much as they like to ignore that Jesus never said boo against abortion but had a lot to say about giving away all your wealth to the poor.
2
@Chris
Haven't read it today in the NY Times, but yesterday via Chanel 10 news bulletin on my phone, the Florida legislature put forth a bill stating that Christianity shall be taught in EVERY PUBLIC SCHOOL.
While seeing the point of your article in one sense by the harm it may cause. Looking at it from another point of view we will see just what the movers and shakers, CEOs' of major financial institutions and other firms with direct influence on populations well being actual beliefs. Are their reports being generated about the potential profits of foreclosing on homes or are orders coming down from those like Dimone too control adverse actions of those effected. Has Jared and others with interest in rental properties called managers and said no evictions due to gov't shutdown. It will be interesting to see what the top three percent actually believe whether conservative or liberal. From the tone of your article it will be about avarice, not disagreeing but it would be nice to find out who among the monied elite also has principles that go beyond themselves.
5
As George Lakoff reminded us, what the anti-government folks call "regulations" are, for the most part, "protections." We shouldn't let the Kochs, Trumps, McConnells, and Ryans frame the discussion. "The term “regulation” is framed from the viewpoint of corporations and other businesses. From their viewpoint, “regulations” are limitations on their freedom to do whatever they want no matter who it harms. But from the public’s viewpoint, a regulation is a protection against harm done by unscrupulous corporations seeking to maximize profit at the cost of harm to the public." https://georgelakoff.com/2017/01/28/the-publics-viewpoint-regulations-are-protections/
381
@Goodglud
Yes, regulations are limitations on their freedom to pollute.
49
@Goodglud
Excellent link! We need to call it what it is. No more reduce "regulations" which people hear as reducing red tape. Make them advocate to "reduce protections."
60
@Goodglud
Unfortunately for us this is yet another example where Democrats/progressives have allowed right-wing interests to define and frame the terms of the debate.
11
Problems with the food industry in the US isn't just a new issue since the Trump administration, it has been an issue for decades.
The problems of Big Ag and Food Manufacturers lobbying has been so bad, that whenever I see doctors in Germany and New Zealand, the first question they ask is have I been and eaten food in the US in the last six months, when they are trying to ascertain health issues".
When the medical community around the world asks about US food intake, you know corporate libertarianism has run afoul and at the cost of the health of America. The fact that foods that can't be sold in Europe for health reasons are dumped in the US just highlights how it is no longer the United States of America, but rather the Corporate States of America.
When will the people demand for Separation of Corporation and State?
174
@James Wallis Martin
Just before Citizens United is summarily relegated to the ash heap of history...
2
@James Wallis Martin, You mean to try and end fascism?
While they're at it, how about eliminating the billions of dollars in subsidies to oil companies. What about the fact that when wage earners earn more than $126,400, they no longer have Social Security taxes with held?
148
@Bill Walsh What’s yer point about Social Security withholding limits? Do you not realize there is a limit to the benefits that can be collected?
1
@beth
Methinks that you are confused:
"Do you not realize there is a limit to the benefits that can be collected?"
The only limit on SS payments is when a person dies. They also stop paying taxes when they die. Seems fair. You also stop paying SS from income when you retire, if you stop working. Seems like a good balance.
I hope you get a chance to face retirement so you can try out existing without getting SS. You could donate it to some whacko conservative group.
It's called regressive taxing - letting the rich get more out of the system at the cost of folks making less (ie - richers not paying into SS beyond a certain income).
@slowaneasy Hmmmm, first of all I am extremely left, so much for that assumption
Second of all I was referring to the monthly amount that can be collected. Not the lifetime amount. If contributing more would lead to a higher monthly payment who would choose to gamble with a (k) plan?
Funny how libertarians never argue for privatizing the military, or law enforcement. When they think it's really important, even libertarians come running back to government.
The facts are that markets are only free if they are transparent, and in all of history nobody has come up with a better way than government regulation to make markets transparent. We tried unregulated markets in food production, and it was a disaster - which is why we have federal regulation of food production today. We tried unregulated labor markets and it was also a disaster - which is why we have child labor laws, minimum wage laws, and the full range of other labor regulations we have today.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
96
@Ecce Homo
Re "privatizing the military, or law enforcement"...don't those U.S. contractors in Iraq (Halliburton, Blackwater) and private prisons over here count?
