The NTY is proving itself to be center right with these endless columns of doom
2
Fiscal hypocrisy is both parties' biggest advantage. Trump is, perhaps, the guiltier party because he should know better. But Sanders' unwillingness to even ponder the fiscal impact of "Medicare for All" is almost equally egregious.
Sanders' beloved Scandinavian social welfare programs work because they are all local: Sweden has the population of Ohio and the landmass of California. And billionaires are obviously not the problem. Sweden, Norway, (plus Switzerland and Singapore) all have far more billionaires per capita than the US does.
I attribute our federal fiscal hypocrisy to the scale of population and geographic factors. The federal government must serve as the backstop for the rest of the nation and be prepared to run sustained deficits when necessary. Still, it's worth noting that 40 states are required by law to operate within a balanced budget. When these social welfare programs are sent so far away, it's always someone else's fault and someone else's problem.
2
It's the same every cycle: Republicans ruin the economy with tax cuts for the wealthy that generate NOTHING but profits for donors, then Democrats repair the ruin and we prosper as a nation. Republican "trickle down" economics gets trotted out each time in tandem with the hypocrisy of Republican "fiscal responsibility" and their base eats it up like candy. It's two separate worlds where Republican states slip farther into 3rd world status and Democratic states move ahead only to be hampered by an uneducated, racist Republican electorate that apparently becomes easier to manipulate with each generation. It's not cynicism that works best for Trump, it's ignorance.
9
I've long been aware of the difference in Republican opinions about what deficits mean: different under them than under Democrats. However, they've always been pretty circumspect in how they talked about it.
Until now:
"'My party is very interested in deficits when there is a Democrat in the White House. The worst thing in the whole world is deficits when Barack Obama was the president. Then Donald Trump became president, and we’re a lot less interested as a party,' [Mick] Mulvaney said at the Oxford Union to a group of several hundred people.
"Mulvaney, who ran the Office of Management and Budget before taking the acting chief of staff role, said he found the growing deficit — which reached almost $1 trillion in 2019, soaring in the Trump era – 'extraordinarily disturbing' but that neither party, nor voters, cared much about it. Republicans, he said, were 'evolving' since Trump became president."
—Washington Post, Paul Waldman, 2/20/2020
4
Republicans have demonstrated over and over again not cynicism but downright greed and hypocrisy. When they are in office, debt and spending don't matter. When Democrats are in office, they suddenly fear the threat of huge debt. Somehow their base and even more educated people who should know better believe them. That's what has to change. Meanwhile, Republicans who don't like either Trump or Sanders but insist on voting for Trump will help Trump and his base further ruin this country.
7
The article might need an update if the stock market continues it’s free fall.
2
One glaring omission has been clear for the past year: Jerome Powell? Every week during the past 30 years it seemed was mentioning the FED Chairman's role in guiding the nation's economic well being. The 'how and why' of interest rate calculations were of universal study and anxious results. In any event the FED Chairman/woman were mentioned all the time.
Jerome Powell, who? And why not?
2
Graph2 @ Bit.ly/EPI-study shows that the median wage has been flat since 1972 despite GNP growing 150%, 90% of the gains flowing to the <1%. Before 72 the median wage grew w/ GNP. That makes 1972 "The Great Inflection Point of 72"
GNP is >$22 trillion so basically over $10 trillion is flowing to about 10,000 wealthy families (that's $1 billion per family).
Ours is a system of free contract. So the distribution of resources in the US is a function of the distribution of bargaining power.
The bargaining power of the 99% was broken in 72 as a result of a variety of events happening around the same time (no room for that here).
Bargaining power occurs on a micro level between you & your employer based upon market conditions for your labor. At a macro level bargaining occurs in Washington around various lobbies & their interests groups.
At the highest level it occurs between the <1% & the >1% (the 99%). The <1% pay their lobbyist better & so buy congressmen.
The reality is not lost upon the public.
1 reaction to this is Bernie Sanders & other progressive pols. They don't take money from the <1% so they can only serve the 99%.
& so the public, a little slow on the uptake, is slowly finding its way towards Bernie.
Initially he got 20%. Then 30%. Now he's moving up to 40% & 50% but just in the democratic party. By November don't be surprised if a landslide occurs in his favor & if it does maybe the Great Inflection Point of 1972 will be broken for good, as it was in 1933.
3
Besides the hypocrisy there is a much greater risk to the "Rump Economy" which will effect the next administration be it Democrat or Republican.
This economy is essentially on a sugar high. These easy money policies have led to an over inflated economy with essential no value added assets. Factory production? Productivity? Expansion? All suspiciously missing. Like all things Rump, there is no there there, just gilded glitz and an exercise in self promotion. The king of debt has struck again.
So, when Rump does what he does best, go bankrupt, what then? What tools will be available to the Fed?
The real question is, who do you want at the helm of the next recession? DJT? or anybody else?
5
trump may be re-elected.
We hope not.
But, the reason he will be re-elected is that the GOP wants power at all costs. They will lie, cheat, steal, ask Russia for help, and use wedge issues (abortion, gun control, "religious freedom", taxes, ...) to divide us. They preach hate and fear and know that people will respond. They care not one bit for this country. They only care for their own wealth and hold on power.
With that as their primary motivation they do not consider truth, fairness, honesty, budget deficits, promises, ... as constraints but merely tools to manipulate the low information voters. With the stresses we all face to care for our families, save for college, care for children or aging parents, save for retirement, ... they depend on us to not have time to fact-check their lies. They don't need to convince everyone to vote for them - they don't even need to convince the majority to vote for them.
How can we stop them?
Part of what I think must happen is for GOP supporters to bear the consequences of their choices. For the farmers to fail because of Trump's trade war will teach a lesson that opinion articles cannot. What we must do is make sure that people understand why they are suffering and not let the republicans blame Democrats. We must fact check republicans constantly and remind people why they have lost health care or social security or decent roads.
We must resist the temptation to let even a single lie slip by.
6
@RN: "But, the reason he will be re-elected is that the GOP wants power at all costs. They will lie, cheat, steal, ask Russia for help, and use wedge issues (abortion, gun control, "religious freedom", taxes, ...) to divide us. They preach hate and fear and know that people will respond. They care not one bit for this country. They only care for their own wealth and hold on power."
You can substitute "The Democratic Party" in place of "GOP" and it will still ring true.
Rather beside the point. This election is looking more like 1932 than any other historical example. Trump is our Herbert Hoover.
@Federalist
It's not totally absurd to assume Trump's inept administration will bungle the Corona virus, which in turn may lead to a significant recession by November.
Neither of those two points are absurd. Pandemic could be Trumps Katrina, on steroids. A person reading or writing this might not be around by November as a result of the pandemic. I recall a SNL script in December 2016 mimicking the movie "Love Actually" with the character of Hillary begging an elector for the electoral college with message cards not to vote for Trump. The final sign saying "He'll kill us all."
That skit has haunted me ever since.
I recall when Bush Jr. was elected an Onion head line parodying Bush's inaugeral address with: "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Over."
It proved remarkable accurate. As did, just a few years earlier a scene in the movie "Good Will Hunting" where the leading character basically objects to working for the NSA by reciting a spiel that turned out to be 90% accurate rendering of Bush Jr's Biography and ascent to the presidency.
We are all holding our breath as the GOP whistle's past the grave yard for the latest incompetant GOP president to exit the stage before another huge disaster occurs.
The GOP hasn't had a reasonably decent President since Eisenhower. Thats 1 in one hundred years. Heck of a job GOPers.
2
"And Trump’s economy also gets a lift from the fact that Republicans have ended the de facto economic sabotage that prevailed throughout the Obama years."
************
Seriously, Professor Krugman? Are you so far down the partisan rabbit hole that you are actually claiming that Trump hasn't faced even worse than what Obama faced?
Let me remind you: Exhaustive investigation into Russian collusion that found no evidence of it, and then impeachment followed by acquittal.
2
Ok Alice, there’s a question as to who is down the rabbit hole here. First, Paul is just talking about deficit spending. Republicans were so anti under Obama, now they are all in on subsidizing farmers, and gifting billionaires huge tax cuts, all the while blowing a hole in the deficit. By bringing up the Mueller investigation, a results of Sessions, is off topic and just plain wrong. Anyone can see the Russians aided trump, and that they had over 100 contacts between trump people and Russian operatives. So Alice, which pill? Blue or red?
6
The Mueller Report Volume II contained detailed examination of the Trump Administration wrongdoing. And, there was no additional evidence in the impeachment trail for two very good reasons: (1) Trump issued a blanket refusal to comply with either Congressional requests or subpoenas (hence the obstruction charge), and (2) the GOP-dominated Senate used their majority to vote along party lines NOT to call witnesses.
If Obama had done even a single misdeed as detailed in Mueller's report, neo-cons would be calling for Obama's immediate removal.
The Congressional GOP has covered and protected Trump from any consequences for his un-Presidential acts
3
It isn't cynicism that will get Trump re-elected. It is practicality. I am a non-Trump Republican. Didn't vote for him in '16, because I knew he was nuts, and figured Hillary (who I can't stand) was at least predictable and reasonable. If Bernie is nominated, I might just have to hold my nose, and vote Trump. And, there are millions of voters just like me.
26
Of course there are millions of voters just like you. Of course, there are millions of voters who are not like you. Many of them are not supporting Sanders now, but if Sanders gets the nomination most of them will gladly vote for him if it means defeating Donald Trump.
78
@Stan Sutton sorry Stan. I’m a moderate with exactly the same view as Esteban. The democrats have done this to themselves. They have alienated not only moderate republicans but also moderate democrats, whom I believe will also peel off to Trump (but never admit it).
6
@Jason: Your alienation isn't remarkable. At this point, everyone in the country has a right and a reason to feel alienated and pretty much everyone does. If your alienation is a reason not to vote for Sanders then someone else's alienation is a reason to vote for him. National polls show Sanders (and other Democratic candidates) beating Trump, so the Democrats seem to have a fair bit of alienation on their side, too. Personally, I'm kind of fed up with people feeling alienated. I'm just going to vote for the candidate who I think will do the most good for Americans, America, and the world. If you want to get my vote, please speak to that.
36
Stop saying that out loud! Please.
2
So, let me get this straight, Paul: US Representatives and Senators have put their individual paychecks and clout ahead of the best interest of the nation. Stunning.
Why do I think that even this level of demonstrably political perfidy won't stick? Because it's our team vs. their team, that's why.
1
From The Atlantic Monthly February 16, 2017, “Federal Anti-Poverty Programs Primarily Help the GOP's Base.” ‘The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal policy-analysis group, found that in both percentage terms and absolute numbers, federal programs reduced poverty among working-age whites without a college degree more than they did among non-college-educated Hispanics, African Americans, or members of other races, and far more than they did among college-educated adults of any race. The number of these working-age whites, in fact, exceeded the combined number of non-college-educated blacks, Hispanics, and members of other races that made such gains.’
The GOP wants to prolong the myth to its base, that only minorities benefit from federal aid programs, despite evidence that this is clearly not so. This election, They will brandish this misconception to defeat Sanders or any nominee who embraces single payer universal health care or Medicare for All. They will rail about nothing being free, about how you can’t get something for nothing, when in truth they have cut taxes so millionaires can buy another yaught ; when in truth we will pay for health care with our taxes. In the GOP Universe, welfare is only okay when it’s corporate! In the GOP worldview, deficits are okay if it’s a Republican in the Oval Office. Maybe if and when the Democrats win, we can allow Trump‘s base to pay for their own healthcare, pay for unnecessary visits to ERs we taxpayers fund.
3
I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of voters don't care about any of this.
1
you could have added to the list of hypocrisies the idea of subsidizing the farmers. One of the reason given by the Trump team for putting tariffs on China, was to stop them from subsidizing their industries.
5
Please name the V.S.P.s. That would be very helpful.
2
I still have a feeling that the Three I's will get Trump in the end at election time: Incompetence, Ignorance, and Indifference.
Wait until the coronavirus hits the United States, and we need a credible and strong government to contain and manage the epidemic, and a president who listens to information, makes sound judgments, and is an excellent role model who is widely respected and inspires all Americans to respect the law, each other, and what is best for the country.
This election should be Trump's to lose--and Lord I pray he does, because this country will not survive another 4 years of Trump Republicanism.
6
I dream of four I’s actually: impeachment, indictment, imprisonment, impoverishment.
8
Sanders and Warren would easily out spend Trump if given the chance while also taxing the economy out of competitiveness. Trump = bad does not equate to Sanders or Warren = good.
2
That's not really a defense.
1
The only things that are going to save Trump are democrat naivete, incompetence, and general stupidity. Nominate Bernie and I anticipate posters of him with Fidel and Brezhnev by his side.
1
@James R. Filyaw Yes, and Sanders walked right into it. What did he gain by defending Castro’s legacy? He merely gave Trump ammunition while calling his own motives and intelligence into question. What’s the purpose of claiming that you support Democracy while praising an authoritarian?
1
Thanks Paul, you usually hit the nail on the head and have this time. Bloomberg seems to be the only person who can beat trump on his terms. Sanders will never capture the Independents & republicans who hate trump and will not vote for him again. Dems need to concentrate on the issues you list here and call out trump and stop attacking each other and Bloomberg.
2
Well yes but all the tariff $ flooding our treasury with hundreds of billions pays for the farmer bailout whose political support he needs . Of course like so many things Trump says like fighting for pre-existing conditions while his admin is in court fighting them is a lie . If we want a lying wanna be dictator Trump is anxious to be one and his family is anxious to cash in as they show up at every event where rich folks assemble but never Africa. Trump using the Justice dept and Intel agencies as his political tools headed by two toadies shows his desire to rule with an iron fist and the GOP is terrified of the monster they created.
3
Trump doesn't care about anything beyond his 4 or 8 years so it's no surprise that he's willing to blow up the deficit for short term gain.
2
"And this cynicism may win Trump the election."
I think Professor Krugman is conflating the Republican met at the proverbial Georgetown cocktail party with the 'average' Rep. voter in the Midwest---about who I believe I can speak with some authority.
I will be open on the key point: The people who live in the pejoratively named fly-over states have been told steadily over the past 30 years that they're at best imbeciles, and at worst, downright evil whose voices need muzzled and behavior shackled. These people have been told they are worthless, racist, phobic, prejudice and any other ist/ism that is en vogue. They have been referred to as are clingers who are holding the country back and blamed as the sole cause of all anguish in our nation; past, present, and future.
At the same time these Americans are being told they are wrong and bad for being, chiefly, White and christian, their middle class jobs were outsourced or automated. Then the corporations brought in immigrant labor from the developing world to replace the working-class safety-net jobs that this native white group relied on. This also drives down wages and makes jobs scarce. Then the coastal liberals call them racists and mock them for having some reservations about their situation.
Even if it is a facade, guys like Trump give them reassurance that their mere existence isnt a crime. Chiefly, that its ok to be white---not 'superior', but just 'ok.' It isnt about 4% federal spending cuts, or whatever.
4
Republicans don't care about hypocrisy. They care about winning to preserve the plutocracy. They can and do lie, cheat, and steal to win. There is no point in pointing out hypocrisy unless you believe that voters care about it, and they don't. You have to point out how the policy affects their lives.
5
NYT writers need to spend more time in flyover country besides Iowa. Farm Bill promises in a state "designed" for industrial-scale farming has made it very difficult for real farmers throughout the country since the 1980's. Iowa-scale agribusinesses are buying up and subcontracting farms in our state and hurting local, family farms. Sanders, Gabbard and Warren (who I personally don't trust) are the only candidates that seem to be aware of the negative influence of large-scale agriculture on local economies. Pete Buttigeig even went across Iowa (more specifically, to State Delegate Equivalent-rich counties/precincts) to suggest that Iowa's "Big Farma" (maybe this will stick...) will actually be stewards for the country and world in carbon sequestering and climate change reversal. This is as preposterous as was DuPont's , "better living through chemistry" dogma.
https://nofa.org/
https://morural.org/
3
Economic theory in the US - Republicans create MASSIVE debt then they become outraged that Democrats won't cut their own throats to pay for that debt.
Then the Reps cut taxes in some bizarre fairy tale where the magic fairy comes in to pay for the mountain of debt they have incurred. Then when the magic fairy fails to materialize, then they blame it on the sick, elderly and poor.
They are like Bank Robbers who, when caught, red handed outside of the bank with the money in their grubby hands they point at the impoverished woman on the corner selling oranges and say, "it's her fault, she's the problem"!!!
1
Trump is using our tax dollars to buy his re-election.
