Trump won’t release his tax returns. Krugman won’t reveal his investment statements. Trump made money off the Russians. Krugman made money off Trump. Put up or shut up.
4
Children with high medical costs are covered since the inception of Medicaid even for prosperous families. When insurance lifetime maximums were reached, or things like home and respite care were not covered, Medicaid stepped in, rather than have middle class families impoverished by high medical costs. States covered 50%/federal taxpayers 50%. Same for prenatal and maternity care. All pregnant women were covered.
SCHIP was intended to cover relatively low cost children so that they could get vaccinations and identification and treatment of vision, hearing, orthopedic problems before they interfered with development or behavior. Since the cost was modest, the federal government covered most of the cost, rather than it being a 50/50 split.
States led by Democrats quickly figured out that if they moved the sick children and pregnant women into SCHIP, they could foist the bulk of their cost onto the federal taxpayer. Those are the states that are now blaming the Republicans for the fact that Obamacare abolished SCHIP and did not provide a substitute. For children whose parents were offered "affordable" insurance by their employers but unsubsidized insurance for their dependents, or for prosperous parents with sick children, there was no more SCHIP.
Because the blue taker states abandoned their responsibility to get the higher federal share under SCHIP, the reauthorization will have to normalize the costs to the 50/50 split.
1
Dr. Krugman,
I couldn't agree more about GOP cruelty; that party must be decapitated by one of several means of evicting Trump from the White House. Sadly, the National Cowardice Party won't budge!
9
The quality of thought in Krugman‘s piece is so poor that it should not have been published. He may believe the Republicans are cruel sadists, But he refuses to distinguish between intentions and consequences of Republican efforts to reduce access to healthcare for low income Americans. He fails to even mention the stubbornly held myth that low income people could lift themselves “if they tried harder”; the fact that high-income legislators and families rarely know people struggling with the tragic health outcomes their policies lead to; or how our ethnically and culturally diverse and stratified population lessens the trust that others are like us and really need our taxpayer dollars. Yes, the health consequences of slashing more from the social safety net will be stark, but this willfully blind “they are evil” formulation simply fans the flames of hatred and misunderstanding. Poorly done.
6
Yes, Republicans are the ones proudly thumping their chests as being strict Christians. Words only.
However, no one really thinks Jesus would remotely approve of their actions.
Shame on them.
Until they get their just comeuppance after death, we should vote all of them out of office - so they can spend more time in church, worshipping of course.
17
MAGA is really MAMA .... Make America Mean Again.
5
The USA spends about twice as much per person on health care as other developed countries. However, the prices paid by Americans or their insurance carriers for medical procedures are typically about triple what is paid in other developed countries. Hence, Americans consume less health care services than their foreign counterparts.
Government spending has been increasingly driven by medical care prices. Government pays half of the costs of health care in the USA. When the tax spending aspects of the tax deductibility and exclusions of medical care and insurance expenses are included, the impact of health care costs on the deficits is even larger. In many respects, the health care price crisis in uniquely American. Our Government spending on healthcare per capita exceeds that of any other country in the world, including those where there is very little private health care expenditures.
Adopting the second worst healthcare system in the world, Canada, Germany and the UK are probable the best candidates for that dubious honor, would allow the USA to eliminate much of the Federal budget deficit.
Being the second worst healthcare system after the USA, is like being the second worst nuclear accident in the last decade after Fukushima. There probably was another nuclear accident where a few people were injured in the last decade, but none comes to mind immediately..."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1647632
5
In multiple studies using fMRI scans of different people from the 2 political parties has shown that by and large, Republican brains react to certain stimuli differently than Democrats.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/republican-democrat-brain-poli...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/republican-democrat-brain-poli...
1
Where many of those on the right who are motivated by racism make their mistake is assuming that the primary beneficiaries of government assistance are black. A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found this, however:
A table created by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that white people were the racial group with the highest number of enrollees in Medicaid in 2015. Kaiser Family Foundation
Though rates of participation are higher among people of color, it is white people who are the greatest number of recipients when measured by race. Given the population of the U.S. in 2012 and the annual rate of participation by race reported by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015, about 35 million white people participated in one of the six major government assistance programs that year. That's about 11 million more than the 24 million Hispanics and Latinos who participated and considerably more than the 20 million Black people who received government aid.
In fact, most white people receiving benefits are enrolled in Medicaid. According to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 42 percent of non-elderly Medicaid enrollees in 2015 were white. However, U.S. Department of Agriculture data for 2013 show that the largest racial group participating in SNAP are also white, at more than 40 percent. ... Read more at https://www.thoughtco.com/who-really-receives-welfare-4126592.
3
They have been working for some time to make sure we get back into the fields and pick cotton. In their view only if we exist like the people in India and China, can we compete with India and China. Trouble is while they weren't looking Indians and Chinese got better health care than we do.
5
In the long term, Republican mendacity will prove to be nothing more or less than a form of cannibalism -- just as they destroy and consume our natural resources they will destroy the health of our society. By then there won't be enough limo window tinting to shield their eyes from what they've done.
10
By requiring a person have a job to get Medicaid or any form of welfare Republicans play to their base who hate any of their money going to create "a dependent welfare class ". Nothing wrong with $ Trillions of Corporate welfare - that is incentives for white guys.
9
And what does it say about us as a country that we put Republicans in charge of pretty much everything? Maybe we're a nation of masochists or, perhaps, we're just far less caring about our fellow citizens than every other advanced society.
8
May I add that anyone who directly or indirectly condones or even ignores that the agenda of our current rulers is open cruelty IS a Republican and deserves to share the stink of a Republican.
6
Yes, that's what I have seen in Trump fans here in Oklahoma. They like meanness, they like to offend or hurt people who are different from themselves, who need help or seem weak, or who dare disagree with them. They have hated "PC" because it held that meanness was unacceptable. They were impeded by that, as it was in the way of their freedom to be bullies. Not all right-wing people are this way. Some are deluded, or going along with family or church teachings without thought. But many are mean; their numbers have increased, and their boldness is cresting with Trump. They enjoy self-expansion through power to cast down others, a gleeful malice masked in self-righteousness-- and we must oppose them. It's a matter of moral life and death for our land.
11
Let's call them what they are: #MeanMen
2
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. Substitute Americans for animals and you have the GOP attitude towards the average American. The more equal Americans are those with enough money that they are given whatever they ask for: tax breaks, the ears of our elected and appointed officials, a free pass to whatever assistance they request from the government. The rest of us can camp out on the local dunghill.
6
The actions of the republicans can also be called ECONOMIC GENOCIDE.
4
We have had too much of the scorn of the indolent rich
PS 123
1 To you I lift up my eyes, *
to you enthroned in the heavens.
2 As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, *
and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
3 So our eyes look to the LORD our God, *
until he show us his mercy.
4 Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy, *
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
5 Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, *
and of the derision of the proud.
2
Pain and cruelty and humiliation for their need. Shame on you for your poverty and ill health. You should be estate babies instead. Then, freebees abound.
5
In many peoples minds it is people of a darker skin hue who undeserving get the benefit of social spending pay for , you guess it deserving white people who are not getting it. Of course those poor whites are the biggest recipients. And the rich have more money in their pockets to spend on the most deserving themselves of course. This is how this scam works.
9
so, Republicans are anal retentive sadists who promote a strict Calvinist approach to those they assume God disfavors?
but they're posing as Mr. Potter-like skinflints to appear more likeable?
and they're not thinking the needy they'd so gleefully punish for their miseries are unworthy because they're not white Christians?
yep, that's it in a nutshell.
8
Not funding CHIP is like eating your seed corn.
11
Of course the GOP leaders are sadists, but the base are masochists. To the GOP base pain purifies you for eternity in heaven. They like it. Their ideas about heaven also allow the GOP base to ignore criminality and cruelty in their leaders because God will decide their fate. It's all a very nice little cult. Pretty normal as cults go really.
7
The only thing the Repugnantans care about is their own bank accounts; even their "friends" aren't safe. The rest of us are simply invisible. Need, hunger, cold, wet, none of these things matter. They want everything for themselves, with nothing for anyone else; I suspect even their own "families" are invisible.
But the Cardiologist? Oncologist? They get plenty of visibility because the rich feel the danger. In Trump's case, he is not only oblivious to NOT TRUMP, he is an out-and-out Racist, he is a foul-mouthed amadan, but a religious bigot, as well.
4
Republican resistance to funding social programs can be entirely explained by racism. As a group, they adhere to the belief that lazy (insert expletive here that describes non white person) rely on government aid, not virtuous, hard working white people. If only virtuous, hard working white people needed help, it would be given to them freely.
3
Today seems to be hysterical, conniption fit, psychedelic freak-out day.
Take a deep breath people.
Come back off the ledge.
It simply isnt that bad.
We actually have GREAT health care......expensive, yes....but thats only because we keep listening to self-righteous, closed-minded people like Dr. Krugman who believe they already have ALL the answers and are unwilling to LISTEN to anybody else.
Listening to others is one of the most incredibly great things you can do to make your world SANE.....you dont have to agree with anyone....but if you at least comprehend where they are coming from......you're back in control.
The Ivy League Crowd that runs this country....the ones that break their arms patting themselves on the back, as "the brightest people in the room"......are the ones that have driven this country into the rocks!!! Simply because they NEVER listen to anyone else but themselves.
Sure looks like Republicans are masters of the ultimate death panels.
4
Orrin Hatch and the rest of the GOP are trying to cull the herd. The ones they're trying to cull are disproportionately poor, sick, black, and brown.
What they ultimately want is a strong, self-sufficient, Caucasian majority population.
2
You haven't been reading the news for decades if you're surprised by the sadism of the Republicans.
4
Blow up yer iPhone. Throw away the papers, Move into the country...build you a home.
Plant a little garden, raise a lotta Peaches, try to find Jesus.....on yer own.
1
In the Republican mind there are only two crimes; 1) Being either too stupid, or unlucky enough to get caught while committing a crime; or 2) Being poor (either having no money, or not being white).
4
The sad part is that the United States spends more on health care with poorer results than many other OECD countries. The fix is to improve they system, not to rip holes in it.
Oh the hypocrisy: congress people have lifetime medical coverage once elected, as does POTUS and a raft of cronies. They don't really care, they got their health care entitlement at taxpayer expense. (looking at you O'Connel. With 30% or more of Kentuckians on the Fed dole, pulling the dole means Kentuckians would be pushing up more tombstones than tobacco plants)
4
This GOP Cruelty Gene harks back to the Puritan perversion of Christianity. Instead of the meeker milder embrace of tending the suffering, the Patriarchal Monotheism discovered you could use that bait to ensnare, to brain/heart-wash people for Your Power. It was a fearsome perversion of a gentler, more open-minded, open-hearted message. But it works a hideous charm -- as the blood-soaked centuries in the last coupla thousand years can gruesomely attest.
So, humiliation of those not-blessed-therefore-anointed-by-God with Prosperity is the Petty & Putrid Righteous Wrath of the overlords. Born on [white] thirdbase & thought they hit a triple. Fie!
4
Opioid addiction is a disease, crack addiction is a crime. The difference? The color of skin, opioid addicts are mostly white, crack addicts are mostly black.
Republican revulsion of the poor is based on race. Poverty among people of color is close to 25%, while less than 10% of whites are poor. Republicans use the poverty of that white group to demonize people of color and cover their own callousness.
Have no illusions. The Republican Party of today is the party of George Wallace, Jefferson Davis and Roger Taney.
6
Let's just admit it. Our electorate hates poor people and non-whites. They want us to die as soon as possible. That's the reason for a lack of universal health care for U.S. citizens.
4
A time will surely come when these filthy sadists will beg for mercy. When that time comes, show them absolutely NONE! I hope I will be there to raise the shout of "No prisoners! No prisoners!" They showed no mercy to millions; why should anyone offer them so much as a smidge of mercy?
I really am interested in answers to the above question, however angrily I may ask it.
3
Short-hand for your column, Paul Krugman. If the G.O.P. hates the poor so much, why don't they just take them out and shoot them, instead of nibbling them to death like ducks?
1
Many of the GOP believe that the poor are poor because: (1) they are lazy, (2) they are inferior beings, or (3) God made them that way. Therefore, any aid to the poor: (1) will discourage them from working, (2) will be ineffective and only increase their numbers, or (3) violates the will of God.
Even though these folks vote Republican!!!
5
My greatest heartache is to see a party I once supported become a heartless, cruel and unthinking body of bigots. The number of Americans who vote republican turns my stomach.
4
The raw, primitive racism in Trump's remarks today about immigration is the same current that powers the kneejerk hostility Trump's deplorables have towards "welfare."
Base whites "know for a fact" that welfare = cheating = cadillac welfare queens with 65" flatscreens = BLACK. Base whites hate Blacks. They "know" Blacks are lazy, shiftless violent welfare cheaters. That's why Republican engineered racial hate as the third rail of American politics. They want us to think -- like base whites -- that racist welfare disinformation is common sense and sotto voce justifies vilifying Blacks, Hispanics and Democrats who coddle them. Base whites go ballistic "knowing" an unwhite is stealing their hard-earned taxes and the well paid jobs base whites are entitled to.
The fact is that welfare -- no matter if you define it narrowly as AFDC, SNAP and Food Stamps (originally a subsidy for farmers), or broadly to include SSI, Worker's Comp, Disability, Disaster Relief, Medicare, Bank bailouts, tax relief for billionaires, owners of private jets, wealthy heirs, Congressional pensions, etc. -- has historically, currently and in absolute terms mainly benefits whites.
Base whites are the real takers, the largest group lifted out of poverty by public welfare support. Base whites will deny welfare for Blacks and Hispanics and be in total denial of how much welfare they take for themselves.
Some call it welfare-bashing and race-baiting. Republicans call it "Winning Elections."
6
As hit men say,"it's just business" as they pull the trigger. The NYT lawyers may have told you not to say murder, but cruelty is inaccurate. It's murder.
3
"Let them eat cake" leads to "Blood in the Streets."
1
Republicans believe in merit, that you should get such blessings as good health care, a good education, a college degree if you merit it.
And, according to them, one of the most important indicators of your merit is who you picked as your parents....
7
Krugman’s clinching vocabulary:
“minimal cost”
“very small”
“initially pay”
“trivial”
Now think about this: both, improper Medicaid payments, and also CHIP payments have routinely been above 9% annual. In addition to $billions fraud, unnecessary tests, enrichment of doctors and pharmas, that also means that expansion has *already*, without any help from the law.
I have two suggestions for Krugman. First, ask Nikki Haley. To quote her when she was governor, “Medicaid is that broken system – there is too much waste, too much fraud, and too little focus on prevention and personal responsibility,”.
Second, read “Nudge” by fellow Economist and Nobel, Richard Thaler. Then call him, and thank him profusely for shedding light. Optionally, NYT-pick this post. You’re welcome.
1
The conservative Republican policy can be summed up very simply: If you can't afford to live, you deserve to die.
7
In the beginning of the New Deal the oligarchs of the time began a systematic program of demonizing poor people for "being on the dole". They did this with the help of some tent preachers who preached that taking help from the government leads to ungodly bad habits of sloth and avarice. We must take it on faith that these oligarchs cared not a fig about the souls of the poor people. They needed a way to put Roosevelt (who happily embraced their hatred of him) into the role of the devil.
And much of rural America embraced this meme, even though it had been Roosevelt and the Democrats who saved their towns, their farms and brought them electricity and water projects.
WWII and the rebuilding of the world afterward led for a while to a more cohesive society, but when poor Southern whites saw gains made by black people that cohesion was destroyed by Nixon and Reagan and their Southern Strategy.
Now we have t rump. I believe he wakes up each morning, from whatever tweet fog he may have been in, and finds someway to bring some pain to as many people as he can. His day is not complete without hurting someone somewhere, in America or elsewhere in the world.
When racism is combined with fascism the result is nazism. We had all better get to work to take our Nation back. We are not going to get many more chances at the ballot box.
6
The obvious conclusion.
The GOP, despite their Christian posturing, are manifestly about kissing up and kicking down -- they worship wealth and power, and have only contempt and cruelty for the poor, the needy, and the weak.
Any co-called Christian checks their Judeo-Christian values at the door when they become a Republican -- there is no compassion in the GOP, only greed, corruption, and mendacity. Mammon, Caesar, and Thanatos are the unholy trinity of the GOP.
4
say Paul
when will the Trump election stock market and economy crash end??
I cant stand making all this money...Ypu are so savvy...Please help me
I am only up 7 figures
That the so-called "conservative" approach to the less well-endowed is based on cruelty has been evident to this writer for a long time. I have an unfortunate habit of reading comments where they are available. The persistent tone of the trumpists is one of unholy glee at policies and actions which anger and upset liberals like me, as they torture and torment people whose main sin seems to be their native tongue or their skin pigmentation. That they have managed to install one of their own kind, ignorant, resentful, bigoted, and sadistic in the most powerful office on the earth is a source of pleasure unending; that every action taken by this pitiful excuse for a human being is motivated almost entirely by a desire to destroy all that his predecessor (who had the gall to be President while black) has built. The only ray of light in this gloomy picture seems to be that their champion is a bumbling incompetent whose inability to control himself is one of the largest obstacles to carrying out his agenda.
5
GOP = cruelty and failing conscience
2
The GOP has become an Ayn Rand cult. It's not led by the moral of Jesus Christ, it's led by the moral of the anti-Christian Ayn Rand.
6
The rich Republicans want a weaker government, because it is government that taxes and regulates them to enhance the lives of the poor and middle class. The rest of the Republicans that vote against their own economic interests are mostly dupes or single issue voters that want to control women's bodies or make sure they can have an automatic rifle to protect themselves from rabbits and other critters.
It's pathetic to watch the cult-like rural poor vote mindlessly to inflict pain on themselves and others, in a country with nearly $100 trillion in net worth, or about $800,000 per family if split evenly (the bottom 50% of families average $11,000 net worth).
Some days, I'm tempted to vote Republican just to inflict pain on these idiots, but too many good people would get hurt and I want to see my country succeed.
4
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
4
My Republican friends in Arkansas hate "moochers," and this is their reason for opposing government programs for the poor, read black. I don't think they want to be cruel, but they sincerely believe that most blacks have found ways to have children or do other actions that gain taxpayer dollars to support them because they don't want to work. It's all about not wanting their taxpayer dollars to encourage laziness and what they see as the injustice of hard-working whites paying for blacks who don't want to work.
1
Republicans look upon the poor or nearly poor as "losers". What better way to get rid of them than by not giving them health care. What better way to drive them out of red states into blue states then by denying them benefits.
3
This Op-Ed is spot on. The Democrats should be saying it again and again and again:
"It's the cruelty, stupid!"
1
I used to think they were genuine fiscal conservatives, then I thought they were social darwinists, then I thought they were just greedy. Now I know they are just sadists.
4
"Senator Orrin Hatch...and whose federal funding expired back in September — declared that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.”"
Statements like these infuriate me. We have plenty of money for the military...nearly $1 trillion in the present budget, billions more for so-called "black projects", $90 million per copy fore the much troubled F-35 program...and on and on. What is the cost of the entire CHIP's program? $13.6 billion. We have the money...Republicans just don't want to spend it on the people who need it. They are more concerned with supporting the MIC.
3
And Orin Hatch is a typical white male Republican..........getting riled up when the Senator from Ohio challenged him...........Orin pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and he expects everyone else to do same no matter that their life experiences, family structure and history are far different. In his mind nobody needs federal assistance.
1
Leftists cannot be taken seriously on policy, because their views are based on wishful thinking, not fact.
Take Medicaid. NJ’s costs are $14.6B; let’s assume that this was ALL expansion money, so that NJ only had to shell out $1.5 B of local taxpayer money. (As NJ sends $1 to DC to get $.50 back, that means that if we get $13B back, we’re sending $26B down) Does this money grow on trees? The state is drowning in a sea of debt; our pensions are the worst funded in the nation; we have the highest property taxes in the nation, among the highest income and sales taxes.
But an unwillingness to fund more handouts (with the $$$ actually going to some of the richest, highest paid people in the country: MD’s and medical professionals) is “cruel”?!?! Where do YOU, erstwhile Princeton resident, propose that we come up with scratch? (Don't tell me; let me guess: "tax the rich".)
And what, pray tell, is wrong with expecting someone who’s subsisting off of the efforts of others to make some, modest attempt to offset the costs of that taxpayer-funded largesse? Your offhand reference to “federal dollars” is amazing; is that money “free”? Or does someone – usually someone from NJ – have to pay crushing taxes to provide it?
Again, the left lives in a fairy tale, in which no one actually has to pay for the goodies it proposes to shower upon “the poor”, and in which “the poor” are never expect to behave in such a fashion as to be not-poor.
When you’re actually serious, we can talk.
1
How to fix Trump AND America: Make Obama President, Again.
Thanks, GOP. November.
1
Republicans should remove the elephant as their party emblam and replace it with a statue of Ebenezer Scrooge.
3
Oh Orrin, you could print more money.
2
Thank you for calling Republicans what they are—SADISTS. I also call them evil— evil being the opposite of good.
2
AS the numbers rise: Death from Asthma.. MS..Lupus.. Measles .. Flu.. and any other life threatening disease that could be prevented or held at bay by CHIP or ACA the shadow of their deaths should sit squarely on the shoulders of Republicans.. The NYT should keep a tally just as they do of those lost at war or any other disaster or condition that could be avoided. Let Paul Ryan, McConnell, Trump and all the rest see the faces whose lives they stole for their march to some sort of power over the other side. Let the American people know just who these "losers" are.. And make a special place for their sacrifice... Everyday.
3
THe Republican, conservative mantra-Love the foetus, hate the child.
3
Spot on truth! Thank you Dr. Krugman!
1
Did Senator Chuck Grassley have relatives signed as Military Medical dependents? Was it done in Anchorage Alaska to cover His tracks? Was The Veterans Affairs Office pressured to do this by Alaska Congressional members? Were the persons signed up legal recipients of such services? Was this a practice that was done for years by many congress members by hiding it in other states than their own? How many millions does this cost the Veterans of our country>
2
Much of the country, and indeed many of my "Christian" relatives, suffer from what I call "Protestant work ethic run amock". This is the notion that "those who do not work shall not eat" a quote from Thessalonians that, as all things Biblical can be left up for interpretation. (Does it refer to the poor, or the very rich who inherit their wealth and do not have to work for it?? Knowing the teachings of Christ I would say the latter, but that is just my interpretation!)
Regardless, by this philosophy, people for whom no work is available should be forced to break rocks or do any chore no matter how useless, to prove their worthiness to live (eat, have basic shelter, or health care etc.)
Christ said "‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God", and "Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me" and I will not even go into the many things he said about the rich (NOT very flattering!) Christ did not ask a persons worthiness before he healed them.
So not only is this forced "work ethic" un-Christan, it is also uncivilized, uneconomical and indeed cruel! Hoisted on us by a judgmental, holier-than-thou minority who hopefully will be out of power soon!
5
Republican sadism is nothing new and escalated after Nixon's Southern strategy seems to have flipped Republican ranks from the northern states as far back as the uncivil war, to now when it welcomes the hateful and angry into it's ranks. Just like John Brown of old who inspired the North to punish the South over the issue of slavery, now the modern Day Republicans are the angry Americans that create enemies for the thrill of it and to gain followers, just like John Brown did.
1
The Republican attitude is that if you are poor, it is a moral failure on your part. If you are poor, it is because you are lazy, you don't want to work, nor do you desire to succeed. Meanwhile Republicans do everything they can to lock poor people into poverty, to make it ever more difficult to educate yourself out of poverty, to rise above poverty. Republicans do everything they can to encourage the concentration of wealth to those already wealthy, and to impoverish and take away from the middle class. The Republican goal is an aristocracy of wealth, with a serfdom of workers, poor, barely educated, kept fearful and ignorant, distracted by scapegoats and lies. There is no more solid danger to the future safety and success of our nation than the policies being promoted and supported by the Republican party, in thrall to the plutocracy that funds them. The Kochs, Mercers, Adelsons, and Trumps see themselves as the overseers, the nobles, and the rest of Americans as future serfs, tied to corporations with debt and fear. Vote them out, vote them all out.
5
It is true that “...for awhile you could argue that it was about cynical political strategy...”. Heaven forfend that one party should allow another a political victory, regardless of how beneficial it might be to the citizens they purportedly represent. However, in the case of the Affordable Care Act, this cynical strategy was less policy based than it was racially motivated. To give a victory to the other party when it is represented by an old white male might be possible, but a young, black male? Impossible.
3
Thank you Prof. Krugman! The Republicans are sadists in the extreme.
Another prime example, the Drug War. It's about torturing people not helping them.
I hope America rises up and overthrows these oh so evil politicians in 2018.
1
Today's GOP: "the problem with CHIP is we just dont have the money."
Today's GOP: adding 1.4 trillion dollars to the national debt is fine, as long as it's to give corporations and billionaires huge tax cuts.
Watch what people do, if you want to see the truth, don't just listen to whatever they want say. This is what this extremely far right republican party has become now. Trump-publicans, all of them, it's a party that lacks compassion, and bears tremendous ill towards the majority of other Americans. They now openly tolerate and excuse white supremicy and racist ideology, promote divisiveness, exclusion and intolerance, and it now values wealth and privilege, property and money, over any moral, or their supposedly Christian obligations to others. GOP = Death Cult, well, I hope not. But GOP = Wealth Cult to the exclusion of everyone else? Most definitely.
3
Dear Mr. Krugman:
And who, pray tell, elects these nasty, cruel, sadistic politicians? Nasty, cruel, sadistic American voters. Take off your rose tinted glasses and see us for what we really are. Again, as Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is us.
Regards,
Michael Skadden
2
And this is a party of Christians? NO! This is the party of hypocrisy.
3
Poor Mr. Hatch! CHIP is threatened because "we don't have money anymore!" Really? REALLY?? You would have, Senator, had you not championed and unilaterally crammed-through a $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy!
Greedy. Cheap. Cruel.
5
This really isn't about economics, or the ins and outs of tax laws, or who contributes what and how much, but about the psychological chicanery that the 1 percent somehow feel they are entitled to inflict on others.
I remember Paul Ryan, one of the worst characters on Capital Hill, lecturing the unwashed masses who can't afford health insurance that they have to buckle up and not run out and purchase the newest iphone the minute it comes out, and then, presumably, they could buy insurance. This prompted a lot of creative derision on Twitter with people posting pictures of iphones lining the parameters of football fields to illustrate (since Ryan apparently needs visuals to figure this out) the drop in the bucket even a brand new iphone is to medical coverage.
It is this kind of elitist arrogance that rots from the head down. People like Senator Grassley who whined the other day (shamelessly, in front of a microphone) that poor people only think about intercourse and movies and unhealthy foods or something along those lines, and therefore prove they can't get it together and don't deserve help. Even though these politicians went to the best law schools, their thinking is as stunted, unsophisticated and hostile as the poor white guy living in a trailer park and blaming Mexicans and Haitians for his bad fortune.
I am white, but I cannot wait for a brown majority in America. I am sick and tired of old white guys keeping their foot on our necks.
2
How did the Republican party that liberated slaves has come to be like this? Heartless and cruel. Donald Trump's racism is not an uncharacteristic feature of many of them, especially the leaders.
But the rank & file Republicans are far more kind and helpful to others. Many among them may be racists, which is a culture developed by word of mouth that blacks don't have a work ethic & they look for government handouts. But if they realize that someone in need, whether black or white they are ready to help. They attend church regularly. But the leaders among them are selfish.
In the last election season, they published a list of charitable donations of the candidates. Mitt Romney & Barack Obama donated 29.4 & 21.8 % (2011) respectively on their incomes, whereas, Ted Cruz donated just 0.9% on his $2 million income. David Brooks wrote a piece in NYT in early 2016 on the Brutalism of Ted Cruz.
3
How can anyone believe that most Republicans are pro-life? Being anti-abortion is not the same as pro-life. Being pro-life means you care about those who already born. Not just keeping them alive but also you also care about the quality of their life
1
Our economic system, survival-of-the-fittest unfettered capitalism, encourages and rewards keeping the less fortunate "in their places" and relentlessly hitting down on them in case they get uppity and start dreaming of a better future.
To wit the recent tax "overhaul" officially referred to as Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Imagine: I was following behind a pickup on the road one day. There was a dog of uncertain breed padding down the shoulder of the road. All of a sudden, the car in front of me swerved and hit the dog, knocking it across the road and dead, into a ditch. I stopped for the animal, and could think of nothing else so put it in my trunk to take to the pound.
On the way, I spotted the truck parked in the driveway of a small shotgun style house. Incensed, I pulled into the driveway and pounded on the door until the owner came to the door. "I was driving and saw you swerve and hit this animal. It is in my trunk right now". The man just blinked at me. "What kind of person does that? Aren't you ashamed?"
"No", he answered.
It was my turn to blink. "How on earth can you not be ashamed?"
"Because it wasn't my dog".
1
Math problem -
Q: If every state expands medicaid, and the federal gov't pays for 90%, what's the % of cost paid by taxpayers in your state?
A: On average, it's 100%
I think it's more selfishness that cruelty. They simply do not have any regard for anyone not like themselves. Those who are poor and different simply should not exist. They clutter the world.
The republican perspective is too shallow to extend to cruelty, it seems more genocidal than cruel.
It's not sadism it's power. In states where a Republican can get elected by telling voters that "those people" won't get a penny of your tax dollars it keeps them in power. It doesn't matter whether the facts are in their favor or who gets hurt. If you're running for office where there are enough bigoted or intellectually challenged people to vote for you why let ethics or compassion stand in your way?
To paraphrase Anatole France:
In its majestic equality, the Republican Party's idea of freedom is to allow rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
We used to theorize that all Ryan and McConnell wanted from Trump was to sign off on tax cuts for the rich, and after that they'd suddenly rediscover basic human decency and oppose him. But now it's clear they're salivating about the real prize: slashing Medicaid, Medicare and (their wettest dream) Social Security. Hurting the poor is the ultimate goal. These aren't politicians, they're ghouls.
2
Cruelty is born of greed in our country. Dem or Repub. As long as my and mine can get the biggest piece of pie no matter the consequences, it is easy to justify the cruelty that makes that happen. For me to feel good about not being willing to share with those who are in need some of mine, I need to define them and believe that they are less than and not worthy so that I can live with myself. They and their supporters on the right have no spiritual connection to anyone or anything but what they can have and own. Jesus would be ashamed of these people who claim his name as their God. Oligarchical thought prevails and manipulates those who's support they need. This needs to be stopped. VOTE
1
They will not stop until we are fighting each other to pull out moldy crusts they throw into open sewers. They want us too sick to haggle over employment conditions, just work for bottom dollar and not ask questions about the beneficence of the job creators.
1
I believe it began in earnest with House Speaker Gingrich who spoke admiringly of orphanages. He lived in a Dickens world of workhouses and debtors' prisons. Shame is dead. Long live infamy.
1
This devastating indictment of the Republican party is completely supported in fact. The sadism is an observable truth.
2
Keeping the poor down is the only way the wealthy, well connected white males can maintain their dominance. I am sad to say that ever since Bill Clinton's administration, this is not entirely a mainstream Republican problem.
1
This old joke explains Republican motivation: An explorer goes into a cave, finds a magic lamp and rubs it. A genie comes out and gives him one wish, but tells him that whatever he wishes, his worst enemy will get twice as much.
The man pauses, smiles and then replies. "Then I want you to beat me half to death."
Republicans don't care if their policies hurt them. . .as long as the people they hate are hurt more.
1
It is indeed about the cruelty and the power the GOP carrying out the will of its rich masters with such relish. Trump's bullying has given that cruelty the ugly face it deserves, a rich old vulgar greedy misogynist who enjoys inflicting suffering on people less fortunate. It is the ultimate power of despots everywhere to have such little regard for human life and to be utterly bereft of any compassion.