@Ecce Homo
What are you talking about? Many military functions were privatized during the Iraq war! benefiting Cheney's Halliburton and other right wing organizations, and electrocuting soldiers taking showers. We had mercenaries over there too. Don't you remember the scandals involving Blackwater?
2
Libertarianism attracts the finest stunted teenaged and hypocritical minds that are either disconnected from reality or that suffer from cognitive dissonance that allows hypocrisy and selfishness to flourish like mutant bacteria.
Taxes and good government are the price of any decent civilization...and both of these concepts are completely demonized by Republicans even though Republicans are some of the greatest welfare queens in the nation.
Productive, modern, blue Democratic state federal tax dollars have long subsidized rural, religious Republican states that hate the federal government....they curse they horse that feeds them and then they curse even more when the federal teat is turned off.
America's 0.1% Robber Barons and crony vulture capitalists curse 'high tax rates' that aren't particularly high compared to the rest of the world while using America's infrastructure, legal system, government-funded research and technology, and corrupted electoral system to make parasitic profits that dwarf those of foreign corporations who pay their fair share of taxes to countries with increasingly better infrastructure and educational systems.
The libertarian theology followed to fruition is Somalia-like; an unregulated anarchy of human misery.
Decent human beings understand that healthy taxes produce healthy civilization.
Today's version of libertarian Republicanism is a demented form of arrested emotional development that's been destroying the USA since 1980.
Nice GOPeople.
790
@Socrates: "Since 1980"
Please. You can find the roots of much of today's animosity towards the Federal Government in actions like Judge Roth's decision in the Detroit School desegregation case. Judge Steven Roth wrote when attempting to order a multi-school district busing plan:
“Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of 45 minutes, one way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way. ...kindergarten children should be included in the final plan of desegregation.”
Talk about a weaponized judiciary, Roth seems to have perfected it. Fortunately the damage Judge Roth caused was minimized by the Supreme Court. Unfortunately Roth's actions just about killed the Detroit Public School system. This was long before Betsy Devos. Roth was a JFK appointee.
It's a wonder liberals in NYC haven't aggressively pursued desegregation of their racially segregated public schools. Maybe something like Roth's decisions could be applied to NYC public schools - no price to large to pay and all that stuff...
As you said: "cognitive dissonance that allows hypocrisy ", and the NYT OP-ED pages lead the way.
2
@Socrates Amen.
Something also came to mind in reading your comment:
Productive modern blue states subsidize receiving red states, who then, thanks to their outsize representation via the electoral college, bludgeon the blue states with red policies like deregulation and taking of health care etc.
Like I am paying someone to punch me.
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
42
@Socrates
Libertarian philosophy: I have the right to blow tobacco smoke into your face; you have the freedom to not breathe in the smoke.
25
I work with alot of big Ag companies -- they're constantly raging about government regs and the red tape, etc, etc., but they have HUGE lobby and political power.
On an average year, they get an amazing amount of subsidies coming in all kinds of forms, from direct compensation packages to float an industry a la corn, or from electric rates that are lower for them at the expense of the other rate classes. And when any hint of hardship comes, nevermind true hardship, they're front and center for the hand-outs. And they get plenty.
All this before we even address immigrant labor! Ha! Libertarian Ag would look WAY different out in the fields. And one thing that would surely be needed: Cheap immigrant (sometimes illigal) labor.
You get what you vote for.
110
Trump’s deregulation and downsizing the federal government and massive tax cut for corporations have drawn the libertarian Tea Party and Freedom Caucus into his orb, in spite of his huge increase in the deficit. Those who had been neutral on social issues now support his anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, rule by executive order policies. The libertarians have exposed themselves as apologists for neo-liberal capitalism’s profiteering that destroys the middle and working classes. They’ve become part of Trump’s power base of white, rural Christians, consolidated not on individual rights, but on white racial anxiety and the need to be protected by an authoritarian leader.
23
Unfortunately in this issue (‘government is the problem....’), conservative ideology has wrested control of the agenda, as it also has with its incessant cries to reduce taxes and the size of the government.
A relentless but thoughtful counter narrative is required, focussed on inequality and unfairness.
23
"And as it happens, many of the spending cuts being forced by the shutdown fall heavily and obviously on base voters."
Is this true since Dr. Krugman has not cited any source for the claim. However, it hope it is - as they say, elections have consequences.
"And if you have libertarian leanings yourself, you should ask whether you’re happy with what’s happening with government partially out of the picture."