3
Krugman's logic can be pointed directly back at his side. The very same Democrats, who applauded the Obama auto bailouts are now poo-pooing farm aid, and for one lame reason. They hate Trump and Republicans. Also, what is more justified, making sure auto companies don't go out of business, or to ensure that our food supply remains stable?
2
@Me
Ironically, many conservatives support Trump, and Obama had overwhelming support from moderates for using policies that many would call "socialist."
1
So you admit Republicans were wromg when they demanded no deficit spending?
1
I wonder if the NYT and other organizations could explain the Americans, that they may feel they are having a great time now while Trump's government is maxing out the credit of the country, sinking it in debt, but later on the time to pay will come and it will be very painful to them.
2
So true. The hypocrisy is ingrained into the system. The fear of Bernie Sanders piling health care debt onto the already astronomical deficits created by Trump's tax cut for the wealthy will scare people off voting democrat. Meanwhile, the beneficiaries of Trump's cut fill his coffers for reelection. What gets me is nobody asks delegates or Trump tough questions about getting a handle on the national debt. Nobody seems to go there, except occasionally, Prof. Krugman.
The word hypocrisy" applies to almost everything that the Republican Party has done and stood for over the past 25 years.
- Just today, a Republican candidate for Congress (in AZ) dropped out of the race because he overdosed on heroin. But according to the Republicans, drug abuse is a problem primarily of coastal urban liberals, not patriotic law-and-order candidates who represent "real Americans" in rural districts.
- Remember all those "family value" Republicans who fathered children out of wedlock, paid for abortions (while voting against them), and have been found to be pedophiles?
- Didn't the "unbiased jury" of the Senate Republicans tell us before the impeachment trial that they already knew how they were going to vote?
- How about all those tax dollars that are collected from Blue states and given to the "welfare queens" in Red states? Republicans don't mind the Socialist redistribution of tax dollars as long as they're the recipients.
- Fox News doesn't count as the "biased mainstream media," even though they're the most-watched news channel? And they're clearly not biased (yeah, right).
It's time for us to call out Republican's hypocrisy at every turn, vociferously. Counteract the lies with the truth!
2
No. No. No. Trump is going down. Any cynicism is coming from you Paul.
What is going to get Trump into second mandate is a pathetic lineup of Democrat candidates. I say this as a Dem voter.
@zumzar
If Trump wins it will be because many Americans will look at their bank accounts, investment portfolios, and 401k plans and see Trump as the guy that will keep the gravy train rolling.
Never underestimate the greed of moderates, they are the chief enablers of the plutocracy.
2
Paul, I read your posts religiously and I keep hoping that your many columns on the “breathtaking fiscal hypocrisy” of Republicans would gain some traction—other than with folks like me who don’t need convincing. Seems like you have been writing this same message for years now, but it doesn’t get through to those in need of hearing it—like the Peter Navarros of the world and others of his ignorant ilk.
2
Many of the lines in this op-ed by Dr. K elevated the blood pressure of this old guy (80 years and counting), but this comment K made me think I was having the "big one," the one would put me on the other side of the grass: "And despite its obvious indifference to budget deficits, his administration seems determined to deprive children of the adequate health care and nutrition they will need to become productive adults."
The message from Trump and his disciples in Congress, the members of the Trump cult that voted not to convict him in the impeachment trial, is that they do not give a damn about the well-being and health of America's children, although they will assure pious voters that they are the pro-life party advancing God's will for humanity.
Trump and his blindly obedient deadbeats in Congress have not only taken hypocrisy in fiscal responsibility to highest level but they have also done the same in the moral order--justice for our children. If these moral morons have their way the "arc of the moral universe" will never "bend toward justice."
6
Trump won the election for one reason. He played to the basic and virulent hatred for Republicans and other conservatives for "non-whites," women, gays, education, Liberals, environmentalists, people who are not conservative christians, and everyone else who is not just like them. Of course the Sanders supporters who refused to vote for Hillary helped a lot too.
2
Trump is now a known commodity. Self delusion is what holds his base together. More have left the Trump base than have come over to support him. That is why there is reason to believe that any Democratic nominee, including Sanders, can beat Trump.
Trump will continue to shock even the most deluded between now and election day. We are only now learning that our CDC has been gutted and we are poorly prepared to address the viral pandemic. Goldman Sachs predicts a 1.2% growth in GDP for Q1. Nothing wakes up the deluded like a drop in the 401K value.
1
Stop the nonsense of centrally planned economic activity and you'll see real growth again, real prosperity, cheaper healthcare and college, etc. Economics like you pretend to know better than free people, and the results are not good. Instead we have never-ending debt, wasting interest payments to the rich that could have been for actual infrastructure to benefit the nation as a common good. We don't have a tax system that is easily understood, tries to harm sinners, tries to benefit donors and special interests, and isn't even stable to allow us to plan our lives.
Shorter, and correct, Krugman. Keynes is dead, long live Keynes.
The incompetent in the White House with his Trump Zombies will not win the election because of Republican Cynicism. IF he wins it will be because a significant number of Americans do not care about their neighbors plight as long as their own wallets are full---even if what is in them are credit cards for borrowing to buy things they cannot afford.They are perfectly willing to support building walls to keep out the 'other', military expansion and wars, and tax breaks for the excessively rich. Buying on credit, and taking from the poor to make an interest payment is how Trump is running the government, supported by his Trump Zombies.
2
Too many Americans have no long term memory. It wasn't that long ago that Republicans were willing to default on the national debt in order to relitigate a budget that had already been passed. This could have caused a global financial breakdown, but some of the more extreme Freedom Caucus legislators were willing to go through with it. Now they will rubberstamp every debt ceiling increase, knowing that most people don't pay enough attention to see through their hypocrisy.
1
Paul K - i think youre on to something with spending priorities and ultimate in hypocrisy. Things really are mixed up but do people care? Farmers (mostly very large-scale ones) now are the national welfare queens. Thanks Tariff Man. And as you point out corporate tax cuts have boosted buybacks and lifted the stock market.
Now about your position on deficit hawks- as a progressive liberal that i am i do have some serious concern that in the first four months of this fiscal year interest on national debt has totaled $194 billion! Times three and hey I wonder if we dont have a significant problem here. What else could we be spending whats approaching a trillion bucks annually on???
1
As misguided he is, I admire Trump's hold on Republican party.
If only Obama held similar sway (and the devil may care attitude that would have steamrolled any Republican filibuster attempt), we might have had as part of ACA, the public option, medicare allowed to negotiate price with pharma and more. We could have channelized most of the trillion dollar spending on true infrastructure projects instead of handing a significant amount of it as tax cuts.
This is where I look at more decisive candidates from the current crop of Democrats (be is Mike Bloomberg from the middle, Elizabeth Warren from the Left or Bernie Sanders from the far left). I just can't swallow the tame talk of Biden, Buttigieg or Klobuchar. I like it when Warren called it out, "You don't run for President talking about what all you CAN'T do".
I supported Hillary over Bernie in 2016--partly because I didn't think we could afford Bernie's ideas. But the Republicans end up costing us more--and at least Bernie wants to spend the money on a lot more than 1% of the American people.
2
The problem is that the middle class is very dissatisfied and decimated by center right economic policy (basically supply-side deregulation economics to one degree of extremity or another). Trump did not win by running on a center-right economic agenda, he spent all his time tearing apart Republican ideology and attacking Hillary for free trade and globalization. It was all a ruse. Things are not turning around for the middle class and they won't under Trump. So it is only a matter of time before that house of cards collapses very publicly. Will people wake up before 2020, maybe, maybe not, but they will wake up. The Progressives are coming.
2
Excellent column. One minor quibble. Obama and Tim Geithner deserve a fair share of the blame for the tepid stimulus package, which was both too small and too heavily focused on tax breaks instead of direct spending. Obama spent much of his first term desperately trying to be liked by Republicans who made no secret of the fact that they would never give him a policy win. Geithner is very much one of the VSPs.
2
They might do better by pointing out that Trump since 2016 has been shortchanging the future by cutting health experts and other emergency response staff and programs that put your family at risk of death and loss of wealth this year.
5
While I would hesitate to predict the future and cannot speak for what's in the minds of others--it seems that this will work for Trump's re-election, and that farmers will gladly turn away from their lofty principles in order to keep the family farm. Someone will come up with a name for this type of change in the face of adversity brought about by one's own choices, it will be a sermon preached by liberals--and it will be ignored.
We are a nation of laws and rules until we find that what we want is frustrated by laws and rules.
And then we'll become lawless, not because we have no laws, but because we will no longer be ruled by laws.
Maybe we already have.
2
You are right about the overspending under Trump. It's a disgrace and is as bad (and worse) than anything Obama did.
You are wrong about laying the austerity under Obama at the feet of the Republicans. Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (and control of the House) early in Obama's first term. Political cowardice - or perhaps wisdom - by Democrats at the time was the root cause.
If Democrats take control, deficit spending won't be constrained by politics as much as finance - at some point the world will realize that the level of debt held by the US cannot be sustained. Could happen during a second Trump term too.
1
Dr. Krugman is remiss in not pointing out EXACTLY where Trump's farm aid/bailouts have gone (12 billion last year and 18 billion this year... and counting). One thing is for sure, these direct payouts, like nearly all of US Farm Bill subsidies, do NOT go to family farms or to "farmers" as most people think of them. Soybean, corn and other commodity crop "farmers" are industrial scale, agricultural entities that dominate American farming practices, at the expense of real farmers. NYT writers and commenters seem to have great problems in making this important distinction.
https://morural.org/
5
The attitude in play is not "cynicism." It is "hatred," often described by its practitioners as "righteous anger."
The agenda in play is not "hypocrisy." It is "autocracy," often described by its followers as "nationalism."
That attitude and that agenda are the election winners in the USA , not cynicism and hypocrisy. Trump cannot lose in a country made in his image.
2
While the hypocrisy of decrying deficits one day and ignoring them when politically expedient should be self-evident, the same cannot be said for legitimate concerns for runaway deficits.
We've simply never been here, nowhere close. What is the tipping point? When to the lenders call in their chips, and whose kids will be left to clean up after the orgy of greed?
1
Misinformation and out right lies is what the republicans are ruling with, Yes, the facts are very different but Trump and his group have insulated themselves buying their propaganda machines to lie tp the faithful. Try and inform one of them and they will accuse you of lying. No, its not facts and truth its who gets the most votes and that in a few places.
Trade deficit way up, billions being paid by consumers for tariffs, Farmers on welfare and bankruptcies, debt over a trillion this year, wages below 25 years ago, income inequality up, Health care decreased and expensive, No infrastructure repairs, drug prices increasing etc.
2
Republicans are hypocritical and politically expedient. I agree with that, but Krugman, who is about to find religion on Bernie, is hardly the right messenger. Here's what he thought about Bernie before Bernie became the likely nominee:
“it’s disappointing to see so much intolerance over what are basically differences in strategy, not goals” (1/27/16)
“going on about the big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done. On the rare occasions on which he was asked for more detail, he didn’t seem to have anything more to offer. And this absence of substance beyond the slogans seems to be true of his positions across the board.”; “the way Mr. Sanders is now campaigning raises serious character and values issues”; and “Holding people accountable for their past is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any compromise or misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys, isn’t. Abraham Lincoln didn’t meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor for that matter, has Bernie Sanders (think guns).” (4/8/16)
“It’s more likely , however, that he’s being deliberately misleading – and that his effort to delegitimize a big part of the Democratic electorate is a cynical ploy”; and, “sneering at millions of voters is truly beyond the pale, especially for a progressive” (4/15/16)
“to turn defeat in the primary into a moral victory – he would have had to accept the will of the voters with grace. What we’re getting instead is an epic descent into whining” (5/2/16)
And don't forget that Mulvany said as much a few days ago.
What’s the old saying? Capitalize gains, socialize loses - isn’t that the phrase Neoliberal/Republicans use?
5
If the economy goes south GOP automatons will blame it on the profligate spending of Democrats, and the GOP base will take the explanation as gospel.
2
Dr. Krugman: I generally appreciate your columns, but I think you should point out who is really benefitting from this farm "bailout." It is not "Ma and Pa Kettle," or any kind of family operation because most of them were killed with HFA foreclosures about a month after Bush I won the 1988 election. This money is going to Agri-business.
The bailouts are clearly bribes. Is our economy Trump's piggy bank? Whenever he wants, he moves money or pulls it out of another line item. What has happened to the folks who are in charge? Or is he in total charge? Where is Congress in all this? Let's vote out the GOP as fast as we can. At this rate our great grand children will be swimming in debt.
We are paying the farmers with our tax dollars for Trump's playing chicken with China.
What a mess.
4
The Republican credo is simple: If you cut taxes to the rich, is "economic stimulus"; if you cut taxes to the middle class and spend in social services por the por, that is waste and populist, if not socialist policies.
And, unfortunately, the millions of ignorant people, that "are Republicans without money", believe it.
6
Mick Mulvaney can’t seem to keep the cat in the bag. He just confessed at the Oxford Union that the soaring $1 trillion deficit would only be a problem if, “there is a Democrat in the White House.” He also admitted, incidentally, that the economy needs immigrants to continue to grow.
2
If Americans are worried about debt and immigration- just wait until there aren’t enough workers to hire for senior care for the first of many generations who won’t be able to afford while the climate falls apart. It’s the latter that should really cause pause. The planet doesn’t care if you are conservative, liberal, fascist, socialist, nationalist, anarchism, religious, atheist, rich or poor.
3
Trump's biggest advantage is Bernie Sanders.
dr krugman could've omitted 'fiscal' when it comes to hypocrisy.
2
Of course they know what they’re talking about. They’re the masters of division and schoolyard politics. They’re not trying to be better or find out ‘truth’ through any method, scientific or democratic, but rather how to use common ignorance and anger to bull people like cattle, whichever way they want. They say ‘by the people, for the people’, but then use that ideal to do the exact opposite. They are alchemists of ineptitude and venal self-interest, turning those things into electable strengths of perceived empathy and concern for everyday Americans. Of course they may not know what facts and truth are worth, but they certainly know what they’re talking about.
2
...and still we must listen to Fox and the GoP extoll the wonders of the Trump economy!...
Want to live well? The Republican solution is to quit your job (=slash tax revenue) and spend all your savings on good times (=deficit spending). Unemployment is down with a transient surge in spending. But the modest tax benefits for the middle class is coming to an end, we're running a budget deficit of over $800 billions and the tax giveaway to corporations has not produced increased investment even with the bump in spending. The big winners, the wealthy, have low marginal propensity to consume and the poor who do spend get nothing. Obama's struggle to lift the economy out of recession was hamstrung by the GoP's most cynical imposed austerity. Now that we don't need it we spend like crazy to try and buy the upcoming election. Plus trade wars and tariffs to Make America Grate...
Yes, politics is a dirty game. But the GoP is pimping the American economy and spinning cobwebs of lies to look good for next November.
So if we're talking cynicism, how dumb or biased is the Republican constituency? How myopic? How deaf to the utter hypocrisy of GoP economic manipulation?
"Oh say can you see....what you want to see and disregard the rest ..."
2
The GOP has been little more than a metropolis of hypocrisy for decades. Admittedly, it's worse under Trump, when any pretense or principle or integrity has vanished.
However, it's not GOP cynicism that will Trump reelection – if he is reelected – it's Democratic stupidity. The whole Democratic nominating process, the dysfunction of which has been on abundant display for months now – has been disastrous. Sanders, Warren, Biden – all severely handicapped by themselves and their supporters – have managed to lead the party down a primrose lane to impending disaster.
Democrats seem not to have learned that it was the moderates who recaptured the House in 2018, that it was identity politics that sank the party repeatedly and that they cannot beat someone with nobody.
Elections are not about making points. They're about winning. Yes, the Republicans' dishonesty and chicanery has hoodwinked and mesmerized the public for a long time and continues to do so. But it is the mind-blowing stupidity and dysfunction of the Democrats that allows this to matter.
1
Krugman talks of hypocrisy- try this: the press tells us the Russians got the Republican Trump elected in 2016 and now they're trying to tell us the Russians are trying to get the Democrat Sanders elected.
@Robert: No, they're just trying to get him to win among the democrats. They see him, rightly or wrongly, as the best opponent for Trump's re-election.