1
So the people are getting what they voted for. Just hope they are happy.
Isn’t it lovely to have a government of Dick Cheney’s. A government of essentially know nothings on the oligarchic side but are very good at pulling fingernails out from the general populous convincing them that fingernail pulling will make them rich!
The greatest country in the history of the world! Sad.
It's about getting some people dependent on other - on the employers. This is modern slavery.
1
Sen. Hatch's comment that " “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.” is sheer nonsense. The Republicans just gave away 1.5 trillion dollars to provide tax cuts to businesses and individuals who like, but not necessarily needed, tax cuts. Of course, this is part of their business model to give money to businesses and people who don't need it and pay for it by taking away benefits; i.e. CHIP, Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare from working, middle class, and retired Americans.
All the conservatives around here in NC with whom I've spoken about this sort of thing have the same general underlying worldview: economics is inseparable from morality. Lack of economic success is a moral failing. Poor people don't try hard enough, are too lazy to work, too lazy to get an education, are trying to cheat the system, etc. Conversely economic success is a function purely of perseverance and ambition. That a child born into a desperately poor family might not achieve success despite having those qualities, or that a child born into an ultra-wealthy family might live a life of luxury despite having no redeeming traits whatsoever, is inconceivable in their philosophy. So if poverty is due only to personal failure, what better way to teach the lazy and thieving poor the error of their ways than to punish them?
1
The Republican mindset is difficult to fathom. I believe Mr. Krugman is correct. It appears that the idea of any kind of "entitlements" is repulsive to them. I live in a nursing home. I came here at 56 years old due to a progressive muscle wasting disease
which has left me wheelchair bound. I need help in every area of my physical life. If they think I am entitled then I would dare any of them to try this lifestyle for even a week. You know, I bet they couldn't do it!
1
In the end, the cost/inefficiency argument for dropping and restricting coverage doesn't hold up. That's thanks for Ronald Reagan who signed a law with the acronym, EMTALA. That law requires hospitals to provide emergency care to those who need it, even if they can't pay for it. The unpaid cost gets hidden in the increased prices paid by everyone else through their own coverage. But this is absolutely the inefficient, ineffective care possible for all, but the most extreme cases. And, it provides for neither prevention nor follow-up. So unless the R's are willing to repeal Reagan's EMTALA, they're embracing the least effective option. But, they won't likely care for the bad political symbolism of letting people die in public after being turned away from hospitals. So far, they're choosing inefficiency and ineffectiveness.
1
I think you’re being unfair by saying their end goal is cruelty. Their end goal is shrinking the size and budget of government. Even if kicking people off Medicaid doesn’t save the states money, it reduces dependency on benefits which makes it easier for future congresses to eliminate them. Yes, it’s cruel, but you are willfully misunderstanding their intent by suggesting it’s their end goal.
I worked in the healthcare industry during the 80s - 90s and saw it many times - insurance or no insurance poor people will get sick and will go to the emergency room to get that care leaving that hospital with more bad debt to deal with. And the primary way they deal with it is to jack up prices on everything from physician costs to tissue paper on the rest of society who do have insurance. So in the long run those of us with money and health insurance are going to pay for the poor's care 1 way or another. But try explaining that to a Republican politician.
Republicans like to pretend that they support Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare and that they always did. This is not the case. When I was a boy, which wasn't that long ago historically speaking, Medicare and Medicaid were passed by the Johnson Administration over fierce Republican opposition. Social Security was passed during the FDR administration, which was before my time but it also was passed over fierce Republican opposition. What happened, is that over time these programs got very popular and the Republicans said "me too". The same thing happened with the ACA. The Republicans tried but failed to get rid of it. So, opposition to safety net entitlement programs has long been a Republican stable, protestations aside.
1
Previous editorials in the Times have described a meltdown in Christian "membership." Few Christians are attending church services; fewer Americans are calling themselves religious, let alone Christian.
Meanwhile, ,the evangelical movement seems divided within itself; there are the "prosperity evangelicals" preaching the importance of wealth generation and the luxury toys that go with it. Those preachers are driving $100K cars and living in mansions. The other evangelical groups suggest they are preaching the words and work of Jesus Christ.
Yet, by voting for Republicans bent on destroying the social safety nets, promoting for-profit Christian schools, and blaming the poor and sick for being — "ahem" — poor and sick, those evangelicals are genuflecting at the feet of the queen of cruel, Ayn Rand, instead of their Savior who practiced what he preached when it came to caring for the sick, the poor, the elderly, and the stranger.
The former "Party of Lincoln" has transmogrified into the Party of Mean. They are the Greedy Old Partisans beholden to big money, big oil, big pharma, big banks ... Whatever happend to Leave No Child Behind? Yeah, that had to do with education policy.
About 300 years ago, the Calvinists turned Christianity on its head by blaming the poor and the sick for being poor and sick. (Yes, I am repeating myself).
What we have today in the Republican Party and its evangelical supporters is a return to the Spanish Inquisition, not the Reformation.
As reported here, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch indeed declared that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore."
With his very next breath, Hatch said "I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves – won’t lift a finger – and expect the federal government to do everything" for them.
So, yes, it's all about the cruelty. And Senator Hatch thinks that *he's* the one having a rough time.
2
During the 1930's FDR was able to keep his Democratic coalition together by allowing states, at the insistence of Jim Crowe Southern Democrats, to control the distribution of federal aid to their poor, disabled, and unemployed citizens. This was an efficient way for the old Confederacy to insure that Whites would receive increased federal aid while excluding Black citizens from the same. Today's Republicans, whose base has been largely made up of the old Southern Democrats since the passage of Civil Rights legislation under LBJ, are now promoting the same tactic of excluding racial minorities from federal aid by refusing to expand Medicaid. This is racism more so than sadism, since it targets people based on race (or, in many cases, ethnicity). And the leader of this strategy is our distinguished President Trump.
It’s less sadism than guilt. To justify the benefits they enjoy, the wealthy have to ‘prove’ these are deserved. One easy way to do this is to insist that the less fortunate deserve their disadvantages because they are unwilling to work. Another is to claim their wealth results from public service as job creators. There’s a whole culture, quasi-religion around this. Economic inequality is one of the major challenges facing our society today, and we can’t have an honest discussion about it.
I won't go so far as to say that Republicans actually want people to die--though many people do--because of their policies, but rather I think it's about humiliation. To paraphrase Gore Vidal: It's not enough that I should win, but that others must lose.
How do the rich define success and happiness? As the avoidance of suffering. How can they be winners unless they create more and more losers? This trickles down to the middle class: How often have you heard a parent say (oozing sadistic pleasure) in a fast food restaurant to their teenager: "If you don't go to college, this is where you're going to end up for the rest of your life." Their vision of happiness is straight out of Les Miserables--as long as the whip is in their hands.
1
I believe this is all part of the Republicans' War on Poverty (AKA, Kill the Poor People).
Look at their war on food stamps. Ryan has claimed that the poor could get their food from food pantries. I volunteer in one, and we don't have enough food to provide for all of our clients' needs. We can provide for a day or two.
From what I've seen of other food pantries, we are not an exception. And if we were to get an influx of new people, we would have to give less.
Plus, a lot of what we give is junk food, and it does fill bellies. But I'm also afraid that we deliver diabetes.
1
All these programs can be run on the state level but none of the states controlled by democrats has universal health coverage for example, not even California who is a state comparable to France.
So it is not about cruelty or sadism but money. Nobody wants to pay for these programs and everything is pushed to the federal level which already has a huge deficit. And that is really all there is to it. Don't expect any problems to get solved.
The reason the GOP gets elected is not due to the high quality of their stances, but due to the historically unmatched level of cynicism and pure dishonesty in their orations to the voting class, whom must be faulted at this juncture for continuing to believe those orations. How much betrayal is needed before the truth is realized? For a short acronym, one cannot beat GOP for Greed Obsessed Prevaricators. Easy to remember at the booth.
1
Republicans are infused with old fashioned greed. They don't want to pay for anything that doesn't help them or those like them. They don't do the math, they don't study problems, they look at everything through the lens of how will it help me. They are like entitled teenagers, never thinking about others or even how they can be useful. It's all about them. That's also their appeal to thankfully a less than majority of the public. Their greed is so strong and so entrenched they've learned to spin it as wonderful, selling the dream of you can have it all, too, if we just get rid of those pesky outsiders.
Defense spending isn't about shoring up our security but the huge amount of money involved. Armaments is as close to legally printing money as one can get, the markup is that huge.
A lot of people make bad decisions and end up in taxpayer funded situations. Shoring up education, safety and nutrition in poor neighborhoods might resolve most of that. But frankly, aren't legislators and defense contractors wallowing in dough at taxpayer expense?
It's all about greed.
2
As a Finn, and friend of America, I am sad to conclude that I do not wish to enter the country as long as this madness with Trump is going on. There are numerous better places to visit. What a pity.
You allude to the real reason but do not expand on your point of Medicaid being able to negotiate better with big pharma or insurers or others in the industry.
To understand the GOP, you always follow the money.
Getting people off Medicaid or other federal health programs benefits the health care industry as there is a weaker competitor (e.g the feds) in the market.
It's arguably about ideology and power. Cruelty towards "losers" (i.e. victims of de facto plutocracy) is only a side benefit to Reps.
Opposition to the redistribution of wealth, and fidelity to "rugged individualism" (i.e. everyone for themselves), are longstanding cornerstones of American conservatism.
The greater the gap between rich and poor, the more relative power the rich have. Completing our nation's transition to an all out oligarchy of money requires minimizing (or preferably eliminating) all forms of redistribution, including medical forms.
Many Reps don't believe in evolutionary theory, but they clearly believe in the survival of the fittest - or is that richest?
1
Anyone else remember during the GOP primaries in 2012 a debate where the moderator asked Ron Paul, "what should happen to those covered by Obamacare if it is repealed and they have no insurance, should they die", and the audience erupted in applause. That is what is going on, in spite of republicans claiming to be great patriots the truth is the GOP base hates Americans and you cannot love America when you hate Americans. Trump and Republicans are merely exploiting this hatred at a significant price.
To some extent the exploitation of hate for personal gain is made possible because of the link caused by centuries of racism between race and class. I mean if support for Donald Trump by Evangelical "values" voters proves anything it is that "values" in front of the word voter was always code for race. But I think there is also much ignorance involved. All of facts stated in this column are true including that CHIP and food stamps actually reduce the deficit. But because the mainstream media has so failed its job to educate with facts instead of entertain, most people have no idea what or whom to believe.
Realistically, it's not about sadism; it's about the notion that government can help people. In the words of Saint Ronald, "government doesn't solve problems; government is the problem." Reagan meant this mostly as a campaign slogan, but the generation of Republicans since then have taken it as the central article of the faith. If government is seen as helping people, even once, people might come to expect it to do so again, and that way lies Communism and the downfall of mankind. So any government program that claims to help people must be shut down, or at least sabotaged.
1
This is a good example of what's wrong with our political discourse. I don't agree with people who want work requirements for medicaid or other safety net programs but it is wrong to call them sadists and imply they are immoral. We have to stop demonizing people we disagree with and try to engage with them on a more civil level. Don't ever claim to know what is anyone's heart. It may be emotionally satisfying to declare that you hold the moral high ground but it is not a way to get things done.
Many Americans believe that people should work to get health benefits and they have politicians who represent their views. These American are wrong but they are not immoral.
I wish someone will do a benefit cost analysis in implementing these inhuman Medicaid waivers. To implement them States need to design new data collection systems, collect the data, and enforce the sanctions. Considering that large majority of recipients are already working and those who don’t are mostly too young, too old, or disabled, the money saved could be much smaller than the extra implementation expenses. This approach is not only heartless it’s also stupid.
Suffering people can't think. Republicans want a population of miserable people who will be susceptible to propaganda. And they want an oligarchy. They want a work force desperate for jobs so they can have cheap labor. And they want exorbitant profits for their donors. They don't care about reelection; they know they will get great jobs after their work in congress is finished. They will make even more money and work, although this is hard to believe, even less.
1
No, Professor, we need $18B to build that wall.
It's an article of conservative faith that current hierarchies of power, wealth, status, and privilege are natural and just, therefore those who are poor deserve to be poor--because they are lazy or immoral--or else choose to be poor because it's such an attractive lifestyle. To help them is to reward their bad behavior at everyone else's expense; they need to be punished for their poverty so they'll cut it out...
1
Based on what I have experienced of the Republican True Believer mindset, it's not so much a desire to inflict cruelty so much as a persistent belief that everyone gets what they deserve and deserves what they get. It is a sort of magical thinking practiced by people with wealth and power, which in the one case that "trickle down" theory actually worked, has now devolved to the masses via decades of right wing media propaganda. In this quasi-religious mindset, America used to be great but is falling apart, and there isn't enough money to spend on "government handouts", because, in part, the military is also underfunded and falling apart. Wealthy heirs with trust funds deserve to keep all of their inheritance because they, at their jobs at their fathers' companies, work hard and the government just wants to steal their hard-earned money at gunpoint. Whereas, the person living paycheck to paycheck, is, in the words of conservative radio host Neal Boortz, "too lazy or too stupid" to get rich. So you see, it's not cruel to withhold aid to the lazy and shiftless working class while changing the rules so that the government can't steal your children's inheritance. Shrinking Medicaid isn't inflicting pain, it's just teaching people to take responsibility for their own lives and not rely on the federal government. And when facts get in the way of this magical thinking, they are just explained away (something something FREEDOM!), or denied outright (fake news).
Thank you Paul for plainly stating the truth about what the GOP has become. The bottom line is that our country is being ruled by the lunatic fringe that is a minority (albeit, now a sizable one) of our citizens. This has gone beyond politics and is now an existential threat to our society and our future. The majority, who are generally decent human beings, must send this GOP scourge packing in 2018 & 2020 once an for all.
1
They just want to kill off as many of us as possible. We're just making the planet too crowded and used up for their sensitivities. Much easier than providing access to family planning information and services, including abortion for when this fails. This is actually counterproductive to their usual capitalist worldview, because you'd think the more desperate people there are for jobs, the cheaper they will be willing to work.
Maybe they're just mean people.
1
I agree that Republicans are sadistic by nature. But that's only half the story. They are also appealing to the racism that characterizes most of their voters. By promoting the myth (inarguably refuted by the data) that it is THOSE PEOPLE, undeserving and lazy, who benefit the most from the safety net, they reap a huge political gain. Their base's first priority is to make America white again, so they will support any policies they believe will punish non-whites, even if they too suffer as a result of these policies.
1
I don't think the GOP is doing this for the sake of being cruel, but they are willing to support cruel means to support their selfish beliefs and desires. They are greedy and stingy and despise the idea that someone will get some of their money that the recipients don't deserve.
Simply put, Republicans are compassionless and vindictive to people of color or those who are not economically advantaged.To think that many of them consider themselves 'Christians.'
There are two competing alternate value systems in America today: One values gold over the human treasures of love, beauty, and truth. Republicans value money over humanity. Democratic values should regard the welfare of all human beings over soulless greed. Which future do Americans want? The false value placed on pure materialism degrades the human experience and leaves us no better than animals.
1
It's quite simple, really. The Democrats believe everybody deserves a Porsche, a $500,000 house, complete, free, medical coverage and free education and for foreigners, free immediate citizenship and voting rights....and that the Federal Government will pay for it all. And since the government is literally funded by the top 20% (meaning Republicans) that the Republicans should pay for it. And if that's insufficient, well...we'll just increase the taxes on the top 20%. Or the tax on business. Or eliminate the military, and, while we're at it, let's tear up the constitution and ignore the rule of law. And then, according Bernie, Barak, Nancy and Chuck, everything will be just fine.
As cruel and sadistic as the Republicans are, they are elected representatives who are presumably expressing the desires of their constituents.
My question is why are so many American voters so cruel and sadistic that they would deprive themselves of modern necessities in order to deprive it to the hated “others”. Who are these people who support the to bear arms above the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Who are these people who would deprive their own children of access to health care and education but fight for the right of every fetus to be born? How did so many become so twisted?
It's not something that I like to believe, but Dr. K is absolutely right. The lack of a single-payer national healthcare system has always been a blot on the United States, which I've been particularly sensitive to because of health problems that started in my childhood. The fact that virtually every other country in the world manages to offer healthcare to their citizens--at far lower cost than our healthcare demands--is a glaring sign that our government, and the people who vote for them (and I do mean Republicans), are selfish and cruel. I wish it weren't so, but to quote Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows.
5
I work in a business where people had deductions for coaching for the opera and for entertainment. Productivity lowered my income from my own teacher's income by two thirds. So I make 1/3 what my teacher made, (with less training) than I made when I came to NYCity in the 1960s for my training. Now the standard deduction has removed the 1/3 that my clients got for developing their products and made the bar impossible for a business where most people make under $20,000 a year percapita. That effectively made my lessons cost them 1/3 more and I still have my low fee, the same fee I've had since the year 2,000. That in the artistic capital of America. A city where not so long ago the Arts and Entertainment sector was second only to the Financial sector. New York has become Tulsa.
2
"New York has become Tulsa."
Aw, Ray. Come on. Leave the Okies alone.
It's not a matter of whether we 'should' . help each other. It's a matter of 'can' we help each other. The fact is that we can. If we can and then don't...that, then, is the time to argue about whether we should or not. If you come down on the 'we shouldn't help each other' side there are lots of arguments against it.
1
I wonder how many Republicans who profess to adore and support and protect the Constitution of the United States have ever read it. Clearly not most of the conservative commentators on this page.
In fact, we are established as a Constitutional Democracy (or Constitutional Republic) in order "promote the general welfare" along with several other reasons:(form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity).
Yet, just as they elevate the Second Amendment to the eleventh commandment while disparaging or dismissing the First, Republicans demand absolute, unquestioning adherence to insuring domestic tranquility (by structuring a police state to whatever extent they can) and providing for the common defense (with bloated military budgets that are in complete opposition to the Constitution's provision AGAINST a standing army). Meanwhile, they couldn't care less about the general welfare (though they do strive to promote their own), and they eagerly trample on the requirement that they pass on the blessings of liberty to posterity.
Every Republican policy enacted, and every Republican platform position over the past 30 years, has been aimed at those principles; increasing military spending, slashing domestic spending (especially for education), expanding the rule of guns and limiting the rights of free speech, press, and assembly.
13
This isn't about cruelty, it's about social justice.
For decades now, Republicans imagine that work cannot be but something that essentially causes suffering, apart from allowing you to survive through receiving money, and once the world of your moral imagination is based on this kind of assumptions, merely giving away money to those who refuse to work in order for them to survive anyhow, is unfair to those who "take responsibility" and work.
The basic moral rule here is that if life means suffering, then at least we can make sure, as a society, that we ALL suffer, rather than giving some people the extraordinary privilege of being able to stay alive without having to go each and every day to a work place that doesn't allow you to engage in any personal development nor other meaningful activity.
The idea, then, is that the only "fair" way get out of this kind of misery, is to work SO "hard" that you become SO successful that you can put money aside for your kids, who then will have to work a little less hard. Which also implies that it's only fair to deprive kids of parents who refuse to work hard, of basic necessities such as education and health, because that's the only way to force them to work hard too.
Needless to add that for many conservatives, this isn't just moral imagination, it's actually their daily life.
As long as the left can't invent an economy where inhuman of jobs don't exist anymore, people will probably continue to fall for this kind of ethics.
2
While the result is about cruelty, the motivation is likely greed. Republicans are the party of , by and for the rich. Taking money from the poor provides more--in the short term--to the rich. If firms do not have to pay for pensions, companies make more money and pay higher dividends. If government provides fewer services, they need less money to operate. Republicans have justified this with a belief that rich people are good and poorer or working class people are somehow morally deficient. Ironically, this short term thinking is not only the formula for longer term political loss, but makes little sense economically. Greed leads to cruelty, but cruelty is the necessary result.
2
the reason why republicans won't fund the chip healthcare program for 9 million poor children is that the republican tax reform law just enacted, has reallocated the money to corporations through large tax cuts.
6
Those who want to force people on Medicaid to work probably don't know what they are talking about. The structure they will have to build to monitor this requirement will offset much of any savings they reap.
How many people know people who live at or close to poverty level? I suspect it's darned few. They believe the old canards about "welfare queens," fraudulent disabilities and so forth, while the truth is that most are limited in their capacity to work, based on education, health, age, and/or inability to hold a job due to distance, lack of work skills, including job readiness, or similar factors.
Those on expanded Medicaid and/or who receive CHIP for their children are most likely already working. My son's family is a good example. They applied for CHIP when my son lost his job. Once he had a job again, they cancelled CHIP in favor of private insurance. Meanwhile, the children, who were preschool at the time, got a good health start in life, and my son didn't have to worry about their health.
Any wealthy country that denies health coverage to children, disabled and elderly adults and low-income families is a very stingy one indeed. There is money for these programs--or was before the ill-advised tax bill Congress just passed to line the pockets of their wealthy patrons.
7
During the Reagan Era, Republicans made a deal with their wealthy donors. If Republicans would exclusively represent the donors, the donors would provide the necessary funds to make the GOP the permanent ruling party.
Republicans eagerly accepted the deal and became the Greedy Oligarchs' Party. They began to zealously implement an agenda that facilitates the transfer of the nation's wealth to donors: Large tax cuts for the wealthy, eliminating legal and regulatory impediments to donor greed, and destroying programs and services that benefit non-wealthy Americans. Donors envision a minimal government that exists solely to fight wars and to help them get richer. Everything else is unnecessary. Everyone else is expendable.
The failed ACA "repeal" bills, which would have taken health care away from some 32 million people to fund the first round of tax cuts for wealthy donors, epitomized the GOP agenda. The tax cut bill, passed in hasty desperation, is a sumptuous banquet for the wealthy with just enough (temporary) crumbs for their non-wealthy voters to support specious claims about a "middle class tax cut."
Republican zeal to bulldoze the social safety net is not sadism as much as devotion to donors who, as vulture capitalist Mitt Romney revealed, resent the confiscation of any of their entitled wealth to support undeserving "takers." Republicans are merely serving their only true constituents, who believe their enrichment must come at the expense of everyone else.
4
18 States have not expanded Medicaid. We never hear from the
top of the medical establishment in these states. Why do these doctors think that their states have failed to cover the most vunerable in their state. What are they doing to change this? Come forward and
explain it to us because we don’t
understand.
1
There are two necessary components for a person to lead a productive, fulfilled life that they can be proud of: challenges to address, and the resources necessary to overcome those challenges.
Republicans are obsessed with giving people challenges. Democrats err on the side of giving people support. Both are necessary. And there must be a balance.
The pendulum had swung so far in favor of the "challenge" side of the equation that we're at an inflection point. When people exist in a society with challenges that they are too resource-limited to overcome, then you create misery - downtrodden, hopeless people.
At this point the Republicans are simply manufacturing misery, and we, as a society, must stop it. This is the challenge of our times.
4
When I was a kid in high school, my family was on assistance. My Mom went to the county office every other week and got a big corrugated cardboard box full of "commodity" food items; excess stuff the federal government had paid to buy from farmers: rice, cheese, dried milk, canned meat, noodles, wheat. And she got a coupon to buy bread at the "day old" bakery. We got help from the county with the rent. In September, I got one pair of button front Levis ($3.85 at the hardware store), wore them all week, and Mom washed them on the weekend.
I know what poverty is. Even though I made a way through life with a high school diploma to a comfortable and secure retirement, the anxiety of impending poverty looms always just over the horizon of my life. I know what a child's shame is, I don't want one single other kid to grow up with those burning tears their eyes.
I also have personal experience with young, capable people who won't even consider a job because it would place their "benefits" at risk. And I know slightly older, slightly less capable who likewise make themselves unemployable to not jeopardize their "benefits." They are a small sliver of the needy, but it leaves a very bad taste in the mouths of those who are scraping by on their own and paying taxes to support such a system.
For the elites this can be power game about "cruelty", but for the rest of us it is about how we help our families and neighbors.
5
Republicans clearly want to weaken (or entirely eliminate) the social safety net. But what evidence is there that Democrats want to strengthen it beyond their desire to distinguish themselves from the GOP? How many Democrats have talked about "addressing entitlements"? Bill Clinton entertained the possibility of privatizing Social Security. (Then the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.)
A handful of progressives, like Bernie Sanders, want to expand and strengthen Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, protections for workers and for unions. Since the GOP campaign to destroy the Affordable Care Act, slightly more than a handful of Democrats support single payer health care. But when push comes to shove, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and most Democrats have, like Republicans, sided with Wall Street and the 1 percent.
4
Mr. Krugman, let's not forget in our discussion who originated the CHiP program. Yes, Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is trying to cut funding for it now, worked with Sen. Ted Kennedy in a bipartisan manner to start this program. No wonder Utah is trying to beckon him home.
Whoever thought we'd look fondly back on those times?
1
The Republicans can find $20 billion for the wall, a hundred billion for overpriced handouts to military manufacturers, and trillions for tax cuts for the wealthy - but they can't find $8 billion for children's healthcare?
5
"...and trillions for tax cuts for the wealthy..."
1. It's my understanding that a large number of people who will enjoy reduced taxes are not "the wealthy".
2. Since the top 20% (many who would not be considered "the wealthy") pay virtually all of the taxes funding federal, state and local governments, it stands to reason that that group would get the majority of the benefit of reduced individual taxes.
3. What wall?
1
This reminds me of the New Poor Law in early 19th century England. Poverty was dealt with on the "less eligibility principle"-the poor were criminalized and brutally treated lest they be too eager to seek help. It was the poor and their supposed moral failings,not the economic system that led to poverty. Very sad that so little has changed.
4
Let alone the motivation for restarting the wheel of history so as to end up concluding again with a social safety net, the claim that there is "no money" is false. We're awash in a historically large amount of wealth. We can discuss the apportionment of that wealth but let's not buy into crude untruths as the foundation of our debate.
Pain is the consequence but not the cause of movement conservatism. Consider the hard right attitude in historical perspective. Look back to the historic contempt for lower classes by the privileged that grew out of classical divisions between patricians & plebs, free and slave, rich and poor, elites and masses. Add the emergence of capitalism, the Protestant emphasis on individual moral authority, and the Enlightenment regard for natural law, and you have the roots of a belief system that links poverty with laziness. Hamilton turned the wealth-power nexus into a pragmatic argument for supply-side economics, and social Darwinists reinforced the notion that might and right are linked by nature. Ayn Rand’s distain for the hopeless and helpless added a social stigma that has animated the hard right ever since.
2
I don't know what is in the hearts of any Republicans, but I understand the perception they are creating of themselves. They don't appear to care about their fellow Americans. This is the impression they give as a whole, though there are individuals who have made it clear they don't agree with their majority.
Members of Republican party need to wake up to the perception problem faced by many of their candidates. They need to demand better from their officials in terms of their humanity and morality. Eitherwise, people who don't suffer from labels such as cruel will be be more than willing to take their place, and we are more likely to help put them there.
2
Republicans have just one plan in mind: to make access to healthcare, education, housing and, in short, the right to dignity something unattainable to low income families. Very sad.
3
Judeo-Christian ethics 101: Thou shalt not own what has not been earned, stolen, or paid in a dividend. God helps only those who help themselves, because we said so. A stitch in time makes your money mine. Too much government is bad, but I am the government and the new rules say that I decide who is bad. Being in the minority makes you invisible in the eyes of the government. Only God and the IRS can see our tax forms or understand our tax cut.
3
And because most of the poor are women who work for minimum wage or close-enough to it, the GOP gets the added pleasure of punishing children who have the nerve to have been born into poor families, and women who have to work outside the home, either because their husbands don't make enough money, or because they've had the nerve to leave their abusive husbands, or because they've "chosen" to get pregnant out of wedlock and have been abandoned by their boyfriends, and the abortion clinics have been closed. And to add insult to injury, the GOP doesn't have the decency to feel badly about setting up a system that is designed, on many fronts, to hurt people because "that's what they get for being born."
2
Let’s take a look at the potential reach of these policies. My late mother used to say that sometimes when you dig a hole, you fall in it yourself (or something to that effect.)
Poor people don’t live in pods; they mingle with the entire population. So, what if denying health coverage to poor people who CANNOT find employment ultimately results in a pandemic?
Moreover, policies that deny poor people access to a decent education can affect even the affluent and the middle class. How would one feel, for example, if a near-literate worker mistakenly administers the wrong dosage or the wrong medication to your affluent or middle-income loved one who has landed in a nursing home?
These wrong-headed policies have the potential to have an adverse effect on us all. It’s amazing that legislators don’t realize this.
3
Agreed. It is hard to understand how these self-interested people fail to worry about the health of the people who handle their food.
What about middle class people? Because of Obama care, health premium has soared. Because of Obama care, we lost freedom. I don't remember Obama ever did anything for middle class people. This country really need one more political party for middle class.
1
Your right. Our nation's private health care solution isn't working out for the vast majority of us. It's high time we switched to a simple single-payer system.
Keeping a caste system in place is hard work. They're doing everything they can to ensure that it stays in place. It's that simple.
2
Considering the current labor shortage,maybe these folks could join the work force... why that is unreasonable to democrats? Democrats need votes from the needy and the government employees who render aid to the poor.
For Republicans in government, it's all about taking care of their sponsors -- the wealthy -- and pulling the wings off everyone else.
3
Calling all you so called Christians.
The book of Matthew in your Bible says: "In as much as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me". And Jesus said "the greatest and only commandment is that you love one another as I have loved you."
So my question to you is - why is it always the liberals, who don't claim any particular faith, who are the ones who consistently call for things like caring for the poor and downtrodden, for honoring our environment through good policies, who advocate for taking in the tired, the poor, masses of immigrants who are seeking a better life?
I'd like to hear the Christians defense of their deeply held Republican belief on these issues, and why they reject what is so clearly demanded of them in their Bible.
5
It’s not a question of whether to spend it: we have the money. It’s a question of how best to spend it.
2
There is no rational way to explain it. Hating the poor could be a core tenet of the Grand Obstruction Party religion. (Many claim to be religious folks.)
Prosperity for all should be good for everyone except those who are jealous filled, even if there is no reason for the mega-rich to be jealous. Perhaps their lives are so miserable that making others miserable helps them to derive some pathological satisfaction.
To be clear, not all the rich folks are misanthropists. People like Warren Buffett have no qualm sharing the spoil. However, those are not the ones who bankroll the Grand Obstruction Party.
6
Dr. Krugman, there may be an effect from the refusal to accept Medicaid expansion that's slipped below just about everyone's radar. It's important.
Our GOP governor Scott refused such expansion on the usual vague and mostly erroneous grounds, and here's what's happened as a direct result.
Medicaid makes it profitable - sometimes just barely, but still profitable - for major health insurers to do business in areas with moderate to high poverty levels. Simply put, what the insurers won't pay for, Medicaid picks up.
For a state like Florida, the absence of Medicaid expansion has made it UNprofitable for insurers like Aetna, Cigna and United Health Care to do business. So what do they do? They "pull out", leaving only ONE insurer in Central Florida. I won't name that company, but it's very well known and is notorious for its stingy underwriting standards.
So governor Scott and has GOP buddies in Tallahassee have created a health insurance monopoly in Central Florida, with soaring premiums and increasingly poor service as a natural outcome. That's how monopolies behave.
We'll not alone in this. There's a story here. I wish someone would write it.
14
While Krugman's article is largely accurate, I would suggest a concurent theory- it isn't just about cruelty, but also about control.
The key point of all those programs Krugman mentioned is that, no matter how how much power is given to states to use them, they are ultimately Federal programs and, more importantly, government programs- which means that whether or not the Republicans control them now, they can lose control of them later.