No I don't have libertarian leanings but yes I am happy what the Trump shutdown. Why, see my answer above.
"Knowing that the food you’re eating is now more likely than before to be contaminated, does that potential contamination smell to you like freedom?"
I am sure it does to his base - freedom to die, and without Obama's "death panel". What other smell will be better to them.
Make America Great Again - keep the Trump shutdown going! He claims, at least once in public TV, that he is proud to "own" it. So let him keep it and for us to see the true reality TV.
Yes, I am being completely cynical. Totally! This is no time for rational discussion but time to seek revenge. They got what they wanted so stew in it.
12
Somewhat off topic but since Trump is not getting the Democrats to cave on the shut down and give him his wall, Trump is now thinking of declaring an emergency on the border and using disaster funds meant for Texas and Puerto Rico to fund it. How many Trump supporters are in Texas? How many are in farm states that have been impacted by China not buying their products? How many of them were relying on money from the government to offset these losses? Trump and his base may believe that Government workers are mostly Democrats and not care about them not getting paid but they will care once Trump's actions start affecting them.
12
@Dave in Seattle
It's been noted before but needs repeating: the federal employees being impacted are Americans. That a president would be so amoral to deny pay to people he believes are in the opposition is beyond despicable. He's also renewing his threats of withholding FEMA funds from the victims of the recent horrific fires. Most of the people in Northern California who lost everything they had are Republican. It probably doesn't matter who they vote for in 2020, because California polls oftentimes close after the race has been called, but I would be interested in seeing the voting results from those counties.
@Dave in Seattle he’s gonna take the PR and CA disaster aid. Already tweeted about the CA money. Don’t think he believes he even has to justify taking the PR money
this is the old "shoot someone on Fifth Avenue" proposition: Trump believes his base will follow him off any cliff, hold him accountable never, believe his every lie, and agree to put his interests above their own. there is a covenant here: Trump can do or say anything, as long as he makes it seem ok for his base to hold to their KKK beliefs and makes them feel it's ok to express their true natures. it's liberating for both sides to become nothing but ego. it's something like opioid addiction, not good for you or anyone else, but it sure feels swell in the moment and eliminates any concerns about tomorrow. how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm once you've made it ok to be a loud and proud ignorant racist, as you've been wishing for all your life? heady stuff!
The FDA is a good example, it was created because of a book,"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair about the Chicago stock yards, and how the meat was treated. There were also traveling salesmen selling snake oil as cures for many ailments, many of them making things worse. The current Libertarian movement is right out of "Atlas Shrugged" it is the bible of the Cato Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute, followers of Ludwig von Mises. Such economies have never existed, it assumes all people are rational, make choices only for their best interests.
Well we know how well that works, these are the first people to run to the government when they get scammed by some shady deal. Another group that thinks government is the problem live in small foothill communities o Social Security medicare and medicaid. We have heard the say many times keep the government out my Medicare.
The read dumdums are the ones that say deficits do not matter, the government can just print more money. Printing more money with no collateral is the classic definition of inflation like that going on in Venezuela now. But real Libertarians are gold standard people, and that if strictly practiced brings deflation as it brings a shortage of money.
The GOP jihjad is for the HMOs, how else to pay those multi million salaries and stock dividends to upper management, how else doy you profit from disease and illness?
20
@David Underwood
Fake news.
Upton Sinclair was an enemy of the people.
Fake news.
I'm still plenty worried about selfish libertarian billionaires, but I've given up worrying that there will ever be a mass movement for libertarianism in this country. The citizens have more or less wised up about *that.*
9
The simple solution to the problem of children getting ill from contaminated food is to sue. Isn't that the Libertarian way? It may take several years and tens of thousands of dollars, but that is the price of freedom.
3
@David
But, someone literally has to die to start actual change. We have enough of that already.
1
I believe the calm response to federal workers not being paid is rooted in our comfort and familiarity with the government shutting down. They'll get paid after it reopens so it's more of an inconvenience than a true problem. What would happen if congress didn't approve back pay for time not worked? There would be much more fury from both sides and a different attitude when the next shutdown happens.
2
@Chris You might ask the private contractors who work for the Feds. They won't be getting back pay.
31
The number of private contractors has been increasing. There will presumably be calculations a few months from now of savings to the government from non payment of contractors.
The federal government is presumably run honestly enough that most of those contractors were chosen fairly and without regard to political connections.