5
@John I disagree. The way I see it, the yellow press (think Hearst and Pulitzer fighting over who could be the most jingoistic before the Spanish-American War) is doing its best to keep the one man down who might divert some of the trillions going into the defense industry pockets to more urgent domestic priorities
1
@Robert: So it's the press, and not the Russians? The heads of U.S. intelligence agencies would disagree, at least about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
2
@Gone Coastal
Maybe a future empowered FCC could start by banning Fox News, or limit it's airtime to late-night so as to not damage impressionable minds.
Mr. Krugman is right, but what are the Democratic candidates doing with this & other issues to help their own, & the Democratic Party’s, electability? It’s fine to have big ideas, however, the electorate must be able to relate to them. Ranting about economic injustices & dreamy solutions is not going to move moderates to your side. To do that, candidates must bring it all down to earth by stating how Trump/GOP have utterly failed, & what the Democrats propose & how it will actually improve citizens’ lives & especially their pocketbooks.
Take healthcare as an example: In 2016 Trump promised healthcare that would be better, cheaper & cover more people. And nothing happened. In 2018 almost every GOP candidate promised support for pre-existing conditions while Trump was supporting a court case that would abolish the ACA & its pre-existing conditions provisions! Last, Trump has promised to unveil his healthcare plan only AFTER he is elected. Fool me once … . This history should be part of every Democrat’s healthcare talking points until it sinks in. Then they can explain how their proposals will work better &, importantly, save people money. Bernie got snookered when asked about the cost of his M4A. Of course, it’s the media’s job to do that, but I think what he should have said is that if America wants better healthcare, we will figure out how to make it happen.
Apply the same formula to infrastructure, climate change, income inequality, etc.
In republican think it would be a mortal sin for us to leave our children some debt; some man made debt which can be resolved by man made means. But they think nothing wrong with leaving our children an uninhabitable planet.
republicans are the gravest danger to life on this planet since the meteor that sent dinosaurs into oblivion.
Those who think Wall St. defines the actual economy are seriously deluded; the real economy is defined by the millions of people one paycheck away from living on the streets, the millions of people without health care, the millions who rely on two or three jobs just to put a meal on the table and pay the rent.
republicans refine the free market as billions given in subsidies given to already profitable campaign contributors; they define "socialism" as giving millions to our fellow citizens to help them with those groceries and rent payments.
republicans must be sent to the ash heap of history if there is to be any more history for US to study in the future.
2
Mr. Krugman rightfully calls out the make believe deficit hawks. While I find his analysis compelling,and most certainly agree with his view of deficit spending during economic contractions, I'm uneasy with increasing national debt faster than economic growth during the late stages of an economic boom.
The fed is already having to generate short term debt to keep the interest rate down since the private market won't absorb enough of the new debt, or take on the risk, at current rates.
It leaves open question of what happens during the inevitable economic contraction that will create ever larger deficits. At what point will the market decide our economic policies are not sustainable? It seems we are a long way from Greece or Argentina but how does this end?
If the market does lose confidence in the dollar it will be during a contraction. One that the fed may be powerless to stop. Now that our economy is dependent on ever increasing relative levels of debt to sustain growth, turning off the spigot will cause a contraction that no politician will put in place.
So rather than addressing the fundamental issue of capital versus labor costs in a constructive way we simply run up the debt till we eventually end up in a crash.
1
Critics of Sanders keep pointing to the 1972 Nixon wipeout carrying 49 states. I would like some discussion by someone who knows more than I (Krugman?) pointing out that 1972 was the same year Nixon took the US off the gold standard beginning the era of unlimited money printing that made all these deficits possible. Did Nixon do it to be able to print money to stimulate the economy artificially before the election? Seems to me there is an obvious connection.
Also watchers of the international financial scene have noted that China and Russia (actually everyone but the US govt) is increasing gold reserves, with speculation that those two countries will soon announce a new gold backed currency that will tank the dollar. Meanwhile the US has not allowed its alleged 8000 tons of gold to be audited in 70 years.
4
46.9% - percentage of eligible voters that did not vote in 2016.
How many people in that group might be urged to get off the bench this cycle?
2
The level of hypocrisy by white Republican voters has reached a hight that I did not think was attainable. Was I wrong. We have a wannabe dictator, someone who is systematically destroying our democracy and his ratings go up. I have stated to friends and neighbors that I would never have thought that I would be witnessing America drifting into a fascist state but that is exactly where we are today.
To vote for Trump based solely on the economy misses the more important issues of the day. These include global warming, unequal educational opportunities, student debt, the national debt, the environment, women's rights etc.
In the last four years of the Obama admin the S&P rose about 60%. Currently the S&P is on track to add about the same percentage during Trump's four years. No real difference even including a massive tax break for the wealthy and corporations that has resulted in trillion dollar deficits.
The destruction of governmental institutions such as the Justice Dept, the State Dept, the EPA, the FBI and others will result in a totally dysfunctional government should Trump win another 4 years.
There is no "deep state" only dedicated government servants whose responsibility it has been to protect America, American democracy and be champions of the US abroad.
Pray it doesn't happen.
4
Trump is certainly going to be re-elected, partially because of Republican cynicism, but mostly because Trump's campaign machine will attack the democratic candidate more fiercely than it attacked Secretary Clinton.
44
@jmf
Not to forget, Centrists establishment Democrats are beating up on Bernie. That includes the MSM electronic and in print.
On cable TV all the old cold war warriors are ranting the same old cold war scaremongering. No different opinions are welcome, and even much less real honest debate.
11
@jmf Oh, well, if they're going to attack him fiercely . . . I mean, that's never happened before.
1
@jmf Hillary Clinton needed no attacking as she was a terrible candidate who more entitled than injected into being commander in chief.
2
I agree the funds raised from current tax cuts and deficit spending would be better mapped into infrastructure, education, and other programs of long-term benefit to the country. But this article misses an opportunity to also tout the potential benefits of Democrats funneling a large portion of the funds down to states and localities for use to improve individual communities. It is a Democratic weakness to assume federal level programs are most meaningful to voters, and this represents a chance to show voters Democrats are interested in their communities.
2
Ok, Paul. You are on the right track. Every time anybody says BOO about a new domestic spending program - healthcare, daycare, environment, etc- because it is going to break the bank, all anybody has to say is - we are paying for it the same way Republicans paid for the tax cut. End of discussion. Except to add -- this kind of spending will do much more for the general welfare and the future of the country than the tax cut produced!
4
It's odd that the only time the GOP or media (including NYT) are concerned about the budget is when a progressive details a plan to benefit the entire nation. Their only question is "How will you pay for it?" How about we take into account gains in productivity or the improvement in overall well-being of our residents? Better yet, let's compare these progressive plans with the GOP 2017 tax cut and measure benefits side by side. Even Bernie's M4A plan will not incur $1 trillion annual deficits.
2
Bailouts are always polarizing, whether it's the auto industry, big banks or farmers. However, everything about this election has been tinged with not only cynicism but with outright savagery. Taking a queue from the current POTUS, nearly all of the democrats running have debased themselves in the most unpleasant manner. It's forced leftists to go right of themselves and come out swinging, attacking each other more than Mr. Trump. It could be fear of a twitter attack or simply exhaustion from calling out a bully who has not a single empathetic cell in his body. Nevertheless, the democrats have got to get it together and start proposing realistic plans that are viewed as fiscally sound and, above all, fair to everyone who has previously felt their concerns have not been heard...and I'm talking about people who do not live on the East Coast or the West Coast and who do not, as of yet, fall into the base of Sanders, Warren or even Biden. They'll always be fiscal hypocrisies abounding in Washington regardless of a republican or democratic administration. That cynicism is not going to affect Mr. Trump's re-election. It's the democrat's blatant disregard for addressing the needs of much of middle America that is (horrifying though the prospect may be) going to get him another term.
Dr Krugman is right about everything in the pre-anthropocene world. In this world, "growth" is neither necessarily good or bad. Some growth is good (renewable energy), other growth could bring the rapid degradation of modern civil society. Population growth, the lack of which is called a crisis, will make everything worse, except corporate profits, for a few years, before they start to die, when all the customers are destitute - income inequality perfected. The "economy", of which Dr. Krugman speaks, cannot exist in an ecosystem that has been destroyed. The party is over. Not to worry, there won't be any lights left to turn out.
"the vanity candidates who continue to fragment the field despite having no realistic chance of becoming the nominee"
Really? Any one of them has a realistic chance, if the others drop out first.
Does anyone really think these are vanity candidates? I get the impression that they all think their nomination will be the only successful one, and are in this to save the Republic, if not the entire biosphere.
There’s not a strong economy despite appearances to the contrary:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/01/17/us-manufacturing-was-mild-recession-during-2019-sore-spot-economy/
1
The original sin by our Republic was slavery. The bigotry and racism which caused slavery were never completely eradicated and both now propel us to a fascist oligarchy. Republican cynicism and hypocrisy are tools to herd the less compliant toward an unfree, grotesquely unequal, and unlivable future for most.
3
I haven't heard a peep out of Pete Peterson. Is he dead? What happened to his think tank?
It's time for the Times' columnists to take responsibility for their headlines. Every day, there are headlines like "Are Democrats Handing Trump the Election?" and "How Trump Wins Again." The column often isn't as discouraging as the title, but the damage is already done. Fox sows doubt, you sow doubt. Do you want another four years of Trump? My jaw (and my morale) dropped when Bush was re-elected, but if Trump remains in power, I will be horrified. You are influencing the outcome as much as any Russian propagandist. Please stop.
4
The red state welfare queens love all that government socialism provided by us hard working 'coastal elites'. I would fall off my chair if a member of the press pointed this out to them during a 'man on the street' interview in "America's heartland".
3
Paul, shame on you. Your so called “V S P”s have existed and do exist. Let me start with two late, great US Senators, Warren Rodman and Paul Tsongas, one of each party. Both as serious about debt reduction as an “outback wildfire”. Former Republican cabinet member, Pete Peterson. Did you miss Mark Sanford’s (former Republican governor and congressman) column in the NYT last week about runaway federal debt? What I appeal for is you and the NYT to point out what the debt saddled future looks like when interest rates increase and more baby boomers start on the “ entitlement gravy train” while they are living longer. Let Steve Ratner loose. Talk Brooks into giving his cerebral, esoteric op Ed’s a rest and to help you expose the real “ existential threat” of a cash starved government. Maybe Mayor Mike can direct a few hundred million in ads. The campaign could be called “ glaring hypocrisy” with McConnell as the poster child.
Tea Party = racists who discriminated against President Obama, a black president, to ensure his failure.
They are no where to be found today.
But the Democratic Party has lost its ability to speak to U.S. citizens about the economy in easy to understand terms. Until they do, the GOP of "low taxes, cut entitlements" will continue to prevail as they have for 40 years.
1
Re-name this article “trump’s welfare bill” and publish it EVERY day! Please!!!
"If and when they re-emerge, Democrats should ignore them." We should deport them.
Trump is definitely getting re-elected- duh.
Of course he has no competition people like the owners of the NYTs and its' administration have made this easy (many others like CNN as well). What we have ere is a failure to communicate and a lack of understanding. It's so sad, so basic, so incredibly grade school. Trump kept more promises than his Democrat opponents. The wall is going up up and illegal immigrants no longer stroll across the Rio Grande. China has been put in its' place and the European countries are not getting as much of a free ride. Before you know it we'll know who all the communist socialist are and be able to win again.
@DED: And don't forget that healthcare plan that would be better, cheaper, and cover more people than the ACA. And how about those checks from Mexico to pay the "Wall." And the commitment to infrastructure. Wait...
2
Trump is nothing more than rant, rave and rodomontade. 8645.
2
How about the millions Obama gave to states for teacher unions?
To save their jobs,,or,,,a da da.
Votes.
Yep.
2
Yeah. Because teachers are sooo overpaid. You know with their Toyotas and their JC Penney clothes.
Just fact check every single LIE that Trump utters...
Keep it simple: Trump LIES ; Associated Press fact checks
every lie....so the way to defeat Trump is to fact check his
LIES : every single time he utters a LIE.
We do not want any President who lies: again.
Trump is not George Washington; He is the ENEMY of THE
PEOPLE.....and now prove this point; why is TRUMP The
Enemy of all those he has made promises to; He is NOT
for helping those he has made promises to....He is out for
just one person: Just for HIMSELF...
2
Republicanism 101: It NOT a Lie, if you believe it. Also, Jesus is a Republican, everybody knows THAT.
Seriously.
3
The Republicans and their #NeverTrump enablers could learn a lesson or two from the Weimarer Republik's history books.
Oh, wait, I forgot all they care about is their pocket books.
2
The top 'Republicans' aka Benjamin Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Recep Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, Jair Bolsnoaro, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Rodrigo Duterte, Abdel el-Sisi and Narendra Modi want America to cut taxes and increase spending on the military-industrial complex and social welfare programs because neither deficits nor debt matter.
In other words they are socioeconomic Ronald Wilson Reagan Republicans.
3
Again, deficit spending was not an issue in the Obama administration. You even wrote an article on how borrowing money from yourself was just not a big deal because you really didn't have to worry about paying yourself back. Now its an issue? Maybe the economy will take a dive and we can be rid of Trump. Listen to yourself...I do, and you sound hypocritical too.
I was wondering where the virulent Tea Party disappeared to, after a Black, Democratic President was no longer in office.
2
It's always a good principle to spend less money than you take in. Doesn't matter if you run a household, business, or government. This is ancient common sense.
1
Ignoring (or promising to ignore) the debt is a check mark against ANY President or candidate for the presidency, one given to both Trump and Obama but also attributable to Congress, who (theoretically) controls spending. Other check marks are regulatory vigor (less is better), with which Trump has done pretty well and Obama was abysmal, and of course tax policy (less, within reason, is better) which again Trump has done somewhat well and Obama was again abyssmal. All of these checks roll up to the biggest positive check mark of all, GDP growth, and Trump's is considerably bigger than Obama's.
The combination of Keynesian orthodoxy (with 'stimulus' atop the list), aggressive regulation and higher taxes - all hallmarks of Democrat economic governance - is a recipe for economic stagnation, which is exactly why today's Democrats have such a hard time being taken seriously as capable stewards of the American market economy. Warren or (especially) Sanders will be seen as the epitome of this in the general election.
@MinnRick
Certainly the gutting of the EPA will do wonders for public lands, e.g. mining and oil interests gaining a foothold in our national parks. I can't imagine anything more destructive than oil rigs in a national park. Mountain top mining in W. Virginia and Kentucky is producing a mountain of mining sludge hovering over poor communities below. The barriers will eventually give way, and communities will be buried in that sludge. We have a President and a GOP Senate who do not care about the danger their big donors pose to ordinary, often poor Americans.
1
Recommended reading: Debt Myths, Debunked
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/articles/2016-12-01/myths-and-facts-about-the-us-federal-debt
If people are such idiots not to see beyond the artificial for four years, they may deserve what they get.
But that is not what is going to happen.
Bernie’s message is for real and so is his momentum. He will get votes from the people who voted for Trump and did get the shaft. The few who made a bundle because of the S&P’s rise are not even a small percentage of the people who voted for him in the Midwest.
Bernie is ahead already of Trump in polls and we are not even past Super Tuesday.
2
If you look at the political spectrum as a line ,a moderate left wing person and a moderate right wing person could be put together in a circle drawn in the middle of the line. Thus they would be closer to each other than to the people on either the left or right extreme. I am on the left; David Jolly is on the right. But I am closer to him than I am to someone the extreme left; and David is closer to me than to anyone on the far right. Maybe we should replace spectrums with Venn diagrams.
My point is that Bernie cannot be blamed for the excesses of Soviet communism any more than Nancy Pelosi can be blamed for the Spanish Inquisition because she happens to be a Catholic after the event.
Nothing in the Constitution stipulates you cannot be a socialist. On the contrary due to the free speech entitlements it would be an insult to the Constitution to disallow socialism.
BTW plenty of people honeymooned in Spain in the 60's but it would be ridiculous to accuse them of being general Franco followers.
3
Federal tax revenue hit an all time high in 2018 and is projected to break that all time record in 2019.
What programs do you want to cut?
In a way, this is a full-throated argument against Bernie and for Trump in 2020.
Medicare for all, College debt relief, free college, guaranteed government jobs all costs money.
Oh.
In other words, we’ve collected more to distribute to the wealthiest via tax cuts, farmers who might otherwise fail to vote for Trump, and iffy weapons programs.
While cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and the CDC.
Good thinking.
4
@Tim Federal revenue was 16.16578% of GDP in 2019, far from a record. The modern record was 19.75344% of GDP in 2000. I would think that socialist Bernie would increase it by at least 4 percentage points of GDP, which is around $1 trillion/year.