What wealthy Republicans want is the ability to personally make the decisions as to whether and to what extent each recipient of charity (and yes, we are talking about charity) gets it or does not get it- the ability to dominate the lives of others and to be capable of withdrawing aid when it suits their morality to do so. That sense of power cannot be replicated properly in a government program. It only comes from owning a personal fief- which is exactly what you have in places like Kentucky and West Virginia.
The fact that these places are terrible places for anyone but the ultra-rich is beside the point, as the only ones whose opinions matter in these places are, of course, the ultra-rich.
10
Astute, careful observations here from Michael B. English. I hesitate to go full Marxian here, but so much of what we're seeing today seems taken directly from Piven & Cloward's 1993 book, "Regulating the Poor."
1
The issue is not charity (a debatable issue unto itself) but rather FORCED charity. The government is deciding what charitable acts are worthy and further, how worthy.
Another article from Krugman about how Republicans are demons in the flesh sent from Hell itself to ruin our lives....yawn. These types of articles long ago became too boring to read through. The “social safety net” has bankrupted this country. Medicare and Social Security have amassed trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities. Paying for all the goodies that socialists want to hand out is often an afterthought for these economic illiterates. In fact, Bernie Sanders is usually tripped up in interviews when he’s asked about paying for his socialist uptopia. He rambles on about corporations and millionaires and billionaires without providing any salient points. TRUMP 2020.
2
Yet other first world nations are able to support a much more generous safety net for the less well off.
Growing income and wealth inequality is not improved by taking from those struggling, to give more to the 0.1%.
How can the US spend around 17% of its GDP on health, yet have worse health outcomes than other first world nations who spend roughly 11% of their GDP on health?
39
I realize you’re commenting here mostly to argue (rather than constructively debate), but you should actually read the article.
The broad statements you make aren’t really relevant to the specific points Krugman presents, and he dismantles the assumptions you argue from. I’d be interested in reading an actual rebuttal to his points. Your re-assertion of ungrounded thinking doesn’t move our shared understanding forward at all.
2
Krugman, and others, make valid points based on empirical studies (CMS) and historical analogies (Victorian Britain). You make pronouncements that are devoid of reason, they are only cant.
3
As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in the 1960s to a young Bill Moyers: “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” (Charles Blow yesterday)
27
Money is about everything and it comes with a cost and the cost is the republic. You can only put down for so long. As bystander, there seems a vast polarization where millions agree with the misogamist and millions don't. How representative is that of the real population fake news/polls aside. The crunch may come if you agree to let things really go south how many are prepared to take up arms toward a neighbour. That would be a bit of a different reality.
How in the bloody hell did such a mockery of everything decent occur and how much more will the population to take. Is apathy the common denominator in America?
9
We got too used to being entertained.
That sign is not hyperbole: Today's GOP is a cult, and it cares not a wit about children born or unborn. That fiction is all about oppressing America's truely oppressed MAJORITY: Women. -Nor do they give a damn about the poor, either here or in 'shithole countries'. That lie is just about keeping them our, or jailing as many as possible who are already here so they can't vote, thus implementing 21st century Jim Crow. Fascism isn't coming to America. It never left.
19
Getting born is the original sin they say justifies punishing you for the rest of your life.
There were a total of 45,980,595 Medicaid and CHIP recipients nationwide in 2016.
26,094,338, or 57% of them, hail from states that voted for Trump.
19,886,257, or 43% of the nationwide total, hailed from states that voted for Hillary.
Medicaid/CHIP recipients in TRUMP-voting states:
Texas 4,610,610
Florida 2,773,238
Georgia 1,580,701
Pennsylvania 1,567,184
Ohio 1,564,269
North Carolina 1,391,358
Michigan 1,285,914
Arizona 992,571
Tennessee 979,832
Louisiana 884,736
Indiana 814,929
Alabama 797,572
Oklahoma 719,185
South Carolina 714,260
Wisconsin 712,697
Missouri 680,021
Kentucky 630,464
Arkansas 533,192
Mississippi 530,617
Iowa 426,599
Kansas 362,401
Utah 311,961
West Virginia 291,734
Idaho 244,783
Nebraska 223,881
Montana 143,939
Alaska 106,306
South Dakota 98,339
North Dakota3 66,480
Wyoming 54,565
40% of Medicaid recipients are white, 25% are Hispanic, 21% are black and 14% are 'Other' (Asian or other ethnicity)
There is no one in the world that loves to vote against their own interest than America's poor, rural Bible Belters who cannot get enough punishment.
As the cruel Calvinist and Puritan Cotton Mather put it, “For those who indulge themselves in idleness, the express command of God unto us is, that we should let them starve.”
The Republican Party has taught their own voters to kill themselves through racism, disinformation, systematic self-mutilation, cognitive dissonance, abandonment and a 'God' who doesn't give a damn about them.
Nice GOPeople.
28
Permit me to note that whatever god Mather was referring to - it was not the Christian one.
Republicans love the poor. Really they do!
Having an ample supply of poor Americans holds down wages and makes for a population that is more beholden. That means more for shareholders who can be convinced to give more to the CEOs. It means a larger office here, a vacation home there. It means more gratitude from the many below for a pittance in benefits or a fifty cent raise.
The goal is to keep those below happily unhappy. To that end, nothing matches an opaque group of "others" that can be looked down upon.
The autocrat class, of course, looks down on everybody below and many of their peers. But the middle class and working poor need someone handy to blame for the challenges life hands them. The distraction deflects from following the money to the source of the problem.
So you choose the mythic "idle poor". You call them lazy, shiftless cheaters who are taking advantage of the system. Reality be damned. An enemy's been found. It keeps the wage earners occupied for awhile longer so they'll be thrilled with a raise to eleven bucks an hour and a health policy that will only force them into bankruptcy if something goes really wrong.
Keeping the middle class and working poor happy is very important. Having plenty of people struggling to just get by provides a great set of targets for their anger.
As you see, Republicans love the poor for many reasons.
That's why they're working so hard to fill the nation with them.
23
This all goes back to LBJ's succinct explanation of the reason for the existence of the belief in white superiority: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." What the Republican elite realizes but refuses to acknowledge is that its policies hurt everyone from the poorest (who are in the crosshairs of these primarily racist laws) to the middle class and even the wealthiest, though the severity of the injury inflicted dramarically lessens as the level of wealth rises. Somebody's taxes are going to pay the bills, whether it be direct and straightforward through Medicaid or by other, circuitous, routes that reach into the pockets of the well-to-do.
I say this is all of a piece with Johnson's dead-on observation because many of those poor-to-absolutely-destitute whites who rely on Medicaid are part of the backbone of Trump support and of the Republican Party even before Trump's fait accompli.. Before the two major parties traded their philosophical underpinnings where race is concerned, Dr. Krugman would be pointing at the Democrats. As the enlightenment of the Democratic party toward race brightened, the flame of freedom for all sputtered out in the GOP.
13
The GOP has always represented the rich. Lincoln was supported by the rich; he made his fortune as a lawyer for the railroads. The GOP ruled from 1860 until 1932. Except for 1901 when "that damn cowboy," TR, as JP Morgan called him, the Republicans fought labor unions, oppressed and enslaved workers and the middle class, and made laws to make the rich richer. Until Ike, it looked like the GOP would be a weak 2nd party forever. Blame Ike for selling out moral principle and allowing the GOP to re-emerge.
7
Some have used this column to expound on theory that this so-called sadism is really just tough love and enforced self-dependency. A self-dependency they feel they earned entirely on their own and thus others who don't have it must have something wrong with them.
Quoting Barry Switzer, these are the people that "are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple." Of course a lucky few were born directly on home and think they hit the game winning home run. And brag about it.
These are people that sucked all the water into their pool, tell you they are swimming just find, and that you just need to swim harder. When you remind them that they have all the water they'll just tell you its your fault. These are the people who ignore all your efforts at the end of the year and say "I'm sorry there is no raise or we can only afford 1% for you".
The rest of of know how much we owe our success to our fore bearers, our country, and all that has been built around us that enabled our success. It is astonishing the number of "self-dependent", often science denier, types that would be reduced to the Stone Age should the modern infrastructure collapse for not even having the basic knowledge of the inventions that make our life possible.
11
Decades of boot heel grinding of the destitute, the working poor, the lower middle class & now the traditional middle class (even as that group is defined as families earning between $40k to $200k -- no family at either end of that spectrum could fathom a life on the other's income) is the logical and rational outcome of unfettered capitalism, a system designed to build an ever widening base at the bottom, a Ponzi scheme perforce. The GOP has been hell-bent on this outcome since the first stirrings of the CRM, though it was already an infant under the anti-labor & Communist farcical scares. Combined with the militant revolts of the 60s, the GOP has looked with horror on many of us as "radicals" who threaten their property and control over the economic lives of us all. Their corruption of English, demagoguing the less educated and the inherently racist to stave off (futilely) the demographic and ethnic transformation of the USA. I believe those in power, who sit at the top of this pornographic pyramid -- which consciously built to effect the most heinous redistribution of wealth in American history -- intend to punish us until we resemble en mass our Mexican neighbors. Sadists? Obviously! No money says Hatch? On top of the tax cuts and corporate welfare, look at our obscene military & intelligence budgets which they cry are still "under-funded." All of us must work to overturn the HR in November. There's not a minute to waste.
12
Dr. Krugman nails it. But there are historical antecedents dating back 500 years, from the first settlement of this continent. First, there is American Calvinism and its attendant doctrine of predestination. If one is, from the beginning of time, either damned or saved, early Calvinists looked for omens. For example, if one's riches in this life are an omen of eternal salvation, the reverse is true: one's tribulations are omens of damnation.
American Calvinism fit neatly, as early as the 1860s, into the onrushing tide of Darwinism, which morphed overnight into SOCIAL Darwinism. Certain groups were obviously inferior; if the goal was improving the stock, inferior types were not to be rewarded. Bringing Calvinism back into the mix, both God and heredity were punishing non-whites and such "inferior" whites as Appalachians.
The obvious psychological effect was/is that it's just fine to punish the already punished.
To my knowledge, there is no other advanced nation that punishes its poor and disabled. Such a practice would be ludicrous in Europe, for example, because its tiny factions of militant, fanatical Calvinists emigrated here, and where social policy, over time, tended toward mitigation of Darwinism.
I wish there was more historical light shone of these antecedents of ultra-conservative social policy, which at best we regard as bizarre and immoral, but which lurks so immensely in our national consciousness that we can't even see it.
16
Apparently in our nation if you're on the wrong side of the prosperity gospel your hell starts while you're still above ground.
15
A large part of this is because many Republican voters don't think the poor deserve these benefits. The people a little higher up on the economic ladder are more than happy to vote for people who will kick those beneath them in the teeth. They all have a story (a neighbor, cousin, brother-in-law. etc.) who is lazy, worthless, on disability but not really disabled, can't get their life together, you name it. And they feel completely justified in punishing "those people."
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -Lyndon B. Johnson.
10
There is a place for everyone to kick down as long as they kiss up in the Republican pecking order.
I wish someone would do an article in response to Shithole countries comment and why we do not get more people from Norway. He forgets Norway is basically a socialist country. It has various saftynets, like heathcare for all. Why would they want to come to the US? Only if they have something mavelous to offer us and make a bundle of money.
15
The Republicans face a big dilemma is the coming years as more domestic jobs are increasingly lost to automation: How to continue to use their Puritanical "moral failings" argument to vilify and scapegoat members of the citizenry who can't find those diminishing low skill jobs.
8
Let me answer that very honestly - you are now in my actual professional "area" -- the end of mass labor is at hand, so is the end of the law of scarcity. With emerging robotics, new computer technology and particularly with nanotechnology - there really is, within 40 years at most, and probably within 25, no visible source of non-elite jobs. Trucks will drive themselves, loaded and unloaded by robots. Construction will be accomplished by the use of 3D printing and other similar technologies - and to some degree the use of AI and robots. AI will take over base keypunch and related jobs. In very serious point of fact - the projection that we will retain 30% of the number of jobs we have now is realistic as a best case scenario. SO, either we restructure the political economy, or we don't - and that is true globally. One of the major Chinese employers just recently replaced a hundred thousand jobs with robots, overnight - and we don't have GAI (General Artificial Intelligence) yet. The Right KNOWS this is coming, it is the Left that believes band aid strategies and waiting for Schumpeter's Gale to kick in will work - they are wrong. The Right however knows its coming, and they have a clear understanding of what money is really about - its about power. They don't REALLY care about money except as a way of counting coup - they care about power. The convo needs to be held while it still can be.
4
Accurate analysis.
A guaranteed minimum income (call it any “ism”) and better education are the necessary remedy.
Yes, the C-level views people as a continuing expense. But robots are an investment they can depreciate and have a much better ROI.
Krugman says re: Medicaid
"accepting expansion should have been a no-brainer for every state"
That is an over simplification. In a big way. The universe of health care providers that accept Medicaid is not growing. Increase the number of Medicaid participants at the same time that the number of available doctors and facilities is shrinking and you are triggering major problems with regards to access to care. This is happening out there right now as people wait longer and longer for treatment. If the patient switched from private insurance they may have more money in their pocket. But it is not a positive outcome with regards to health and that's what this is supposed to be about. Krugman chooses to ignore this inconvenient fact. In doing so he is being very dishonest with the readers of this column.
1
And that is why European single-payer systems don’t work. Oh, wait....
1
OK, OK, a significant percentage of R voters these days actually do want to impose cruelty on others to no purpose other than for its own sake. But not every one. It's so tacky of Dr. Krugman to bring it up. I still don't understand why it's necessary for the D Party to actually fight with the R Party in order to keep power from such people. It's so stressful. It involves risk. Certainly D Party leadership doesn't want that. Can't we just work together and get along with the R's like leadership wants us to?
1
What? I sincerely hope you are joking. TACKY? You know what is tacky sir, letting a child starve, or die from a curable illness or.... RISK????????? Really? What? Of course we must struggle to protect the weak - that is basic premise of being on the Left, and I am PROUD to be on the Left.
1
The issue is as old as the Book of Genesis. "Am I my brother's keeper?" Gen. 4:9. If we say no, are we any better than Cain? I understand the legitimate concerns of fraud and waste in the healthcare environment, but one would think that providing healthcare for more people would be seen overall as an investment, rather than a liability. Healthier people are more productive. What is so difficult about this to understand?
8
Well put! Do you find it ironic that the party with a large, vocal and demanding group of evangelical Christians is the party that demonstrates the least charity when legislating for those who are most physically and economically vulnerable?
The number one thing Republicans stand for is Privatize the Profits and Socialize the Losses. They feel that way about everything, from government to private business.
11
They say they can provide better services for profit than the government can on a non-profit basis. That bridge has been sold a million times.
1
I'm happy for people who try (or consider themselves to be trying) to live with a creed of goodness: kind, giving, generous, contributory to the community. But, at some point they, and we, have to look at what, and who, such people are sending out into the world to represent them. If they're sending cruelty, corruption, extremism, greed— embodied by this latter-day Hatch, (Lee, too, is eager to act as trump's little helper)— then that is who and what those people really are. That is what they are behind the masks. I'm forced to consider their self-concept is self-delusion and in the end, the much-vaunted creed of goodness is merely window dressing.
5
The corporatist policies favoring the Republican uber-rich and their followers are strangely cruel. They're often gratuitously cruel providing no real benefit to themselves.
Their policies take away more than they should from those who do not have much and give more of what they do not need to those that already have far too much.
You'd think that they'd be worried about a gathering storm of votes, if not triggering a French Revolution.
But they are not worried. They mock us like they're daring us to do something.
That too is strange.
We should be concerned that they have something planned, something bad, because only those completely secure in their power will first hurt, then mock.
It's like they have confidence that they can rig our votes or decertify or cancel elections. They are acting like their authoritarian project is complete.
9
I think they realize time (demographics) is running out and they want to nail down as much of their agenda as possible before they are out of favor. And maybe, if they do things correctly, they may be able to bump democracy to the side of the road and end up with a feudal oligarchy.
Not long ago, a commenter here expressed what I believe summarizes the selfish ideology of the GOP: "Why should I have to pay for someone else's healthcare?"
Whatever your ideology, isn't the primary responsibility of government to work to provide the best possible lifetime outcome for all of its citizens? So how is it that many less wealthy democracies, most of them in Europe and Scandinavia, can afford to provide national health care, paid family leave, free education through college, some form of Social Security and more services to their citizens?
Conservatives reject social programs like these on ideological grounds. Nevertheless, these countries' citizens enjoy a high standard of living and express their general satisfaction with their lives and opportunities. A UN study found Norway the 'best place to live', followed by Australia, Switzerland, Denmark, Netherlands, etc.
Why don't we study these countries, and adopt similar national programs?
11
We don't, because clearly, those in power do not want to. They are more concerned with enriching themselves and being re-elected to seats they've held for 10, 15, sometimes 30 years.
We do some people who are desperately willing and waiting for the chance to repair our healthcare system. Hoever, with the Reps in power, and gerrymandering leaving them with too much control even if the Dems take over, I fear we will not have a fully functioning and AFFORDABLE healthcare system for....... a very long time.
1
Republicans want a system where the only people eligible to receive Medicaid assistance would be those who are well enough to hold a job. In practice this would mean that Medicaid would be available only for minor medical problems.
What do Republicans propose that we as a society do for people and families whose lives and finances are destroyed by major medical problems?
I would really like to hear the Republican answer to this question.
7
Lets be honest, there is a large segment of the population - many who are pride full in their "christianity" who only care about humans from conception to birth. After that we are on our own. I refuse to believe that anyone living in poverty would not gratefully take a job that pays a living wage and would enable them live a good life.
7
At last, Mr. Krugman, you realize that the object of the Republican policies is to inflict pain. But why? It seems to me that people in pain and struggling to survive have no time for political activism.
3
Yes. Maslow hierarchy of needs
Our parents fought WW2 and paid for it, built an interstate highway system and created Medicare. Billionaires paid taxes for the privilege of living in a country that created and protected their wealth.
The idea of a "general welfare" to include education, healthcare, poverty programs was in their DNA.
Why has my generation become a generation of takers and looters? We don't put anything back.
We now heap college debt, no jobs and no healthcare on our children
We are now destroying our environment.
I am a Vietnam Veteran with 27 years of military service and a Ph.D. I am so ashamed of the unbridled greed of my generation.
11
Thank you Mr. Krugman for stating explicitly what the problem is: The rich want to hurt us. Neither you nor any of us believe in the argument from authority, that Krugman of the Times has said it, so it must be so. You marshal evidence, you generate argument, and these we can use. It is the drive, attitude and power of the likes of the Kochs, Adelmans and Mercers that is the problem.
I want this remark to be short, and so state without proof that an equal problem is the complete lack of self-respect in the Senators, Representatives and other politicians who serve our oligarchs. They have allowed themselves to become completely dependent on their patrons, and now these lords of politics must do exactly as they are told, however cruel to others or humiliating to themselves. Look at the Senate Judiciary Committee's referral of Christopher Steele, and look at what happened to Bannon when he fell out of favor.
Longer and longer, but I still need to ask, “Why do they do it?” Not a natural question to ask a fact-based journalist. Do the oligarchs seek earldoms? Does Lindsay Graham wish to be remembered as a good and faithful servant, the Samuel Pepys of the Second Restoration?
And one last gasp: Can they be stopped before we the commoners are reduced to serfdom for thousands of years?
It's agonizing.
4
I disagree with Krugman about the GOP's motive. It's not about the cruelty; it's about creating dependence on the wealthy few for everybody else. GOP donors are instructing their cat's paws, the GOP, to remove the social safety net in order to create a de facto serf class so that the .0001 percenters can become modern day aristocrats.
It's not an accident either that so much of the tax burden in the newly passed Republican tax bill was geared towards the middle class in wealthier blue states, where roughly 64% of the country's GDP comes from. By draining the resources of the middle class and forcing it into relative poverty, the top earners can increase their choke hold on the rest of the country both economically and politically.
5
I never thought the Republican party was cruel until recently. In the Obama years they tried to head him off at the pass over and over. In this past year, their behavior has earned them a label of cruel. I wonder if they yearn for the "good old days" frontier living?
3
Dr. Krugman has perceived the Republican Party's ideology and behavior correctly--an unlike most others, he's willing to call that behavior by its right name. Thank you, Dr. Krugman. I am sorry I graduated from Princeton without having the opportunity to take your class.
4
Let’s not pretend this is a new phenomenon.
As an architect in the 1980s, I was designing subsidized housing that I tried mightily to make attractive and dignified, within a very tight budget. The designs were rejected as “too nice” by Reagan administration officials who told me “these people have to suffer for their subsidies.”
There seems to be a strange assumption that by making poverty even more painful, we can magically make people become prosperous. This nonsense can only be concocted by people who have never experienced the misfortune of being born into poverty, denied a decent education, and then slapped in the face as a punishment for needing help with health care, housing and food.
11
What we have not made clear is what happens without Medicaid. Chronic conditions left untreated bring people to expensive emergency care, hospital admissions and perhaps premature death. From the human point if view - yes, suffering. From the financial perspective, use of emergency room visits and inpatient stays are far more costly to us all in Emergency Medicaid and programs that pay for “charity care”; not my word but an official one. Our premiums and taxes go to pay for such reimbursement.
Such care only raises costs. It is commonly accepted that rip-offs in the Medicaid system exists. But those are a small minority compared to the overwhelming majority for which Medicaid is truly a lifeline and the insurance of last resort. That makes us all suffer. Get real and get the facts, Washington!
1
It is similar to the Republican arguments about “voter fraud”. Let’s make sure that everyone from these disenfranchised populations are guilty until proven innocent
Senator Orrin Hatch did not completed his sentence. So lets do it for him. He said: "(T)he reason CHIP'S having trouble is that we don't have money anymore." Now lets complete the sentence for him: "And the reason we don't have money anymore is because of all the tax cuts we gave to the 1% and the corporations."
7
True, and a single F-35 costs $94.6 million before operating costs.
Given the fact that many of those affected voted for Trump and Co., it is a case of sadism nicely matched by masochism. Sadly, and unfortunately, neither are new.
2
The republicans just represent the rich and most of them do mean to drive everyone else into the ground. They want the government to protect them from the masses. They don’t believe in democracy and think the masses should not be able to vote. They want things the way they were before FDR when they controlled everything. The Mercers, Kochs, Singers and others are only interested in their fortunes and resent having to share any of it. They are the ones running the country and probably much of the world.
Read Nancy MacLean’s book Democracy in Chains to understand what is happening.
3
As the days go by, and as the beginning of year two of this Republican presidency approaches, the only real consolation is first the midterms may destroy this un-American cabal strangling our nation, and second, 2020 may see the rise of what we once were, which was a caring empathetic nation, ready, willing, and able to help when called upon.
Meanwhile it is the responsibility of every genuine American, and by genuine I mean, cognizant, considerate, possessing common sense, aware of the need for social responsibility, and willing to exercise such, and equally important, the need to speak loudly and often when obvious wrong is being perpetrated and promulgated by this thing, this wholly corporate heartless monster currently posing as our government.
There is still time to make this one resolution, so make it, and remember we are part of an interconnected world, working together for the future of all mankind, and indeed our planet itself.
Do not let corporate out-of-control greed destroy our future.
4
There is NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD REPUBLICAN IN POWER! We need to see to it we get rid of as many of them as we can as soon as we can.
We also have work to do on Democrats. Most of them aren't very good either, as they answer to the same wealthy elitists. But even the worst Democrat is better than the hypothetical best Republican.
4
In the Book of Genesis, after Kane killed his brother, God knew what had just happened, but He asked Kane where his brother was. Kane, in FULL SNARK, snipped "What? Am I my brother's keeper?" This important lesson teaches us that we are expected to be our brother's keeper. We are supposed to look out for each other and help each other and thrive as a group of people. People who are poor are so appreciative of help, as they struggle to climb out of poverty. Congress needs to fund the CHIP program. These kids suffer enough as it is. Lets not deny them medical care.
110
We're not "supposed" to let innocent people suffer. But isn't it funny how it is the truly innocent, like the children, who suffer and the wicked who do not? And so it has been since the beginning of time.
Professor of History & Judaic Studies at UC San Diego William H. C. Propp reminded us in his lecture on the genealogy in Genesis that we are all descended from Cain, the murderer, and must try to overcome that. He also says that in Cain being the first farmer, he was the first person to have to work hard. (Abel was the first herder, not so much effort.) Maybe Cain was resentful...
I agree with what you say, but his name was "Cain" and not "Kane".
Mr. Krugman, I'm a bit lost. Republicans say they represent businesses and industries. Yet they are upending one of largest growing industries: medicine. The ACA is more a funding mechanism than it was a healthcare reform bill and Trump's Party is defunding it after billions of private and public monies have been committed. All around this country I see investments in healthcare building new hospitals, urgent care centers and new investment device, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and the Republicans have injected bad faith in one of our largest business sectors. As an economist - what's your take on the possible consequences? What is business without good faith. Sentiment floats of currency and stability is vital to our national bond ratings. What say you sir?
6
While I am in agreement with Professor Krugman I can’t help but play the devil’s advocate. Federal dollars are still, albeit indirectly, those of the taxpayers. One might argue that a fair reason for rejecting these policies comes down to a decision of how to spend US taxpayer money.
Of course the counter argument is that, as in the European Union, there are states that are net contributors and net recipients. It would be interesting to look at the number of states having rejected ACA subsidies that are net recipients of federal dollars.
I would not be surprised if the number of net recipients ends up being a majority of those states. Strictly by self-interest and “economics” one would be expect adherence to the ACA. Finding the opposite would only serve to prove the professor’s point.
Not that facts matter...
3
Peter, where do you think money comes from in the first place? Can you create it? Do you have a printing press? In order for money to get in the economy, the FED must create it. It can create as much as we need. But the FED cannot get it to people and businesses. It can only get it to banks or the federal government. So taxpayers get the money from the federal government to pay taxes. The purpose of taxes is to make sure there is not too much money in the private sector since that would cause excessive inflation.
Just remember that all money comes first from the federal government.
4
Yes dollars are dollars. And the dollars not sent to states to expand Medicaid/ Medicare ACA and CHIP was just doled out to the 1% and their corporations via the Trump Republican party's new tax breaks.
1
And President Trump wonders why people from Norway don’t want to move to the United States?
211
Those who repeat, "Socialism has failed in every country where it has been tried," are unable to explain why Scandinavians are not fleeing across the Atlantic Ocean in makeshift boats to enjoy the freedom of minimum wage jobs in the United States with no benefits.
3
People in France don't want to move to the US either !!!
2
Republicans always seem to have simple, straightforward solutions to problems: How to beat the high cost of food? Simple...eat less! How to deal with unaffordable health care? Easy...die faster! Having trouble fighting addiction? No problem...just OD on an opioid! See how simple that was ?
25
Tarring a bloc of people as evil - in this case Repuhlican legislators - right off the bat cues my suspicions. On the other hand, history has many examples of vicious outcomes from group dynamics. I hate to think it's happening in my country's legislature, but...
4
It's happening, Robert....don't be so naive and innocent.
12
It's been happening at least since Newt.
By their deeds you shall know them.
Our country has become full of people who are just plain mean. The banality of evil.
20
they've been mean all along. we've just let the Republicans normalize it so it is more acceptable and less unbelievable in the context of our high opinion of ourselves.
The GOP loves to point out cheaters. For every finger they point to others in hopes of labeling them as cheaters there are three fingers pointing back. Cheaters punish others not because others are guilty but because if you can frame others with the picture of guilt it enables cheating to be profitable. Now we have the game plan of the Gop and there soon to be fall guy. Cheating the Truth brings profitability to Lying and allows punishment of the Innocent.
10
"Making lower-income Americans worse off has become a goal in itself for the modern G.O.P."
It would be more precise to say, "Making lower-income AFRICAN-Americans worse off has become a goal in itself for the modern G.O.P."
9
In the UK's Daily Mail there was a comment posted BTL which encapsulates one aspect of this phenomenon.
"I am sorry for the disabled but I do not want to give them any of my money. I want my money spent on things that benefit me."
Thing is - coverage by federal funds rather than by state funds is still "taxpayer's money." And a lot of people do not want to spend "their money" on healthcare for the poor. Or food for the poor. Or justice for the poor.
I see many explanations for this including rapacious capitalism, sadism and the desperation of the "deplorables".
I do not wish to deny any of these factors, but behind them all lies American beliefs about poverty - and how those attitudes have changed. Oprah was cheered to the rafters the other day for saying that hope and hard work would enable you to "be whatever you want to be" in America. This is the positive spin. The negative one is the Republican cry that being poor is your own fault and that no one needs to be poor and no one needs any help in their poverty - just a boot on the rear to get out of it.
But even the Oprah version implies that poverty is a choice. Not an inheritance. Not a misfortune. Not a hostile act. A choice.
From a UK which you would call socialist (though we would not) seems like both a delusion and an excuse for exploitation, selfishness and cruelty
23
And meanwhile AI and automation are munching up any job that can be reduced to an algorithm
That is a lot of jobs
What will we do with the people who no longer are able to get onto the rapidly dwindling job pool?
And please stop painting with such a broad brush. We are no monolithic.
We could easily say that all of the UK are backwards Nationalists who voted to exit the EU. But we know that all of you did not vote that way. Please offer us the same courtesy. Delusions indeed.
It is probably more on the order that 'Nits make Lice". Republican leaders know that the poor, minorities and women tend to vote Democratic. They do everything to keep them so poor they can't vote, or so poor they can't get registered and photographed to vote. In addition, there is the widely held belief that people deserve what they get even if that means getting born into a poor family or disabled.
12
It all makes sense from the Republican point of view: If you're poor, it's because you're unworthy. If you're unworthy, you don't deserve benefits. If you don't deserve benefits, you'll just have to remain poor and unworthy. Cruel? No. Just logical.
9
From the WaPo article: Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire backer of Bannon and Trump, chooses sides (1/5/17)
"Robert Mercer is a former IBM computer scientist who made billions later in life by applying complex programming techniques to financial trading as the co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, Bloomberg reported. Quiet and socially awkward — he once told a friend he preferred the company of cats to people, according to the Wall Street Journal — Mercer has an extreme views on small government and wealth.
“Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make,” a colleague told the New Yorker. “If someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.”
These are the kind of people who courtesy of CU have been allowed to purchase our government.
Explains it all.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/01/05/rebekah-me...
25
Wealth is capitalism's scorecard. Any other measure is simply subjective and easily manipulated or influenced. It is a record of how the market values you. If that value is insufficient to allow you to afford healthcare or a home or children or education or food or even a vacation or a car, then you shan't have them. The same freedom that allows Mercer to be worth billions or Apple to have the largest market cap will also allow catastrophic failure and living in a refrigerator box under an overpass.
Yep, that is capitalism and why I would heartily prefer social democracy.
1
Because the complexities of life values can be reduced to a single dimension
What is the value of a neighborhood volunteer, or a fireman, or a social worker? They can touch and drastically improve many lives. This calculus has nothing to do with the complexity of life.
Based on this philosophy, one can make the claim that two otherwise identical individuals (background, education, experience) have different values if one is hired and the other is not.
Clearly Mr Mercer disagrees with the proposition that “all men are created equal” as th son of a rich man has higher value than that if a poor one.
And this means that Mr Mercer does not believe in the American ideal.
1
You're correct about Republican sadism But it didn't start recently. We've known about it at least since the great depression.
12
The 1956 Republican Party platform ( http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25838 ) included this passage:
'Our great President Dwight D. Eisenhower has counseled us further: "In all those things which deal with people, be liberal, be human. In all those things which deal with people's money, or their economy, or their form of government, be conservative."'
I guess that attitude was lost when they opened their doors to the neo-Confederate racists who had previously befouled the Democratic Party.
10
Republicans, many old and white, have been force-fed the Christian narrative about self-reliance since they were toddlers (hard to believe they were ever toddlers). It has leached into their politics until they started believing it was truth, reinforced by phony prophets (for profits) and toads like Grover Norquist. What kind of religion believes in such cruelty?