2
@Chris
There has been a desire among Republicans to privatize more functions of government. Should this goal be realized then a shutdown could become truly hazardous if it involved, for instance, federal prisons.
4
Given the various incidents of GOP regulation rolls backs of Obama regulations and lack of oversight on so many fronts - there is probably a bona fide conspiracy theory that would support that this border kerfuffle is all about depriving hated oversight bureaus of funding.
And gee whiz, if they can't tough it out, well, I guess we really didn't need them anyway right...
More money for our sponsors!
4
The government is in partial shutdown for 20 days, and literally nothing changed. I am surprised how little impact government shutdown has on anything. Literally nothing changed. Neither stock nor bond market seem to be impacted. Can we keep it closed until next election ? Let E. Warren reopen it.
1
@Alice - had you read the article about how the shutdown has affected trump supporting farmers you might realize that the the affects of trumps shutdown is quite profound - with a sad and ironic twist for the many farmers who are at risk of losing their farms.
20
@Alice Anyone who thinks nothing changed is not paying attention to the news. National Parks are covered in human feces and trash. Joshua Tree National Park had to be closed because, in addition to the poop and garbage, people were vandalizing and destroying the 1,000 year old trees. It will cost millions to clean the National Parks and repair the vandalism. It would have all been avoided if rangers had been left on the job.
13
@Linda This really wounded me. What kind of evil people would enter these sacred places while they are unprotected and damage them? Public property is our responsibility to preserve, protect and share. Our National Parks are cherished by the world; I am proud to share them and ashamed of our stewardship under stingy Republicans.
1
In fact, which is more acceptable to American people, the border wall Mr. Trump claims or a small fraction of (maybe excessive) government employees? Due to my calculation, the yearly salary to some one tenth those currently unpaid is almost equal to the cast of the wall.
@KI
And what do you use as "the cost of the wall"? The current 5.7 billion is just a ransom demand, not the cost, which is likely 10 times that. That might be okay with you but it's not what the people nor their representatives have ever voted for. You may not be a minority of one, but those that truly believe in your "point" could meet in a phone booth.
14
@David To say nothing about the environmental devastation it would cause.
@KI. Show your math. And who will decide which government employees are excessive? The NPS rangers who protect our parks (so that Joshua trees don't get cut down by vandals, as is now happening, and trash and human waste doesn't get out of control, as is now happening). Or FDA inspectors who try to make sure our food supply is safe ( a huge task)? Or do you plan to do the deciding as well as the math? Do you want your $$$ going to a wall when walls HAVE NEVER IN HISTORY WORKED?
"...truth is that libertarian ideology isn’t a real force within the G.O.P.; it’s more of a cover story for the party’s actual agenda" of cutting social safety-net spending.
True, but not playing along with Trump, as James Mattis did when told of assassinating Assad, was a mistake. It might still pay dividend for standing up to Trump, but there is a greater chance for the public to turn against Democrats, for causing so much inconvenience and suffering in about a million employees, and their both direct & indirect dependents.
Sometimes you may have to do things you don't like or shouldn't for the greater good. What's the point in picking a fight with Trump on this silly matter, when Democrats will inevitably find to fight for much more relevant issues?
One way or another with some face-saving measures open up the government.
3
@A.G. Alias Why? So it will be easier to force something even worse on us next time?
@Shirley
When something "worse" or more consequential is demanded of us, put your foot down. Explain to the affected, like you explain to the soldiers why they are subjected to the suffering for greater good. They will understand, eventually, if not right away.
This fight with Trump is not worth it. That's my view.
1
@A.G. Alias
And what if next time he decides to hold the country ransom until the Statue of Liberty is replace with a bigger statue of Trump?
I don't think the shutdown has much to do with political philosophy at all. Trump talks about tariffs as if they are being paid by the Chinese government. He talks about immigrants as if they are being selected and sent by their countries, to thin their populations.
And I think in his alleged mind a government shutdown would stop the Mueller probe. In Trump's mind, government truly isn't the solution, it IS his biggest problem.
22
@Joe C.
But it is certain that closing the I.R.S. is "bonus time" for Mr. Trump, considering that at least 20 years of his taxes will need to be recalculated because of the Trump Foundation, not to mention the severe economic hit he and his siblings are likely to take when the I.R.S. takes a second look at their parents' estate tax.
1
Where you see Libertarians, I see people who are so self-unaware and entitled that they believe the only apt government subsidies are the ones that benefit them.