@Tim
So does the permanent tax gift given to large multi-national corporations. This will eventually impact our highway system necessary for the transport of goods; it will impact the maintenance of national dams; it will impact our public education system. Economists estimate a future shortfall of approx. one trillion dollars. Of course, Trump and McConnell might not be alive to see the consequences of their tax cuts to their big donors. Our children and grandchildren will see it. Perhaps they might even learn about the legacy left by the Greatest Generation: a solid middle class.
1
During Krugman's recent appearance on NPR TV, he mentioned two instances of socialism which have been very successful in the US and they include medicare and VA health care. I am 73 years old and thanks to medicare and free gym membership, I am in excellent condition. Given the NO copay arrangement and NO ongoing battles with medical insurance companies, I am proactive and thereby save medicare money and avoid expensive hospitalizations.
The young people of America have figured this out and are turning out en mass for Bernie. They don't care what we call it, but the young people I meet at the gym drool over my medicare coverage and the fact that I attended City College in NY for almost nothing in the 60's.
Rescind Trump's $1.2 trillion tax cut, change the tax laws so billionaires pay taxes, and make America competitive. Trump spends every day working on his reelection versus Bernie who will spend every day working for the 99%. Young people understand this. They need to educate their parents.
4
I want all readers to pay attention to reader Bruce Rozenblit says below, essentially, "...Where's the messaging???..." why aren't we fighting back?
Most of us grew up with "Turn the Other Cheek" but sometimes you just have to punch a bully in the nose - hard !
3
The bottom line.....socialism candidates have a life expectancy of zero. Dead on arrival.
The nation knows that and so does most of the world.
Just text message George McGovern.
Bernie Sanders May Win Trump Re-election.
"..especially about the vanity candidates who continue to fragment the field despite having no realistic chance of becoming the nominee."
Did you hear that: Swalwell, O'rouke, Castro, Inslee Hickenlooper, Gillibrand, Harris, Booker, Moulton, de Balsio, Ryan and Delany?
My Goodness.. what a bunch of bloated egos and wasted time!
By definition, "republican" means intellectual dishonesty in all matters, large and small. You can look it up.
5
2016. I finally had to face reality and admit......the Independents have an Image Problem.
Charlie Brown, standing on the mound, after losing another one...."How can we lose? When we're so sincere??"
I tried communicating this to the Finance Officer of the Libertarian Party, Starchild......yes. Starchild. Now, to his credit, Starchild actually wrote me back and wrote a very logical well constructed response to my plea... But he was only defending a very unrealistic strategy(I guess he had to at that point).
NOW. Its 2020.....the Independents need to recognize that THEY are in the drivers seat this time. A new Major Party has to develop with one purpose.....elect the President....NOT to "raise cash so we do better next time".
...
The Democrat Party will never die....it is the mainstay of America....since 1800 when Rural Agrarian Jefferson cut a cynical deal with NYC Financier Aaron Burr. The Democrats ARE Status Quo. Stay the Course. Promise'em anything.....never change anything.
...
The DNC is now the national version of Tammany Hall. the DNC is not the Democrat Party....but it controls the Democrats thru a ruthless use of Bureaucratic Patronage, Corruption, Bribery, etc.
The DNC Diversity Strategy, aka "Divide and Conquer" worked very successfully through the 20th Century. But the New Deal Order is crumbling. Trump, who is neither Repub nor Dem, accelerates the process.
It is time for all thinking Democrats to abandon the DNC and help form a New National Party.
So Republicans like Socialism when it works for them and their constituents
2
@rho: All public sectors conduct socialism for the interests that control the nation’s political systems. There are no exceptions.
Trump may be one of America's all-time great socialists.
Fred and Donald Trump made their money with federal subsidies.
Trump's father—and subsequently Trump himself—amassed a real estate fortune in large part by taking advantage of various government-backed real estate loans and subsidies.
"Fred Trump would become a millionaire many times over by making himself one of the nation's largest recipients of cheap government-backed building loans," according to Gwenda Blair's book on the Trumps called Three Generations of Builders and a President.
Fred Trump passed on both the knowledge of how to use subsidized loans for personal profit and the profits themselves to his son.
Fred Trump began taking steps that enriched Donald alone, introducing him to the charms of building with cheap government loans.
In 1972, father and son formed a partnership to build a high-rise for the elderly in East Orange, N.J. Thanks to government subsidies, the partnership got a nearly interest-free $7.8 million loan that covered 90% of construction costs.
During his entire business 'career', Donald Trump has feasted on real estate subsidies and tax deductions not available to normal businesses.
And when the subsidies din't work, Donald would just file for bankruptcy or not pay the bank back.
We know who the real socialists are: Donald Trump and his socialized 0.1% who demand endless subsidies on the national credit card while sticking society with the bill.
Nice GOPeople.
Feel The Bern
8
Again, a NYT columnist wrings his hands over Trump possibly being re-elected without mention of the main driver. It's not the economy; it's Russian cyber warfare under way right now to create chaos and help Trump win a second term. The Russians are all over Facebook and Twitter. Their English as a Second Language awkward phrasing and grammatical mistakes are obvious. Russia's social media clap trap propaganda is being amplified by Fox. Trump picks it up and passes it along.
1
I love the photo; 30 bucks for a 50 cent Chinese made visor cap. It's so Trump, and it's so typical.
2
The last thing I said to my last conservative friend before I was blocked; “We’re nine months away from Republicans saying deficit spending doesn’t matter.”
His response was a bunch of “But Hillary!” accusations, questioned my manhood, my sanity, my “patriotism.”
I’m still in the same place, man! All I really wanted was access to some of that “affordable” healthcare some of you have. Instead, because I don’t have insurance, and can’t get any government aid, I’m subsidising your health care, that you STILL pay too much for!
But that’s capitalism, we loose so the capitalist (which aint us -how much “capital” do you have?) can win. btw- You can’t count what’s mortgaged, that’s the Bank’s capital, not yours.
1
I’m not allowed to use the name, but he was the first one to say it; “if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it.”
Everybody knows that politicians lie, and that Trump lies all the time. However, as Boy George said: “I know all there is about the crying game…”
Have a summit of all the New York Times pundits, editorial-ists and opinion writers and tell us how to beat Trump. “…don’t want no more of the crying game…”
I’m not allowed to use the name, but he was the first one to say it; “if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it.”
Everybody knows that politicians lie, and that Trump lies all the time. However, as Boy George said: “I know all there is about the crying game…”
Have a summit of all the New York Times pundits, editorialists and opinion writers and tell us how to beat Trump. “…don’t want no more of the crying game…”
Yeah . . . Nothing like living off that credit card . . .until the bill comes in.
1
As if Trump would get any cooperation from Democrats to get anything done. The Democrats have staged one crisis after another - the Mueller Investigation (Russia, Russia, Russia), the Brett Kavanaugh Brouhaha, the Faux Impeachment, etc, etc. They've exhausted the country and now we get Bernie and a dismal Socialist Platform to contend with...as they say, 'ya can't write this stuff'.
1
@kitkat: “They did id first!” is the justification you juveniles provide for everything awful that you do.
2
Do you think for an instant that Trump and is "acting" administration can manage the situation when the Corona virus strike the USA?
2
What's wrong with a few more billions in welfare to family farmers (i.e. Cargill, General MIlls, ADM, Purina, etc)...
Mexico will pay for it.
2
And the biggest deficit hypocrite is Mick Mulvaney. He screamed the loudest as a Tea Party congressman about the deficit under Obama.
2
I don't know who writes headlines for the Times, but you have all done a wonderful job of creating a narrative that is long on speculation. As Niels Bohr once said, prediction is difficult, especially of the future. But every time a Times op-ed or other reporter decides to reinforce this narrative that Trump seems to have better than even odds of winning, they ignore the 2018 midterms, the lousy predictions of the punditocracy in 2016, and they serve to build momentum and perhaps discourage that electoral majority that has disapproved of Trump since the beginning from even bothering to oppose a moron in the affairs of governance, and the clearest danger to democracy faced by the US in decades. It seems irresponsible, especially when Prof. Krugman's entire op-ed suggests Trump doesn't understand economics, and will likely fail catastrophically if faced with a disaster the likes of which Obama encountered in 2009.
1
The real Trump/Pence/Putin election slogan is this: Make Russia Great Again.
1
The best part of a Krugman article is its sheer irrelevance in the Trump era.
Krugman’s irrelevance is more proof that God exists.
1
Why do we have to keep pretending Republicans are not the enemy of America?
2
If conditions have not improved at all for small town and rural America, why do they continue to support Trump? Aristotle said that the foot that wears the shoe knows where it pinches. If his statement is now untrue in an era of mass media controlled conformism, reminiscent of George Orwell, then 1984 has arrived later than expected.
Corporations treatment of the tax break, buying back stock instead of driving growth of employment, infrastructure and R&D are examples of why we can't rely on them to drive benefit for society as a whole - including them. Education, infrastructure, increased productivity of the workforce through expanded healthcare, improved and available education must be driven by societal needs, not those focused on near term profit. In other words, they should be taxed. Paul, you're point about the efficacy of debt needs to also address when is it too much, when do we stop. When do we pay back? How do we pay back? Are you suggesting we just file for bankruptcy since no one can hold us accountable? Much of that debt was provided by U.S. citizens. The interest is being paid by citizens. How is this different than Trump's multiple bankruptcies? Mismanagement, delayed maintenance, greed all leading to investors being punished.
1
I don't necessarily see a strong economy as a cause for re-election of the incumbent party. Let's not forget that as recently as 2016 - as in 2000 - th average voter, or independent voter, became rather apathetic about th US economy and seemed to regard it as the natural state of things; like it was going to just go on and on and on...
For whatever reason, and I've even written Dr. Krugman directly about this, no one ever brings up th economic formula we were living under in th later 90's. It was just a mere 20 years ago and we were running consecutive years of surplus budgets! Is some horrible Pandora's box going to erupt if we even mention the US Economy of th 90's?
Somebody? Anybody?
1
Jesus Votes Republican. Just ask them.
Sad.
1
Republicans do not disagree with Democrats over policies nor principles of governance, they flat out mistrust people who are not Republicans because they are no longer convinced that they share anything in common. The basic consensus about shared interests has been lost sometime in recent years. The Republicans see themselves forced to live with strangers who are unlike themselves. No matter how dishonorable Trump maybe, they see him as their countryman but not the rest of us.
1
Fiscal hypocrisy has worked very well for Democrats and their advocates as well. As long as the deficit climbs in order to pay for things Democrats care for, the deficit is not a problem. Bernie—the Dem’s front runner, wants to spend trillions and increase the deficit to accomplish his political goals. Trump raised the deficit by giving tax dollars back to those who paid them. So yes, we are all deficit hypocrites. That is because politics is the art of the possible—let’s not pretend the Democrats are immune from that.
1
Prof. Krugman nails it again. However, I must add something: Our biggest enemy isn't the Republican "Party"; rather, it's the corporate Dems who are doing everything in their power to sabotage the prospect of serious change. It's in this context that Bernie's (or "the Squad's") common sense ideas are seen as crazy. Pete Buttigieg and Bloomberg are currently trying to tear him down with right-wing propaganda.
My hope is that this election totally destroys the Republican Party and purges the Democratic Party of the corporate sellouts. I'm sick of living with a revolving door of far-right Repubs and Republican-lite corporate Dems.
I want actual change. There's no reason why the wealthiest geopolitical entity in human history can't go far beyond the progress made in the Nordic countries. No reason at all. Our poverty rate and broken healthcare system is a scandal.
4
Mr. Krugman, you and the rest of the most influential people in American media and political circles are missing the very real threat facing America. Trump and his closest ally Barr are planning a coup with the aim of installing Trump as a dictator.
Make the people understand what is about to happen. You have to shout out a warning to all Americans.
1
Good point, Vanity candidates like Bloomberg, Klobachur, Buttigeig and Streyer should get out of the way and support the leading Democratic candidate. Trump must be beaten to save this country and for that matter the planet. But defeating him and the GOP, while vital, is not enough. We need leadership that will address the damage done by 40 years of failed "trickle-down" neoliberal economics. We need leadership that will actually stand up to the corporate giants Trump serves and that will effectively address climate by moving us away from fossil fuels and adapting infrastructure.
Anything less will be a disaster of historical proportions.
2
Economic stimulus under Trump is akin to burning the furniture to heat the house.
Trump is perfectly fine with this. Short-term thinking is not a bug, it's a feature.
2
The GOP and Trumpism particularly is all about "owning the libs." They have long since ceased worrying about the effects of their policies, or the duplicity necessary to enact them. As long as they can stick a thumb in someone's eye ...
And sadly, the most vocal proponents of the GOP policies are those who will be the worst affected.
1
Trump "makes" money by going serially bankrupt and shorting if not ignoring legal financial obligations to others. Add to that his transactional meaningless statements and empty promises that are geared to arouse tribal emotions among his audiences and voters who unquestionably accept his ludicrous shtick, and it's clear that his prattle on economics cannot be taken seriously. Supported by self-serving politicians and corporate interests whose only shared interests are retention of power and financial gain, Trump is running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. I'm not confident that serious informed discussions of applied economic policies will sufficiently move the needle to impact the 2020 vote.
1
Hypocrisy is the Plank of the GOP. And they willing walk it.
1
Well, one thing we can be certain of is that Republican cynicism won't manifest as higher taxes, dropping overdue college loan payments in the taxpayers lap, and lawsuits against all major corporations intended specifically to raid their coffers and fatten the Washington goose.
Nope. That, and calling 50% of Americans "deplorable", is the stiff of Democratic cynicism.
1
So, Mayor Mike “buying” votes with millions of his OWN money is outrageous, but Trump “buying” votes with billions of TAXPAYER money is perfectly OK?
1
Prof. Krugman has it right. The Republicans TOTALLY don't trust white liberals with their "out-group" bias in which they favor being led by members of an out-group instead of their own. The Republicans are happy to be led by their own. And they will win like that. And anyone who is still trying to compare apples to oranges, Republicans to Democrats, is someone who hasn't picked a side. Those folks will now be along for the ride provided by those who have picked a side.
1
We have the capitalists represented by Trump and the GOP in one corner using indecency, hypocrisy and lies to enable a hate-filled, superstitious and well armed minority to gain unconstitutional power over the population of the country.
Then in the other corner we have the left who really want dialectical materialism to become the main discourse in US politics. They believe that society, service and goods, and the means of production need to have their relationships realigned so as to avoid class systems based on disparities of wealth. I am all for that.
However, Marxists believe that the end justifies the means. Just like their capitalist adversaries.
The middle has gone.
What style of deception do you want?
2
Foolishness of Democrats doesn't seem to matter. Despite hard earned lessons in 2000 and 2016, they still don't recognize that the Electoral College decides the presidency. So they'll nominate a candidate who will campaign in southern Florida while saying that Fidel Castro had a swell literacy program, then go to western Pennsylvania and tell the citizens to forget their fracking jobs and do something that isn't evil. Finally, he can campaign in the hollowed out industrial Midwest and tell desperate low wage workers who haven't seen a pay raise in 30 years because they compete against an unending flow of immigrant labor that they are xenophobic if they don't welcome illegal aliens, as they have just as much right to this country as someone whose ancestors fought in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. I feel insulted every time a Democrat pontificates yet it's Republican cynicism that will tilt the contest. I'll see you at the polls in November.
1
What an amusing article. First you criticize the president for "hypocracy" for his fiscal irresponsibility and then go to actually ADVOCATE even more fiscal irresponsiblity.
Anyone reading this oponion article should remember a simple fact. The US government, using your tax money will pay $474 BILLION in interest payments this year. This is money it could have used for education, housing, health care or even tax cuts. To left leaning economist like this author this doesn't matter because socialist countries just print money when their debts catch up with them driving up inflation and exposing your country to a risk of default.
Debt matters. Interest payments matter. Regardless who incurs them, Democrats or Republicans.
2
Is the DNC's media office paying attention? The content for anti-Trump and anti-Republican ads is right here. It's so easy to invoke facts to highlight Trump's lies and Republican hypocrisy.
2
This is nothing new. I remember reading a column written by William F. Buckley back in the 80's, during the days of $900.00 hammers for the armed forces. Buckley wrote that "In the end, deficites do not matter." Deficit fears are invoked to justify "starve the beast" policies.
Wait a second, Republicans are hypocritical? This is a truly shocking revelation to me...Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that we heard reports of private hand wringing over the Great Orange One's actions only to see him get a pass? I hope the ruling days of our current batch of oligarchs are ending soon.