5
All of them. That is the whole point. To be cruel to the other.
1
The Puritans did. I grew up in the independent Congregationalist Church, now mostly absorbed by the UCC so they don’t have to think about what it was. When I was a kid, we were taught that when a majority of the Puritans decided being run by cruel, hateful men wasn’t right, they left. Becoming Congregationalists (one of a group who felt the members of a church should have control, not the hierarchy with all the wealth & power. We were raised to believe that the Puritans were wrong. But, it still too well over 100 years to get rid of just most of their ‘Puritan’ laws. Which kept the rich, rich & the poor, poor. As well as controlling civil life (Christmas was illegal in MA well into the 1800’s). No entertainment, no playing, no sports, no shops open, no buying or selling, except newspapers. They were called the blue laws. Some still around, but, mostly ignored. They hurt the poorer people more, those who worked 6 days a week, couldn’t shop for even basics on Sunday. All those ‘no’s’ were about Sunday. There are still religions based on Puritanism. Evangelicals are. The hierarchy rules, the peasants, oops sorry. The members do as told. With many of the same ‘no’s’ that MA is getting rid of. Dress, act, think, do as you are told. You will be wealthy if you do it perfectly (lie), mess up in one thing, you will be poor & despised. Welcome to the U S of Puritanism. Punishment is all there is. Joy is sacreligious.
2
I’m not sure that self-reliance is a Christian narrative. The Catholic Church was designed to separate the people from god with a clergy as intermediary. Most teachings in the Bible look more like socialism than capitalism. Help the poor. It is harder for a rich man to enter heaven... the Good Samaritan. The list goes on and on
The GOP has decided the easiest way to bring back slavery is to make lower income people so desperate that they have no choice.
12
You just noticed? I have suspected for a long time that the resistance to raising a minimum wage was done to maintain cheap labor, and illegal immigration also plays a role.
Hence the inability of the "conservatives" to make the serious changes needed to reduce illegal immigration, like better employment regulation and criminalization of employers of illegals. Send a few CEO's to jail and see how fast they will fix the problem.
3
The republicans would rather send the employee to jail for violating the law.
every republican policy is about punishing someone.
10
Right wing Republicans congratulate themselves on being the ones who make hard choices. They believe they're doing disadvantaged people a favor by not giving them "handouts." By and large these are privileged Republicans whose frame of reference doesn't include the many reasons others are not just like them. I've seen it all my life (63) here in the Midwest.
10
I think you might be missing the point. It isn't that they want to inflict pain, its that they don't want these programs to exist AT ALL. They are trying to create a country which is run entirely on the backs of the poor and the middle class. The donor class, which is more and more about investment income and not labor income, does not want to contribute to the maintenance of our society, in any way. In order to do this, you have to kill off any expectation that the government should collect sufficient taxes to do anything other than the most rudimentary services. In order to do that, you have to destroy people's expectations that the government will provide for individuals when individuals cannot provide for themselves.
12
It's simple. Reagan wanted taxes to go down. To do that, the government needed to be smaller. But, not defense or law enforcement. So it had to be benefits. Food stamps, welfare, and psychiatric hospitals. To persuade others to go along, he and his allies invented a meme: that helping people was actually enabling them to stay weak. That helping people actually hurts them. That people on welfare were lazy bums exploiting all the rest of us taxpayers. Now his party preaches that it is kind to be cruel. For a tiny minority people receiving assistance, this may well be true. But, for most people, helping them is, in fact, helping them; it is not enabling. It's just that Republican leadership, their egos indoctrinated by the fictional worldview of Ayn Rand, are too lazy and too emotionally stunted now to figure out that most people who need help actually need help.
15
I haven't read Atlas Shrugged for along time, but I don't remember any characters in wheelchairs.
And they refuse to remember that Ayn Rand was so right that (he, she, it) committed suicide, because being on the lower side was tough.
As I (and others) have written before, the Republican mindset, even if its proponents can't quite articulate it, stems from a very Puritan/Calvinist worldview, and the Social Darwinism that flows from it.
Calvinism, you may recall, was an austere offshoot of the Protestant Reformation that opined that one is judged worthy of Heaven--one is a member of the Elect--through evidence of God's smiling providence here on earth. In effect, if one is successful here on earth, if one is prosperous and materially blessed, then obviously one has been favored by God. And if one is not prosperous/materially blessed, one is obviously NOT favored by God. The logical extension of that is the poor do not deserve charity or compassion, as they are not worthy of heaven anyway. If they were, they'd be rich, or so the circular thinking goes.
It's not hard to see how this leads to the mentality among our "Elect" of
"if you're so smart, why aren't you rich"; "if you're not rich, it's your own fault---you're lazy/stupid/inferior, and why should I give up anything of mine for you", etc. And it's really easy to characterize those of a particular race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, nationality, etc., as unworthy, and deprive them of charity or resources, as they are not deserving of them.
So, this "cruelty" is precisely the point--Republican Calvinists do not want to suffer the poor to live. The faster they die, the more will be there for the deserving oligarchs.
13
After the poor die (hunger, disease, inborn illhealth & disability) who will do all the dirty work the filthy rich Puritan believing won’t, can’t, don’t even want to think about, it’s too nasty? Those are the poors’ jobs now. I doubt the Middle Class will willingly leave their jobs to do these dirty nasty ones. If they are, who will do their jobs, not the rich. Work is for peons. So, they will fight each other, making the losers poor. And the round robin goes on. It’s happening all over the world. Maybe it’s a psychosis this planet is encouraging to get rid of us all, as we pollute just by our presence. Interesting thought. Farmer ants or cockroaches, who will be the new masters of the world when we are nothing but fertilizer?
precisely right...
... but in the meantime, the Republicans need to keep enough of the lower orders around to scrub their toilets and grow their food and take care of their ancient, failing bodies.
thanks to automation, even these few will become totally superfluous pretty soon. the, everyone will live in Mar-a-Lago and dine on caviar, as God intended, with nary a wretch in sight.
1
I wonder what Mercer and Calvinists think of Mother Theresa?
Notice that the Republicans and the right refuse to stigmatize recipients of government aid when they're farmers. Farmers depend more on illegal aliens than any other industry. Yet they face no cutoff in their farm welfare entitlements, no limitations, regardless of how many illegal aliens they hire.
Or, for that matter, how much they make. Income limitations are limited in the farm welfare entitlement system. Farmers have all sorts of tax welfare subsidies. They have special bankruptcy protections. Unlike working Americans, farmers can "cram down" their mortgages in bankruptcy.
Now, of course, the skin pigmentation of farmers has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all!
Too much rain? More farm welfare entitlements!
Too little rain? More farm welfare entitlements!
Too hot? More farm welfare entitlements!
Too cold? More farm welfare entitlements!
Prices too high? More farm welfare entitlements!
Prices too low? More farm welfare entitlements!
Too many illegal aliens working for Elmer Fudd? More farm welfare entitlements!
Not enough illegal aliens working for Elmer Fudd? More farm welfare entitlements!
Taxes too high? More farm tax welfare entitlements!
17
True. But, remember this: No farm entitlements? Bread will cost $10 a 1/2 pound loaf. Meat will be only for the wealthy. Good healthy quality veggies will be so high that again they will only be for the wealthy. Could be the beginning of Solent Green. Shouldn’t waste the biggest ‘crop’ in the country. Dead poor people. Fewer family farms each year. More BigAgra farms every year. They are the ones demanding the entitlements. Go to your local farm (in season), check out what they have they have grown (not the green grapes from Chili just after Christmas). Prices are reasonable, quality is good, even in areas that have been farmed without stop for 300 years (which is nothing in Europe). But, pull the farm subsidies for one year & those farms, most of them, won’t exist. WE will be totally dependent on BigAgra, red slime in hamburg, low quality veggies, massive use of artificial pesticides, herbicides. No nutritional value, no taste, texture, or anything worth eating. Forget dairy & eggs. Massive amounts of antibiotics will continue to make us sick. Any family farms left will be small & their products, by law, will only be for the wealthy. A farm family will go along with it to keep from having to make do with what the rest of us will have to. Including the Upper Middle Class. Oh Illegal farm workers? Without them, the amount of farm product will take a nose dive. Cause the former farm workers, citizens who left to work in factories, now unemployed, will not go back to the farm.
Quentin Tarantino's World War II-period dystopia fantasy is an accurate projection of the nature of today's GOP. They should be marked on the forehead with the same sort of symbol of hate and authoritarianism, as they are genocidal on an even larger scale.
4
Republicans want to weaken the social safety net for one reason only. The have been bribed.
8
They took the bribes. Personal responsibility, the Republican mantra.
"It's about cruelty." That is precisely why trump and the Republicans are made for each other. They believe in the American dream for themselves and their 1% patrons and the American Nightmare for the rest of us. They love to dangle the Mega Ball carrot of obscene wealth - with the same astronomical odds - in our faces to keep us all going and productive to sustain their wealth.
"It's about cruelty" is as crystal clear as the fact trump is a racist.
Now that the Republicans have stolen money out of CHIP and the rest of taxpayers to give to themselves, look at all the Republicans retiring to enjoy their loot! Tax cut for the rich is not a Free Market, it's just Free Money for nothing.
I am not impressed with the crumbs Walmart and others are 'so generously giving' to the employees that make their wealth possible. Does it even cover the cost of losing CHIP or a brief stay in a hospital?
Amazing that business interests allow the Republicans to lower productivity by promoting a sick, unhealthy and dependent work force.
The racist party requiring sick, unhealthy, disabled, seniors and children to work for Medicaid smacks of slave drivers of old to me.
13
The entire doctrine of the Republican party has boiled down to:
1. Reward the rich for being rich
2. Punish the poor for being poor
12
The plan: One way bus tickets to 'bleeding heart' States.
3
Prosperity Politics. If you aren't Rich, you don't deserve anything. Right, GOP??? Remember in November.
7
Truth! Thanks Paul, so few have the stuff to say it straight:GOP=cruelty.
5
The GOP is the death panel.
The party of the repeated lie.
Deplorable.
They only serve the rich and corporations.
8
“Democrats want to strengthen the social safety net”, if this is true Professor perhaps you could explain to the huddled masses why the great, the good, the much advertised liberal of America’s companies in Silicon Valley( the worlds sixth largest economy) are on a crusade to insure their are no jobs left for anyone but as Thomas Friedman puts it “ the best and the brightest” and they do everything possible to insure they pay no taxes to support these worthy issues of which you speak. The new publisher doesn’t seem to allow conflicting opinions so I doubt thus will see print either as none of my recent comments have, but it would be enlightening Paul if you could dedicate a column to answering this question, how do you support the liberal agenda of unrestricted immigration and the other issues near and dear to the liberals in Silicon Valley and at the same time destroy the job base by manufacturing your products in Asia, insuring maximum profit to shareholders and mind boggling wealth to executives, hide the wealth abroad to avoid taxes and always work on the next thing that will destroy more jobs for those among us who are not the “ best and the brightest”. Seriously Paul explain how any of this equates, it’s wonderful to talk about liberal policies, it’s quite another to pay for them. Trump is proposing slapping the Chinese with tariffs which is being fought in S.V., that is the only thing that might help restore American manufacturing, yet opposed by liberals, what gives?
1
Social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, improving the breed, contempt by the elite for the ne'er do wells, eugenics, masters and servants, superiors and inferiors, the lower classes, the little match girl, the exquisite trembling of inferior flesh, Lochner v. New York, the poor house, debtors prison, "please sir, may I have some more?" the Irish potato famine, Make Dickensian London Great Again, Ayn Rand. Rand Paul. Paul Ryan. Appalling.
"We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the*best citizens* for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough." —O.W. Holmes, JSC, Buck v. Bell, 1927.
Five generations of Republican Ugly is evidently not enough. I would be inclined to say this ends badly. But on days like today it sometimes seems it never ends at all.
4
"The answer, surely, is that it isn’t about saving money, it’s about stigmatizing those who receive government aid, forcing them to jump through hoops to prove their needines".
This is true as one who was forced to apply for unemployment benefits a while back can attest. A humiliating, demoralizing experience.
6
Remember in November. VOTE.
9
My God!
It is their fear that someone, somewhere, might not be as mean-spirited, envious, covetous and miserable as they are.
Misery loves company and loves inflicting misery on others.
It never ends.
Foul, foul human beings.
4
Krugman’s clinching vocabulary:
“minimal cost”
“very small”
“initially pay”
“trivial”
Now think about this: both, improper Medicaid payments, and also CHIP payments have routinely been above 9% annual. In addition to $billions fraud, unnecessary tests, enrichment of doctors and pharmas, that also means that expansion has *already*, without any help from the law.
I have two suggestions for Krugman. First, ask Nikki Haley. To quote her when she was governor, “Medicaid is that broken system – there is too much waste, too much fraud, and too little focus on prevention and personal responsibility,”.
Second, read “Nudge” by fellow Economist and Nobel, Richard Thaler. Then call him, and thank him profusely for shedding light. Optionally, NYT-pick this post. You’re welcome.
1
Haley is wrong: Medicare and Medicaid are not broken systems. There is not too much fraud and waste.
The underlying problem is entrenched Big Medicine, which has fraud and waste built-in as Features to enrich itself - that is, MDs, Hospitals, Med Schools, Medical Journals, Medical Research, and their leader Big Pharma, not to mention their investors and lobbyists.
Insurance/Medicaid/Medicare/ACA is just the financing arm of Big Medicine, somewhat like the accounting department of a corporation and not directly involved in the scam.
Haley was absolutely correct in saying there is too little focus on prevention and personal responsibility. Everyone should be doing with Dr. Google.
1
And the ironic part about your comment is that you fail to notice that those who fleece the public programs are respected because they are rich and therefore deserving of MORE!
The Republican party only reason for existence at this point is to move as much money and power to the already rich and powerful. If the poor, children and middle class get hurt by doing so Republicans believe its their fault for being poor or its Gods will. The Cruelty of these policies is just a bonus payoff for Republicans...
6
Hating the poor is the distraction to allow the wealthy to rob the country blind, as a matter of fact everything is a distraction to allow the wealthy to rob the country blind.
7
GOP to USA: We want to compete with China, so you need to work for Chinese salaries. Don't get sick, old or poor and all will be OK. Trust us! Anyone who does not believe the previous 2 sentences needs to get ready to vote in Nov. 2018. Then it will be: USA to GOP: Go away!
8
The party that evangelicals claim as their own is consistently the one that Jesus would want to remove first should he ever want to come back to earth.
10
stolen quote
civilization began when the first femur healed
so civilization ends when we do not help people heal
5
This is nonsense.
Punishing the poor is a bipartisan effort and part of American society.
What else is the American Dream about? If you work hard, the propagandized myth goes, you will make it and become rich. If not, you are a lazy bum that deserves no help, nothing, because it's your fault, not the fault of a rigged, unfair system.
It was Bill Clinton and his sidekick Hillary that pushed through the kind of welfare reform that Republicans had dreamed of but couldn't pass themselves.
And both parties recently decided that increasing the already bloated and ruinous military budget was more important than providing money for CHIP.
Democrats provide lip service, pretending to care.
Republicans don't even pretend any more.
Hard to tell which is worse.
3
Chris, it's not hard to tell. The Republicans are far worse. Glad to help!
Republican social policy 101; demonize poor people for being poor. Make it political: they are a Democratic constituency and so Republicans have every right to treat them like the opposition. Force them to wait for hours in emergency rooms for medical care. Its better to have the hospitals pay for their ER travails and poor medical care.
6
Mr. Krugman, the GOP hasn't cared about the 99% ever, in my opinion, and tax cuts the Congressional GOP gave to their wealthy corporate owners was infinitely more important than working on a government budget for the next year or funding program that help those in need. This is yet another piece of meat to throw the "base" (and are they "base" or what?) in a sad attempt to help them with the upcoming mid-terms. Here comes the 2018 Blue Wave, ready or not.
9
Let's hope. Vote together--no "purist" third party nonsense!!!!
1
Paul, Completely agree with your thoughts here. But, I am going for a practical financial sense reasoning for states to accept Medicaid expansions. The money for the Medicaid expansion comes from tax dollars. Residents of all states pay federal taxes. Well, the tax dollars paid by the residents of the states not accepting Medicaid go to states that do accept Medicaid expansion. Uninsured people put off health care or use the hospitals’ emergency rooms, where they cannot be turned away due to inability to pay for their care. This expensive hospital-based care isn’t free, Folks. We all pay for it through higher hospital costs and higher insurance premiums. We all pay anyway. Every state legislator and governor knows that we all pay for care for uninsured patients. Which brings me back to your thoughts here that there is more than just money at work.
5
Right now they are targeting children and the disabled. Next it will be the elderly when they go after Social Security and Medicare to pay for this "tax cut" that will ultimately turn out to be anything but. I was reluctant for many years to believe what Mr, Krugman states here, but unfortunately the truth of it has become undeniable. One thing this administration has accomplished is to push the real GOP agenda out into the open for all to see.
17
It's part of the GOP's unwillingness to accept facts and replace them with an alternative reality. Remember the reason given for cutting unemployment benefits was to encourage the unemployed to get out there and find a job. The alternative reality implied is that there's no such thing as involuntary unemployment. If workers are unemployed it's a moral failing on their part. Or take the so-called skills shortage. That is also an alternative fact that has no basis in reality but which convenently blames workers if employers are unwilling to offer suffienclty higher pay to attract and relocate workers who have the skills they require. And it also forgets that employers used to hire less than ideal candidates and train them on the job but now they are expected to come in off the street with all the skills employers require on day one.
And one possible explanation for the hostility to Medicaid is that it is not popular among providers precisely because it pays them less than private insurance. In other words, instead of cruelty it's about plutocracy. Remember that the GOP under W. Bush passed the prescription drug coverage expansion of Medicare which explicitly prohibited the government from lowering costs by negotiating lower prices. In other words, as long as a government program to help the needy is structured as a profit center for a favored industry it can pass a GOP Congress and become the law of the land.
10
Well, I just listened to the Lieutenant Governor of Kansas on NPR say that the reason for wanting a work requirement was to increase health. He claimed that being employed brings health benefits, so this is just a concern that "able-bodied" people should not have Medicaid unless they get work. Then presumably, it would be okay to allow them to have Medicaid? It seems kind of incoherent, but on the surface it looks like he endorses a nanny-state of sorts: it's really for these peoples' own good.
6
So even without the ACA, they'll be healthy as long as they work? Ask the people who have to work with dangerous machines and chemicals,with no union to protect them, and if the Republicans have their way, no OSHA to protect them either.
Clearly the United States is NOT a Christian country.
245
One can hope you are wrong, and that this outrageous state of affairs will awaken us to what is being done in our name.
I believe goodness may yet win the day.
I second that !!!
We have too many hypocrites that go to the church every Sunday holding the bible in their hands pretending they are Christians following Christ's teachings all the while more than eager to let their neighbors suffer. Hm... that sounds like the Republican politicians we have in Congress.
2
I believe it is about time for a healthy dose of Democratic Socialism. Conservative Capitalism is destroying the Republic.
22
Rather than saying Republicans are cruel I'd like to say Republicans lack empathy.
If I want to change somebody's mind I won't be succesful if I offend them first and then propose to help them. So calling the Republicans cruel won't help getting the Republicans support poor children.
I don't know what the best way is to teach people empathy but I'm sure it would help if the stories of CHIP children were told. The Times has a an opportunity here.
7
On a related note, congratulations Wal-Mart employees, thanks to the Republican/Trump tax plan, you just got trickled on with a hot $2 hourly wage increase!
Unless you happen to be an employee of the 63 Wal-Mart stores they decided to shutter at the same time! Or you are one of the 13 million who will lose health care due to the bill and fall into bankruptcy after an ER visit for a hangnail!
14
Mr. Krugman, please feel free to document how much you give to children's charities anytime you want to spend other people's money.
Better yet. Mr. McLaughlin,
How much do you give to charity and which charities?
1
You first. Do you actually give money to any organizations to help your fellow man?
1
It couldn't be posited better. Thank you.
5
Never underestimate the GOP's penchant for cruelty.
10
the GOP holds us all in the highest contempt. Remember that next election.
9
Medicare for all regularly pops out out as the solution to our nation's stunted performance when compared to other more advanced social democracies of Western Europe. Republicon insistence on transferring wealth to the already wealthy and undermining the voting process, key to a well functioning democracy, pops out as treasonous.
16
Thank you, Mr. Krugman for always saying what is on your mind. We can't see into people's minds, but your theory is logical. Cruelty is at the heart of racism, the need to feel superior and powerful.
9
Folks, there's nothing hard to understand here. Being a Republican millionaire (or temporarily liquidity-inconvenienced thousandaire) feels good when we see big tax breaks announced. We cheer them.
But, in the end, in order to feel really good about our place in this society, it's utterly necessary that we have the gleeful opportunity to see "lesser" citizens writhe in agony. It not only only feels terrific, it validates our adherence to the GOP Code: Be on the lookout for (insert ethnic, religious or political group here) that may be trying to be more successful than you. You have to keep them down, even if it hurts you, too.
9
This is nothing new, sadly. There have always been those who imagine that people chose to be poor, or chose to be forced to rely on public assistance.
Social scientists call this mentality dividing the "deserving and undeserving" poor.
Many places used to make people break rocks to prove they really were willing to work, or dig holes, then dig new holes to get the dirt needed to fill the hole they had just dug.
If they could, Republicans would do exactly that.
They already waste millions on drug testing people so desperate they need food assistance. It is a shocker that people too poor to buy food do not have the money to buy drugs.
It is all 100% meant to humiliate anyone who needs a hand up.
The irony of those who claim to be Christian Republicans is they will deny food to the hungry, healing to the sick, shelter to the displaced, and clothing to the cold.
Must have missed that scripture in Sunday School.
20
Let’s call a spade a spade. The Republican Party is full of extraordinarily nasty, selfish people. The ugliness has festered for 100 years and has metastasized in the last 40. Those who are of good heart and belief that are nation should be the beacon of hope for the downtrodden and oppressed, isn’t it finally time we excised them?
16
"Let them die," is the unstated message of the Republican campaign financiers to the Republicans whose campaigns they finance, often secretly, like the message itself. Call it what it is: mass murder. Reagan started it when he was governor of California.
13
For an economist, Krugman is using some pretty funny math here. "The federal government would initially pay the full cost, and even in the long run it would pay 90 percent ..." Last time I checked, the government did not possess a magic money tree. We all pay for this. Or this one - "In fact, a 10-year extension of CHIP funding would save the government $6 billion." Presto ! Magic ! All Krugman is talking about is moving costs from one government program to another.
Working to provide for yourself and your family is part of the fabric of American life. Krugman talks about "stigmatizing those who receive government aid". On that point, I agree. But he forgets that not very long ago, being "on the dole" was not something to be proud of. Shame isn't enjoyable - but it's a natural part of human conditioning.
Liberals often justify welfare by "being your brother's keeper" or acting as Jesus would. But those references miss the point. When you receive help from your brother (or other family member), there's a sense of gratitude ... and a desire to get back on your own feet as soon as possible. Getting assistance from your church is similar. There's a natural feeling of community.
But that interconnection is missing when a faceless government sends you a check. Government has supplanted family and church as social institutions. There is no sense of gratitude or shame. Instead, there is only entitlement. And we are worse for it.
1
so, your solution to the problem of uninsured masses is to have churches and family pay for their health insurance and care so the poor will feel shame and get properly chastised for accepting a hand-out. what if the costs exceed the ability of those sources? what western society has succeeded under this scenario in the last 50 years? universal healthcare is working in western Europe and Canada. let's look at their successes for our solutions before applying the "shame and charity" response.
1
“She gets mad when the mailman is late with her welfare check. That's how dependent she is. What's worse is that now her kids feel entitled to the check, too. They have no motiva-tion for doing better or getting out of that situation."
This was Justice Clarence Thomas condemning welfare by describing his sister. What he failed to note in his condemnation was that she had stopped working to take care of their mother who’d suffered a debilitating stroke while Thomas was making his reputation at EEOC harassing Anita Hill.
When Dr. Krugman talks about Republican “sadism,” nothing makes it clearer than Thomas’ as he stepped up to take Marshall’s seat on the Supreme Court almost 30 years ago.
The Republican war against suffering people is deep and long and it can’t be blamed all on Trump
14
Thomas doesn't deserve to remove the chamber pot from Marshall's bedroom. No brains and no curiosity.
1
Yes, why didn't Thomas interrupt his career to help his disabled mother? Why didn't he at least spend some of his nice salary to hire help so that his sister would not be impoverished for helping a parent?
Republicans are such hypocrites.
1
Isn't this also an extension of the "starve the beast" Reagan-era legacy, whereby our GOP friends first reduce revenue through tax cuts, then plead for sympathy for not being able to take care of the social safety net because it will add to the bad old deficit?
Rather like the morbid old joke of the youth who kills his parents, then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan.
10
At least I'm not the only one now calling the GOP the Cruelty Party. Will Republicans finally, finally be happy when 100 million Americans are begging on the streets and dying in the gutters? Inquiring minds want to know.
7
The Republicans are bought and sold by the corporations. They want to force people onto expensive insurance policies to increase insurance company profits.
You'd think the rich would get tired of bleeding the poor. Will the rich ever have enough? I guess not until they get it all.
12
And these people enjoy excellent health care on our dime...
7
So why do the people who are hurt the most vote for these people? Please tell me?
6
I just want to emphasize the concluding paragraph of Karen Garcia's excellent comment:
"The upshot is that the Trump administration wants vulnerable people to die quicker, and to suffer a lot before they do."
9
Well the Congress can't fund everything. After all, first things first. They needed to subsidize the wealthy and the Corporations first. Which added over a Trillion dollars in deficits to the Treasury. What is a Congress to do? They can't fund everything. As Orin Hatch said "we don't have money anymore". That is because he gave it away to the wealthy with the new Tax Reform bill. His priorities and that of the Republican Party are at the very least skewed. It is hard to believe that Hatch grew up poor, as he has stated. If the were so, don't you think he would want to help those very people. There is nothing fun about being poor.
Go after children, the disabled, the elderly and the poor or low-income citizens. It was the only answer.
It did not take a lot of critical thinking on the part of Congress to do this. Just greed and stupidity. I bet if we had the personal financial reports on most of the Congress' members wealth we would see where their loyalties really lie. To themselves and their donors.
Furthermore the cruelty does not just lie with the members of the Republican Congress, but also with the Republican Governors who refused to adopt Medicaid Federal funds to expand Medicaid in their States. Cruel is to kind a word to describe these people. It is sadism of the highest order.
7
Those people in America, (and other places also), who express and employ dog- eat-dog greedy selfish destructive predatory behavior, by means of which the destructive predator gets more money and wealth than he or she needs, and also passes it on to its heirs who have not had to work for the money and wealth they have; these destructive predatory people and their heirs take pride in their riches and power, riches and power that they use to denigrate and otherwise deprive others of what other people need to be healthy and live healthy social and economic lives. Then the predators look at those who are suffering and call them inferior, as these predators continue to deprive and imprison the people they are causing to suffer. These predators caused the Great Recession, and they could not and can not stand the policies that where necessary to save the effectiveness of the American economy from them. Now, the predators are back in power; and they once again will take destroy the economy and will take peoples' lives.
8
Obviously 'There but for the Grace of God' is not a phrase Republicans take kindly to - why acknowledge that our own situation may have an enormous amount of luck involved if it makes us feel undeserving. The psychology of the smug privileged is always distasteful.
7
Paul we shouldn't even be having this conversation --- a long time ago, we should have all been benefiting, as other countries, from a Medicare-for-all type system. Shut them all down. If they can demand a wall, we can demand Medicare-for-all. I'm tired of Chuck Grassley's world, where one pats himself on the back for his high-on-the-hog estate living, while 57% of his fellow Americans have less than $1000 in their savings account.
5
It seems to me that every act, every move the republicans make is against the betterment of our society. Why would they be against a consumer protection agency? Clean air and water? Children's health? School lunch programs? The list goes on and on and we as a nation continue to elect these charlatans.
6
I think Krugman was very careful to call the Republican policies cruel and sadistic, which they are.
The question people then ask themselves is what do the policies say about the politicians who enact them.
2
Trump's ruling style can be described as malevolent incompetence.
The Republican party is malevolently greedy.
They do at least make a malevolent combination, to the detriment of the entire planet.
5
The context of quoting Orrin Hatch is a little misleading about the particular problem that plagues the Senator from Utah. The irony here is that Orrin in tandem with his dear friend Ted Kennedy and supported by then First Lady Hillary sponsored CHIP, the same Orrin who also gave full throated support for the last tax reduction. I bet he isn't even aware that he produced the undermining of CHIP.
Thus while Orrin Hatch might in this case not be accused of cruel animus towards the CHIP recipients, his political priorities produce the very cruel consequences that he in general ─ but not in this case ─ is consciously aiming at.
2
I don't necessarily think that Republican foot-dragging on CHIP and the Medicaid expansion is about cruelty. It's about the ideology--the belief that big government is bad and expensive, and when big government aids those who in their fevered brains don't deserve any help, big government is wrong--even immoral. This is about a moral judgement on the poor and disadvantaged, whom the GOP view as lazy slackers who won't work and help themselves. The GOP would probably spin this judgmental attitude as tough love, limited government, socialism, etc. But in the end, I guess, "cruelty" works, too.
4
Could be that the driving force toward cruelty is not “Republican sadism”. More probably it is slavish fealty to the Mercers, Koch bros, etc without regard for consequences beyond getting re-elected.
We might inquire about the mind set of these bonkers billionaires. It seems related to the view that if you’re rich you deserve it. And if you aren’t rich, it’s because of a moral failing. The threshold for becoming virtuous is increasing - once if was a million or two. Not any more!
5
Republicans find a crack in the Dems policies like medicaid and use a crowbar to tear it apart. So don't have cracks. Medicaid should be 100% provided by the Feds. If we did that all states would have it today and the country would be stronger. Work requirement, no way it will pass in the senate. Building a bureaucracy for programs to limit them is just wrong. Rs think it's their money, it isn't, it comes from the workers, certainly not the rich. Take them out of the equation. We Dems are our own worst enemies.
3
A thought experiment: Close your eyes and try to conjure up an image of a poor person. Got that image clearly in mind? Good. Now, is the person you thought of white or some other ethnicity. I’m willing to bet that the stereotypical poor person you thought of is black. And if that’s so, isn’t it crystal clear what these policies are really all about, particularly when those policies are coming from a party whose leader glorifies white nationalism and denigrates people whose roots aren’t in Northern Europe?
3
The Republic Party strategy since the passage of the landmark civil rights legislation has been to identify government programs that help low income and disadvantaged individuals as helping undeserving non white people to the detriment of the hard working and exploited white tax payer. The characters may have changed, but the playbook describing the usual blocking and tackling for right wing candidates has always been the same. Trump and his S. Millerist, neofascist supporters are just cruder, louder, and feeling like they have power and so use it. That is why all civic minded voters must throw the current Republican Congess out of office in the upcoming elections. May the gods have mercy on us.
5
Trump’s desire for immigrants from Norway seems much less to do with Norway being a stable country with a high level of satisfaction with their government than to have people
from wealthy white countries immigrate here rather than from poor black countries.
2
No gain (for the rich) without pain (for the poor).
2
Republicans have an existential dilemma, one where anything can be done by human will, individual will. Anything that shows otherwise, like their growing potbelly, or someone else getting their promotion, or someone who takes help, andy kind of help-- that mars their ideal picture of how the world works.
They hate the poor because it shows there are human limits.
2
Are you Democrats finished begging for compromise from Republicans yet? By acting as if the Republicans have a serious world view that deserves entertaining in serious policy discussions, you have legitimized these attacks on the People and the Constitution. Meanwhile the Republicans view compromise as evil and a sign of weakness. Democrats like Obama lead not with their ideal vision, but with the desired compromise, discrediting themselves to the American worker who wants to vote for a party that fights for them, and Republicans respond by moving the goal posts.