Remember the ACA debate line - "keep government out of my medicare?" Most people have no idea of what the government does!
What about the staunch GOP voters who nonetheless complain when the government doesn't provide immediate aid to them after a disaster, but hesitate when the aid is going to others? And do they comprehend that all disasters - even those claimed to be "natural" - are actually man made?
And do those that value privacy and their right to do what they want - do they really think that corporations and businesses will keep their products fair and safe? No, because corporations and businesses take the short view, while fairness and safety - both of which contribute to the health of the nation and its people - take the long view.
Libertarians and their ilk are self-entitled peoples who only think about the immediate impact on themselves and their wallets. They change their tunes quickly when government is needed to help their bottom line.
51
Spot on. Naïveté about libertarianism runs deep. It was brought home to me when I worked with programmers in Silicon Valley in the 1980s. A fair number espoused libertarian ideas. Yet they had all had their computer science degrees paid for by the Defense Department, many at state universities. I was not too sophisticated myself but even I could see the disconnect between the ideas they were pushing and the real world implications.
94
Religious extremists of any faith and their allies have no right to impose upon the vast majority of us by rationalizing that it's acceptable to allow the world to be imperiled (global warming, pollution, government shutdowns, increasingly vast income disparities, etc.) because that will perhaps hasten the Second Coming, Messiah, etc. Rather than allowing for this feeble excuse born from laziness and complacency and antithetical to America's founders, creative solutions - not stubbornness - must be pursued for the benefit of our children, grandchildren and beyond.
18
The essence of the word Libertarian is Liberty, but liberty to do what and by whom? Liberty to shut down the government for political purposes? Liberty to play golf on the public dime endlessly? Liberty to scam your customers or sell tainted foods? Liberty to let your most needy do without health care, education or a job? This list could be endless, but even Libertarians at least most do not believe in anarchy that leads to a crash of civilization. The question has always been about how much government we need and whom it should serve. Without government we are lost, and this government shut down even a partial on is about to prove this point.
22
"Does contaminated food smell like freedom?"
If it is produced in order to generate profit, it is.
That's the definition of freedom in liberalism: the liberty an individual has to fully enjoy his private property.
The philosophers of the so-called age of Enlightenment elaborated this concept of freedom during a time feudalism (manorialism) was the dominant economic system of Europe. Those were completely different times.
You think that the philosophes from about Descartes and Diderot all the way through to the newer times of Rousseau and Mill and Paine and Jefferson, lived in feudal society.
Hoo, boy.
Well, one aspect of libertarianism works out fine: the staunch faith in not knowing nothing.
This just in: Elizabeth II reigns, and England is not a feudal society.
My view on the shutdown is that the whole thing is theater.
The US Federal government is not, in fact, shutdown. Lights and heating are still on in the White House and the Capitol. The Secret Service guards are still keeping citizens out of the White House grounds.
Air traffic control is still operating. So is customs and border protection. So are federal prisons. So is the FBI. So are Veterans hospitals. The US military still operates, as does the weather service and the satellites that collect weather data for forecasters around the world.
A real government shutdown would have unpleasant effects very quickly. Fortunately, Washington isn't dumb enough to go there. What we have is a partial shutdown of some agencies. It is a scam made for reality TV.
President Trump and the Republicans have had two years to get the Wall funded. If he had refused to sign the tax cut bill the McConnell and Ryan would have rolled over and funded it. Having failed to get it done the President now needs to put on a show to convince his supporters that Republicans are still better on immigration that Democrats. The longer the show goes on the more effective it will be. That's why the shutdown is happening.
I think everybody realizes that the Democrats will never ever vote for a wall because they quietly support illegal immigration. What is not as widely understood is that Republicans like McConnell and Paul Ryan also support illegal immigration. They only pretend to care about the border.
6
@Schrodinger . An insightful comment! If the TSA and air traffic controllers had gone home just before Christmas the "shutdown" would have lasted about 20 minutes! I think Republicans want to keep up the flow of low wage workers (AKA illegals) even more than the Democrats. Republicans own more high end resorts, golf courses, corporate farms, food processing plants etc. than Democrats* Trumps ego needs it, it plays to his base, it won't have much impact on illegal immigration and he will be gone before the bill for borrowing money to build it will come in, so why not build "the wall?"
* I learned from Trump: always state a "fact" that supports your point - if there is any truth to it is irrelevant!