1
Paul, tell us about the chance of a recession, when it arrives and how deep it may be. That may rid us of the Republican menace once and for all.
1
Jamie Beyer, a soybean farmer in Wheaton, Minn., and president of the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association. “We are all very excited about the USMCA and the trade deal with China. But we are all waiting for that to be reflected in commodity prices and orders. … It’s disheartening."
What is DISHEARTENING is that --- this guy devoutly passes along Trump's sales pitch ("excited") about USMCA and China "almost deal".
Beyer watched his industry (along with others) get sacrificed for US tariffs benefitting others. Beyer is oblivious to the fact that Trump provides lip service to the markets that he destroyed. Plus, boisterous talk of bigger tractors and now deflecting criticism by suggesting farm-fare will be higher than it is, Trump sells greatness ON THE HORIZON.
Many family farms couldn't weather this Trump-made downturn. MORE WILL GO. And STILL, the Jamie Beyers of the farm belt --- continue to sell the myth of Santa Trump on his way with gifts for good little farm boys and good little farm girls.
Santa Trump only needs these suckers' votes..
which he's got.
1
"Not by warning about the dangers of deficits — that’s both wrong on the substance and politically ineffective, because nobody cares."
Hold on, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Anyway, "the big Lie", where have we heard that before?
It is not only economic growth that can be undone by the coronavirus. Trump's disdain for human life unrelated to himself will be on display as our already strained healthcare system collapses under the stress of a pandemic.
Watching minority targeted groups, like Latinos or secularists, being treated like animals is one thing. Watching your parents or children being treated likewise is another.
When the disastrous consequences of our beleaguered healthcare system become personal, attitudes will change, finally, toward our selfish, inhumane president and his cohorts who care nothing for the country's middle and lower classes, other than how they can be milked to enrich the top 1 or 2 percent.
1
The problem is that if the Democratic nominee ignores the "Very Serious People" (as they should) the media will still go clamoring for the V.S.P.s opinions and give them the biggest microphone in the room, and gullible less educated voters will fall for the trick.
Thanks again for the clear explanation of our sad state of affairs
The Democrats lost Congress because they couldn't fix the mess by Bush/Cheney in 2 years. Remember that mess? Two wars and an economy in the toilet. By 2010, it was all blamed on Obama.
Then when the economy finally gets turned around, no help by the Republicans, they get back into power. It's just a matter of time until we repeat the same cycle. This time, it may not be two wars and financial instruments (although NK and Iran certainly may do something), it may be a virus.
Great election season, pick your virus, hacking from corona or hacking by Russia.
Three guesses as to which political party will be blamed.
1
It's not cynicism. It's hypocrisy and utter lack of moral fiber or decency.
1
Right on.
Krugman may not be right about everything (although who is?). But he is right on the main issue. Republicans are both kleptocrats and hypocrites. As an opinioneer all you can do is call this out. And he is doing it.
1
"If and when they re-emerge, Democrats should ignore them."
Everyone should ignore them.
1
"Republican Cynicism May Win Trump Re-election"?
I think Prof Krugman may be mistaking Republican cynicism for Democratic stupidity.
But - the again - it is a common error.
Stop saying "re-election". Trump was not elected president in 2016; Hillary Clinton was. Ever since then Trump has been trying to throw her in prison.
1
Could I ask you one question, Mr. Krugman? You rightly argue that Republican "bailouts" are bad. But then you ignore the obvious point: every Democrat presidential candidate is calling for bailout after bailout for every one of their cherished identity groups. So why isn't it equally cynical and hypocritical of Democrats to support their candidates and their bailouts?
Re the title “ Republican Cynicism May Win Trump Re-election “ — No! The ONLY way he wins is by cheating. Cynicism is relatively benign. Voter suppression and disinformation are the malignancies that might impell Trump to another term.
3
You basically called yourself a centrist over the weekend, or center-left, in your brief column about Bernie Sanders. And you decried Modern Monetary Theory.
The GOP is all about winning or maintaining power. Which means doing all they can to make life politically difficIult anytime a Democrat is in the WH. Which means, regardless of the impact of their attempts to harm Democrat policy any harm to the citizens doesn’t matter. For example, an almost forgotten cruelty is what is happening to those seeking asylum at our border who live in tents and horrible conditions. The party and Trump literally support cruelty. Hearts have been hardening over the years. Those who recognise Ash Wednesday have far too many sins for any God to hear. That’s right, Trump is perfect. No confession coming from the White House. And this doesn’t disturb, just a little, conservative Christians?
Perfect timing for buying an election?
1
I have always respected and like your columns but today , while accurate, misses the mark because "the Bernie" and his followers will lose all on their own because Bernie cant even tell voters how much his great plans will cost and then added insult to injury by coming out in favor of Castro today==bye bye florida!
Don’t worry, Professor Krugman, coronavirus will end Trump’s presidency.
There couldn’t be a better gift to Trump than the GOP having Bernie the socialistic-communist running against Trump. Trump may win re-election in a landslide. the only one’s who will be voting for Bernie will be leftist dreamers and out of touch flower children. Trump 2020.
Americans deserve the government they elect.
Question is, whether future generations deserve the economic consequences and financial aftermath yet to unfold. A case in point, the financial pain of the absolutely ruinous Bush Recession still lingers a generation later, courtesy of "Gopnomics".
I am going to repeat this Gopnomic special: PRC will start buying farm products from other countries, e.g. Brazil, soon as the they are ready to deliver the volume the PRC needs. They won't come back as trusty customers. The American farmers kicked them in the face for being dependable. And Boeing, Intel, Qualcom, T.I. Broadcom et. al are next.
And another thing, one can safely assume #45's tax cut has widened the wealth gap betw the top 10% and the 90% by a big margin.
1
Trump - "Billions for the Wealthy,
Nothing for Our Kids or Our Health!" -
a good rallying cry.
1
If the economy dips because of the coronavirus, Trump has an easy out. He will blame the Chinese.
2
Voters, which do you prefer: Trump's lies or real action?
1
Democrat's lunacy will seal Trump's election. Lovin' Castro Bernie is Trump's dream opponent. Record deficits pale.
1
Bernie Sanders has already won Trump's re-election. Why do democrats not see this?
Dear Paul,
Yup, Repubs are hypocrites when it comes to debt and deficits.
"What slowed recovery? Unprecedented fiscal austerity."
"Does fiscal austerity hurt growth? Yes. We’ve seen this fact demonstrated again and again over the past decade..."
Tax and spending cuts seemed to work shortly after World War I, Paul:
https://mises.org/library/forgotten-depression-1920
"So who was responsible for all this austerity? The answer, overwhelmingly, is Republicans in Congress. Remember, they threatened to create a financial crisis by refusing to raise the debt limit unless Obama cut spending."
Was it just Republicans who agreed to sequestration in 2011?
https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-sequestration-causes-and-impact-3305775
Maybe we can use a better approach. The first and most important thing is thoroughly review the tax code. Unfortunately neither party is truly interested in eliminating tax exemptions, carve-outs or subsidies from their respective supporters and special interest groups.
The next thing would be a gradual decrease in taxes and spending. A one percent reduction in each from the previous year for the next ten years would be a good start.
Do you think our federal government can function with less of our money, Paul?
submitted 2/24 @ 7:55 p.m.
It's not the economy, Nobel Laureate. Or at least not alone. If the left could find a progressive narrative that relied less on demonizing white men and insisting that America is uniquely awful, it would pull the rug out from under Trump.
1
"Reagan proved deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney.
Unless a Democrat is President.
3
Farm subsidies ensure that we are fed and clothed. Bailing out GM means we can continue to watch an inferior auto maker flog their weak products in the face of European and Asian superiority. The same can be said for Krugman’s stale and disproven economics.
Sure the Republicans are cynical. They're also hypocritical, corrupt and morally and ethically bankrupt. They have the conservative "movement" to thank for it.
That power and wealth obsessed group of AM radio propagandists, plutocrats, reactionary business interests, hypocritical fundamentalist Christian business entities (they don't deserve to be called churches) and above all Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News" have spent over 40 years ceaselessly working to accomplish turning a once normal, moderate to conservative political party into the radically corrupt and seditious entity that is todays Republican Party. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
That ugly reality of just who and what todays Republican Party is still has not sunk in with far too many of the rest of us. Until it does those traitors will continue their successful campaign to destroy this republic and replace it with a kleptocratic plutocracy.
2
The only solution is to win the senate regardless who is president.
2
Not to mention Trump has led his cabinet and the White House to all-time high rates of criminal behavior— while bringing the accountability rate to zero. How great is that!
1
If Paul Krugman is going to call presidential candidates vanity candidates he should name them. Who does he believe has no chance of being the nominee other than Tulsi Gabbard? The South Carolina primary hasn't even taken place yet. Nobody has any good idea how blacks are going to vote. The only large metro area that voted was Las Vegas and that a unique one. Let's see what happens on Saturday before saying certain candidates should drop out.
“Republican Cynicism May Win Trump Re-election”
or
The Democrats nominating a socialist may win Trump re-election.
1
Marvelous analysis. But, and, look at the average number of voluminous words in the column and readers' comments. How do you turn this message into a reptilian sensory shock that can overcome the captivating venom of Trump's effectively appealing vulgarity on the masses?
1
Trump’s provided very little stimulus, and can’t take credit for our economic boom - which is tied mostly to low interest rates.
But, let’s get one thing straight Mr. Krugman, you’re bias thinking towards Obama paints a clouded picture.
Trump is incurring a $1 trillion dollar deficit - continuing the plunge America into debt - a descent that began under Obama.
The US debt increased more under the Obama administration than any other President in the history of our Country.
Our National Debt skyrocketed from just over $10 trillion when Obama took office, to just over $20 trillion when he left.
He doubled our debt - Trump’s no better - just as fiscally irresponsible- he gave corporations a tax break....and Obama spent $1-2 trillion in wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
So let’s get your facts straight - Obama was a spendthrift and Trump is a spendthrift.
I don’t care if they’re Democrats or Republicans like you do - your opinion may be that Democrats can do no wrong - it’s not fake news, it’s just 1/2 the news.....the left half.
They are all politicians. If we all woke up tomorrow to find that over night the U.S. had become communist, a majority of the U.S. politicians would be fighting for their spot on the politburo. (What happened to all those communists in the Soviet Union when it fell? Oh that's right, they were suddenly capitalists.)
1
You should do a piece on the positively STUNNING things that are happening in the NY Repo Market.
Truly OBSCENE amounts - hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of BILLIONS are being poured in there, weekly, esp. since September 2019- so much so that they've begun to talk about having the "repo" window open ALL THE TIME - and who knows how much of this has come back, or has NOT come back.
One CANNOT escape the impression that this is one of the devices that Individual One and his lackey at the Fed are using to prop up the economy at least until after the November elections, after which, Individual One does not care one way or the other - because this is ALL coming from the Fed.
This is a story with MASSIVE ramifications for the economy that American are not being told, which, if the truth were known, could well influence the election against this criminal gang.
The Times needs to WEIGH IN.
1
'Keep America Great' caps sold for $30 each to the suckers who get stuck paying the bills is so pathetically fraudulent it boggles the mind. That's the true hypocrisy fueling the final phase of American democracy.
1
It's more than "breathtaking fiscal hypocrisy" as Krugman well knows - it's legal corruption.
1
Are those miners, and the Mitch McConnell poor, and the drug addicted that have gotten no relief, still thinking Donald Trump is somehow saving them?
2
@MIMA
McConnell renamed the ACA to Konnectcare. He convinced his constituents that he was responsible for getting them medical care.
Despite Dr. Krugman's steadfast refusal to enter the 21st Century.....I hope he's right this time.
Democrats (using Michael Bloomberg's spare billions after Bloomberg drops out) need to go out and register every unregistered eligible voter in all 50 states.
And Bernie Sanders needs to keep on preaching for a better America with better healthcare, better infrastructure, fair taxation, campaign finance corruption reform, immigration reform, real representative government, and a President willing to fight for all Americans, not just the minority of voters that voted for him.
40% of the nation will remain in an unreachable Trumpian-FOX News trance, dutifully repeating their 'Venezuela', 'socialist' and 'Fidel Sanders' Pavlovian poppycock chorus lines.
But the majority of Americans know very well that the Republican Party doesn't care about anything except oligarchy, greed, power and stealing elections.
The majority of Americans know that this nation will not survive another four years of Trump tantrums, treason, high crimes and misdemeanors.
It's impossible for Bernie Sanders to be a worse President than Donald Trump, so what's all the paranoia about Never Sanders voters who prefer to cling to the Great American Healthcare Rip-Off like some creepy, illogical security blanket.
Bernie Sanders is a smart politician; he will pivot toward the center and will do so after the nomination is secured.
Other countries do certain things better than America; we should copy them: big deal !
It's time for America to stop painting the toenails of the rich in gold.
Feel The Bern 2020.
2
The gyrations and roiling of markets caused by spread of covid 19 pose serious threats to growth here and abroad. How long and deep covid 19's effects will last is uncertain. The most threatening infection to the long term health and well being of the people and economy of this nation is the man sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office. He and his crew are their own version of a pandemic
2
Krugman calls on Democrats to ignore those "very serious people" who pretend to worry about the national debt, yet ignore it when Republicans hand out tax cuts for the rich and big corporations.
That same warning to ignore certain people could be applied to the centrist Democrats -- Biden, Buttigieg , Klobuchar -- who want us to worry about the national debt with Medicare for All.
By the way, Medicare for All will be cheaper for all of us, collectively, than either the current system or a public option variant would be:
https://www.salon.com/2020/02/22/multiple-studies-show-medicare-for-all-would-be-cheaper-than-public-option-pushed-by-moderates/
We can ignore centrist Democrats' and Republicans' supposed "horror" at the expense of Medicare for All by noting, per Krugman, that deficit spending can be beneficial. In addition, Medicare for All will cost less for all, collectively, than any other proposal would and it would give us what no other proposal would: simple to use insurance that covers, not 80 or 90%, but everybody.
1
I am a Republican.
My party gave up the mandate of keeping budget balanced – starting with none other than the famous fiscal hawk – Ronald Reagan.
As the acting chief of staff – Mike Mulvaney – recently said ”our party just does not the Democrat deficits.”
”Theirs are ruinous, ours saves the Republic”
Japan has shown that deficits don't matter and even unbelievable sovereign debt burden does not matter – if economy keeps growing via a healthy population growth that keeps paying taxes.
I am no economist – but Japan has acute problems – not because of debt but because of shrinking population.
As long as our country keeps growing with population and economy performs – not even to Goldilocks standards – Republicans should quit worrying about Republican deficits as well as Democrat deficits.
As to bailing out farmers – it's called in simplest terms – buying votes.
Not that there is anything wrong with it.
1
The American farmer is a pawn in this great war on the country that djt is succeeding in turning into a third world country.
1
This outrageous hypocrisy astounds me on a near daily basis. Thank you for calling it out. Keep it up.
1
Herbert's C.I.A. rules. Has since Reagan. The fix is in for November, or at least it was tried when someone got Bloomberg to run against Trump, both Wall street men.
The C.I.A. murdered my dad, a very big witness regarding my Coal invention and a gun given to me for my birthday right after Henry Wade, the Dallas DA left office in 1987. The Republicans killed the Kennedy's, maybe me too. Time will tell.
I'm not with Republicans, never was, and never will be. And I don't drink or drug. I ring alarm bells real loud because no one seems to hear any more. It's a long term coup, since Herbert.
Way to go Maggie. You're a real genius.
My favorite lay person's explanation of monetary policy - "Money is like manure, it doesn't do any good unless you spread it around." Democrats want to spread it, Republicans want huge heaps of it for the wealthy to hoard.
1
Bravo. The hypocrisy is laughable.
1
I know what cynicism is it is the most formidable weapon used against democracy.
America elected a president who promised to burn down the village to save it. The cabinet and house and senate tells us evil is not always banal sometimes evil is a pus filled and festering pile of corruption.
The hypocrisy, the lies and the denial are simply a distraction, Trump was elected by people who know and understand what the GOP is all about and who and what Trump is.They hate America and will do all in their power to destroy it.
Plutocracy and oligarchy gives citizens the right to obey.
2
Does “cynicism” however delineated and expressed,
come packaged with endless types, levels, and
qualities of personal unaccountability? For a person’s
harmful words. Voiced. Written.Twittered and even
non- Solacing-Silences? Damaging, traumatizing-
done-deeds? And their temporary or more
permanent implications and outcomes?