They claim they want to help people that help themselves, but they are killing CHIP.
CHIP is for the children of parents who make too much to get Medicaid, but can't afford insurance. These are people with jobs, but Republicans want to take their insurance away. A trillion dollars for tax cuts for the rich is no problem, but $12 billion for children of working parents would break the budget.
It is time for every American to pick a side. Are you with the global billionaires, who threaten to leave America every time we ask them to give a little back, and their base full of white supremacist suckers who think that the billionaires care about them because they are white? Or are you with the left activists, who fight for economic, social and environmental justice. Centrist Democrats who keep talking you into supporting Republican policies made Trump possible.
Right is the past. Left is the future. Choose.
2
I'm a married white woman in her 50s with a master's degree and while I've voted for Democratic candidates, I used to consider myself pretty middle-of-the-road, but the more I see of the Republicans and their deeds, the further I move to the left. It drove me nuts when President Obama kept trying to compromise with the Republicans. They were NEVER going to be bi-partisan. What I wish he'd done was allow the whole lying, war-mongering Bush administration to be dragged into court over the Iraq war as they should have been. If that had been done, we never would have Trump now.
1
There's a lot of discussion about restoring the CHIP program, that's a no-brainer, I'm all for that.
I don't hear enough discussion about the unacceptable fact that the working parents of these kids can't afford health insurance for either themselves or their kids... They do not qualify for Medicaid (not poor enough), and even subsidized ACA plans are too expensive.
In a developed nation, this is a disgrace.
Americans have become blind to
2
When I lived for a time in a rich, almost exclusively white suburb, many of the country club Republican moms I interacted with at school and sports functions talked absolutely endlessly about Jesus. Their kids all went to Bible study on a regular basis. When I ferried those kids to practices and games, I frequently heard conversations where they displayed contempt for minorities and what they considered the lazy, nonworking poor. I saw the same in their Facebook posts when Barack Obama won the presidency. They showed no awareness of their lucky circumstances, or the systemic racism which infects this country, and felt that poor people deserved their plight. I was truly disgusted that this is what they were taught in their homes, by people I liked, but it was certainly a revealing window on Republican ideology.
8
Orrin Hatch's legacy will be one of a partisan hack who cared only for himself and his party. To say that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore." while handing out tax breaks to his own is ludicrous. He belongs in the waste basket of history as do most of Trump's water boys. For shame GOP. Will remember this in November...
4
The “vast right wing conspiracy” is creating a society ripe for revolution. We, the people, won’t lie down. We have a proven track record of fighting for justice. These devils will pay for their unspeakable cruelty.
5
Thank you, Dr. Krugman, for putting the truth right out there. The Republicans are sadists.
4
I think it's Old Testament retribution for what-is it a sin to be poor? To be disadvantaged? Is it punishment for the wrong skin color? Speaking with an accent? It's sick. Our "quaint" old Puritan ethics have become virulent Stage IV cancer. Whether it's fatal is still open for discussion.
3
Readers may be forgiven for thinking Professor Krugman cannot possibly be right, but sadly, he is. Republicans do not govern Americans, they judge them. And they do so with a healthy dose of Austro-German economics know as austerity for you, and none for me. Why would they do this? Well, it pays off in the end, quite literally. If you can convince folks the crop returns are dismal because the 98% did something bad, it follows (perversely) that you must now suffer to regain balance. This is a basis for many organized religions that practice "Forgiveness Theology" and who also embrace a belief that God showers the good with money - being rich is QED you are highest in His eyes.
It is, of course, bunk, but this tenant of austerity runs at a DNA level and frankly Americans do not like freeloaders or the concept of them (getting welfare and driving a Cadillac). It has worked so well on certain voters that lack the self-confidence to unshoulder this stupidity and go forward with confidence and duty (and yes, love).
What's the plan then? Vote. Register to vote, and then vote. It is the last act of resistance when the country is occupied at all levels of government by these types of people and the bootlickers and synchophants who support them (looking at you, Paul Ryan!). And if you cannot be troubled to vote, at least do so to pass that privilege on to the next generation, please.
5
Thank you Mr. Krugman for telling the truth about the Republican Party. This was a depressing but truthful column.
For years I have read, in the Times and elsewhere, about how much Republicans care about deficits, how they are concerned by "big government's" intrusions in our lives, about how they are the "party of ideas," about how many reasonable and deeply moral people vote Republican, about the importance of having two vibrant political parties in a democracy.
All of this idealizing of the Republican Party has been nonsense since Nixon's Southern strategy and Reagan's supply-side fantasies, since the GOP's decision to welcome bigots into the party and to govern only on behalf of the wealthy.
Who speaks for the Republican Party today? Donald Trump. Is he an aberration, an extreme example of Republican callousness and bigotry? Of course. But can anyone imagine Trump winning office as a Democrat? When a Klansman like David Duke dons the (false) respectability of electoral politics, does anyone doubt which of our two parties he will feel akin to? Is there a Rush Limbaugh of the liberal class, a Sean Hannity? Who do the hate-mongers--the neo-Nazis and White Nationalists vote for? And finally, when will the Republican leadership disavow the cruelty and violence done in the name of the so-called policies it holds dear?
3
Having added hugely to the deficit with their tax giveaway to the rich, Republicans have one again become deficit hawks screaming for cuts in the social safety net. Hypocrisy thy name is GOP.
3
@Richard: No need to respond to your further comments about who bears the ultimate responsibility for keeping our children healthy; others who've posted here have already done so at least as well as I could. So here's one more question: if The Donald's policy proposals were unchanged but his s*hole remarks were made about your own ancestors' place of birth would you continue to support him?
3
I have thought for a long time that there is a streak of sadism a mile wide in most of what the Republican party does. It seems embedded in their DNA.
I’d like to think that eventually, life experiences show them the error of their ways, as Lee Atwater found out near his death...but that is a rotten time to come to that understanding.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Try it, for a change.
160
I see it less as sadism than a kind of societal autism, an unawareness of the reality of "others". And they're prone to judging those others without in any sense "walking in their shoes".
1
Matthew 26:35... Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.
1
Exactly right. Now add the new tax law effects on charity giving. Charities are pushing to get people to give before the law takes affect because of their fear that the law will throttle their sources of funds to do all the work they will need to do. After all, what is often overlooked are the not infrequent comments by Republicans that Charities can fill in for what the government no longer does or will provide. Cutting the monetary pipeline to Charities along with cuts in the government safety net will cause the poor --- a lot more pain. What are they expecting, that our poor citizens will self-deport, or maybe kill themselves? Cruelty, along with hatred, thy name is Republican. Wait until the economy tanks and alot of Trumps whiny base finds themselves in the poor group. The "Fire Next Time" perhaps?
1
Many Trump voters believe that the "takers" are abusing their tax money. They see themselves as hard working and barely making it, while those "others" do nothing but live off the government. Whether the claim is true or not matters little. Belief always Trumps fact in American politics.
The Republican party has found that playing to resentment and racism is a winning proposition. The fog of anger obscures policies which hurt the working person and benefit the donors.
1
While I agree with the facts that Dr. Krugman presents and with his policy recommendations, rather than cruelty, I think for many on the right it is a false sense of independence, along with a very poor understanding of the real situation.
Many on the right really do believe that individuals stand on their own, like a lone John Wayne silhouetted on the hill. Requiring assistance represents failure and, for those who follow the remnants of the Protestant Work Ethic, this is a sign of God's disfavor. My Republican friends and relations who are most adamant against welfare and medicaid are usually the ones who have themselves been on welfare or medicaid, but seem to have repressed that memory.
Moreover, these people tend to have a very poor understanding of statistics. The image of the Welfare Queen or generations relying on welfare is very visceral and over rides the fact that the vast majority of people transition through government assistance. Those numbers, after all, don't provide a gut reaction that feels real.
As for the Republican politicians, it is hard to tell how much they understand. Certainly since Reagan, they have fed the misconceptions of their base, but that also means that there is now a generation of politicians who have grown up immersed in their myth of rugged individualism. So it is hard to tell which ones really are cynical and cruel.
1
One could try to rationalize it as a belief that punishment is motivating. If it doesn't work at first, punish some more. And, again, some more, some more, some more, until the problem goes away. But that is so evidently inefficacious that any reasoning gets lost in the process and one is left only with the manifest desire to punish and the animus against problem people, just wishing them gone. So, yes, without going all psychological, one must conclude "Inflicting pain is the point" and understand why racism and xenophobia, and all species of hate, find such a ready home among such people.
So true Mr Krugman , when I used the word cruelty two years ago during a family dinner describing the Republican Party platform, my whole family thought that I became radical ,18 months later I read in the Ny Times that they are actually Cruel ,the Paul Ryan and Rand Paul 19th century dark age Europe philosophy agenda is starting to take form , good thing that election season is approaching , meanwhile a lot of damage is created every single day , that will take decades to rectify.
2
Krugman is absolutely correct.
There is only one way to correct the situation: vote in the next election.
So many low income people do not vote and by doing so they put themselves at the mercy of republican politicians who have little or no mercy.
There is also a significant amount of the population that needs the help the federal government is providing, yet they are voting for the republicans. These people need to educate themselves and vote democratic. Plain and simple.
1
Once again the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot by trying not to develop a Medicare for all system. The bottom line is that our emergency rooms, already full, will be filled with people who can't pay. The costs of serving these people are passed on to the rest of the public by rising health care costs, i.e., exorbitant charges for medication, services, etc. that are now and will continue to be seen on all hospital bills. Our taxes share in the coverage of the non-covered. Just because we can't see these hidden charges doesn't mean they don't happen.
Then our insurance costs go up - remember the fear mongers who claimed that the ACA would cause prices to rise? The prices were rising and will continue to as long as the insurance companies set the prices.
Add to this the enormous cost of the voluminous paperwork involved.
Is it any wonder that health care costs in the U.S. are double that of all the other industrial nations? Wake up America.
1
"But that story can’t explain states’ continuing resistance to the idea of providing health coverage to thousands of their own citizens at minimal cost."
Let's take it a step further and put the onus on the Democrats. The politicians doing this have gone through multiple election cycles doing this. Why does the electorate vote to be flayed by these politicians? Understand that. Get that message through to the electorate. And win some elections. Something is missing on the Democratic side here.
Unfortunately what is missing is a) fair elections (Gerrymandering and voter surpression comes to mind) and b) the will of the Democrats to "fight" as dirty as the Republicans...
GOP cruelty towards the working poor is a reflection of their ideology. They really do believe that the free market is the perfect system and those that fall through the cracks are simply lazy and losers, and any facts to the contrary are simply ignored.
Here is another example: The GOP's opposition to extending long-term unemployment compensation during the end of the recession. With national unemployment above 6%, with some states' rates much higher, they successfully argued that long-term unemployment insurance made people lazy and was a motivation to not find jobs. (While at the same time, the GOP accused Obama and the Democrats of not doing enough to create jobs, clearly at odds with their statement about laziness).
It is a well-known fact that unemployment insurance is the most effective program to stimulate the economy because almost all the benefits will be spent by recipients and therefore plowed back into the economy, stimulating business. In addition, the program also prevents foreclosures and the related problem of depressing home prices in the surrounding communities, including for people who haven't lost their jobs. Cruelty is the only explanation I can think of for GOP members of Congress to deny long-term UI to people who need it during a recession.
1
This law is a fine example of an effort to turn the middle class against the poor. As the middle class becomes more engaged in their suspicion and hatred of "the poor" they also fail to see they are becoming poor themselves. This is about status, and Republicans want those of us who are "OK" (i.e. moral, upstanding job-holders with "good" jobs) to buy-in to their lie that the reason poor people are poor is because they don't have jobs, are lazy, and refuse to participate fully in society. Krugman rightly points out that in fact, the poor work hard and participate fully in society. They work as much as the middle class - if not more, considering how much effort it takes to be poor - and their malady is only in taking lower paying jobs. The more lower paying jobs there are, the more "poor" there will be. Think you can sidestep these problems by earning a college degree? You'll be in massive amounts of debt the day you step off the college campus and into the workforce, and spend the next decade digging yourself out. As the oligarchs grab the wealth, those of us clinging to "good paying" jobs will become rarer, eventually joining the ranks of people on Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, Disability, and/or Unemployment. It's just that no one (none of the "good" middle class folks) think it's gonna happen to them.
1
It does not matter how one sees Republican policy and the actual reasons for their actions. All I can say is that it does not make any sense to me. I just do not understand how any society can have 100% of the people in it "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and be fully functional like everyone else. That does not make sense. That is not realistic.
All families struggle in their own ways; especially with health issues. It doesn't make one group superior or less superior just because they have enough money or not enough to take care of themselves 100% of the time. Life is much more complex than that.
A society rich in resources and monetary wealth should be willing to take care of its people. If it is not willing to do that then the entire society fails. This is not about being nice or mean or greedy or any of that; it is about a society surviving in the best way for the most people as possible. If we don't help take care of those in need we will not be living in the best possible situation we can create for ourselves as a society.
It's not about cruelty. The right is just tired of the ever expanding size of government. I know someone is dying to say something about the military but that actually is the primary job of the federal government. And the simple truth is that the large majority of federal expenditures is money taken from some people and given to other people.
Sounds like you are living somewhere in the outdoors without public roads, police, a fire department, hospitals, schools, etc. etc. If you ever use any of those you are relying on the government as well - its not only about the military!
I hope you will never be in a situation where you need help as you might not be able to get it in the future...
1
Senator Orrin Hatch stated that "the reason CHIP's having trouble is that we don't have money anymore". Wow, there have been plenty a money to pass a huge tax "cut" to the 1% and Corporations by a 15% gain to them, There was plenty a money to assure that the military received another huge increase.
There were also great savings, the decision to underfund Obamacare, destroy all the pesky regulations so businesses can increase their bottom lines. There will be savings to Medicaid, so these freeloaders can work. There have been cuts to Education and many more if not all Departments. So there is really plenty of money, but let's not forget that children do not vote.
I am cognizant that the Republicans would like all citizens to be self-sustaining and successful. But the reality is that some people are not very lucky in life and many are hindered by chaotic families, lack of a good education, healthcare, and housing. Add to this mixture, people make bad decisions. Trump is a perfect example of this concept but in reverse, his advantage luck, family, education, healthcare, and housing has made a nominal individual a "successful" Republican role model.
What have we become as a Nation? We are self-centered white, male, bigots. Trump could be our poster boy.
Reducing welfare and government programs is simple.
It just is not easy.
Reduce poverty, get people educated and working and paying taxes.
We fund schools by local taxes so the poorest communities get less when they need more.
Republicans say they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps but when they have children, they move to the best school district they can afford.
And too many Republicans I know would rather pay for prison than pay for preschool.
A year in prison is at least $30,000 as much as a year of college at a state university. Except it often isn't for four years but five or ten or fifteen or in and out for a life time.
And we have the highest incarceration rate in the world - by a lot.
People don't realize that all the money going to prisons is one of the reason state university tuition is going up. States have less and less money to subsidize state universities.
If you don't want to reduce poverty because it is morally the right thing to do, then help because it is in your own economic long term self-interest. Get people educated and working and paying taxes instead of paying for Medicaid and Welfare and Prison.
1
The GOP is the party of the elites. The world is divided by
which side of the tracks you live on, and if you live on the wrong side you deserve to be there and you're on your own. But the number of people on the "wrong" side is growing, hopefully they will rise up and vote. i'm waiting for an American Spring with the next election.
The real answer to why the conservatives want to cut or destroy government programs for the poor is to pay for the huge tax cuts for the rich and famous.
We may all think the GOP programs are cruel. But how far does that get us in persuading any Republican to oppose those programs? Is it their own belief that they are cruel? Do they WANT to be cruel? I think we can much more effectively discuss these matters without such moralistic ad hominem name calling.
Two politicians from the state I'm increasingly ashamed to call home exemplify the Republican view of low-income people who receive public benefits. Scott Walker believes food stamp recipients, 60 percent of whom are children, need to be drug-tested, because apparently anyone who can't afford food is a drug addict who needs to be in treatment. And Paul Ryan has always condemned any form of welfare for the supposedly destructive effect it has on poor people's motivation and sense of self-worth, saying it turns them into hammock-swinging loafers. Strangely, the largess he showers on rich people via the tax code encourages precisely the opposite behavior, turning THEM into dynamic job-creators. And of course both men have spent their entire careers on the public payroll. Just sayin'.
2
Maybe the GOP end game is to lessen the cost of all the safety net programs by letting the sick and elderly die earlier than they would otherwise and to let children be malnourished which also will shorten their lives. The lack of real action against opioid addiction does the same. They don't really seem to care when the poor get killed in crime-ridden neighborhoods. As long as a dollar goes to them rather to the programs that fight against those things. The less people living longer on the safety net programs, the more money to be shifted to the wealthy.
Where is Jonathan Swift when we need him?
1
When has math ever mattered to Republicans? Not in my lifetime. Beginning with Reaganomics at least, Republics have been completely detached from basic arithmetic. Look at Paul Ryan's tax policy for starters. Plugging numbers is his game. He doesn't even try to sound smart about it anymore. You'd think Republicans lawmakers would at least have the courtesy to try faking their policy absurdities. The G.O.P. is just plain lazy these days. We should probably cut off their health insurance.
1
We the People of the United States have to decide what our values are. Healthcare is a universal human right according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Will we insist that our government secure this right?
There are people who live in Trump country USA who camp out overnight to get in line to get healthcare when the traveling medical service comes to the area. This is a disgrace in a country that likes to think of itself as "exceptional".
The United States is US. We get the government we deserve.
1
all tax paying people should should enjoy similar benefits,lower and low middle class tax payers are always neglected hence the divide and social infighting.
Of course it is about sadism, it is a sadism based on the rantings of people like Ayn Rand and the old Victorian notion that being poor was a disease, that the poor were poor because they were lazy and indolent, and was what led to in Victorian England the brutal workhouses and debtor prison. The GOP sees the social safety net, not as a last line of defense against the US looking like Mumbai or other third world countries in terms of how the poor live,but rather as some mythical gravy train where, to quote St. Reagan, welfare mothers drive Cadillacs to get their welfare checks. They totally leave out, for example, that a large majority of people on Medicaid are the working poor, because why bother with facts when myth is better?
What makes it worse is the GOP does support a gravy train for the lazy, the tax breaks for investment income supports the rich trust fund kids like Paris Hilton who do absolutely nothing, and more importantly the GOP has made it so that the next time big financial firms or companies go bust, the government will bail the company and its executives out and make sure no one goes to jail (hey, Trump land, how come Trump hasn't gone after any of those behind the 2008 bust? And why is the GOP removing laws that would allow proscuting financial shenanigans?).
What is really sickening is the religious leaders. Where are the Catholic Bishops, all so ready to punish politicians over abortion and gay rights? Where are the holy roller evangelicals?
1
How many Republicans complain about the government subsidies and take their tax deductions for mortgage interest and children - government subsidized housing and child care.
It is a cruel triage of sorts. No point in empowering the powerless who are powerless for a reason and would squander any power bestowed on them. They are marginalized and insular communities that few outside those boundaries know or care to know. Further it just makes the powerful angry. All good reasons to maintain a posture of "benign neglect". If they cease to exist they and everyone else is better off.
I believe one of our great modern philosophers once opined: "Haters gonna hate."
Trump and the GOP remind me of an uncle on my father's side of the family. He came across as very nice man. He was very bright, accomplished, and unlike Trump, successful. But he had a mean streak a mile wide and at least 10 miles deep. This over six foot tall man stomped on my foot when I was 8 years old. He weighed at least 200 pounds at the time. He smiled as he ground his foot into mine. Being a small child I didn't understand what I'd done to deserve it.
Years later, when my father was recovering from a serious illness this same uncle called and accused my mother of trying to kill my father, her husband. He proceeded to tell her that he hated her and the children. Not one word of sympathy escaped his lips. No offer of help, nothing.
Trump reminds me of my uncle. So does the GOP. They do whatever they want based upon whatever "principles" they say matter to them and don't care or see the disaster they leave in their wake.
4
With respect to Paul Krugman, I believe the reluctance of Republicans to do right thing and extend health insurance is essentially about politics. The donor class that controls the party is determined at all costs to prevent government from being a viable part of any solution, because if that idea takes hold where would it end?
12
I believe Trump enjoys toying with the fate of the Dreamers because it feeds his sadism. This morning he describes the “shithole” immigration meeting as “a big setback for DACA”.
5
It surprises me that it has taken three decades of Republican neo-Victorianism masquerading as public policy for people to come to the realization that the rightwing attitude about everyone who isn't financially stable, white, and patriarchal is that they should work at appalling wages until they drop dead of exhaustion and lack of care. "Dark Satanic mills" anyone?
I heard someone refer to Trump as a "self-made billionaire" the other day and it stunned me: Trump, and many of the Republicans in Congress whose wealth far outweighs their sense of honor or morality inherited their money. They didn't earn it. Inherited wealth can be used for good, but more often these days it is used to abuse everyone else.
Just a reminder: Bill Gates is a true self-made billionaire. And what has he devoted his life to doing? Making sure that the underserved are educated, get adequate healthcare, reasonable housing, and the dignity they deserve.
This group of carrion-eaters in Congress and the White House really are deplorable.
576
Bill Gates' father was a multi-millionaire who benefitted from the GI Bill after serving the country, and Bill's mom is the person who introduced him to IBM to whom he sold his operating system. IBM wasn't aware the money would be in the software and not the machines. So while I begrudge him no part of his phenomenal success, he started out at the top and benefitted from parental connections that come with being at the top.
4
Reagan's "Welfare Queen in her New Cadillac" meme has never been forgotten; it is renewed with each generation and is the central tenet of Republicans' approach to the social safety net. Nearly every conservative I speak with portrays recipients of government aid as lazy and/or morally deficient - and there is a frequent, typically unacknowledged, racial overtone. Either "those people" are having children out of wedlock or they are too lazy to get a job or they are "on drugs" or whatever. When I point out that the largest recipients of public assistance are white Republicans, their eyes glaze over.
The key is to alter this public consciousness. As long as Americans see the wealthy as intelligent, virtuous and hard working and the poor as stupid, immoral and lazy, there will always be an undercurrent of disdain for any public assistance programs. When the goal is to eradicate perceived deficiencies in character, a righteous indignation takes over to the extent that logic & compassion go out the window.
Republican Jesus indeed.
Unfortunately, educating conservative Americans in this day & age does not appear to be a reasonable goal.
29
Well stated.
Wasn't it Nancy Pelosi who said she would support drug testing requirements in a food stamp bill if they were extended to all recipients of federal agricultural subsidies? What bothers me most about the Republicans in Congress is that they seek to impose restrictions only on the poor and most vulnerable members of our society. In contrast, they argue that the giant tax cuts in the recent tax bill are justified because the cuts will generate widespread investment by corporations and wealthy individuals in the economy. Yet they do not require the recipients of these to actually make these investments. Professor Krugman is right: Republicans in Congress these days are not just indifferent to the reality of how many Americans live. They are downright cruel.
1
I agree.
Blacks are only 14% of the population so they will never be a majority of those on welfare or in prison, etc.
The real problem for most social ills is poverty. White poor have similar drug, crime, welfare, high school drop out rates as black poor.
Growing up in urban north, I didn't see this rural white poverty until I moved south.
But blacks also have higher poverty rates which is another problem.
The city I live in now is 30% black. The upscale professional part of the city is a 2% black at best.
We need to address poverty in general for both whites and blacks.
1
And US health care is 17% of GDP. Someone somewhere is getting pretty fancy healt care.
3
My husband broke his wrist last year. The "surgical center" that set his wrist was a palace, with fabulous artwork everywhere. I'm not sure that the money spent is going to actual health care.
I wish that were true.
We pay more. We just don't get more.
Go to a clinic for poor people and you will be glad you have employer health insurance even with all the co-pays and negotiating with your insurance company.
The extra is for-profit insurance, hospitals (even though they are legally non-profit), pharmaceuticals, and specialist doctor's incomes are much higher.
The latest trick is hospitals have been buying up local doctor's practices and increasing rates to insurance companies because the are a monopoly and they can.
A lot of people are still claiming that it is malpractice but that turns out to be 2.5% of healthcare costs where 1.7% is for defensive medicine and only 0.8% is for actual malpractice.
We are the richest industrialized country on the planet GDP / capita and the only industrialized country without universal care.
The dichotomy of the day in trump land: The repubs squirm with envy over those European states with stable economies, healthy citizens and a high level of satisfaction. Witness the trumpster's whine: why can't we get people from Norway to move here???
He and his cohorts totally miss the point: Norway is successful, stable and happy because its citizens are offered the health, education and family services to enable them to live productive and satisfying lives without worrying about the cost of a sudden illness or how to pay for child care.
They would stupidly rather hurt poor people than enable all of us to succeed. Make American Great Again. Indeed.
20
They are missing that point for a simple reason: they have been repeating for so long that "America is the best country of the world" that they have come to not only believe it, but they believe that no other country is worth living in and their people are all dreaming of coming to the US!
1
To every Trump voter who suffers under the heel of the GOP, I say well deserved. You voted for them. They are your government. Stop whining about it and take some personal responsibility. To those who did not vote or voted for a third party candidate, I say now you know better so get out and vote for a candidate who will help you. To those who voted for Clinton and were robbed by the Russians and the medieval electoral college, stay strong. Help is on the way, but you must vote in every single election and get your friends and family to do so, too.
14
Spot on. The Republicans have lost their humanity. And America is a much weaker nation for it.
7
Agreed. But even further..clearly if you are white, male, and wealthy to Republicans you are a human being. If you fail any of those criteria you are less than human and deserve nothing.
Conservatives never had any to begin with. Oh, they sure pretended to...
Bravo!
Thanks for focusing on Republican cruelty.
There is a long history of violent roots of Republican policies against people that most Americans do not know.
See https://www.legalreader.com/republican-racketeers-violent-policies/
1
The underlying assumption that is behind the GOP's war on the poor is that poor people have an inherent moral failing. Otherwise they wouldn't be poor. This guiding principle is wrapped up with the so-called "Gospel of Prosperity" that is preached by "Christian " Charleston's like Joel Osteen.
7
I think you meant "charlatan"
Got to pay for that billion dollar give away to Trump's buds some way. By the way, did you used to have Medicare?
1
I hope Democrats stand their ground, this time? I would shut down a government in a heart beat that doesn't provide medical care to its impoverished citizens. Sure we all need to work and contribute, but I ask, when does Congress start?
Yet those who need these programs the most vote against their own self interest when they vote straight party Republican.
3
Republican policies are not just about cruelty, but about the political benefit Republican politicians receive from the perception of cruelty.
These politicians pursue these inhumane and even irrational policies because they are appealing to a significant segment of the voting population, particularly in rural and comparatively under-educated states. These hate voters like the idea of depriving certain of their fellow citizens of basic services and revel in their suffering.
Why would this be the case? Because, of course, the hate voters believe the beneficiaries of these programs are substantially people of color, which means that the hate of these voters is racially motivated and that the Republican politicians who exploit it can and should be labeled as racists. All of which brings us to the POTUS, whose racism is only less subtle than his more intelligent and calculating colleagues.
So here we are, still fighting the original moral and cultural battle for the soul of our country. This battle will go on killing us slowly because it continuously undermines a greater sense of community and paves the way for under-investment in the public sphere, a permanent and expanding underclass, and a gradual conversion to Latin American style kleptocracy.
I think it is fair to say that either the modern Republican party falls or the country does.
321
I agree with your comments. Many of the people who hate Obamacare do so because they think that President Obama designed it specifically to help black and brown people. I have heard many people that I see talk about how black people would turnout to vote for President Obama to get the "goodies" that he would give them.
I know that many of our northern friends don't believe it, but there are many people who want to make life hard for poor people, black people, immigrants, etc. just because they hate the poor, black, etc. Many of these same people want to make life easy for the wealthy and well-connected.
2
While I agree with your premise CD, I think there is a fundamental problem that is never dealt with when dealing with this population. They actually BELIEVE that people of color are lazy and looking for handouts and therefore do not consider it racism. It is simply the truth, and being the truth and believing it, does not make them racists: it makes them realists. It's part of the fundamental messaging problem on the left. The right presents a welfare queen living the high life and doing nothing and the democrats present CHARTS demonstrating that the real beneficiary of things like welfare are recently divorced, unemployed white women who benefit from the support or less than a year. The welfare queen is a much more compelling argument because 1) it aligns with their racial beliefs and 2) it gives them the opportunity to focus their anger on a 'real' person.
3
CD in Maine, although I totally agree with your comment, where you state "So here we are, still fighting the original moral and cultural battle for the soul of our country.", I would add that slavery was the second moral sin by the Founding Fathers in starting a new country. The first and original sin, was the genocide of the Native American Indians, who were living here before us.
6
I sincerely doubt that there are many actual "sadists" in the Republican party: people who get their jollies by making other people suffer. The true problem lies in the enduring attitude that was prevalent even in Jesus' time - that the poor and disadvantaged in our society, and often even the chronically ill, are somehow morally deficient - lazy, sexually promiscuous, greedy to get assistance without working for it, etc. This is very often a case of "deliberate ignorance" - in the words of Paul Simon "All lies in jest, 'till a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."- - when someone is passing all information through the stringent filters of dogmatic belief and cynical self-interest, it doesn't matter how much solid, valid, well-researched data and analysis (ie, hard-core evidence) you place in front of these people, they will simply ignore it, or denounce the sources of any evidence that doesn't fit into the small boxes of their "My mind is made up: don't confuse me with a bunch of facts" world-views. Challenging and changing these deliberately distorted belief systems is the key to making them grow weaker and less widespread over the long run: in the SHORT run, resistance to such evil in any and all non-violent forms, will help those sitting on the fence to make the correct choices when it comes to helping those in our society who are most in need of help - regardless of how "worthy" some might consider them to be.
7
A friend lost her coverage after major intestinal surgery when her son got a job in the gas station that he lost in a week.
She had to go thru the entire process again to be denied. I can say that 5 people were affected adversely just trying to keep her healthy.
These decisions are not made in a vacuum they are made in real time and with lives on the line.
I have much stronger words that can’t be printed.
8
I see the issue as "The Role of Personal Responsibility." Americans have never liked government interference in their lives neither for benefit nor constraint. The more government takes on a paternalistic role the less will be the role of personal responsibility. The GOP seems big on personal responsibility even at the expense of many social goods - health care, education, retirement security, The question is how much of a blind eye can we turn towards the suffering of our fellow citizens versus how much of a disservice do we do to our fellow citizens by dissuading them from turning into responsible adults. A middle course seems appropriate.
2
Denmark looks pretty good to me.
They have better education and healthcare for the whole population.
All done by government.
Norway, too, who Trump just praised.
On the other hand, those countries don't have the billionaire class we have.
" Or actually less than nothing. In fact, a 10-year extension of CHIP funding would save the government $6 billion."
Paul,
That's only if you assume that the safety net programs are there for them. The dark side (actually, the darker side) to this is that it won't be more expensive for the government because they are going to slash entitlements as well. After all, "entitlement reform" to lower the debt has been their goal for years. What better time to institute it than after they raise the debt enormously to provide tax cuts.
2
How did our country end up here? Why is the right so terribly mean? What happens next? If the left cannot come up with the answers to this I'm afraid we are at the beginning of the end of this country. Folks...we are in a world of trouble!
5
To have a strong growing economy, the country needs healthy and well educated people. The Republicans seem to believe that the economy is just a zero sum game, where the money taken from people's health care and education ends up in the pockets of their supporters. That probably helps explain why Democratic presidents always preside over better economic growth than Republican presidents.