6
@Schrodinger very well said. Your comment is more insightful than the article. I hate to agree but both parties support illegal immigration, and both failed to mandate e-verify. It is not about the wall, it is about scoring political points. And yes it is a far cry from the real shutdown.
3
@Schrodinger
What's needed is clear updating and execution of immigration and visa laws, clear and timely processing of refugee status, clear, modern and adequately staffed enforcement of border crossing areas, clear and adequate enforcement of laws against employing undocumented workers and some definite moves to improve those countries that all these unhappy people are deserting.
What's not needed is a xenophobic symbol lining our southern border.
2
Two obvious exceptions.
One- Libertarians would have left the billions of dollars with the people in the first place (speaking of the taxed money which is now just sitting in a government account). Allowing for people to pay for museums and parks locally instead of waiting for a trusted politician strong enough to wrestle that money away from another politician.
Two- Every Libertarian I have heard get close to winning an election has proposed not going after food stamps, Planned parenthood, or other smaller programs, but would instead go after big corporate welfare first.
Libertarians believe that industry, corporations, and the state do not have the right to pollute the lungs of the kids downwind, the water or soil of the farmers downstream.
So, yes, we believe the personal and economic choices are most potent and powerful when kept local.
How many more trillions will it take to learn that centralizing everything is bad for the environment and for the economy?
4
@ScooterL >Libertarians believe that industry, corporations, and the state do not have the right to pollute the lungs of the kids downwind, the water or soil of the farmers downstream. <
In my experience, most libertarians have consistently opposed any effective efforts to prevent industry and corporations from doing precisely that. I would welcome specific counterexamples that go beyond theoretical handwaving.
If personal and economic choices are to be kept local, then local private self-interest provides no incentive not to suffocate or poison someone else's children... especially when those children don't have the money to complain, or to be customers capable of impacting the polluter in the marketplace.
In such a world, corporate polluters are "free to choose" whether to behave morally. But their victims have rather less choice in the matter.
Who would stop those corporations? Well, who DID stop them before the federal government, representing the citizenry, stepped in to do so? Nobody did, that's who. They bought the local authorities, lock, stock, and barrel.
If libertarians really don't like corporations killing other people's children, how do they propose to prevent it? (Or is doing so less important than the principle of liberty? Easier to say if it's not *your* kids.)
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@Bill Camarda
A- It's currently the Democrats and republicans grandfathering and selling pollution rights and making egregious exceptions to government and industrial pollution. (Deregulate Hemp Now!)
B- Gary Johnson, the 2016 Libertarian Candidate for President was calling for a strong EPA to protect against industrial abuse. But hey, What is Aleppo? Amiright?
C- Until we restore the democratic process of open democratic debates, not managed by former Clinton and Bush staffers, raising the bar to keep independent voices out, all you are going to have is hand waiving from the cheap seats. (League of Women Voters anyone?)
D- Let Libertarians speak for themselves. FOX pundits are not Libertarians, despite having a slab of Libertarian philosophy that they adorn themselves with to please moneyed masters.
Even if Reagan didn’t downsize to extremes, the damage his mantra of private enterprise’s superiority to government action has bankrupted us for too long and directly led to Trump’s or Bannon’s dismantling of the “administrative state.”
How many times have I heard even liberals badmouth government, suggesting only the State Department has top notch people. It’s time for civics and government classes to teach students exactly what government does, how valuable is the research and data collecting mostly invisible to us. And it wouldn’t hurt to validate public service as a career choice.
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Do you believe in magic?
Religious extremists do. So do Libertarians. And so do Republicans though what they believe is a variant of magic that might be called delusion or magic mixed with whisky and soda, which we call cynicism.
What they all have in common is a collective inability to see the forest from the trees: central to their emptiness is the absence of humanity and all the messy ambiguity that entails, instead substituting a bogus certainty that's nothing more than a palliative for existential panic at the absence of self identity grounded in community.
Bertrand Russell called it cosmic anxiety. It drives the compulsion for religion, ideology, in fact all systems of coping that avoid the crushing weight of freedom that comes without compass or owner's manual.
Whether the god of the invisible hand that directs the market, or the god of clubs with exclusive membership and status, or the god of ancient fables told and retold for a millennium of successive generations, all are rationales for the irrational aversion of responsibility to do the work necessary to make freedom meaningful without making it meaningless for others.
The two bargain bins in the basement of modern life are religion and ideology. Libertarianism can be found on the clearance rack for one size fits all.
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