Expected ones as well as unexpected ones.
Are Republicans, a diverse group of Peoples,
with a long diverse history in this divided nation,
since its inception by colonizing, FOREIGNERS,
the only “seeders,” nurturers and harvesters of a
continuum of an enabled, toxic, infectious daily,
WE-THEY violating culture?
As WE label THEM who, and what, are WE helping?
Changing? “Difference-making?”
Republican cynicism? - For sure. But how about the Democrat party's seer idiocy of selecting Bernie as its standard bearer? Hello, Trump's second term.
Trumps biggest advantage is his opponents.
As usual, Dr. Krugman, an excellent column; well-done.
It is just terrible that the Republicans are nor working hard to elect more Democrats and to defeat Trump. Paul, my heat bleeds for you!
Seriously, I would prefer a Democrat to be the next president but when I see how deluded Democrats, like you are, I wonder if I want your party in charge.
1
Some Bread and Circuses for the plebes, and when the GOP wins, then the lash.
1
The Trump base of racists and xenophobes doesn't care about the economy.
They all could lose their farms, go bankrupt from medical bills, lose their social security and end up on the street, every single one of them, and they would still support Trump.
Because their deep down racism and hatred of immigrants - however misguided and fueled by lies and ignorance - has finally been legitimized, and they will love Trump for that until their dying breaths...
1
NOT ignore them! Call them out as insincere hacks. By name.
2
Unfortunately, this very newspaper emphasizes the budget deficits during Democratic Presidencies, and has remained silent under Republicans.
Anyone see an article in this newspaper in which the same news reporters who wrote non-stop stories highlighting the voices of budget scolds are highlighting those very same budget scolds now? The reporters simply allow them their hypocrisy by not mentioning it.
It shouldn't be a surprise, however, These are the same reporters who dutifully reported that Carter Page had nothing to do with the Trump campaign in 2016, who are now reporting stories that are entirely based on what they simply present as fact -- that wiretapping Carter Page was wiretapping Trump. Even though in 2016 they dutifully reported that Page had nothing to do with the Trump campaign! Hypocrisy is part of how this newspaper has become the Orwellian enabler of fascism.
Trump is trying to sabotage health care which would lead to mass death. He is taking away food stamps from 700,000 Americans to starve them. He is hob nobbing with Dictators and destroying traditional alliances to deny us help when we need it in the future. He's entrapping gun owners who show a tendency to revolt. He's conducting military "Shock and Awe" conduct to confuse us with his Daily Chaos through TV and Tweets. He's attacking democracy to deny Democrats power and position after Republicans carefully cultivated the military for backing. The 2016 election was rigged. You must make sure that reporting of votes between polling stations and the public is correct, and ignore Television reporting. And you should arrest and imprison the Coup leaders. Trump is "The Wall" street. Bloomberg abused the Occupy Wall Street Demonstrators with the NYPD whom he called "My Private Army". Taht four former federal prosecutors helped Trump is no coincidence. Now Barr does. Mueller looked the other way. The F.B.I. is in on it too. It's a coup. I don't care if you don't post it, but pass it around. They know what I'm typing here.
When the economists win Nobel, they turn socialists or communists. They also wear special blinkers. Last but not least, they lose whatever little common sense they. Here this criticism equating subsidies given to the farmers with auto industry bail out is one such. You know Mr. Krugman, when you are hungry the farmers feed you. Don't you ever forget that. We had a PM in India, a Cambridge economics doctorate...your breed and a pal one would think, he compared the subsidies given to telecom tycoons when presiding over 2G scam to the food coupons given to poor. You are getting there.
The answer to “how are you going to pay for that?” should always “by taxing you a small percentage of what you actually deserve to be taxed.”
1
As my mother (the late “Miss Scarlett”) used to say, “There is no defense against an accomplished liar.”
If there is one thing we know about the man in the White House, it is that if he is nothing else, he IS that individual.
If and when he comes back in 2020, it should be no surprise.
1
Mr. Krugman if you continue to repeat Trump's lie about his "strong" economy, like all the pundits in the media, then how will people really find out the truth. Trump is not spending a penny on climate change and in fact is rolling back Obama's efforts to find ways to control the nightmare that faces humanity. But instead of doing the math you keep touting how strong Trump's economy is and how low the unemployment figures. When will you write a column in which you do the math of what we should be spending on climate change and figure it into the "strong" economy you tout so that people who respect you and depend on you for real economic insight do not have to read columns that lie? And if I am wrong and climate change will not kill millions more than the coronavirus shouldn't we be figuring its economic impact on the future. I would like to read your explanation that climate change, as Trump and his supporters claim, is not a hoax. You cannot have it both ways and Trump not spending on infrastructure is only the edge of what needs to be done to the central issues of climate change: reducing the use of fossil fuels and spending trillions on alternative source of energy. Please correct me if I am wrong in blaming the media for helping Trump. And including you on that Kudlow, Navorro, Moore team of Hiroshima weatherman who see a sunny day ahead because no one told them an atomic bomb would turn the city into a nuclear wasteland...
1
Trump is paying farmers to not grow food.
1
Krugman gets it wrong again. Republican cynicism is irrelevant. Conservative rejection of Socialism is the real reason Democrats will be smoked again this fall.
I suspect, given the choice between paying down the national debt or solving any other national problem or simply using it as a weapon to defeat political opponents Sen. Mconnell and his partner Mr. Trump would much prefer the latter.
I grew up in apartheid South Africa where towards the end the national party Government weaponised asbolutely everything.
They had zero interest in governing and were obsessed with winning every political battle.
Sound familiar?
1
Trump supporters didn't start dumb. They were seduced by a carefully crafted shiny flashing sensationalist Television screen.
Sometimes, the trouble with freedom is that it invites criminals and misconduct. You know everyone has a little larcenous inclination for enjoyment. The Republicans made an art of trying to get away with as much as they could. It's the mighty big pillaging of the nation.
And everyone; you have got to read the article below about Ginni Thomas, Clarence Thomas' wife and the connections. You all are smart, you'll read into it, but don't miss it. It's big, right Herbert?
1
let's be honest. a poor choice like Bernie will also assist trump
The outlandish hypocrisy started way before Obama. They’d been crying “fiscal discipline!” for decades, up until Bush Jr. blew up the debt and Cheney said “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter”.....even when Clinton balanced the budget.
And that’s just fiscal hypocrisy. Add to that their “family values” hypocrisy, and their “national security” hypocrisy, and their “decency” hypocrisy, and their “rule of law” hypocrisy, and their “state's rights” hypocrisy.
The only thing they’ve been consistent on is sticking it to the poor and the blacks and the browns and the women.
1
Paul,
The people are not behind Trump or Republicanism out of logic or ideal but out of hatred for minorities of all description. Clearly writing the evidence as you do here does not appeal to persons who do not ever want another black first family and surely would never accept a gay leader.
1
These are the values and behaviors that today's Republicans teach our children and grandchildren: Hatred of all non-whites, and of whites who don't also hate all non-whites, bullying, lying, cheating, greed, stealing from and bilking the taxpayers, bribery, adultery, assaulting women and grabbing their private parts, faking medical conditions to run from military service during time of war, running-up unconscionable deficits, vilifying science, scientists and stewardship of the environment, kow-towing to despots. That's a lot for responsible adults to fight and teach against, and/or to try to shield their kids and grandkids from every day.
1
A quick review of 2016. And a reminder that the Presidential election is NATIONAL and follows a completely different set of rules than every other election, all of which are LOCAL.
...
Both National Parties, Dem and Repub, made use of OVERWHELMING FEAR to manipulate the voters. Neither National Party offered anything remotely "progressive" or new. To be sure, both sides packaged their message as "new and improved".....but it wasnt. Be Honest. More of the Same. Status Quo New Deal(which is actually 80 years Old). Even cute lil' Sandy Ocasio has a GREEN New Deal.....(sorta like that toothpaste I buy that claims to be "green").
During 2016....there were two feeble attempts to move America forward into the 21st Century......both got deflected through a liberal use of mockery, deliberately constructed bad press, and were simply ignored to death.
1. The last two REagan Republicans were the only two from positions of intelligent, successful leadership...........
John Kasich and Elizabeth Warren.
FEAR of breaking ranks from the existing Order....Bush Minions vs DNC Minions.......nothing happened.
Kasich was mocked off the stage........Warren took Clinton Money and joined the Dark Side.
2. Two very successful governors made a run for it.
Gary Johnson(NM) and William Weld(MA)....and the Press Corps used a whopping amount of FEAR Mongering......Chaos will ensue if we dont elect a Democrat(ie DNC Minion) or a Republican(ie....Bush Minion)!
After three years of editorials criticizing Trump, Mr. Krugman is now trying something new - criticizing his voters.
1
$30 for a hat ?
it should say "Keep America Robbed"...
1
Thanks Paul. Keep on spreading demoralization among Democrats.
Isn’t there enough of that going around?
Mike
2
Let's just keep printing money. What could go wrong?
1
I have 4/10ths of an acre on my farm. Send me the money and I'll vote for whats his name.
Hate and willful ignorance always triumph in human affairs.
Where is the magical data from which these NY Times predictions come forth?
No matter.
Just make it up.
Mr. Krugman. Where are the Republicans of which you write?
The Republicans died long ago, after Trump and Bush came to term.
They were burried alive after djt stole the election, bydefrauding and colluding with enemy datacriminalists in countries beyond the US.
There ARE NO republicans other than those weird characters in the Senate and the Congress who claim to be, but they are NOT.
So, what you seem ignorant of IS, that Republicans have left the PARTY.
Count those people.
1
What kind of economist and financial adviser would suggest you to pile up the personal debt to make yourself more financially stable and sound?
1
We can predict with certainty that once there is a Democrat in the White House, Republicans will go back to obstructing that president's efforts, with the excuse that deficit building by Trump was necessary to undo the terrible damage caused by Obama. Bet the house on it.
2
You are so rational, Mr. Krugman. Most people are swayed by things other than reason. Not because they are bad, but it is the way the human mind has been shown to work by scientists trying to figure us out. Mr. Trump is good at pushing human buttons. He is a consummate provocateur and, frankly, a con man. It has worked well for him in his life. It is working well for him now. Democratic candidates often err on the side of reason, and so their fortunes rise and fall along with the preponderance of US voters who can be motivated by arguments based in reason. Your colleague, Mr. Brooks, suggested Democrats need a new myth not based in Trump-style demagoguery or virulent us versus them tactics (unfortunately practiced by both Trump and Sanders) that could motivate voters for whom reason is not persuasive. Those of us in the Warren cadre of voters are working on it (https://medium.com/@teresadlonghawkes/we-are-gathering-f10f1a1daf21). But, know that the reasonable arguments you supply help us craft our message based in reality, not destructive and obfuscating politicking. Thank you.
2
@TDHawkes So, I guess then, Democracy is not to your liking, right? Perhaps, a benevolent dictatorship, say an absolute monarchy? May we pone for King Paul the Fist, perhaps even? I am being pestiferous of course. Democracy is the best we've got / the best possible/?- so let us have Trump reelected and the Democrat party perhaps FINALLY learning a lesson.
Governor Walker of Wisconsin wound up losing by ignoring infrastructure (Governor "Pothole"); so too this may be Trump's fate when people realize that he (President "Pothole?") has reneged on his campaign promise of rebuilding the nation's roads, bridges, etc.
1
Even more frustrating and angering is what the nation receives for republican deficits. GW Bush took the budget surplus he inherited from Clinton, which was on track to nearly eliminate the national debt, and gave 2 tax cuts that benefited the wealthy primarily. What did the country get for that profligacy? Not improved infrastructure, healthcare and education. It got an unpaid for war, trillions more in debt and a collapsing economy. On the other hand, the Obama deficit saved the country from another great depression, made the first honest attempt in the nation’s history to provide healthcare to all of its citizens, and saved the auto industry and much of its supply chain despite republican foot dragging. Now we have another republican deficit that is benefiting the wealthy and a few farmers while feeding the republican lie machine that social programs need to be cut as a result. In other words, the country does not benefit from this borrowing. The country will be poorer with nothing to show for it. Might as well get a loan from your bank and use the money at a Trump casino.
2
Anyone could create the appearance of a good economy if the dump greenbacks into it at the tune of over a TRILLION DOLLARS A YEAR!
And that is what Trump is doing. It is not something that can be sustained for long. I am no deficit-fearing "very serious person," not at all, but what Trump is doing, and how he is doing it -- shoveling it into the pockets of corporations and the rich -- is going to lead us into a VERY bad place.
The only question is when the reckoning will come due. If it is before the election maybe the American voters will turn Trump out and the damage will be able to be mitigated. But if this ploy happens afterward and Trump gets reelected, we will find ourselves back in 1929 with a crash and an administration we are stuck with for years who will do exactly the wrong things to deal with it and make it get worse and more tragic as long as they stay in office.
2
The greatest challenge we face as a country is the political divisions which have become too great to even discuss among ourselves. Global warming is the greatest existential challenge for mankind but it’s political disagreements that prevent us from addressing it with seriousness. The science is just what reasoned consideration of proven facts compel reasonable people to know about this issue. Politicians who are fixated upon controlling what other people might do which might affect them are unwilling to accept what are clearly reliable facts not because they have contradictory facts to offer but because they mistrust anyone who asserts what they do not wish to accept.
Democrats need to understand that when our fellow citizens reject global warming triggered by man’s great effects upon our world, they are rejecting those who are telling them what they want to believe is untrue, it gives them a sense of warm and fuzzy safety to think that the problem is people who are misleading other people and not the great forces of nature.
1
Trump's economy is just like his wealth. Inherited.
6
@Jim Trump inherited roughly $400M, and had turned it into $2B. Not bad.
I believe we have given away our generational chance and belief that we are the greatest country in the world. With trillions squandered on wars and self-interest, narrow tax breaks, we have missed the opportunity to invest in the very country we live in. We are slowly becoming poor in infrastructure, health, education and generally public good investments that keeps our democracy viable.
3
The employment figures are skewed. Many people work 2-3 jobs at minimum wage. Many workers have contract jobs with no benefits, many can find only part-time employment. As a result they cannot pay for childcare on these incomes. Who takes care of these children? How can they afford health care? As so many of the statistics presented to the American people these too are false narratives doctored by the government under trump. How can we believe anything anymore? Yes we all know this and yet do nothing out of fear and helplessness and of course working multiple jobs.
1
@FunkyIrshman If the Democrats refuse to raise the debt limit in 2021 to slow down spending, for the simple reason that he has done this for all his life, Trump will simply default on the debt and try to reduce it by offering repayment 50 cents on the dollar and thus lower the total amount of the debt. Then when we become a deadbeat nation Trump can wonder why no one wants to invest in US debt at face value price. This will be a problem that no amount of money laundering for Russian oligarchs could fix.
1
oh, everybody already knows the Republicans have no sense of governance. they're only about winning elections, by any means necessary. after that, they go raise more money.
1
Infra-structure projects do not always lead to either economic growth or greater wealth distribution, and tax cuts for the wealthy and subsidies for mid-western farmers definitely do not. But this is about politics and ministering to Trump's core vote.
The only thing consistent about Republicans are achieving and retaining power to keep other citizens from gaining it, slashing taxes in the hope that the rest of the country will become fed up with government and leave the country, and to enjoy all the trillions of dollars that will be dumped on them by the fleeing “takers”.
Consider this, government in a liberal democracy is only an oppressor for a minority who are convinced that the majority are tyrants. Reagan’s opposition to government were rejection of liberal democracy by those who opposed what the majority was deciding through the government.
When a consensus that all share the same interests is lost, the minority which feels unrepresented seeks a charismatic leader to provide what the democratic institutions are not.
Paul - it is way too early in this process to be making these pronouncements and educated guesses about what might happen.
In addition to which, the media lost a lot of credibility with me in 2016, and has not recovered it.
As a former New Hampshire resident, my head is still spinning over the endorsement of the Manchester Union Leader in the New Hampshire primary of....Chris Christie.
The deficit is not a problem ... until it is. Or so we hear. Put another way, the deficit is not an issue until those now buying our dirt cheap debt instruments find other, better things to do with their money. That will be the day of reckoning. So, how about a follow-up note or two from Mr. Krugman detailing who these entities might be, why will they continue to buy US debt and what might their alternatives be?
We begin see suggestions that a dramatic drop in the US markets in the next months could well affect this president's path to reelection. Paul, could you take this question up? In your journalistic guise, whom might that market outcome benefit most among the Democratic contenders?