2
WWPGS
[What would President Greitans say?]
Because that's where we're headed. Greitans is Trump on steroids, probably literally. Will he slide by blackmail and battery accusations? Did Trump?
Things will get worse before they get worse.
And please note: Trump's approval ratings are *improving*. Check 538.
Probably the Republicans are presuming that the required low-level jobs for those who receive Medicaid will be opening up once enough Dreamers, Haitians, Salvadoreans, etc. are deported.
1
To Republicans it's not cruel, it's just math. The more money you transfer from the middle class to the poor the less you can transfer from the middle class to the rich. That's what Hatch means when he says "we don't have the money."
4
I am very uncomfortable with defining policy disagreements in moral or psychological terms. Anybody with knowledge of history (this excluded many Americans, I know) realizes that the worst atrocities have been perpetrated by moral and upright people who happened to believe that Jews, or intellectuals, or the rich were immoral, evil, and perhaps not human at all. If dehumanizing African-Americans is bad, how is dehumanizing Republicans any better? I don’t agree with most Republican policies but I always argue against them on rational and fiscal grounds. Calling people who disagree with you “sadists” makes you feel self-righteous but adds nothing to the debate. I have no empathy for people who have kids they can’t afford. Nevertheless, I think these kids have to be insured because it is a rational social policy. You think I’m heartless? Fine, and what is the punishment for lack of empathy should be? Once we start legislating morality and demanding empathy by force, what kind of society are we going to end up with?
53
We can't demand by force that every American have empathy, but we certainly can demand, by our votes, that the people who make our laws and set policies have empathy for those who need help. How do you think you can persuade non-empathetic lawmakers to do the right thing when they won't even acknowledge the facts that are the foundation of "rational and fiscal" arguments?
8
I think Dr K's use of the term 'sadistic' is more of a colorful flag to get people's attention than an actual literal insult. It is quite true that these Republican policy positions do not make sense from a strictly financial analysis, so there has to be some social reasoning or strategy behind them, which in this case are pretty accurately described as a form of punishment.
I wouldn't say it is unfair to characterize the overriding GOP stance on health care, old age, poverty and education as being willing or eager to punish the poor & reward the rich, even when that would cost more than the other way around. In other words, they obviously prefer gratuitous pain, imposed without rational explanation. This is more than just a friendly disagreement where each side has good reasons for their opinion. I think 'sadism' is a pretty accurate depiction of what is going on here. The term isn't being applied to all Republicans everywhere, under all conditions, but rather hyperbolically to describe the effects of their actions on this one issue.
6
Well, of course we legislate morality, All law has some moral dimension. Empathy is demanded by common morality: "Do unto others as you would have others do to you." If our laws reflect our recognition of our common humanity, we will have a just society. The kind of individualistic libertarianism that you seem to espouse leads to a barbarous society where most people will be poor and crime will be rampant.
9
The fan fair of Walmart giving a ('one time') $1,000 bonus to workers is to boost Trump and the GOP and higher hourly rates but I believe it's intended to try soften the lose of Medicaid support by many states. Walmart's worker health insurance program is Medicaid so it's likely that Walmart workers will get hit with increased health expenses.
Of course, the 'one time' money disappears and then the workers will realize they've lost wages, not gained them. Walmart is a Republican company and plays like the GOP, saying one thing and doing another with perverse cruelty.
1
History dictates where this is going. A country, a governing system, that treats its citizenry in such fashion does not long survive. The Republicans, the Democrats, too, had better wake up lest they become the ultimate victim to all that they have set in motion.
John~
American Net'Zen
It is completely irrational not to provide comprehensive and affordable health insurance to everyone. For example, the ACA provides for vaccinations. If people get vaccinated, the population develops herd immunity. A flu pandemic could be on the way, so this is an important matter. Or you're driving along and the person next to you has a heart attack, or a stroke, or is drunk, and your family is killed. They didn't get necessary medical treatment they needed, because they had no medical insurance. But they had to have car insurance. Hopefully they did, but will it matter to you?
Health care is a basic human right. Many other countries understand this fundamental point, and they provide for their people. Everyone contributes for the better good of their population. There is a sense that for a civilization to exist, civilized people must be present in it. Except, apparently, in the United States.
Here in the U.S., one can always go to the E.R., but by then it may be too late. Preventative care is essential, and often crucial. That means everyone needs affordable and robust health insurance, regardless of their circumstances.
We in the U.S. do not live in a healthy society. Fundamentally, our inability to take care of one another with basic health care makes us uncivilized. The rest of the world -- those who have already figured this out -- look to us in horror, and rightly so. The real problem is that when we look at ourselves, we are not equally horrified.
3
"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer as they must."
This kind of sadism has been the core of the Republican party for decades. Now they no longer hide it. Previously, they wrapped their economic sociopathy in warm buzz words like "freedom", "opportunity" and "common sense". They had gee-shucks front men like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush sell toxic policies with a "relatable" false-front.
They've run out of time and they've run out of front men. Now, they only have the unfiltered crass sadism of Donald Trump and the reptilian greed of men like McConnell and Ryan. Demographically, they're in trouble as the nation trends more progressive and more diverse. This is the last big heist they'll be able to pull for some time.
The Republican party sincerely believes that the wealthy are more worthy of freedom, comfort, and power than all other people. Republicans genuinely do not care about the suffering and struggles of the middle class and the poor, in fact, they get sick pleasure out of it. They are all of a like mind with Grover Norquist, whose ultimate dream is to take us back to the McKinley era, when robber barons ran roughshod over the populace, took the lion's share of wealth, and there were no regulations, laws, and worker protections to rein them in. Workers were unhealthy, in poverty, and died on the job. There was no social safety net to speak of. It was a nightmare.
The twisted heart of the GOP is greed and racism. That's it.
2
For Republicans, charity begins at home. Their home. As in in their pockets from big donors who could not care one bit about the health problems of the common folk and their children.
1
There is only one way to stop the madness: We have to Flip the House and Senate. Organize now to get out the vote this coming November!
1
Think like a Republican
No such thing as luck, privilege, race, gender. They all made it entirely on their own, overcoming hardships and challenges unaided and so much the better for the struggle.
Who considers himself a sadist? They're all just tough-minded tough-loving philanthropists.
1
Isn't it strange that Donald Trump expressed his desire for Norwegians to come to America, Norwegians who, if they were to bring their country's national values and policies with them, would be totally opposed to the Republican goal of making America worse (if you are a lower-income American)?
We can be sure that were it possible he would see to it that the immigrant-filter would allow only those Nordics who would become Michelle Bachmans (Norwegian) or Charles Lindberghs (born Mansson in Sweden) to enter.
Republican cruelty toward the poor is not be explained by nativity. How can this cruelty be explained? It can not be explained by postulating that the cruel have a cruelty gene in their genome. How to keep Americans from becoming cruel? We will never know the answer to that question. So what to do?
Answer: Do everything possible to get the percentage of eligible voters voting on November 6 to match the percentage in Norway and Sweden (SE 85%)
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
3
Although I agree with Professor Krugman to some extent, in this case, he is not noting something important, the real point of the Republicans' plan. It's that the poor are undeserving, or as Mitt Romney said, takers. This attitude goes back centuries. The distinction between deserving and undeserving poor can be traced back to Justinian. In the 1834 English Poor Law reforms, it was referred to as "lease eligibility": make welfare so unpleasant that only the desperate will accept it--and go into the workhouses described by Dickens.
1
"And a vast majority of those who aren’t working have very good reasons for not being in the labor force: They’re disabled, they’re caregivers to other family members or they’re students."
Paul - you forgot one major group that relies heavily on Medicaid at their most vulnerable time in life -- the very old. I am not clear how the Republicans will force these folks back into the workforce. Just picture a 90 year old person on a walker being force to work every day. I forget the percentage of Medicaid going to the elderly, but I believe it is a major percentage of those receiving this help in addition to the ones you highlighted.
3
Very good point. Medicaid pays for much of the nursing home care provided in this country.
As long as it remains out of bounds for the rich to EAT the children of the poor - as proposed by Jonathan Swift - it isn't important that they be healthy, i.e. safe to eat.
2
Point 1. Notice the photo. All women. No men. This speaks volumes.
Point 2. Second sentence: "but why?" The answer is the wealthy don't have enough money to live on so they want to subsidize their income on the backs of the poor at least some who have come from Haiti or Africa at some point in their ancestry. And we know what trump and company thinks about people from those countries. And some of the others are poor whites who have had the misfortune of losing their jobs to overseas adventures and are disabled.
Cruelty aside, it’s eternally mind boggling how the GOP is considered the party of fiscal responsibility.
2
When I was still on the school board beat many years ago, a conservative Republican (an actual conservative, not a right-wing extremist) got elected to the board with the aim of working with both sides to calm discord. After about a year on the job I chatted with him about his experience dealing with the board's far-right extremists. "I used to think they were good people with bad ideas," he said. "But I've found they're just bad people." Seems to me that describes the modern Republican Party pretty accurately.
1
Is the driver here cruelty--or a bedrock belief that poverty is both a choice and a self-inflicted wound.
My inclination--based on conversations with rock-ribbed Republicans stretching back for decades--would be to say it is that belief--a shibboleth they cling to like survivors of a shipwreck bobbing in the ocean.
To insist that the deprivations of poverty in a laisse fair, free market system reflect personal sloth and lack of discipline is central to their belief that their success, wealth and privileges are all fully earned, totally deserved and reflect their superior moral fiber.
The fact that doing these things will inflict pain is considered to be plus--like the slave masters of long ago--the whip is the only motivator they recognize.
1
This "feature" as Mr. Krugman puts it has been in the GOP DNA for decades--remember Regan and his welfare queen line. Putting aside the obvious cruelty of this feature, what troubles me is that old phrase my mom would announce when talking about someone less fortunate than ourselves: "my the grace of god..." The lesson of this comment was we are all fragile human beings on this earth---no matter how much money, fame, power you may have, we are all vulnerable to tragic events beyond our control. Although I have been extremely fortunate in my life with good jobs, great wife, great kids, in the back of my mind always is my mom's comment to be humble about what you have and empathy towards what others do not have.
1
No one, who has lived in the South as long as I have, more than 60 years, can possibly believe otherwise. There is a very strong cultural desire to punish and diminish those who are "unworthy" here. Not everyone shares this desire, but it is very common among the older population.
Liberals, unhappily, are so determined to see the "good" in everyone, that they will go to extreme lengths to find some other reason for an expressed statement, or an attitude, than the obvious, that there are some people who are simply mean and like to see others hurt.
And that's all there is to it. Some like to see others suffer. And they will pick an unworthy group, and attempt to make them suffer. That's the reason, it's not complex or complicated, and that's how it is. No need for 10,000 pages of analysis, they want to see the outgroup suffer, and if you don't make them suffer, you are a bad person.
And that's it.
1
The Republicans are implementing the policies required of them by their wealthy libertarian financial backers: the Koch boys, the Mercers, Adelson, et al. This cabal pours millions into GOP campaigns at the local, state and federal levels, and in return, the policies explained in PK's column today are demanded.
You can find all you need to know about this simply by reading Dark Money, by Jane Mayer. It's now out in paperback. Read it and you will understand how deeply vulnerable our society is to cruel, secretive, anti-democratic manipulation.
2
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons..."
"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
1
This isn't about inflicting pain for some perverse sense of righteousness; it's also about maintaining bargaining power over a large population of poor semi-skilled workers. A large population of powerless people (either one paycheck from disaster or without the rights of citizenship as an illegal migrant) keeps labor costs down and unionization dead.
Nixon's Southern Strategy succeeds because "superiors" always want to control "others" with pain and fear.
The plot of the 1973 movie Executive Action is mostly an exposition of a conspiracy theory about President Kennedy's assassination, but there is one scene in which a group of Old White Multimillionaire Geezers get together and talk about how there are too many "useless" people and that it will be necessary to "cull the herd."
At the time I saw the film, it seemed like just another aspect of the fictional conspiracy theory, but every time I hear of a new Republican initiative concerning the social safety net, I am reminded of that scene. Maybe they really ARE trying to "cull the herd."
In 1992, my barber told me that without fear, greed, and ignorance there would be no Republican Party. Fear (loathing) of the poor and the desire to keep them ignorant may explain the sadism, but I wonder if GOP hatred for the “other” isn’t rapidly becoming a self-standing fourth reason for their existence.
There is no longer anything known as "compassionate conservatism." The GOP has now become the party of cruelty with its own fealty to its donor base. They would like nothing better than to see anyone who is not white, christian, male, and rich just simply drop dead. And if it takes a couple of generations to do so, they're on board with it.
A good portion of our citizens are simply punitive in nature and too many of them are sitting in Congress and state legislatures. They think it's your own fault if things go wrong in life and you will be made to pay the price for it. Of course the exception is if it happens to someone they care about. Different story then. And it doesn't matter that all this results in poor outcomes for our citizens and a weaker nation. It's what you deserve.
Jesus said "suffer the little children." Our party of "pro-life family values" has interpreted that as "make the children suffer and punish their parents for not being born rich."
4
I have to disagree that inflicting pain is the objective. of Republicans. They believe in trickle down economics and welfare queens and nanny states and all the rest. Their belief is based on seemingly defensible ideas of self-reliance. Unfotunately, no amount of data will convince them that we are not doing a disservice to the poor by helping them - that they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Which is why I think we are in such battle - Dems feel that we are just being humane and acting on what the data tells us and Reps feel Dems are being naive and enabling bad behavior.
The only way we can be in such an intractable state is because we both think we are behaving virtuously. Oh, sure, there are exceptions, but I think this holds for most on both sides.
Do I believe Republicans are profoundly wrong? Yes. Do I know how to convince them of this? Not at all. We, Dems, all just need to vote in November - I don't think there is any other answer.
Mercer is on record as believing that nuclear war has its upsides.
Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings had greater resistance to the impact of radiation he asserts, although I understand there is little scientific evidence to support this.
It is becoming increasingly clear that billionaire GOP donors want poor people to die as quickly and cleaning as possible. This will reduce the health care burden and allow the billionaires to keep their lower tax bills.
Some part of the GOP donors think automation and AI etc will likely put more people out of work, so wouldn't it be better for everyone if poor unemployed people just died. You can read this type of thinking in their favorite books, Ayn Rand for example that Ryan loves.
Congratulations you poor Trump supporters.
It's not that only that you elected a President that doesn't care if you live or die.
You actually voted for a political party that would really prefer you to be dead, because think of all the billionaire tax cuts your death could help pay for.
Republican policies are not just about cruelty, but about the political benefit Republican politicians receive from the perception of cruelty.
These politicians pursue these inhumane and even irrational policies because they are appealing to a significant segment of the voting population, particularly in rural and comparatively under-educated states. These hate voters like the idea of depriving certain of their fellow citizens of basic services and revel in their suffering.
Why would this be the case? Because, of course, the hate voters believe the beneficiaries of these programs are substantially people of color, which means that the hate of these voters is racially motivated and that the Republican politicians who exploit it can and should be labeled as racists. All of which brings us to the POTUS, whose racism is only less subtle than his more intelligent and calculating colleagues.
So here we are, still fighting the original moral and cultural battle for the soul of our country. That this battle still rages so hard surely indicates that it has never really been won, despite the successes of the civil rights era, the election of a two-term African American President and so on.
This battle will go on killing us slowly because it continuously undermines a greater sense of community and paves the way for under-investment in the public sphere and a gradual conversion to Latin American style kleptocracy.
An unreformed Republican party will bring it all down.
Given the screwballs in Congress are under the thumb and being held hostage by the corporations, voting against the people every single time, maybe we should turn our time and effort to teaching values to corporations, calling out and berating those by name who would leave a handicapped individual without Medicaid assistance? It seems then, we would finally be getting at the core of the issue, as they are the ones funding the politician screwballs. Children laying dead in the classroom and Congress votes against the people's wishes?
"Making lower-income Americans worse off has become a goal in itself for the modern G.O.P." Maybe not.
"Rich" and "poor" are essentially relative terms. One way to benefit the rich is to give them more money--other things being equal.
But a double whammy--makes the rich richer AND the poor poorer.
Money is power--political power--in two ways.
1. The economy is really the political-economy a creation of property, tax and labor law--none of which are "laws of nature".
2. The worse off must defer to, submit to and obey the better off for their very subsistence.
Past "haves' would just enslave or tax "have-nots"--mainly by military might.
But now forced labor is reserved for pregnant women.
So the rich make themselves comparatively better off by eviscerating labor rights--pay and benefits--AND increasing costs of primary goods--health care, education, housing, food.
Feudalism/Mercantilism is worse than Fascism--for the masses. But it built those great palaces, cathedrals and pyramids.
GOP policy is Feudalism-Mercantilism: they assume a fixed total supply of wealth--gold, money, whatever; but instead of getting it from foreigners--by conquest, piracy or colonization, they subjugate citizens. "They" being GOP donors and their vassal GOP knights.
And their Big Lie Propaganda spins welfare benefits as "income redistribution;" while increasing costs of living for have-nots to lower taxes for the rich.
Not exactly "sadism"--getting off on other's misery. Just close.
Mr. Krugman, in two recent articles you've succinctly captured the entire essence of modern Republicanism, which can be reduced to two things: racism and selfishness.
The party is now almost completely a party of white people who are racists, selfish, or like the current President, both.
On today's topic, selfishness, the GOP has elevated it to a religious principle. There's a simplistic belief that people basically get what they deserve in life. The rich are rich because of their individual merit and the poor are poor because of their own lack of merit. Any attempt to regulate or tax the rich or provide benefits to the poor only disturbs the divine moral order. Government should get out of the way, other than to provide police power to protect the property of the rich and keep the poor in their proper place. For the racists, this dogma of selfishness is easily adopted to their own world view, by equating the rich with whites and the poor with blacks and browns.
Most Americans still believe, I hope, that people succeed or fail because of multiple factors, many of them having nothing to do with individual merit, and that each individual's progress in life is as much a collective responsibility as the responsibility of the individual himself. We believe that government should lift up the weak, encourage the strong, and provide protection for all citizens whether they succeed or fail.
But alas our electoral system allows the majority to be ruled by the minority.
1
If one is wondering from where this stuff comes, just stand on a checkout line at a grocery store, where the shopper at the cash register is making a transaction with food stamps. The muttering condemning the person is deafening, when it is just a mother trying to feed her children.
1
I've long said that the fundamental difference between liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, is hope and optimism versus pessimism and fear. This is why it was so easy for the Republicans to ridicule Obama's "hope" campaign. Hope is an anathema to the conservative mind.
When one is fearful. unhappy, miserly, it much easier to be selfish and harbor resentment and wish cruelty toward others, and to justify it. When one feels miserable one resents those who don't and one wants to others down to their misery rather than see people elevated - because they sure it will be at their expense.
Just watch FOX News to see what makes so many conservative Republicans define has happiness or optimism - it is the defeat or suffering of others. The only time I know right wing conservative types to be happy is knowing that someone else is miserable or will be made miserable with hand wringing glee at their own "winning".
A perfect example is Trump himself. If money, position, and power could bring happiness he should be the happiest person on earth rather than miserable, insecure, and continuously aggrieved. always trying to "win".
I first saw this judgmental, self righteous attitude towards Americans who need Americas help when Reagan took office back in 1980. One of the first things he did was to cut programs for people who really needed them and he did it based on whether he thought they were morally worthy, or if he did not approve of them. Combine Reagan's bigotry and Falwell's moral superiority, the people who needed help were not worthy of receiving it and should be punished for even asking.
By contrast Germany, provides "Kindergeld" to all children up to the age of 27 in some circumstances, to make sure the children, who are the future, are well fed clothed, housed and educated.
As a society, did we come together to make all of our lives better or only those who deserve it?~~~SE
It would be tempting to have a fit over this latest news of the immoral behavior of some of these Republicans, American impostors, with our best interests at heart.
Stay 'woke'. You're on your own because as Midwest once pontificated David Brooks is a preacher, and I told the former that he should keep Christ out of his equation.
For the record this American has not turned into a Rhino, nor joined The Mainstream, nor developed shabby, shanty thinking. Singular but during the Anita Hill Tragedy I chose to address a brief letter to Orrin Hatch, informing him at the conclusion that not all of us were prepared to stoop to his level (take that last line out, advised an astute economist at the time). He probably thought it was petty, and not petty cash either.
Some of our children are being medicated at an alarming rate with sedatives. Whether the parent(s) in lower-income brackets are insured is debatable. The Affordable Care Act has provided insurance for the grown children of friends for the first time, and with few exceptions, they have all been to college on scholarship, now holding a job.
These Republicans have been around for awhile. You will find their profile in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, the leaders of Plymouth witch hunts, in Miller's 'The Crucible'.
Let us stay alert and condemn this G.O.P. hiding in the shade like a cobra. It will take valor to send it into the mental bank of oblivion.
I think there is another aspect to this; envy. Why should I support these losers when I've worked so hard for my money? All they're going to do with the money I give them is buy cell phones and TVs. They'll buy candy for their kids and steak with the food stamp money I give them.
What we're looking at is competition at its lowest form.
That a single working man or woman could vote for the GOP, whose policies harm their lives, signals that this nation is in far deeper trouble than most want to admit. It's like a prisoner helping the executioner.
4
The problem with your statement, of course, is that you seem to be oblivious to the actual cause of this.
Right wing talk radio, sir. Right wing talk radio.
The GOP continues to tout its being the party of Lincoln, who'd be aghast at how today's republicans are able to fool so many of the people so much of the time. Sorry, Abe – bigly sad.
1
Somehow the GOP has managed to spread an insidious message that the only people helped by social safety net programs are non-white. This has combined with the racism in their base to create rage about social safety net. So look for them to use the entitlement language to cut social security. In everyone's mind, entitlement has become associated with non-white. The white people in the GOP base have shown they are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.
1
I think the political calculation here is that they cater to voters who believe their hard-earned tax money is being used to support deadbeats. Especially those not white. As long as the race card wins hands it will continue to be played.
And for many on the right, it's also about the ideology, which is valid in some senses but has become steeped in self-ennobling myth. I know a lot of folks who think they are self-made men. There is no such thing. Show me a self-made man.
In order for a malignant narcissist to feel he has won, someone else has to lose. The greater the loss for the innocent target, the better the narcissistic "winner" temporarily feels. And we know that Trump always wants to think of himself as a winner.
The USG has repeatedly broken promises, so why should anyone believe that they will pick up the costs of expanding healthcare?. For example, we were repeatedly told that special education funding from the feds would pay virtually all local costs when that program was mandated. Good luck with that. JFK laid out a tale of wonder and federal subsidies if we would only release the mentally impaired from institutions. Sidewalks today are full of the homeless. Likewise, HHH assured us "there are no quotas in this bill." LBJ: "I'm not sending American boys to fight a war Asian boys should be fighting on their own." Need any more examples? Enough people have lost trust in their national government to put this guy in office and you wonder why? Good Lord.
Perhaps the long term point of this kind of agenda is to allow the elderly, disabled and poor to just die. Voila! No more need for these costly services and more for rich people.
You are talking about a party that just passed a tax bill no one had evaluated to give enormous tax cuts the rich.
Seriously?
It's not about cruelty. It's about putting those losers in their place. And more money for the rich. Orrin Hatch should have been struck down where he stood if there really was a god. And guess what? The people in those states still vote for these knobs. In they go to cast their ballots for people who treat them worse than gum on the bottom of their shoe.
I just don't know what to say any longer. It's like a race to the bottom of the barrel with Congress lashing their constituents all the way.
Sadism is precisely what defunding CHIP is all about.
If it were about money, even Republicans would be compelled to acknowledge the independently-proven truth that children who have access to regular healthcare grow up to be more productive, higher-earning adults. Children who've not had regular access to a doctor do not do as well in school, tend to drift into gangs and crime or end up drifting from one minimum wage job to another, and contribute less to the nation.
Why is the GOP turning America into a "sh*th*le country"?
2
I'm not defending this move, and it may well be that some Republican lawmakers are malicious, but I think, Paul, that you global characterization of them all as malicious doesn't help us as a nation. It just deepens the divide, making it less possible to reach agreement. Linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff says that the reason Republicans are against welfare is because they adhere to a strict father world view. In this view, you get rewarded for being disciplined and working hard. In that kind of thinking, welfare actually hurts people because it creates "dependence." I'm not defending this stance, however, I think it helps us realize that the Republicans, though misguided, are not evil.
2
Mr. Davidson : Your concluding remark defies all the evidence, and leaves you clinging to flotsam, bouncing around in rough seas .
Misguided and evil
If the United States had a Medicare for All type healthcare program, paid for through income taxes and a VAT where everyone pays into the system - there would no longer be stories, op-eds and reasons for anyone to even discuss the merits of people being cared for medically.
5
I can't speak to the motivation of top GOPers, but I can talk about sentiments of those who support many of the policies Dr. Krugman mentioned. Their image of those in the safety net was expressed by Grassley (?) when he said he was sick and tired of helping people who wouldn't lift a finger to help themselves. Despite the statistics, despite the changes in requirements post-90s welfare reform that's still their perception of who's on welfare. They want to help those truly in need, but to them most in the safety net are 'welfare queens' and ne'er do wells - despite what the data evidences and laws allow.
1
I understand Krugman's argument against Hatch's lie. Good efficient health care SAVES money, Certainly the universal government run health care systems of ALL other industrialized countries prove that 30 times over. But there is a stronger simpler argument against Hatch that Krugman cannot make because it goes against his religion--Keynesian economics. Where Hatch is wrong is when he says "we don’t have money anymore.”
I hate all caps, but I don't have italics or bold face.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (THRU THE FED) CAN CREATE AS MUCH MONEY AS IT NEEDS. IT WILL RUN OUT OF MONEY THE DAY AFTER THE NFL RUNS OUT OF POINTS.
There is no theoretical limit, but there is a practical one. Too much money will lead to excessive inflation. Today there is not enough inflation. A reasonable amount of inflation encourages people to use their money, not to put it in their mattresses. Japan's slow growth is due to their citizens not spending enough.
In fact, the people who need the money and would spend it do not have have enough because not enough is being sent by the federal government to the private sector, and too much of that is going to the people who do not need it and use it to speculate--see market, stock. We have just have 2 studies that showed if the typical American family had a real emergency & had to come up with some money, they couldn't do it. One said the half the people couldn't come up with $400 & the other that 2/3rds couldn't find $1,000.
Just follow the money.
2
Here is a real example of how this goes.
My friend worked for cash most of his life, so at retirement age he couldn't get much out of Social Security. He lived on $500 a month, in an old motor home in Louisiana and with the recent changes, he didn't have enough to cover his meds, for blood sugar and high blood pressure.
He was not doing well.
To get free meds he would have to coordinate his day, take a free bus to a clinic in another town, and arrange all that.
Without the meds, in just a few days his blood got so out of whack that he could not think well and logically follow through with the demands of his deteriorating condition.
One thing leads to another, everywhere all the time.
So he dropped dead in his old motor home.
And so it goes every day somewhere...
390
Bruce....did he vote Republican ?
Your anectode typifies how simple basic coverage for medicine and doctor care can make the different between life and death for so many. How a government cares for the most vulnerable and less affluent of it's people is how it should be judged. The US frequently criticizes other countries for their apathy to the welfare of their citizens, but we're on a fats track to a heartless and cruel banana republic that only cares about the rich, the powerful and the big corporations. Your friend should never have been put in the situation he was in that allowed him to spiral downwards. My sincere condolences.
1
I think that's the idea of Republican Health Care.
2
Every day I take care of illegal immigrants and able bodied people who did not follow the law and buy health insurance.
What happens? They get emergency medicaid the moment they step into the hospital. A woman last month was diagnosed with lung cancer in "her country" and that week came to 'visit' her daughter here. Showed up in the hospital and the daughter "wants her treated here." 3 month visa, now getting medicaid and spending tens of thousands of our dollars on chemo/radiation (which won't help, by the way). Mr. Krugman- you are wrong. The abuses are terrible, as is the idea that it is somehow my obligation to pay for other people without some reciprocal responsibility on their part.
1
If it won't help, why are you prescribing chemo/radiation therapy, Doctor? BTW, it's the Republicans and Trump who told folks they need not buy health insurance. And, one anecdote doesn't make a policy.
Look at your cleverness. You painted poor brown people and visitors with a broad brush all at once. Better cover up. Your racism and xenophobia is showing.
I doubt you’re actually a surgeon. However, if you are, you are woefully uninformed. If you were informed, you would know that undocumented immigrants are not eligible for coverage under ACA. Do you truly expect the poorest among us to buy unsubsidized private insurance?
Regarding your story, those kind of things may happen, but I am 100% positive that you are vastly exaggerating how often. For every one of the people who “abuse” the system, there are a 1000 who have nowhere else to turn.
It’s truly sad how many doctors lack empathy and compassion and are so self-involved and money driven these days. You, sir, (if you are actually a doctor, and not a troll) are a prime example.
We need to look at motivations for such cruelty. A strong case can be made that economic factors underly the hostility to social welfare programs, as Thomas Edsall reviewed very ably this week. The victims of economic changes in the Midwest—generally less-educated, middle-aged white men—have switched political affiliations to Trump and the GOP who espouse economic nationalism and a reduction of social support programs.
GOP leaders channel that resentment into attacks on programs that will disproportionally affect poor people, especially those of color—them. The argument seems to be if we are going to suffer, you get to suffer even more. If you are a less-educated, middle-aged white man, but you have up to recent times been employed and socially productive, recognizing that you are now in a vulnerable state is devastating. The plant is closed and the jobs are gone. The opioid crisis flares on. Somebody is at fault. Put more simply, when Dad is wrong, he lashes out in anger. To admit error or delve into a complex and intractable issue is just not part of the picture.
The loss of good jobs for this segment of the population is a new experience. The notion that you will move into old age without standing on your own two feet is humiliating. You did nothing wrong, but cannot understand the forces that have put you into this fix. Who is at fault? “They” are.
There would be sufficient money to pay for all welfare programmes, Medicaid included, if the U.S. would reduce its horrendous Pentagon budget that is larger than those of the next 7 countries combined, and if the intelligence agencies would also take a haircut, because not only has the military failed miserably to gain bang for the buck but the intelligence agencies failed miserably in Iraq, Libya and everywhere to display any sort of 'intelligence'.
Come on, you're a rich country, spend it on the people (education, job retraining), then maybe you can aspire to the lofty heights achieved by your northern European counterparts whose GDPs embrace a broad spectrum of the population and not just a few flagship enterprises.
6
We have all seen how fast Republicans work when it benefits their corporate leaders and the 1%. CHIP and Medicaid does not fall into any category that Republicans relate to.
3
The GOP is anti human unless those humans are them! As to stigmatizing those who receive government benefits...the only group that is stigmatized is humans who aren't billionaires! Corporations rake in billions in government benefits and no one is stigmatizing them. So do churches and foreign governments.
The GOP has put targets on the backs of the American People and they are now doing their best to hit those targets time and time again.
As to money, when it comes to money they can find it for weapons but not health care; for tax breaks for billionaires and private plane owners to name a few but not for seniors, children working and middle class humans. It's never been about the money with the GOP.
2
The right's mean streak is nothing new. It's an echo still radiating from the primordial black holes of segregation and Jim Crow.
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Actually Jim Crow laws where made by the Democrats! If you look at history the Democrats where an despicable party before and after the civil war. For some strange reason the tables have turned.
Funny Jim Crow was created by Southern Democrats. When LBJ supported civil rights, the democrats drifted to the GOP where they developed common cause. Those southern leaders, like Strom Thurman, Lindsey Graham, and others, oppressed poor whites, jews, and immigrants --- including Yankees, as well as blacks. One can see the similarities with republicans from the north.
booo hooo snowflakes melting
and its still winter
hawwww
The Republicans want to turn this country into a third-world country where a few wealthy citizens profit from the cheap labor of the desperately poor. This vision goes back to the pre-civil war slave states, and has never been abandoned. They hate the safety net because their aim is to starve workers into submission, leaving them no alternative, but to work for nothing.
The amazing trick of the Republicans is to convince so many voters destined for poverty under the Republican plan that they will join the small wealthy elite.
2
Many different articles from many different sources that I have been reading over the past few years, appear to make it clear that a cadre of Republicans give a higher priority to punishing others than to improving themselves. These articles describe Republicans who have no qualms about cutting off their noses to spite their faces (to use an apt cliché), Republicans who obsess about the thought of someone cheating the government out of fifty cents, about someone who has broken a minor law, even a law whose benefit to society is questionable. What reward, what solace do these Republicans get from their obsession of punishing the needy and persecuting those lacking the resources to defend themselves ? I can't think of any on this earth, the reward for their meanness to the underprivileged certainly comes from another world.
1
The goal of conservatism has become to reward success and punish failure. Poor people need to be punished for their financial failures by denying them and their children anything that might allow them the chance to succeed. This includes health care and education. These are rewards for successful people. Poor people need to be punished by police officers and put in prison. This is their twisted vision of morality.
2
Really though, this started in earnest with Reagan. If you there and paying attention, it was quite clear Ronald Reagan got into office in large part based on resentment of perceived unneeded social spending.
Once he was in, and the blanket cuts started, it became apparent money was not what was on his and others' minds. It was that all these people had not suffered enough, and most of them did not need the help anyway.
It's very uniquely American. All this rhetoric about American generosity is about as real as the Horatio Alger myths. Sure, it happens, but not very much. We are both the richest and concurrently one of the cruelest, most sadistic societies on earth. Reagan permanently sealed the deal back in 1980, and we've never really recovered. And in doing so, he brought the country from the black to the red by the end of his presidency. To prove his point. Which proved nothing. The moderen GOP not only shows a complete lack of kindness, it is also in the throes of mostly ignorant individuals. Truly intelligent people would not do this.
2
Work requirements stem from the long standing Republican myth that there are millions of able bodied beneficiaries who simply don't want to work. Hogwash. The vast majority of Medicaid recipients are not able to work. I challenge Republican legislators who support the work requirement to attend state or county mental institution hearings to observe one large class of Medicaid beneficiaries (probably 80% or more who are on Medicaid) and to then tell me which of these individuals they would hire to work on their next campaign.
2
"So Republican foot-dragging on CHIP, like opposition to Medicaid expansion and the demand for work requirements, isn’t about the money, it’s about the cruelty. Making lower-income Americans worse off has become a goal in itself for the modern G.O.P., a goal the party is actually willing to spend money and increase deficits to achieve."
I believe that the group of Republicans named with the label G.O.P. should be re-named "Greed Only Party." It is fitting and suitable.
12
Remember the war cry from conservatives about the coming of the death panels? Guess what, Republicans are the one who sit on the death panels and smile.
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Hard to improve on J. K. Galbraith's definition of the issue.
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
484
"Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."
J. K. Galbraith
5
Reactionaries have reduced it all to a tautology: money is a gift of God, so the rich are blessed.
2
Republican strategy is about division greed and hate. We know their history of using division and hate as for example their southern strategy or the Willie Horton ads, but now their greed has appeared since the citizens united case gives them almost limitless money.
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Many of today's self-styled conservatives belief anyone who is poor is poor because of personal failings, including laziness. This allows them to treat the poor harshly, because, in their opinion, it is for their own good. There is far more selfishness and greed involved than sadism. At least, I'd like to believe that. I would hate to believe that a third or more of our fellow citizens are sadists.
John Kenneth Galbraith saw this quite a while ago. Galbraith said, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
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I believe Galbraith nailed it!
2
There is a lot of truth to this. The Manchester Guardian recently profiled a UN rep who has been touring the US and studying the poverty that he finds here and one of the things that he mentioned in the piece is that the policy makers in Washington have often uncritically believe that the poor are milking the system and collecting all sorts of benefits when they could be out working a job.
I also think that at an elected level the party has abdicated any sense of critical thinking on issues like this. The party leaders seem to like simple answers to complex problems and then they wash their hands of it all and walk away. For example, global warming is a manufactured conspiracy to make you pay more for fuel, well that was easy, let’s gut the EPA.
5
The short-sightedness of citizens who nearly swoon with joy over cutting off benefits to those they've deemed "undeserving " will be short-lived if these things come to pass. People in need don't just evaporate, they become more desperate. and the cost becomes higher.
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Not to mention that all those solid people in middle america who believe this is the right thing to do will find out pretty soon that the 'they' they think they are getting is "us"
1
Republicans just enacted their budget. It is the most impactful and disruptive federal budget in history. Now they are asking Dems to help budget money for a wall. Huh?
Dems should reject that negotiation. The GOP just passed their budget!
Trump spent a year promising his supporter that Mexico would pay for the wall. Why should Dems now be asked to pay for it?
Now the GOP claim that they need help budgeting programs that have been long established and stable, and had popular, bipartisan support. Huh? They just passed their budget!
DACA is an established, popular program. It doesn’t need major negotiation. These are productive workers who have been here a long time. They were brought here as children through no responsibility of their own. They grew up, gained and education, and began working in the US. They know no other country. If Trump now wants to throw them out to nations they don’t know and where they don’t speak the language, let him do that on his own and let him take responsibility for that.
During negotiations over the failed GOP health bill, Sen. McCain warned that all past major legislation followed legitimate procedure: hearings were held, research was done, issues were aired publicly, there was bipartisan input. He rejected the GOP bill because it violated all that. As he warned ahead of time. (ACA was bipartisan; it was the original GOP plan.) If there were any moderate GOP, they should have voted against the budget bill for the same reasons.
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It's about the cruelty all right, but not for its own ends and therefore not quite sadism, although righteous gratification for depriving the undeserving masses is a side benefit. The cruelty is more purposeful than that. The misery inflicted will show yet again what an utter failure government is. The remaining programs like Medicaid, not just in its expanded form but in any form, and Medicare, already openly in the cross-hairs, therefore have to be slashed and finally ended. The wealthiest and most deserving of our citizens still waste some of their precious resources on taxes. Don't imagine for a minute that they don't need to be cut far deeper. The peasants? Let them eat hardbound copies of "The Fountainhead."
49
I think another reason the states are doing this is simply to drive poor people out of the state, and into states that provide the assistance.
41
It is not a love of cruelty, it is indifference. Republicans abhor the idea of transferring money to people that do not deserve it from people that do: by hard work and God’s grace. The individual right to property trumps the communal right to happiness because they do not understand the social contract which defines America.
56
Please add: the right to property trumps the communal right to life and liberty.
1
RE: "it is indifference."
Maybe for some. But I've read comments on NYT where some express satisfaction and even glee knowing that others will suffer. Especially if those suffering can be labeled liberals or likely Democrat voters.
1
The human brain takes 25 years to mature. At every step of the way, as new stages of development are not exercised, they tend to be lost for life.
9
Republicans love to claim that legions of people are living lives of luxurious ease on food stamps and Medicaid. But as the Good Professor points out, it is not easy to get on Medicaid. I don't know anyone receiving food stamps or Medicaid who lives very high on the hog and who would not rather have a good job and income.
I am told that in Alabama approximately half of the people who are covered by Medicaid are elderly people living in nursing homes. To be in a nursing home with Medicaid paying the bills, the elderly person has to be indigent and a doctor has to certify that the elderly person is not capable of living independently.
It has always been my belief that our politicians reflect the people who elect them. Americans love to talk about American exceptionalism. Where is that exceptionalism now? This great country is in general the richest and most prosperous county probably in human history.
Generally, I find that people in government find money to pay for what they want to pay for. When they don't want to do something, then they talk of their being no money. Need a new F-52 at $100 Million each -- no problem -- lets order a dozen or two. Need to fund the CHIP program -- sorry -- we are out of money.
Also where are our pastors and religious leaders? Do the "holy joes" and others who are "eaten up" with religion care about the "least of these."
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My 94-year old mother-in-law is confined to a wheelchair and has dementia. Her late husband worked as a truck driver and paid his taxes for 40+ years. We spent every last dime she had, including cashing out life insurance policies, to pay for her $225/day nursing home care until all the money ran out, makiner her eligible for Medicaid. What job should she get to help support herself, Mr. Trump?
1
Your argument is even better when it's pointed out that there is no such thing as an F-52, unless one includes references from the video game Call of Duty.
Old white women in nursing homes are one of the largest groups of Medicaid recipients in every State. But remember, they (and I'll be one of them before too long) are the ones that Paul Ryan and his cohort want to shove off the cliff - dumping them out of their wheelchairs first so the chairs can be reused.
As a wise person once said, the Republican Party is built on the fear that somewhere a poor person is being given an unnecessary dollar that could be taken off a rich person's taxes.
The pain inflicted on the poor is, of course, intentional, but it's not out of spite from the Republican pols. It's out of spite from the Republican voters. This kind of cruelty is red meat for the base, whether it's effective policy or not. (Pretty much always not.) Like the terrible foreign policy choices, this is actually a communications strategy, not a real policy.
36
This is not just the poor. If they are successful at eliminating Medicare and Social Security that many of us Middle Class workers who paid into them for decades, will be out on the streets. I would probably lose my home, and health care would cost tens of thousands of dollars because I, as a 68 year old, have pre-existing conditions. Ironically, I and my employers paid over 1/4 of a million dollars into Social Security. That's my money, and I haven't gotten near that yet, so will Paul Ryan pay me the balance?
This is why Hatch should have retired at the end of his third term, as he urged Frank Moss to do -- and why term limits are not in themselves a bad thing. No one should get rich off of the salary of a congressman. Our representatives and senators should come from the poor and middle classes, and return to work among them until they reach the age at which they can retire, instead of going to work for the rich, or corporations, or foreign governments.
35
Maybe we need a to have a cruelty/benefit factor. When the government does something cruel, what is the benefit of that action to the nation as a whole. Forsaking CHIP will certainly result inability of some children to receive needed healthcare. That's cruel. But if there is an overall benefit to the country, the Republicans should simply describe that benefit.
I'd also like to know how expelling the Dreamers and Salvadorians, very cruel, will make the US a better place to live, if even in some small way.
19
What Krugman calls "cruelty" is not as simple as that. Many people need the motivation of unmet needs to have the desire to work. Contrary to what many think, it is possible to to live adequately on government handouts, especially with "off the books" income supplements. I can't remember the last time I saw the IRS attempting to go after these tax evaders. Government safety net programs encourage tax evasion by lowering benefits received by people working. This is an example of rewarding bad behavior. And guess what people aren't stupid, they notice. Rewarding bad behavior encourages more bad behavior. Part of the Republican "cruelty" is to encourage good behavior and instill a work ethic which may ultimately make many people happier. I know this sounds harsh, but use the analogy of parenting, when you meet all your children's need they do not have the incentive to learn to do for themselves.
4
The biggest tax evaders are wealthy. Trump even brags about it. And we know he's got something to hide for not releasing his returns. Not only are these people not be motivated they are being rewarded by the new tax code.
So the GOP is opposed to the estate tax why?
Really what about rewarding the bad behavior of the rich by cutting their taxes, cutting business taxes when they haven't done anything for their employees besides no longer offering health insurance and pensions while CEO salaries skyrocket. Businesses were hoarding cash before the tax breaks. Salaries aren't going up for normal workers. Many normal people are struggling desperately just to stay afloat. If you care and want people to not need the help then raise the minimum wage to a living wage require health benefits for all so families don't go bankrupt when an illness or accident strikes. This country should be ashamed of they way it treats its own people.
1
Republicans encourage dependency, just not in terms with which we are usually familiar. Those, like the fraud Paul Ryan, denounce the "hammock" of dependency on government support. What they want is dependency for the poor, elderly, and disabled on the kindness of their betters -- the one percent -- through the trickle down of tax cuts. And how has that worked out over the last 30 years?
16
Krugman continues to baffle with his flawed logic and pouting rhetoric. Before Obama, I was making less money annually, had better and cheaper insurance with a better doctor, saved and invested more and was happier. The polices of the previous decade were cruel. And now, America is paying the price. Blaming the voters that want to clean up the mess is like blaming the fire fighters for starting the fire.
1
Did you not notice the Great Recession...somewhere in that ten years?
1
Part of any social contract is some distribution of wealth. And I must point out that the major way of lowering costs is to GET PRIVATE INSURANCE OUT OF HEALTHCARE!!
This is the compromise that was made in order to get it passed. And also what messed it up.
In the novel "1984," one of George Orwell's characters says that the way you prove you have power is by hurting people. That's Dr. Krugman's point, and it's a totally valid one, in my opinion. It also shows how we are moving closer to the repressive totalitarian society that Orwell depicted.
27
The reason Republicans want to cut social spending is not simple cruelty, it is that they need an abundant supply of labor desperate to take any job offered, regardless of how low-paying or unappealing. Since Republicans tend to be the "employing class" (job creators), they make more money (and have a docile labor force) if people are desperate to work. An empowered working class would drive up wages (and improve working conditions), but cost the owners (mostly Republicans) a percentage of their profits. If Trump has an agenda, it is to reduce regulations (to enhance profits) and make it easier for businesses to operate. An empowered working class, with a social safety net that allowss everyone to get the support they need would force businesses to raise wages (and improve conditions") sufficiently to attract new employees, and if not, employees would not take the jobs offered, which would be a nightmare for business owners.
17
Dear Dr K.
Your insights into Taliblican/Cruelty Party's money-related motivations and cruelty are right on the mark. However, the massive mystery to me, before I read Charles Blow's column today, is why so an majority of Americans, including many so called Christians, consistently support and choose their local member of the Taliblican/Cruelty Party to represent them - at the local, state and federal levels. These hateful and hurtful people would have no political power if they WERE NOT ELECTED by their hateful, resentful racist and misogynistic constituents. No amount of shame or enlightenment seems likely to change the way these constituents think and behave by electing these deplorable politicians. One only has to look at the words and actions of Zinke, Carson, Price, Perry, DeVos, Pruitt, and the so-called president to despair at how many of the very politicians who get off on devising ways to make the less fortunate poorer and sicker are voted into power by so many Americans precisely because they will do just that.
27
Please, add a note of charity towards the hard-pressed working poor, also, who are systematically deceived by Fox News etc. about the reasons why they're underpaid. Savage capitalism has brought them down, and has blamed minority rights for their misery.
This screed may be satisfying to some partisans, but it isn't helpful in understanding the politics of the GOP. Turning you enemies into monsters may encourage soldiers to risk death but it does not help create clear strategy in politics.
There is no evidence that Republicans politicians themselves are cruel, even when the results of their policies are, but Jane Mayers, in her book "Dark Money" shows that the GOP donor base is dominated by the Koch club who wish to destroy all government run social programs and have their operations turned over to the private sector.
In many states, politicians that defy their extremist, Randian agenda will lose their jobs- the primaries are controlled by this group's influence. You can call the politicians cruel but at least do so in the context of what their choice really is- follow the program or lose your job.
The other powerful, anti-socialist power in this country is conservative white evangelicals that don't want the government performing charity or any services that they consider the domain of the church. The idea there is that only charity that comes from the heart is blessed, donations forced from hands via taxation are not a path to heaven.
These ideas can easily be defeated in the light of open discussion. The libertarian concept already proved itself a failure in KS, and religion has never succeeded in creating an egalitarian meritocracy. We are battling fools, not monsters.
23
"You can call the politicians cruel but at least do so in the context of what their choice really is- follow the program or lose your job."
If that is what someone's job requires, then they need to do something else for a living. It's the kind of rationalizations that lead a country to shame. And it's even worse if conservatives are doing it while KNOWING it's needlessly, irrationally cruel. At least true monsters (sociopaths that just don't understand the human condition) have the excuse of mental illness. Monsters do monstrous things because it's in their nature, like a natural wildfire. But the type of politician you describe is more like an arsonist burning down neighborhoods because they are paid to do so. Maybe they don't really have anything personally against the people living there but, their wealthy boss wants the development rights, so... flame on, right?
You’re comment implies the absence of human agency. If your employer asked you to murder somebody or lose your job, surely you wouldn’t argue that keeping your job was a a good reason to accept the assignment. The correct response would be to resign and tell the authorities about your employer’s indecent proposal. Your own integrity and conscience is more important than almost anything. These Republican legislators know very well what their votes do to people, and if they don’t, it’s because they have turned a blind eye to it. Either way, the conclusion is the same: pure evil.
If one looks in the mirror and a monster is staring back we blame the one who put the mirror to your face?
1
This punishment for the “sin” of being poor is another indicator of our growing scapegoating of those who we mistakenly assume are different than ourselves, just because they find themselves in a lower economic status, a different skin color or a different sexual orientation. Movies like Trading Places are popular because they expose this misconception. .
Our country’s strength grows when we recognize the humanity in each and every person. This is why I am a proponent of two years of mandatory domestic service for everyone upon reaching the age of 18 to restore our compassion for each other.
15
And no “buying you way out of it!”
The House passed a 5 year funding Bill for CHIP on 11/3, 173 Dems voted against it. Look it up, it's public record.
CHIP is a Federal program jointly funded by the States, states that are fiscally solvent will not run out of money anytime soon, most it will be June. No children are being denied access to healthcare at this time.
There were two reasons so many Dems voted against it. It contains a provision to shorter the grace period on the exchanges from 90 days to 30 days. Which is fair to the Insurance companies given that 20% of all enrollees from the fall of '16 were eventually dropped for non-payment. They continued to get benefits, and didn't have to pay for 90 days, long enough to avoid the tax penalty.
The second provision was decreasing benefits to very high income Medicare recipients to offset the cost of CHIP.
Meanwhile the Senate has been tied up with CR's, an animal first brought to DC by the Democrats who refused to bring a federal budget up for a vote for 36 months. CR's are swamp monsters. It's an opportunity to bash "the other guy". The next one is January 19th.
Despite what people who write, or comment in this column believe, no one wants to deny healthcare to children. That is insane. However, for people such as Krugman, it can become a weapon, which is seriously their only desire. Krugman could care less about anyone's healthcare except his own.
If everyone wants to give funding for CHP, why not pass a clean bill without impact on Medicare or the A.C.A. The answer is that the Republicans want to use hold those children hostage to get cover for wrecking the safety net.
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Or, republicans just don't care. 30-40% of the rich never worked a day in their lives. They make all kinds of excuses justifying some ridiculous rational for their existence. They don't understand or care how their government influence affects anyone but themselves. And, the morality of politicians allow them to ignore the general cry against them because of gerrymandering, electoral tampering, e.g., political bots, and rigging electronic voting machines, even disposal of ballots.
Sadly, this callousness leads through the process of civic rebellion. Eventually, bloody revolution is the result.
So why are they?
In all of this we have become a cheap society, not a poor one. When a people becomes cheap, it’s a slippery slope because we quit investing in anything new. The social safety net is an investment in human capital without it how does society renew itself? The children of the rich might be fine for another generation but who will bake their bread?
11
Don't worry, all that stuff and more will be done by robots with AI. Most bread
in the US is baked in large industrial machines already. For things that humans are better at, like picking raspberries, there will be an endless supply of
illegal immigrants, who will work for almost nothing. New toys and
entertainments for the rich will require constant renewal.
GOP opposition to programs that help children and the impoverished is indeed cruel, but the cruelty is more of a "by product" than the core motivation. Their agenda of cutting such programs is primarily intended to suppress the political power of minorities and the poor. If disadvantaged people have minimal access to health care, education, and employment they will be continue to be weakened force. People who are struggling with illness, marginal incomes, and broken schools are consumed with the demands of mere survival and are less likely to organize and vote. Keeping them down and out is the Republican strategy for clinging to power.
19
This is short sighted. Because it also creates a class of people vehemently opposed to you side.
Much as I am tempted to agree with Prof. Krugman here—and granting that in some number of individual congressmen's cases, he's almost certainly right—I don't think he's right in this instance.
I come from Alabama, and though I'm from Birmingham, the state's largest and most liberal and cosmopolitan city (a low bar, but it's true), nearly everyone I know is quite conservative, including my parents and all my aunts and uncles. So I have these arguments quite often. I get the sense that this is actually simply a case of a movement running on the fumes of its most recent electoral and ideological success (namely, Reaganism and all its tributaries, like William F. Buckley, etc.).
When I argue these issues with my conservative friends and relatives, what I hear back is not a set of structured arguments built on empirical facts, or expressions of blind prejudice or contempt (the latter of which is the suggestion of this piece). Instead, I'm treated to the same bromides about big government, tax-and-spend programs, bureaucracy, and so on, often recited in a rather rote fashion. It's a political tribal affiliation, this movement—one often defined by what it's against, rather than a positive vision of the future—and most of its voting constituency are quite old now; it's hard to give up the politics you've based your voting patterns on for so long.
I don't know, perhaps I'm too indulgent—many of these people are very dear to me, after all. But that's the sense I have of it, anyway
10
Republicans have always attempted to impose pain and difficulty to limit expenditures under programs designed to help the poor. But when it comes to programs providing massive expenditures for companies and individuals pursuing an investment or activity that Republicans approve, then everything possible is done to grease the wheels so that these beneficiaries of federal funds can obtain their dollars with the least hindrance and difficulty. It is all part of the Republican class warfare strategy. Welfare for the rich and welfare for the poor are delivered in two very different packages.
13
Unfortunately, you paint an image of the Republican party that the ignorants who yell "RINO" at every moment hold dear. It's always unfortunate to say "always";-). Qualifiers are desperately called for:
"The necessities of life must be provided for the needy, and hope must be restored pending recovery. The administration of relief is a major failing of the [current government]." and "The welfare of labor rests upon increased production and the prevention of exploitation. We pledge ourselves to:
Protect the right of labor to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of its own choosing without interference from any source."
You might have guessed: These excerpts are from a REPUBLICAN party platform, the one of 1936 when Alf Landon was running against FDR (http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29639).
You'll find a rich trough of surprising Republican positions going through those platforms. I think it is a lot better to remind Republicans of their glorious past rather than follow them in their Soviet style rewrite of their party's history.
Exactly how do people afford health insurance if they enter the workforce at minimum wage? If over the last several decades, incomes for the lower classes had been rising at the same rate as those for the wealthy, we would not be having this conversation. Now we are supposed to get on our knees and thank Wal-Mart for raising its minimum wage. If the wages had risen over the years to compensate the workers for helping to make companies like Wal-Mart profitable, everyone would be able to buy health insurance. The money has to come from somewhere for health insurance. So it comes from wages or it comes from government. Take your pick. But stop complaining that government steps in and costs you money in taxes if you are not willing to share the profit with those that made it possible for you to achieve that profit. Republicans complain poor people want to have their cake and eat it to. But I would argue the wealthy want the same thing. What is the first order of business for wealthy people no matter how low or high their tax rates? Hire lawyers and accountants to try and avoid paying any taxes. Republicans paint the poor as refusing to accept responsibility. But when the wealthy do it, they are looked at as victims.
6
Dr Krugman: I appreciate you continuing to "call it like it is" when it comes to GOP policies. But in this case, I'm uncomfortable with your framing, describing them as cruel, full stop. There is a "theory" or at least an attitude behind their cruelty: the poor will take advantage of handouts, and the only way to turn them into successful workers is by taking away those handouts. There's a straight line between this "theory" and the social Darwinism of the Gilded Age. It's much-beloved by entrepreneurs and successful executives, who wonder why everyone can't be like them.
Ignoring this "theory" means we never question its premises, most importantly, does simply making a lot of money mean you should shape government policies and social norms? Does winning in a commercial marketplace or executive power contest indicate you understand how humans should live and work? The Greatest Generation learned that this was *not* true after the Depression and WWII. The current GOP looks instead to its earlier forbears in the Gilded Age.
The problem with your argument is that the Republican “theory” generates hypotheses that can be tested empirically. In fact, those hypotheses have been tested thoroughly and the not a single one of the tests yields any support for the “theory.” Note, for example, Dr. Krugman’s story about the negative cost of CHPS. Either Republicans don’t believe the estimate (in which case they owe us the evidence that leads them to believe that those estimates are bad), don’t know about the estimates because they’re too lazy to do their homework, or they simply don’t care what the estimates say. While everyone is entitled to his own opinion, nobody is entitled to his own facts. Enacting policy based on gut feelings is legislative malpractice at best and cruel indifference to facts at its worst.
Dr. Krugman is spot-on. In casual conversation with GOP voters I usually detect an undercurrent of nastiness and anger. Even when they are smiling or joking. Their humor is often caustic and cruel.
There is no end-goal here. It is sadistic and that is the point.
2
To understand the reasons why these people vote seemingly against their best interests a book "Strangers in their own Land" by Arlie Hochschild is a must read. It opened my eyes to ways of thinking that I could not imagine but it is their way and it is why they do what they do. To try and understand them this book is a must.
1
I disagree (mildly). The Republicans' goal is not cruelty, but ideology. They simply believe that any help offered by the government to those who are not rich is morally offensive; in short, it isn't "fair" to tax the well-off (many of whom simply inherited their wealth) to support those who otherwise would suffer from a lack of medical care, food, housing and so on. That said, Team Red has no problem inflicting cruelty (and even death) to ensure their ideology. The cruelty isn't a goal, but it's a necessary ingredient of the Republican program.
4
My brother in law was a 71 year old Family Practice/ Internest Doctor in a small town in Upstate NY. His patients prior to the expansion of Medicaid and NY’s version of Healthy New York Obamacare. Was people whose Toy factory had sent their last production jobs to Mexico about 15 years before. Matell kept a few Management jobs so those lucky hundred had good company insurance. Otherwise they had to wait until they were 65 and qualify for Medicare or figure out away to qualify on Disability. Then the Hospital started using Hospitalist, he maid his money on visiting his elederly patients each morning in the hospital. He would make $300 a patient a visit per patient with one of two hospitalized a day.
With Obamacare and Medicaid his base of paying patients went way up. He told me on the phone that he was scared of what he was going to do with the Republicans taking Obamacare awAy. Half his patients should lose their insurance. At 72 in a couple of months it did not make sense for him to continue practicing . He told me he was going to retire at the end of the leer and go to the Beach, he was seeing the VA therapist because he served in Guam paying off his loans before private practice. We got the surprising new in November the pain of running the sole practitioner in the small town got to be too much for him he ended his life she she if hitting 72.
Krugman makes a good point, but I cannot agree that the focus of the GOP is on 'pain' but rather as Blow commented earlier this week (I think) that this is about deep seated racism-bigotry and power. The 'pain' Krugman describes is simply an on-going and not well hidden version of what America has seen for years. Unfortunately, our president and many members of the GOPand, apparently, many Americans think this is 'ok'. However, it seems that many Americans are getting tired of this and, hopefully, the mid term elections provide the energy needed to begin the process of rebuilding our country into something of which we all can be proud.
1
While I appreciate your effort to look critically into the racist past of your country, I can assure you that the intent of punishing the poor for being poor is and, most importantly, was everywhere way before people of different color or complexion showed up, e.g. in Europe (yes, I am old enough to remember!). I think it has a lot to do with the Calvinist ideas about predestination: God rewards the virtuous. We are rewarded by wealth, therefore we are virtuous.
1
Very true that Republicans want to hurt anyone below the top 1%.
But framing the battle as being between big bad Republicans who hate the little guy, and the good-guy Democrats who want to help the little guy via *welfare*, is a politically losing strategy. Republican voters, have been conditioned to see welfare as theft via taxes, and their wages have been lowered by bipartisan neoliberal economic policies, so they vote for tax-cutters like Governor Scott Walker, who continues to easily win elections in WI - with workers afraid of more taxes they can't afford. This is Dean Baker's "Loser Liberalism".
70% of voters favor a higher minimum wage, 80% of voters support Social Security. Balanced trade instead of decades of trade deficits. Winning positions. Positions which once were known to be fully supported by New Deal Democrats, but were deserted by Obama, who appointed Simpson and Bowles - known SS haters - to have a debate to "cut the deficit" (meaning cut Social Security - a position opposed by over 80% of Democratic AND 80% of *Republican* voters).
For swing voters in key swing states, those economic issues provide a huge untapped opportunity to unify voters and win. If Democrats were truly economic populists, it would be child's play to unify a solid majority and win on those issues electorally - and thus win on *all* issues legislatively. The failure of very smart and powerful donors and pols to take that path, is evidence that their donors won't allow it.
2
Ii think part of the problem is ignorance of who the poor really are. Those who favor the wealthy and want to slash welfare often think they are rewarding virtue. They don't see the virtuous, hardworking poor, who have been so hurt systemically and have nowhere else to turn.
I think Paul Krugman is right. Someone once said that conservatism is rationalized selfishness, and they had a point. Apparently, the poor are seen as the natural enemy of those who have wealth and power, and so the poor must be dealt with accordingly -- and punished.
And how does this accord with professed conservative religious belief? The answer is that it does not. God or mammon. Today's conservatives, especially in their alliance with President Trump, have shown that they have made money their choice. Evidently, greed is at the root of our problems.
2
I believe Dr. Krugman is correct. I live in the heart of Trump country and what I hear are statements like "why should I have to pay for that lazy person." Many people here assume that those who need assistance are lazy. This part of the electorate wants to punish the poor. But, if these Republicans need agricultural assistance, no one better take it from them.
8
We're back to the Ebenezer Scrooge approach where poverty is seen as a moral failing and deserves to be punished accordingly. The crazy thing is that the GOP base largely rely on Medicaid and food stamps yet the GOP feels comfortable with these policies because they have convinced these people to vote against their own personal interests. Happy countries have strong social safety nets and very little economic inequality. Until people stop blindly voting for Republicans because of abortion, guns, religion, LGBT rights, Women's Rights, or anti immigrant sentiment we're going to continue to get more of the same from the GOP. They have no incentive to improve the lives of their base.
4
This is just the tip of the iceberg. The Republicans have just jammed through a 1.5 trillion dollar tax cut for the wealthy and corporations. Next week, next month they will try to cut all social programs because "we don't have any money." Most of us knew that this was their plan all along, but we couldn't mobilize enough of our citizens to realize that the tiny tax cut they will get this year will disappear in ten years, and so will their health and welfare programs. The Republicans truly want us to be a nation of slaves and overlords, and guess which side of the equation they will occupy.
7
Krugman: "So Republican foot-dragging on CHIP, like opposition to Medicaid expansion and the demand for work requirements, isn’t about the money, it’s about the cruelty."
You nailed it, Dr. Krugman. But the Republicans will sanctimoniously claim they are the pro-family and pro-life political party because of their opposition to abortion and same-sex unions. Never mind that they are pushing policies destructive to families while at the same time denying life-saving health care to working poor families via Medicaid expansion.
But what more should we expect from a party whose members now in control of the House and Senate have become little more than apparatchiks blindly devoted to preserving the Putin-Trump regime?
3
Paul,
Here is how we all end up $20 Trillion dollars in debt with no end in sight to debt growth.
"But is it really about the money? No, it’s about the cruelty.".
As long as we turn a blind eye to the fact that deficit spending is not sustainable, and, will ultimately destroy the currency that the debt is based on, then, it will continue.
Even you, recently, after 8 years of being a cheerleader for fantastical debt expansion, have been mildly warning about deficit ills.
Responsible government manages a responsible budget.
That has to include conversations about both limiting vast military spending (completely out of control in the USA) and limiting money that goes to non-productive aspects of the economy (welfare, health care, etc.)
We cannot just scream "It's cruel!" hoping that the word will result in ignoring responsible budget management....
which.....it has so far.