2
@DaCapo Keep rooting for the economy of our great nation to collapse for your political gains Democrats > and see you at the ballot box in November. Bernie against Trump. We all know the outcome, right?
Trump and the GOP seem to using America as their private bank. And their private country club. And they appear to be intent upon impoverishing 99% of us. Sadly their supporters are blind to what is happening. I can't figure out if it's willful blindness or a real belief that all this deficit spending is good for the country.
It would be good if the money was being spent on infrastructure projects, on basic scientific research, on cleaning up polluted areas, on any number of items that would contribute to our general well being. Trump and the GOP are determined to end immigration, eliminate what remains of our social safety net, cutting the heart out of the ACA and convincing us that it's all good.
My fear is that their policies will cripple the country just when we need money to spend the most. Of course this has been typical of the GOP for decades: malign Democrats spending and then when they are in power enacting policies that lead to recessions and massive losses for the working classes of America. Perhaps now they want to finish the job and leave us with a thin top layer of very rich people and corporations, some middle class, and a very large impoverished class of people who will be too downtrodden to fight back.
2/24/2020 10:40pm first submit
215
@hen3ry
The Treasury is their piggy bank, our national resources their meal ticket, and our people, their servants.
“Socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.”
Martin Luther King
36
The US is right on track to validate Enrico Fermi’s calculation that technological civilizations must finish committing suicide within 200 years of detonating their first nuclear bomb, for the sky to be so void of modulated signals.
6
@hen3ry As Jean Jacque Rosseau is reputed to have said "When the poor have nothing left to eat, they will eat the rich." We're getting there.
8
Lying and cheating works.
I have a friend who keeps saying he must have been brought up wrong because he can’t believe this is how things are done. It’s wrong - to him at least. Why don’t more people see it?
One more thing. It’s not just Democrats who should ignore the Very Serious People. The media needs to stop giving them and the GOP any credibility.
I just watched a BBC interview of Rachel Maddow. She said she stopped quoting Trump and having administration spokespersons on her show because she had to spend too much time afterwards cleaning up the disinformation and lies they spread.
3
You would think, having seen this play under Reagan, GW Bush, and now Trump, that Americans would be able to see through it. You would think.
245
@VinceInSeattle -- That was my thought too, this post-Reagan weirdness in which GOP presidents cut taxes while speaking about government, then don't shrink government because that would involve reversing social programs that help retirees, middle America workers, children, etc. Then this lack of balance causes problems in the economy and Democrats pick a centrist (Clinton, then Obama) to spend 8 yrs in the White House cleaning up the mess. The last time it was W, who invaded Iraq and racked up several trillion dollars of debt cutting taxes simultaneously, leading to the debacle in 2008. Like you said, you'd think...
22
Sadly, no...remember it’s a dumb country. Dumb. The rubes can’t wait to pay the taxes the billionaires should be paying. Many people in our country have an unhealthy fascination with rich people. It makes you wonder how much they can take before they wake up.
27
@VinceInSeattle - maybe most Americans do see through this. That's why they're always hoping for a non-establishment candidate for president, one who will shake things up, drain the swamp, anything to get good, sound policies for the general welfare of the country. Trump, like most Republicans, managed to hoodwink us with lies and promises that were never delivered.
14
I'd say the recently legalized (for Republicans) subversion of our elections might win Trump re-election, but to each his own.
We shouldn't ignore them. We should be pointing out their profits over patriotism every day and put the lie to their fiscal responsibility meme. A lie not countered becomes the truth, and this lie must be exposed every day.
209
@PatriotDem But, Trump lies every day and Republicans in the Congress, who know better, and Republican voters around the country who probably don't, still shout Hallelujah!"
4
@PatriotDem
Patriotism over profits ! --- there's campaign slogan.
3
The GOP strategy to get and keep power is to sabotage Americans, blame the Dems, and then once in power, use massive deficit spending to make the economy better. This is basically Trump's whole political model: create a crisis and then solve the crisis you created.
1
Trump is vulnerable on the economy. Living costs are eating up most Americans' income. Though unemployment is low, housing, healthcare,education, childcare and other costs leaves little left over. The consumer price index rose last month at an accelerated pace. Income inequality reigns as Trumpers brag about the lofty stock market. Most Americans do not own stocks. We had a tax cut that favored the rich and corporations that did not move the trend line on jobs. Consumer debt is spiking and subprime car loan delinquencies are rising.
It is not a sign of success when most Americans cannot come up with $400 in an emergency.
66
@Mark Smith Very true. Exactly which Trump/Republican policies are MAGA followers thankful for? Policies that take away their health care? Policies that require them to work more than 1 job to make ends meet? Education policies that hurt our public schools and make college unaffordable? Policies that put more pollution into our air and drinking water? Policies that break up immigrant families?
Are they happy to know that Trump couldn't care less about them, and he favors billionaires instead? Are they happy to pay taxes they can't afford, so the very rich can pay less? Are they happy that their children will live in a dangerously polluted environment because trump doesn't believe in science? Or maybe they want to turn our democracy into a dictatorship, knowing their children will have to live with the consequences.
13
@Mark Smith
It is also not a sign of success when a 40-hr/wk job does not pay well enough to live on, and when both parents need to work several part-time low-wage jobs just to keep the family going, as is the case for many of the people who do not own stocks and do not have college degrees but who work long and hard at jobs that the world needs.
All that money held offshore and untaxed should be in circulation in the form of better low- and mid-level wages, and less ridiculous CEO salaries. Everyone knows this.
The addictive greed for money at the top is no different from the addictive need for drugs/alcohol at the bottom.
We have not yet understood that the people holding all the money, obsessively, are not just greedy and mean-spirited, but also mentally ill, with an addictive attachment to money, and with no ability to recognize the concept of "enough" nor to stop pulling strings to get more, no matter what harm such greed causes the rest of the people who share the planet.
They have so much money that the can -- for now -- hide their crazy, as the Miranda Lambert song says. But I think even the Fox "News" viewers are starting to catch on.
8
I think VSPs will get no traction should they return in the future.
Republicans represent the wealthiest. The Democrats fight for the rest of us. It's no accident Trump became President, a Billionaire connected to "The Wall" street, just like Bloomberg even more so. The fix is in by Wall street running scared about regulation and taxes if a Democrat wins, so, the Fix is in.
My memory of tax cuts for the wealthy goes back to Reagan's tax cuts. After him, Herbert Bush famously said "No New Taxes" but had to legislate some after reality set in. The economic slump led to Bill Clinton who taxed the wealthy and a massive economic expansion occurred during the 90's. And the Republican wolf pack went after him, successfully distracting from the great economy Clinton sparked.
Then along came Bush Jr and even more tax cuts for the wealthy Republican benefactors along with costly wars and the inevitable Republican mental plight that consumed Americans happiness. During the Bush years, the price of crude oil steadily climbed from 2003 until an extraordinary peak from 2007 to 2008.
Obama came in and repaired the economy with stimulus. He literally saved our nation from a Republican Depression. He instituted modest taxes that aided the recovery Trump inherited. Then Wall Street appointed Trump who in Turn now has Mnuchin in charge of the Treasury. He's from Wall Street.
The point is, the Republicans are economy wreckers and Democrats are left with the bill.
Republicans are "The Wall" street, and Democrats are the medics that help the 99% of us.
419
@PATRICK You're right in what you say about Republicans, but you're letting the Democrats off the hook for their part in all of this. Yes, Obama and the Dems passed a stimulus, but it was only about half as big as it needed to be and as such left Main St. to go under.
Paul argued strenuously back then that the predicted deficit from a bigger stimulus would've been paid for by the growth generated, but it fell on deaf ears. This failure to heed his advice led to the Tea Party rise and then to Trump, as large swaths of the working and middle class got more and more frustrated as they saw the donor class and Corporate America soaring, while they sank further behind.
The problem is that the fundamental problem with our "trickle down" system is behind the scenes, and built into our tax code, and not in the obvious way of tax rate on income. We greatly reduced the tax on short term stock gains, which turned us into a "quarterly bottom-line focused" economy. This means anything that hurts profit is cut: jobs, wages, benefits, R&D, domestic production. Is it any wonder we saw an explosion of off-shoring, and slashing of jobs/wages? Until we undo that structural tax change we're not going to see any real improvement. Temporary tax cuts aren't the answer.
We need to go back to the pre-Reagan economy based on the New Deal, and that's what Sanders is pushing.
38
@PATRICK Republicans also seized on Trump's rage and thirst for revenge by inflicting more economic pain on blue states like the cap on SALT deductions. Make no mistake about it, the SALT caps were punitive. In a country where legislation has often been held up, the GOP saw a chance to gleefully inflict economic hardship on blue state citizens with their GOP/Trump tax plan. What will they conjure up to hit blue states with this time?
25
To condense this and so much more I wish I could write, is to tell you the Democrats are always building a vigorous economy after which Republicans then pillage it , it seems every decade.
15
It is not just the sound economy that will return President Trump back to the White House. It is factors like closing our borders to illegal immigrants which many Americans favor. It is creating jobs for all Americans no matter their race. It is electing moderate judges and Supreme Court justices to the bench. It is creating fair trade deals with other countries. The robust economy will surely cause President Trump to be re-elected but mixed in with other factors will also aid in his second term.
9
“Moderate” judges? Many being nominated are labeled “unqualified” by the ABA. And what specific policies has Trump implemented to improvement is employment for people of color? As the labor market tightens, employers have no choice but to hire workers they might be reluctant to hire in times of higher unemployment. Trump has done zero to target lower income people. Has he pursued policies to openly discriminate? Of course not. Whoop de do. The economy is continuing its trajectory under Obama, aided by a huge giveaway to the wealthy.
8
Closing the borders is what people have been told to do by lies and hypocrisy, not something they decided on their own.
The unemployment figure means nothing when wages are low, benefits sparse, and people don’t have enough saved for retirement.
Universal healthcare will offer better coverage at lower cost to everybody, and won’t trap people in particular jobs.
None if Trump’s judges or justices is a “moderate.” They are all on the far right.
None of Trump’s trade deals are advantageous to the US working class.
Did you even read Krugman’s article? Your arguments address nothing in it.
“Moderate judges?”
You mean judges in line with your crusade to control women’s bodies, don’t you.
No objective observer could call Trump’s judicial nominees moderate.
Dr Krugman,
I very much appreciate your essays. However, I
need you to name these so-called “VSP’s.” There are many of us who don’t live in the rarified air of New York and D.C. but we are just as affected by the decisions made as you and other insiders. I like to hear specific names and examples so as to understand the big picture.
1
Trump’s minions can’t do any infrastructure spending because that money is already in the hands of billionaires who essentially horde it.
In any case the only plan for infrastructure they floated was a grifter swindle where private capital would own the final improvement and receive, you guessed it an enormous tax benefit for making the investment. So, the best of Republican economics, privatize the risk and socialize the costs combined with looting the commons.
Why did this two bit con not happen? a Democratic House. Another reason to vote Bernie this November.
1
Republicans have been playing by the same game plan for forty years. We need new strategies to compete against them. They exploit the economy we have stabilize until it is weakened by excess tax cuts, deregulation and spending. When it falters, Dems get elected to stabilize it again. Yet we are portrayed as the problem.
There was no recovery. Deficit spending funded by debt has fueled the fake GDP 'growth'. Tell the truth, Krugman.
The most important facts have not changed.
The US is still in the longest economic growth phase of its history. This growth will not last forever. We can expect a contraction sooner or later.
Since the ACA went into effect, healthcare has been more available to to wage earners below the 50th percentile than at any time since at least 2000.
Growth has slowed under Trump despite the deficits run up during three years of Republican controlled government.
Employment has continued to grow during the three years of Republican controlled government.
Wage growth has primarily growth has occurred as a consequence of state and local government led increases in the minimum wage.
The minimum wage increases have directly affected the wages paid to minimum wage workers.
The minimum wage increases indirectly raised wages for wage earners in the 20th to the 50th percentiles.
The minimum wages increases have stimulated consumer demand and increased economic growth during the past three years.
The result has been an economy that gives non-college wage earners more economic stability than they have had since 2007.
Workers today are more content with their lot in life than they were in 2016.
Conclusion. The economic well-being and relative stability voters enjoy today is the product of Democratic policies. The irony is that voters are likely to attribute it to Republican policies.
Observation. Mainstream media is either unable or unwilling to report these facts.
3
One more thing, it is blue states that have fueled the recovery. California has done more for the US economy than any other state.
2
"They might do better by pointing out that while Trump has rushed to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, he has been shortchanging the future." The shameless hypocrisy of Republicans turns my stomach daily. I support Warren, but am starting to really understand the appeal of Sanders, especially with the youngest voters. Sanders calls out the hypocrites by name and trade, and promises to cast them out. Much easier said than done, but if he rolls through to the nomination, I'll fully support him. We need a New Deal, an FDR, a government by and for the people again. VOTE BLUE 2020
6
If emptying public exchequer with freebie distribution or billions in farm subsidy could help win election there would be no need for leaders to run from pillar to post while seeking votes from the heterogeneous groups of voters with diverse range of interests. So, beyond fiscal profligacy and the Republican hypocrisy Trump will also need to offer convincing answers to the voters about his reckless acts of constitutional transgression and moral depredation even when he has managed to fet out of the impeachment trap.
2
The hypocrisy of the GOP and the myth of “fiscal responsibility” has never lost them an election. Republicans always seem to manage to convince the working class that Democrats don’t want them to be rich, not that they ever will be. The elusive American dream is always one winning lottery ticket away.
This is not France. People are not going to man the barricades and strike. No matter how many times academics write books about it, the American working class will continue to vote against its own interests.
And while GOP cynicism is a factor I think Bernie is what’s going to be giving trump his second term.
2
I agree with Krugman that Trump's fiscal hypocrisy may hand him a victory. HIs economic sleight of hand has never been effectively challenged or exposed by Democrats largely because, in good economic times, those kinds of criticisms don't take hold. He has his hypocrisy working for him but he also has improvements in job numbers and wages about which many voters who actually vote are pleased.
Clearly the Dems have only themselves to blame for Trump’s success. After Trump cut taxes for everybody he proposed a budget deal which included additional military spending which the Dems refused to accept unless Trump and the Republicans agreed to increase domestic spending as well all of which not only increased the deficit but also created more jobs and stimulated the economy. Maybe the Dems would do relatively better if they refused to allow the Reps to be the hypocrites Krugman says they are instead of insisting that they be such hypocrites.
I'm surprised that Paul Krugman does not remember that Vice President Dick Cheney declared in 2004, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." This is the same old song that we've heard for decades from Republicans. Deficit spending by Democrats will end the world as we know it, and deficit spending by Republicans is a non-issue. Krugman is correct, however, the hypocrisy of the Republicans this time around is even more disturbing than usual.
2
The US economy is constantly being trumpeted as being strong by the GOP, but the facts behind the curtain don’t add up in my mind.
Huge tax cuts, nakedly political fiscal spending, and wholesale printing of money to suppress interest rates are like forcing drugs into a weakening body. Countries all around the world are struggling with their economies, some already in recession, yet ours seems to have remained hermetically sealed off from these troubles thanks to the witches brew of drugs. It’s unrealistic to assume that these alternate realities can continue to coexist, especially with weak manufacturing and a grossly overvalued stock market.
And with the coronavirus now likely to take hold on our shores and political hacks like Ken Cuccinelli floundering to even understand its status as head the task force to manage our fate, the economy cannot continue to levitate in defiance of gravity. Sooner or later Trump’s fiscal drug stimuli will cease to have an impact on the frail underlying patient and then we’ll realize that we are inevitably connected to other country-markets after all.
It’s not the economy, stupid - it’s the stupid economy.
3
Paul, you risk sounding like Dick Cheney when you appear to say "deficits don't matter". Deficits spent on transfers to wealthy people, which simply rob the country and its citizens, do matter. Deficits spent on investment that generate productive future returns (e.g. infrastructure) don't matter much, if at all, as long as the productivity ensues that pays off the debt. So, please do not fall into the trap of letting people think that money grows on trees.
1
Cheap and abundant oil and natural gas have largely underpinned the economy from Obama onward. As has our profligate and unsustainable utilization of such.
Consider the auto bailouts. Was not a major concession of the industry, in accepting the public largess, the promise to improve significantly the energy efficiency of the new fleet? To expand the choices? What have they offered but bigger, badder, HP muscle, and largely more mediocre? And the consuming public has largely followed the manufactured lead.
The entire economy is based upon borrowing (robbing) from tomorrow. Fiscal and environmental hypocrisy are built in. When will we finally demand that any new growth might actually be sustainable?