2
It's time to strengthen the caring party by networking in defense , a position of which we can embark on offense. I appeal to business interests to start a fad, and you know you know how to start a fad. Market Single Sideband Citizens Band (CB) radios so we can communicate over long distances without the limitations of digital keys and restrictions or monthly payments. Do your homework and learn about it. You will need a radio for about 100 dollars, you know everything these days is a hundred. You'll also need an antenna and cable to attach to the radio. Learn before you buy so you know what to buy so you start with the right stuff. You can use anything from a high antenna to an indoor antenna. There is no license required. Free speech reinforces freedom. Let's do it.
Wealthy people often invest their money hoping to make more money. And by Republicans' cold calculations, providing for basic needs of other human beings (food, healthcare) does not yield a good return on investment. This is greed in full blossom.
3
The argument that the point is cruelty is a little too easy. A more empirically rooted argument would note the powerful belief among working class people (especially) that some poor people are getting undeserved benefits, while the "deserving" workers get nothing. Arlie Hochschild's book Strangers in the Their Own Land is not that old, is it?
Of course this belief is mostly stereotypical, and of course it is wound up with racism. But since it's a common belief, it's easy for Republicans to cater to it, though many probably believe it as well.
2
The challenge of Mr. Krugman's description - personally, I would call what the Republican's have been and are now doing downright evil - is what it says about the people who keep voting for them. Are they all "cruel" to use Mr. Krugman's term, or "evil" to use mine?
In the past those voters might have hid behind some pretense of policy rational, but now with the openly vile and demonic like behavior of Trump, who's policies are really pretty much the same old standard rightwing garbage but without any façade of policy, it has now been exposed for the lies, hate, ignorance, and hypocrisy it has always been.
Trump has managed to bring hate out of the closet. It must be very cathartic for Republican voters to no longer pretend they are motivated by anything other then pure self interest and hatred disdain for everyone but themselves.
I don't want to think half our country are evil - including some of my own relatives - but I don't see the alternative given all that has happened and still going on. There is no way to justify a tax cut for billionaires while taking away healthcare from children. There simply isn't. There is no way you can say you care about the life of the unborn child while showing that you absolutely don't care about the life of an already living child. There simply isn't.
Yes, "evil" is the word.
4
There is actually a connection between trump's vulgar comment yesterday and this column. The republican's in power actually believe that people with money are better then people who don't have money. They believe they are superior to those who don't base all their life decisions on a dollar sign. I have found that often (not always) people who have acquired a lot of money do so because every decision they make is about how it will impact their money. Everything is transaction with a goal of getting more and keeping more. And because they truly believe they are superior, they also believe they should be in charge and when they are in charge they will not share. Why should they? They are better, the best, and places or people who are poor, they believe, are poor because they are inferior. And they don't want to see those inferior people and truly, they'd like them to go away, through death or deportation and certainly, don't let any more of them in. It's their vision for our country and all of their money, which is currently buying our government, is allowing them to inflict it upon the rest of us, whether we agree, or not. If we don't agree, they'd just go away, too, and if they keep messing up our health insurance, we may. Let's mess up their self-serving, money grubbing plans and vote, vote, vote democratic in November. These people are loathsome and don't represent us or the best values of our country.
2
Donald Trump's ultimate go-to insult is to call someone or some operation a "loser" and, thus, dismiss them from further consideration. This seems to comport exactly with contemporary Republican attitudes and actions.
2
Republicans simply do not want ordinary people have good health. It is more than just not wanting people have access to health insurance. They want to poison our rivers, pollute our air by removing safe air and water standards and regulations. On top of that, Republicans promote dirty coal and oppose clean energy producing sources. Republicans undermine and oppose the fundamental objective of government--protect its citizens.
If democrats stopped supporting the massive waste of money on endless wars all over the world, perhaps I would be more sympathetic to this argument. Cruelty, however, is a bipartisan choice. It is expressed by the death, destruction, and assassinations of every president across decades but especially since 9/11. It is expressed by the opposition to safety-net programs too.
It's unfortunate that no consensus exists on the need for these safety-net programs, but that is the reality. Americans have voted to install republicans in elected offices in Congress and the majority of states. They should get what they want until such time as democrats can make an effective alternative case. It's unfortunate the democratic party has failed in this task.
1
The Democrats have. Just read Hillary's platform and detailed fact sheets:
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
I used to think that Republicans are good people who simply have a different ideology than Democrats on governance. No more.
While I do not think cruelty is their goal per se, I definitely think cruelty is the main accompanying feature. Their goal, I think, is to do as little as possible, nothing if they can help it, for the average citizens, the 99%. Because these people, by virtue of not being rich, are viewed as worthless and undeserving. That is why I still can't help feeling surprised, shocked to find working class, poor Republican voters.
The 99% are worthwhile to Republicans only as consumers to be swindled, workers to be exploited, or suckers through which the cycle of consumption and production can go through to generate wealth for big money.
Take for example the food industry which is in process of ruining health in their new markets from Malaysia, India, to Mexico, Brazil, etc., with high sugar, high salt, high fat, but low nutrition junk processed foods. While big food corporations gain profit, their customers gain weight, blood pressure, blood sugar.
The cruelty of Republicans is to make us all pawns to big corporations. We the people are their playing field of profit making. They left us exposed, unprotected, unwanted, dis-empowered, disenfranchised, hence suffering.
1
I lived in Wisconsin in 2015 when the state legislature was proposing mandatory drug testing for anyone getting government assistance of any kind. Studies show that those on assistance use drugs at a lower rate than other people, so there was no logical reason for it other than to cause pain and humiliation. I wrote letters to my representatives asking if they planned to drug test the billionaire owners of the Milwaukee Bucks who were swindling the state into paying for a new arena. I got no response.
2
Shades of a Charles Dickens novel! 'Unfettered capitalism' leads to robber barons, monopolies with monopoly profits, along with a right wing arrogance that is agreeable and even gleeful about the suffering of the lazy poor and middle class. We have Trump at the head of this long con now and he is a perfect example of the worst of the lot.
As I have said, I have given up movies in response to Grassley's claim that we who are below the privileged classes must give up booze, women, and movies but it has not helped much.
While the economy is strong and some of the benefits of the ACA, SS, Medicare and Medicaid are still available to many of us, we are now past the "let them eat cake" stage in all but the firm racist 35%, and we lowly, lazy masses still have a vote. The sadism, cruelty, greed and corruption are taking their toll on the GOP ranks I hear. Time to recover our sanity as a nation.
The media & economic experts like Dr. Krugman need to detail the government welfare, at both the state & federal levels, to corporations & the wealthy. We need to turn the tables on the GOP & their "welfare queens" scapegoating when it is clear that corporations & the wealthy receive far greater benefits than low-income individuals.
Even uninformed citizens can easily recite evidence of "welfare queens" & all the benefits they receive. That is because the GOP & conservative propaganda break it down & repeat it endlessly. But we need to do that with the benefits to corporations & the wealthy so citizens can learn where their tax dollars go.
1
Just look at the bottom line--where the money went.
There are many references, but this one is the simplest:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/opinion/leonhardt-income-...
Anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked what the first signs of civilization were in a society. It was expected she would talk about tool making or language. Instead, Mead said the first sign of emerging civilization was a healed femur.
In early society, a person with a broken leg could not hunt or gather and so this would mean certain death. A healed femur meant that someone had to care for the injured person while the bone healed.
Compassion, Mead said, was the first sign of civilization.
No health care for many does mean pain and suffering. It is a very self-righteous attitude by those in power. It also means a rejection of a compassionate community/society. Everyone for him/herself is dangerous for the survival of homo sapiens.
5
You need to follow this logic all the way to its conclusion: the republicans consider the poor, sick and old to be a drain of the taxpayer money they could be shoveling into their own pockets. It would be much better for them (the republicans) if the needy were not around.
A year ago I never thought I could believe something like this, but now I do: this government under the republicans is committing the willful murder of a sizable portion of the population.
1
Unfortunately you are right about this
I think it's gross
If only the left hadn't gone crazy about social issues
Because the culture wars are attacking the very fabric of society (speech, ad hominem validity of ideas etc) I have to back these guys
I wonder if many are in my position
It's sad the left took this turn because it's making us have to choose culture over these
"As a result, subsidies for private insurance would cost more than the direct coverage children currently get through CHIP."
That is the Republicans objective. To turn all government spending into corporate profits where their rich donors can get their cut.
I no longer ask myself how people like Ryan, Hatch, Grassley, and all those who voted for the billionaire tax cut but are refusing to renew the CHIP program, sleep at night. I am convinced that any flickers of basic humanity and compassion for the less fortunate they might have possessed have been doused forever. I am sure they all sleep like babies- very, very rich ones.
And herein lies the difference between Progressives and Conservatives--displayed in this column. Former economist, turned Liberal pundit, and Trump hater, Krugman defines compassion by how many people are "helped" by government programs. Conservatives define the same by how many people no longer need them.
Krugman would maintain the Obama-era levels of confiscatory taxation and oppressive regulation--thereby handicapping the ability of businesses to grow and hire people. This approach lead to 8 years of very low growth and stunted business and consumer confidence--essentially, 8 years of malaise.
Now witness the Conservative approach--with the "wealth effect" of the stock market, bulging retirement accounts, raising the spirits of the middle class. Unemployment rates are at historic lows. Businesses are offering bonuses to employees--now that the boot of the taxman has been removed from their throats. Enthusiasm has replaced malaise.
In the clearest delineation of the 2 philosophies, consider the recent news about Food Stamps: over 2 million no longer need the program--since Trump's election. Krugman laments the news, Conservatives celebrate it.
As the economy improves under Conservative guidance, expect guys like Krugman to become increasingly strident--watching as his Progressive, governo-centric economic theories are smashed to smithereens. It started with a prediction of a stock market collapse with Trump's election. And we know how that turned out.
1
" Conservatives define the same by how many people no longer need them. "
How many people were unemployed at the end of the last Republican presidency? A great economy is of no benefit to those that are completely shut out from its gains. A raging stock market does nothing to help the person without health insurance. It doesn't help the kid who receives a poor education because leaders refuse to adequately provide one to all.
This says nothing of the daily bigotry displayed by the president and his party that surely plays a part in damaging the psyche of a sizable portion of people. You can't claim you have morals in a country with millionaires and billionaires that doesn't care for its citizens and actively destroys public resources.
What is the purpose of self-sufficiency when there will always be young, old, and sick people who could never be self sufficient?
Senator Hatch states, "there's no money for the CHIP program" and yet every Republican signed a bill which spends over 1.5 TRILLION to give a tax cut to the 1%. If Republicans demand the recipients of Medicaid to work, I suggest we demand the same of the idle 1% who also don't work.
This is about inflicting pain, giving their big money donors what they want - the safety net gone, and their base people to look down on. It’s a trifecta of evil.
I'm continually stunned than anyone actually reads what this man has to say after his pitiful prediction of the state of the stock market, the economy and the country in the event that Trump won!
Featherpants. Just wait. It took 10 years (1919 - 1929) for the Republicans to cause the Great Depression and 12 years (1996 - 2008) for Clinton and Bush to cause the Great Recession.
I've asked this since passage of the abominable ACA: if Medicaid expansion was such a "great deal" for the states, why didn't the 100% funding level stay in effect forever? Maybe some states saw this as another open-ended entitlement that would damage their budgets in the long run?
1
RJ, because the ACA could only be passed under reconciliation which put nonsensical budgetary restraints on the bill. There is just as much reason to believe that the funding level would have been increased (if the Democrats were in power) as there is to believe the opposite.
Perhaps the GOP's cruelty can be quantified: They like to think that nearly half the country are "takers" (Romney's 47%), but virtually the same Congress five years later allotted only 17% of the benefits of the new Tax Cut law to the poor and middle class. Sad.
Republicans have used government to take away things people need. It’s always about cuts to programs, to benefits.
We pay for these programs and yet our money always seems to go to corporate welfare, to a bloated military. It’s disgusting and disheartening.
Why, in the richest country in the history of the world, do so many need to suffer?
The US could be such a wonderful place to live and build a future in if we took the right steps in healthcare, gun laws, education, in income equality, in maternity and paternity leave, like so many other developed nations.
It’s truly a shame.
3
We suffer far more from what we do for the "Undeserving Rich". Our tax laws have enabled more than 250,000 young men and women to start off in life at age 21 with over $4,000,000 in capital and over $100,000 a year in income. Why should they be absolved from being obligated to serve our country? Why should they be rewarded for being Rich with NO obligation to serve our country while the Poor are punished for their poverty?
2
Hey Paul,
Is there any good time to reverse stimulus for Keynesians? Are the arguments presented in this op Ed analogous to conservatives saying that this is about government statism?
For MMTers, the answer is only when we have excessive inflation.
1. We need money to conduct commerce.
2, As the economy grows we need more money.
3. Money can come to the private sector from 2 places--the federal government or from a favorable trade balance.
4. Money comes from the federal government in 2 ways--spending (fiscal) or from the FED to the banks (monetary).
5, The FED has sent a lot of money to the banks with little effect. The money has sat in the vaults of the banks or been lent to the Rich who use it to speculate.
6. Net federal spending is measured by the federal deficit, i.e. the deficit measures the net flow of money to people, businesses and state & local govs.
7. Thus in order to get the new money the private sector needs, the federal deficit must be larger than the trade deficit. We have a large trade deficit. We need a large deficit.
8. If the above is correct, periods of negative deficits, surpluses, which pay down the federal debt should lead to a bad economy. They have. There have been 6 such periods of longer than 3 years in US history, They have ALL ended in a real gut wrenching depression. In fact this accounts for all of our depressions.
9. On the other hand, in 1946 we had the largest debt ratio in our history. The public debt ratio was 47% larger than today. We had deficits for 21 of the next 27 years. We increased the debt 75%.
And we had Great Prosperity.
It is not only that conservatives do not care about poor and needy and programs like CHIP or DACA, they refused to fund them separately, and in the case of DACA it was discontinued on purpose, solely to be used as bargaining chips in budget negotiations.
Totaly despicable!
And if the GOP has its way, Medicare and possibly social security will be next on the chopping block. As investors and business executives, the billionaire one percenters see the elderly as unproductive deadweight, and not worth the money to maintain seniors’ health, comfort, and quality of life. The message they send is this: you either keep working until you drop dead, or just drop dead.
As a side note, author Jane Meyer has profiled these billionaires in her book Dark Money, as well as in other publications. One value theme that transcends these billionaires is their view on what determines a person’s worth to society. It isn’t morality, kindness, lawful and civil behavior, etc. It’s income and net worth. The wealthier you are, the greater your worth to society. And the GOP, through their policies, enable this toxic and undemocratic view.
What has America become?
Professor Krugman, Dear commenters: Is it possible for the federal government to have a cash-flow problem such that the books can not be made to work? How would we know? What would be the signs? I really would appreciate objective, informed knowlege, insight, and opinion.
Joe, thru the FED, the federal government can create as much money as it needs out of thin air. It will run out of dollars the day after the NFL runs out of points. The books can always be made to work.
The sign that it has created too much money would be excessive inflation. Seen any of that around lately? In fact, there is not enough inflation today. Inflation encourages people to use the money they have, not put it in their mattresses. Spending it provides jobs and money for others in a virtuous circle. Many people do not have enough money today. The federal government needs to provide more. It does that by deficit spending since it does no good to get money to Joe if you tax it right back. The deficit has been cut 75% since 2009.
The GOP is not about legislation, unless punishment for just existing is what one means by legislating. Vicious cruelty, overt racism now with DT's latest remarks, and punishment are the three pillars of the GOP.
I guess it has always been true that the rich feed off the poor. But sometimes it makes me so sad I can hardly bear it.
A few years ago a Republican politician explained to a reporter that the GOP objected to paying for benefits to people they don't like. Seems clear they'd feel much better about those programs if they benefited white evangelicals only.
2
Yes, it's a weird kind of sadism: "I'll gladly forego health care, good schools, livable old age pensions, and other social amenities as long as those people I disapprove of don't get them."
When an American man loses his way, the last thing he would do is to ask for directions because it is a sign of weakness and incompetence. There is a deeply held American ideology that the need for help is clear evidence of weakness, incompetence and laziness. Whether it is addiction, poverty, illness or injury; people must help themselves. The new republican immigration policy is based on only accepting the best from other countries, the Republicans are poised to eliminate the safety net, this nation is pulling back from the world leadership, cutting foreign aid and erecting a wall while many republican run states withdrawing voting rights from the poorest and weakest. According to Trump we are a nation of winners where there is no place for the “losers” among us.
1
So, Paul, the people who voted for Trump, and the Tea Party, and the "conservatives" do not understand in any way what you have written here. If you verbally explained it to them, they would not believe you. If you TAUGHT it to them in a class, they would distrust you as being "the enemy" because they have been brainwashed for decades by the people who want them to remain lost, weakened and angry about the wrong stuff, through all forms of media, at the pulpit, and at all the GOP conventions. The changes in the multiple laws that made this possible took place over several decades but were deliberately done. But with little publicity and virtually no explanation. Just PR, spin and manipulation. The wealthy behind this laughing at every point along the way.
How do you tell someone who is a sociopath to have empathy? How do you bring someone to compassion when they have no heart? That the GOP congress people have been and continue to be elected is the bigger problem and that the people who still support Trump (and there are millions) can do so with impunity is what's frightening.
How can you ask people to connect the dots when they don't see dots in the first place? If you vote against your own best interests, and of course all of them have, and then you blame others for your losses, what is there to do? Maybe only these columns. Please keep writing them. If you can get just one person to wake up, it will have been successful.
1
got to disagree with you on this one. It isn't about the cruelty, its about what Cialdini called "commitment and consistency".
If you believe that all your wealth is the product of your own work and entirely yours to spend, then what do do about the poor? Nothing if it's their fault they are poor (as Grassley so succinctly puts it "spend all their money 'on booze or women or movies")
And if it's their fault they are poor then programs to help them are stealing money rightfully belonging to the wealthy to give to the undeserving poor. Sounds crazy, but its really the way the 1-percenters think.
3
Mike, ask yourself where did all that money that people claim is the product of their own work come from in the first place? Did they print it in their basement? Did it fall like manna from the sky?
I believe the revulsion that Republican politicians feel toward providing a safety net can be put down to animalistic emotions. Like a troop of chimpanzees, humans want to protect the resources from other troops. Some people feel this emotion more strongly than others. Some GOP politicians are simply pandering to people who feel this way strongly, others feel those emotions themselves. Also, before we progressive Democrats get on too high a horse, let us remember that Bill Clinton pandered to the same emotions with his ‘changing of welfare as we know it’.
Somehow, miraculously, there is always enough money for a war against a foreign adversary, real or imagined, while, at the same time, there is never enough money to pay to protect our most vulnerable citizens. That is the America of the GOP.
73
Regardless of one's politics, there is no changing the truth that while defense is called for in the Constitution, healthcare is not. Even the Interstate highway system had to be dressed up as a defense network by Eisenhower to make it legal.
I grew up in a Horatio Alger household; my working-class parents drilled into their children that excelling in whatever we did, applying ourselves in school and work, and applying ourselves in the pursuit of capacity and opportunity offered the prospect of improving our station in life. Attached to this was a Protestant work ethic and sense of moral obligation to our fellow man. Result: 2 moderately successful businessmen and an architect with international recognition. Two of us are registered Republicans.
So I recognize the Republican endorsement of class warfare as a way of structuring society and policy. This is not new as it dates to the Reagan era. But today it combines the greed of Donald Trump, myopia of Mitch McConnell, and swarmy anti-Christian amorality of Paul Ryan to set a tone and focus that leads to the wealth transfer bill (using the taxing power as a vehicle), abandonment of CHIP and health insurance for millions, and destruction of regulatory protections addressing safety and environmental quality. That is simply warfare against the rest of us. If someone picks my pocket on the street it is a crime but if it is done through the tax system it is okay. Republicans in effect strangle Horatio Alger as a role model, replacing him with Richie Rich, then look for ways to make striving an exercise for chumps. OK, I get the message. Not a dime to the Republicans. Send Paul Ryan to drive a Weiner Mobile and Donald Trump to a Mar-a-Lago without an imported workforce
66
It’s about lowering wages to even lower levels. The destruction of the safety net will force people to sell their labor to levels comparable to those of China. It’s done for the class who owns capital not for the plebeians who only own their skin and ability to work.
120
The Kochs and their ilk have been laying the ground work for this outcome for years now. And barring a labor uprising like we had in the 1920's and 30's, it is working for them.
1
Yup, they will be needed to replace the people being deported and the slashing of legal immigration.
1
Balance sheet politics are a death knoll that avoids its own obvious immorality. Numbers are neutral--but they assign costs. Arguments about these "costs" veil the value debate: whether money in taxes goes for the common good, whether victims are to be blamed for their failings, or if debate can even be afforded.
We know the imagined F-52 can; its real counterpart, the most expensive Pentagon project in wartime history, is praised--and paid for by deficits, growing larger by gifts to the rich.
But the lives of the poor, children, and the real victims who find no place in a system of wealth that thrives on waste, have become unaffordable, less important than billions spent on a wall to nowhere.
So we have the politics of the balance sheet and its ledger of hypocrisy. Its record shows defense is more important than the people who are defended, esp. those vulnerable in a system of freedom of hoops without hope.
Paul is right: cruelty is the point. The subtext: white is right, even if some suffer for the will and wealth of others; theirs is a knowingly sacrifice to be praised! Their deaths and opioid addictions are a tragedy of freedom we can't afford to fix. Their dying contributes to the greater good: tax dollars don't have to be diverted to save them. They are martyrs of the undertow oozing from minorities/immigrants/those with different religions--their deaths the worst realization of fear and the scourge of poverty. Blame: Never the system, always the victims!
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And- oh by the way, soon-to-be-ex-Senator Hatch- you and your fellow congressional leaders certainly WOULD have the money for Chip if you stopped cutting the taxes of your favorite billionaire CEOs and/or stopped handing the Defense Department more money than they claim to need in order to purchase outdated and superfluous military hardware.
399
Orrin Hatch is the saddest of all. He actually worked to put the CHIP program together but now his donors say no and when his fury erupted at Senator Brown who questioned it shows that maybe deep down he knew he had sold his soul to the devil for filthy lucre. Of course that didn't stop him from slamming the door on children's health care. He has shriveled into nothingness.
1
There were a total of 45,980,595 Medicaid and CHIP recipients nationwide in 2016.
26,094,338, or 57% of them, hailed from states that voted for Trump.
19,886,257, or 43% of the nationwide total, hailed from states that voted for Hillary.
Medicaid/CHIP recipients in TRUMP-voting states:
Texas 4,610,610
Florida 2,773,238
Georgia 1,580,701
Pennsylvania 1,567,184
Ohio 1,564,269
North Carolina 1,391,358
Michigan 1,285,914
Arizona 992,571
Tennessee 979,832
Louisiana 884,736
Indiana 814,929
Alabama 797,572
Oklahoma 719,185
South Carolina 714,260
Wisconsin 712,697
Missouri 680,021
Kentucky 630,464
Arkansas 533,192
Mississippi 530,617
Iowa 426,599
Kansas 362,401
Utah 311,961
West Virginia 291,734
Idaho 244,783
Nebraska 223,881
Montana 143,939
Alaska 106,306
South Dakota 98,339
North Dakota3 66,480
Wyoming 54,565
40% of Medicaid recipients are white, 25% are Hispanic, 21% are black and 14% are 'Other' (Asian or other ethnicity)
There is no one in the world that loves to vote against their own interest than America's poor white rural Bible Belters who cannot get enough punishment.
As the cruel Calvinist and Puritan Cotton Mather put it, “For those who indulge themselves in idleness, the express command of God unto us is, that we should let them starve.”
The Republican Party has taught their own voters to kill themselves through racism, disinformation, systematic self-mutilation, cognitive dissonance, abandonment and a 'God' who doesn't give a damn about them.
Nice GOPeople.
1187
Thank you for providing these facts. In Mitch McConnell's Kentucky which receives the largest share of federal dollars, the governor is aggressively moving to cut Medicaid recipient numbers. This at a time when Kentucky sits near the bottom of health rankings for smoking rates, cancer deaths, and diabetes and faces an opioid epidemic. Of course cynical cuts to programs like CHIP and Medicaid ($800 billion over 10 years) are to offset the wealth transfer he and Republicans just legalized in the tax overhaul.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_federal_budget
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@Socrates: Once again, my friend, you hold up the blinding, searching light for all to see--those with eyes, that is. All these states voted for Donald Trump because he--like they--hate the non-white "other." That's all that counts. Oh, by the way, they didn't stop to think that maybe--just maybe--the day might come when their children would suffer because of the loss of nutritional supplements. Oh, I also forgot to mention that the unintended consequences of life--accident, injury, illness--might have to be taken into account with a panicked visit to a clinic or a hospital or other treatment center. Then, when later they open a bill in the mail, they can't pay it. They default. As Stephen King once acidly remarked, "they're on the county." The Trump voter finds it exceedingly (and excitingly!) convenient to look down upon the recipients of (temporary) government "aid" as the stereotypical Romney statistic without, mind, once looking in that hard and unforgiving mirror: "Oh, that's me!" But they send to Washington the very politicians who would just as soon beggar them as endorse a donor's five or six-figure campaign check. These folks don't have a clue. They think they're on Easy Street and the rest of us just chill out on their tax dime. Great job exposing the hypocrisy of the GOP and the shining stupidity of the Trump voter. They're going to be hurt, but they don't care, just as long as someone else suffers the pain.
18
To be fair to some of those voters Trump did tell them specifically, and for months, that he would absolutely not touch Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He lied to them. We knew it. We tried to tell them, but they were sold a message they wanted to believe so badly. Not unlike coal workers believing in the face of all evidence that coal was going to "come back." There is literally no way to accomplish that short of physically forcing people to burn coal. Completely unattainable and yet they want to believe.
16
Re Children's Health Insurance Program
Good news
The Hill reported yesterday
"Lawmakers say they're close to deal on CHIP funding"
"the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued a new cost estimate this week that now puts the cost of a five-year extension at just $800 million, down from $8 billion.
Finding an agreement on how to pay for that smaller sum won’t be an issue, said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R- Ore.). “I don't think that will be a problem.""
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/368422-lawmakers-say-theyre-close-t...
Now, why would Mr. Krugman state " Republican foot-dragging on CHIP, isn’t about the money, it’s about the cruelty ?
Here is one possible answer from a former public editor of the New York Times
Daniel Okrent noted "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes "
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/weekinreview/13-things-i-meant-to-writ...
7
Thanks for the Okrent column link. It's worth reading for a lot more than his criticism of Krugman, whose accuracy I can't evaluate.
Because a) you left out the oart or the article saying that Krugman had the ten-year number right, and b) they haven't passed anything yet, and c) Republicans are cited saying that ten years is "too long," of an extension.
1
8 B down to 800 M? Must be a lot of cuts in the offerings. Or increases in what the insured will have to pay. The devil is in the details.
The gratuitous comment on Dr. Krugman are without merit, but not without hate.
1
I’d suggest that Paul get creative.
From 2009-2010, Democrats controlled the purse strings. As a result, during the years following when we lived under divided, highly partisan government and couldn’t pass a budget, Congress was forced to fund government by serial continuing resolutions, so the basic budgetary priorities that survived as CRs were theirs. The Republicans, come Purgatory or High Water, are going to pass a budget this year, and Trump will sign it. Even if Democrats succeed at capturing one congressional House in the midterms (I think it quite unlikely), what will then result is yet ANOTHER series of CRs, except THIS time it will be Republican priorities that survive. If Trump is re-elected (at this point, 50-50), that could go on for a LONG time, basically keeping alive the priorities of a Congress long dead.
By getting “creative”, I mean that Paul should put that mind of his to work coming up with ways of moderating those Republican priorities in return for Democratic, bi-partisan fig-leaves, that could affect their severity in ways that he regards as sensible. But another piece of advice: calling Republicans who simply have different views of what is best for America “sadists” … probably isn’t the best way of affecting what otherwise will be a palpably conservative arc.
The easiest thing in the world is to protest that with which one disagrees. It’s a mite tougher to actually become relevant to the discussion.
9
It’s not about “the cruelty”, and you outrage every Republican by such a transparently obvious ideologically self-interested charge. You consciously make compromise that much more difficult.
It’s about the perception that Americans have become too dependent on government for the most basic sufficiency, which attacks our traditional self-reliance and individualism; and it’s about the perception of the basic purpose of government. It’s those perceptions that largely get Republicans ELECTED. They’re arguable perceptions about American identity, which is why politics remains a blood-sport, but they’re not “sadistic”: they’re legitimate and mainstream.
32
@Richard: I don't believe I caught your demurrals about The Donald's vulgar, hateful and bigoted s*hole remarks in any of this evening's other comments sections. So here's your opportunity to exculpate- I mean weigh in.
In any case, even if those assertions didn't spell out the man's racial animus clearly enough for a blind man to see, the policy proposals that would withhold medical treatment for poor [i.e., non-Norwegian] children has nothing to do with self-reliance or individualism. Minor children cannot be expected to be self-reliant; whether black, white, blonde, poor or born into wealth [much like you-know-who] their health and well-being should not be subject to the whims of politicians And neither should that of adults, albeit for different reasons. And, yes, those policy decisions are cruel and sadistic. If they're the sort that get Republicans elected, it follows that those who vote for them are no less cruel and sadistic than they are. And very possibly no less contemptible that our white-supremacist-in-chief.
248
stu:
Trump's comment, although probably accepted by many Americans as accurate and descriptive, was nevertheless outrageous in its vulgarity for a president to make publicly. But, then, Trump's never been known for the moderation of his mouth. Racism? I don't regard myself as a racist, and I refer to such countries as "failed and near-failed". But, even in private, I wouldn't use the word he used.
No, children can't be expected to be truly self-reliant -- but that is the responsibility of their parents, isn't it? And we teach self-reliance to our children by our examples as adults. Your problem is your view of government as the guarantor of sufficiency, irrespective of the responsibility of parents to their children. It's that warped, extremist view of government that has us unable to DO anything as a country OTHER than feed vast numbers of our people and provide them with their healthcare.
That's not racism. That's a desire that Americans regain their self-respect.
7
The Republicans hope their austerity approach to the poor who deserve help but who are dismissed as lazy, immigrants, takers, and minorities will distract the base from the budget busting tax give-away to the very undeserving rich.
190
Yep. Legal/tax experts examining the tax plan (wealth transfer) have documented 35-pages of loopholes. So indeed the super rich have an even better chance of avoiding paying taxes. And if the estimated $7.6 Trillion currently evading taxes around the world gets bigger the super rich and corporations-as-citizens may have to send a rocket to the moon and park it there for safety!
The Games They Will Play: Tax Games, Roadblocks, and Glitches Under the New Legislation - 35 Pages Posted: 13 Dec 2017 Last revised: 10 Jan 2018
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3084187
22
Why do we persist in characterizing the consequences of the tax plan as "wealth transfer"? The entire Republican agenda could readily be characterized as making it legal for corporations and the very wealthy to take resources from the rest of the population without compensation. The R's are just making theft legal for certain segments of the population. If we characterize this as the theft it is, perhaps someone in the Bible Belt will recognize that what the R's are doing violates one of the Ten Commandments. "Wealth transfer" is a euphemism that obscures what is really going on here to a large segment of the population.
4
Yes. The tax plan changed how inflation is calculated (to chained CPI), so bracket creep will increase the taxes paid by workers, after our bait and switch tax cuts expire.
Has Krugman explained the details of this tax increase to his readers yet?
The king of being mean to people is Donald Trump. The rest of the Republicans follow suit. Trump is just openly mean.
Making sick people work - and where do the jobs they can do come from? - while cutting corporate taxes by 40%: "mean" is the only adjective that makes any sense.
As for CHIP, well, those children should have done a better job choosing their parents. It's not some wealthy taxpayer who's responsible for that choice.
245
Howard, how about the adjective "evil"?
1
He says in public what they say in private, and that is why they love him. He is emboldening white supremacists allied to our historical enemies because these people see ready for the global billionaires to manipulate.