Most sane people realize the need to remove Trump from office this November, regardless of who the Democrat nominee is. If Trump remains in office, it will be because voter turn out was insufficient. Trump's base will continue to support him. Everyone need's to vote. Our Republic is unlikely to be able to withstand another four years of government by only person who is also incompetent and unhinged.
1
Trump is as much out to destroy the Republican party as he is to destroy the Democrats, because his power rests on the GOP leaders not being able to control him. His plan is to tear down both parties and the traditional power structure within the government that he loves to denounce as the "Deep State". If you have been a life-long Republican like so many in my family, you should perhaps think long and hard about that, because the Trump party is really not much at all like the Republican party we grew up with.
Trump is not a Republican and never really has been. Instead, he hijacked the Republican party and its resources to squeak to an electoral college majority with a lot of help from some friends, both inside and outside this country, and through a pile of lies about his own career and about his opponents. Thus, the Republicans today are hypocrites if and only if they were the Very Serious People the professor describes. The rest are the political opportunists and hangerson who have significantly populated both parties throughout most of American history.
2
It is pretty clear by now to any informed observer that Republicans monopolized a set of mantras that are trumpeted continuously as a brand reinforcement, while their actions have nothing to do with those. They are the party of projections not reality. 50% just like what they hear coming from that direction: it is their daily Happynex pill. Republicans mastered the way to play the political game always in their advantage even if that involves dishonesty as the mean to survive.
I am afraid nobody cares about future deficits. Only the present matters. Same as talking about future climate issues is in dissonance with the weather this morning.
I believe that economy is the #1 strength of Trump, and the Democrats candidate must be a guy that can project himself as having a better plan. Every other issue is a distant second.
A focused message on the resl outcome of trade tariffs and the tax break can help.
COVID-19 may tamper somewhat the economic picture in the months until election, especially if a recession starts creeping in. Of course, I hope a Democratic would take care of fixing that as well...
Republicans complain only of Democratic deficit spending while Democrats complain only of Republican deficit spending. It happens all the time. Both parties are hypocritical because that’s how politics work. Krugman thinks that only Republicans play the game. He isn’t paying attention.
If tangible images on nightly news of floods, mud slides and unmanageable fires cant persuade Trumpers that climate change is not a hoax then how does any Democratic presidential candidate make the case that Trumps trillion dollar deficit is going is destroy our economy? Dems grouse when Sander is clueless about how much Medicare for all is going to cost, but as long as the GOP has windmills to vanquish, Trump is their second coming.
Most Trump supporters concerns go only as far as their 2nd amendment rights, overturning Roe and keeping America white. They have little desire to get into the weeds on climate, the economy and dismantling ACA; topics where there are no real concrete tangibles.
It is so dispiriting to think that if a Democrat does beat Trump in 2020, he or she will be faced with the daunting task of cleaning up the mess Trump and the Republicans have created during their four year long toga party. Trump supporters will be left with insurmountable debt, but who cares when they can see and touch their billion dollar wall.
Trump is transactional - the master of quid pro quo. No matter how bad the policy, or how much damage it causes, Trump will deliver.
And if the benefit is short term and the damage long term? No matter - Trump doesn't play a long game and neither do his voters. What is my stock worth TODAY? How can I build on a wetlands today? How can I make more product today? The heck with air and water. How do I get more profit today? The heck with usurious debt.
If I get my profit today, who cares if the market collapses tomorrow and puts all of us in penury for our retirements?
It isn't fiscal hypocrisy. It is simply that the old motto - "E Pluribus Unum" - has been replaced with "I Got Mine."
Krugman: "..breathtaking fiscal hypocrisy, in which the G.O.P. went from insisting that federal debt posed an existential threat under Obama to complete indifference to budget deficits under Trump. This 180-degree turn is, as far as I can tell, the most cynical policy reversal of modern times."
The GOP is an audacious lie machine - as is Trump. The GOP has been doing it for generations and they get better at it every year. Their best is yet to come. My favorite GOP big lie is that the American people love their health insurance companies. Why? Because it works. Their pundits and politicians have repeated that lie so relentlessly that it is now presumed to be fact by the lame stream media, Democrats and a good number of the American people. God luck to us all.
1
Republican indifference to deficits under trump should put to rest any R criticism of "Where's Bernie going to get the money" for all of his programs. Like with everything else for Republicans, deficits are just another political hammer; they have no core value except extreme cynicism.
It is not just the deficits. There is odd silence on corruption, the rule of law, immigration, disaster response, racist dog whistles, etc.
Incumbents want to stay in office. What is to keep them from bribing their way to re-election with wasteful spending or useless tax breaks other than concern for deficits somewhere in the system? If a balanced budget is not the best constraint to use, is there another constraint everyone can agree to?
The budget is not just for optimizing the economy, it is also for improving our politics.
Good fair article.
It looks like the main thing they will pillory Bernie for is his (rather mild by global standards) socialism. Note that the right never defines "sociaiism" with exactitude. What is it exactly that they object to in socialism? People getting health care and accessible education that people get all over the developed world?
Meanwhile due to Trump's tariff bungling he has to implement expansive socialism in the form of massive tax payer funded farmer bailouts. The latter is really dumb socialism. Trump actually implements the worst of socialism because he does not describe it as socialism- meanwhile Bernie wears the label like an albatross.
1
@Bob Guhrie
Having said that I want to make it clear that I abhor extreme socialism as in Soviet Russia, Maoist China and in North Korea, home of Trump's buddy, the murderous Kim.
But tyrannical communism is not represented by mildly socialist people any more than Joe Scarborough (eom I greatly resect) represented by General Franco or Pinochet.
The political spectrum is exactly that a spectrum. If you draw a circle in the middle of that spectrum line you will find many people more or less the same group inside that circle. I am left and Joe Scarborough is a right wi
While Krugman's economics are surely accurate, his point about making these economics a campaign issue is more debatable. It assumes that people will find Republican hypocrisy important. Surely this is true for Democrats, but Republicans have shown again and again that they are completely comfortable turning a blind eye to their own, their representatives', their President's and their colleagues' hypocrisy. They are mesmerized by Fox News which portrays all criticisms of Republicans as lies and foolishness. Self-reflection and curiosity about the truth appears to have been assassinated by the right wing media.
It is actually hypocrisy on a grand scale for Trump supporters. Religion, fiscal policy, environment, right to privacy, the list is almost endless. They believe and can overlook mountains of contradictions and broken promises.
The Trump economy is simply the Obama recovery program followed to full employment, without major hindrance from Trump's inanity.
Now, what next? What about all those promised, now discarded, opportunities that Trump campaigned on? Where is the new and re-vitalized infrastructure? Where is the universal health care plan that everyone will love. Where is the simplified income tax plan that will boost the middle-class but cost Trump billions? Where is the foreign policy that will free Americans of the economic and social burden of prolonged meddling in foreign conflicts?
No where, of course. All empty promises.
Now, we embark on the real Trump economy. Regular thousand-dollar plunges in the stock market index. Steep declines in the market value of American enterprises due to managerial incompetence (Boeing, GE), disruption of international supply chains (Apple, Dell), and shrinking of US export markets by stupid trade tariffs and sanctions (Iran, Russia).
Better reassess your investment portfolio and retirement plans in the light of a leaderless economy and the threat of a pandemic!
This critique is interesting but in an academic way. No matter how cynical, crooked, crass Trump's behavior, it's water off a duck's back. It hurts a lot of people but not him. So his poll number are currently rising significantly as if his behavior pays political dividends for him. Some writers and many readers must by now be exhausted keeping track of his misdeeds. A crook rewarded for crooked behavior will continue to act like a crook.
All very true sir, but who will take notice? The only Democratic candidate who is being listened to is Bernie Sanders because he is using simple hard-hitting and loud talking points that can be heard above the roar of the GOP's paid-for pundits on Fox.
And if Bernie would loudly proclaim himself a Social Democrat instead of a socialist he'd go a long way towards sidestepping all the slings and arrows Fox will throw at him as he yells down Trump and all his false economic pay-offs!
1
What is the GOP nickname for the corporate kind of socialism?
Too big to fail!
Too sensitive and vulnerable to pay an extra cent in taxes!
It interesting how the GOP elite always has something more important to do when it's their turn to fight for this country overseas or pay more taxes to make America fiscally stable and sound.
If they paid more in taxes, they wouldn't have enough money to contribute to the corrupt politicians!
As a member of the punditry has said, to Republicans in Congress, deficits only matter when a Democrat is in the White House. As a particularly nasty Republican VP once said, "Deficits don't matter" (unless. of course, Democrats are in charge). The GOP literally has its cake and eats it too on this one. And probably always will.
Pathetic.
1
One of the VSPs is running for President as a Democrat. Mayor Pete when asked about the deficit said it would be a top priority for his administration. To me, that’s wholly disqulaifying.
The fiscal hypocrisy of Trump and his equally culpable Republican members of Congress is not surprising in a country which fares so poorly in relation to other developed countries in both literacy and numerical smarts. It is a disgrace that America is not even in the top ten developed countries in our ability to read and understand-- financial issues, for example, and a large percent of the population cannot practice basic math skills.
The Republican Governor of Arizona cut over $100 million from the education budget of the state at the beginning of his first term. How many other Republican politicians have slashed funding for schools? We have a very serious problem in America, and it's illiteracy. It will take years of a Democratic President and Democratic governors, and Chairs of Boards of Education to bring about the changes that our children need and deserve!
1
The Rs have been economic liars and hypocrits since Reagan. it has been all about grabbing every nickel from every pocket for their wealthy puppet masters. Investing $1T in infrastructure is completely different than spending $1T on tax cuts for the already-wealthy.
Yes, Mr. Krugman is right about R hypocrisy on the subject of federal deficits and debt. But there's more to Trump's horrific support from millions of Americans who are largely ignorant on the details of the economy and Trump's own actions, and they are so ill-informed and warped in their self-interest that they will overlook all manner of offenses if they believe someone is helping their economic interests.
I think it's natural that average Americans--poor, middle-class and well short of upper-class--care deeply about their financial well-being. This is what's often called "kitchen table concerns". Well, it's not at all clear that Trump's "policies" have benefited the majority of Americans who are not wealthy in ways that the previous administration did not. The curve was already on an upward trajectory, as Krugman indicates. But it's also critical at this time of our democracy being under assault in many ways by Trump and his cronies that people see beyond the edges of the kitchen table. A decent American should be better informed and more dedicated to the protection of our democratic institutions and values. Otherwise, that average American may find in the coming years that we've lost our liberal democracy on the false promise of a bit more money in the paycheck. All in exchange for a cynical, corrupt and traitorous president and a congress crawling with Rs who are spineless, amoral and corrupt as well, Rs with their own "end justifies the means" mindset.
There is hypocrisy all around. The Democrats have been screaming about the exploded debt ever since Trump cut taxes. To refuse to raise the debt ceiling, as some have suggested, would be as irresponsible if the Dems did it as it was when the Republicans did.
The entire key to stopping Trump lies is turning the Senate blue. His party will not stop him, so the only option is to cut his legs out from underneath him.
Deficits will continue to grow under either party. Trump has not done infrastructure or health care. He can’t even get lower drug prices. He is a failure for the country but a victor for corporations and wealthy people. The Republican Party is all in on Trump.
Running on taking back the Trump tax cut and using it for government spending is a loser. Even if you have good arguments, American voters won't support it.
Better--try Andrew Yang's great idea of giving cash to people who need it and let them spend it to buy things. Use the revocation of the Trump tax cuts for that and it could be a win-win-win. It would create demand, it would provide some economic security, people would vote for it.
The reality is that many more voters in November will be energized by hope and good-will versus hate and greed. Watch and learn how the majority of Americans do have hearts do have a conscience and do have a better vision for the future of an America for All!
As is usual in Prof Krugman's columns, there are so many inaccuracies it is hard to know where to start.
Firstly, there is the matter of the so-called "auto industry bailout." In fact, this was a bailout some auto companies (Ford did not need a bailout) and their unions, as a consequence of years of sweetheart deals between the badly-managed companies and their grossly-overpaid union members. The rest of us, well-managed companies and normal workers, were considered road-kill as our taxes went to support these Obama-favored (and Obama campaign contributing) parasites. Comparing that hand-out to assistance to farmers, whose difficulties were caused directly by government action (the hard, but necessary, trade war with the Chinese, whose avarice actually exceeds that of the Obama-supporting companies and unions) is to be intentionally dissembling.
Debt used to fuel consumption (as opposed to investment) is always bad and leads to bankruptcy, as anyone who lives in the real world (i.e., not the professoriat) already knows. The Democrats want debt to fuel the consumption of their (largely) welfare-addicted voters; Trump has tried, unsuccessfully thanks to Democrat opposition, to reduce that debt.
The reason we have no infrastructure spending, which we all agree is necessary, is because of Democrat opposition to rational infrastructure spending. Democrats want budget breakers like insistence on union-level pay and the usual set-asides for Democrat-favored victim groups.
Nobody seems to be able to answer this simple question for me. If, as James Carville insisted, getting elected is all about the economy---"It's the economy, stupid!"---what happens to a democracy if too many people are stupid about the economy. I am not talking about things that require a sophisticated understanding of matters like the federal budget, international trade, fiscal policy and so on. I mean things that are easy to see like homelessness, student and medical debt, as well as wealth inequality; that is to say, things that have a direct and significant impact on most people's lives. By this measure, the economy isn't great at all, unless you're already wealthy.
Blaming the media for the crimes and failures of the political class can be a dangerously misguided gambit. But the media is failing the public by not informing people about who benefits from a supposedly great economy. In fact, they're keeping us in the dark and making us all look stupid.
Saunders was very naive to apologize for Cuba and Castro because they instituted early education for all. More background is required, which includes the US taking responsibility for the Cuban response that brought Castro to power, our heavy-handedness in their country and throughout Latin America. Castro was a dictator and there was behavior control in a closed country, not a good thing. What is not mentioned is that with Trump we are getting close to becoming the same stunted, freedomless country with his love of dictators, hatred of freedom of the press, ignorant shredding and disrespect of the Constitution and now a desire of a loyalty test for civil servants. I really have to wonder about this real ID now being instituted - I have to show a birth certificate to acquire one? India is demanding a proof of religion, anyone who is not the appropriate one may be incarcerated. We are doing something similar here with undocumented aliens. I don’t want open borders, but at the same time...
Trump is dumping money into staid, soon to be dead industries, and stifling research and growth in new areas, especially much-needed areas that combat environmental and health threats. His defunding NIH before the coronavirus epidemic is a prime example. He is supporting old money at the expense of civilizations around the world. A simple reading of history highlights that he is stupidly making every destructive political misstep imaginable.
I am able to deal with hypocrisy and cynicism, at least understand those characteristics. But I cannot comprehend, and I believe that America will not survive, a government formed on and continuing to operate, on the basis of utter and outright lies. There was time when politicians said one thing and did another, but didn't deny what they were doing. We now have leaders who say one thing, do another, and then blatantly claim that they did what they originally said they would do? And, they keep getting re-elected! It is hopeless.
1
Paul, please. If the Republicans are hypocrites for doubling down on debt while claiming to despise it, you are equally hypocritical for advocating massive government spending by anyone but the GOP. And, yes, the economy is somewhat less than horrific. In fact, shock of shocks, you've finally admitted that it's actually pretty good. Thus, am looking forward to next week's column, in which you blame the coronavirus on Trump.
Dr. Krugman, this was an easy one. The rich Republicans pillage the economy, own their politicians, and then they stash the cash like the pirates that they are in other nations, and that includes whole factories to set themselves up for the future outside the country they escape to in their private jets.
The Democrats are then left with a crippled economy to fix, and they do, making it even better. It's happened several decades.
The Republican conduct isn't just hypocrisy. It's criminal. The Rich dominated Republican party are a Racketeering and Influence Corrupt Organization, and the coppers are looking the other way.
What they believe in is greed, power, and the everlasting preservation of the unearned and unmerited entitlements and dominance of white conservative people, especially white conservative male people. Driven by greed, mad for power, and too clever by a country mile, they are, one day at a time, driving a stake deeper into the heart of our democracy. How long has it been since any of them actually believed in any of those old conservative economic chestnuts? The problem is, I don't see how they can ever get off of this Trump horse, now that they are up on it. Is there only the one end game left for this Trump administration and Trump Senate? Do anything it takes, to take all the marbles, or, failing that, burn the whole shebang to the ground?
1
This is why I hate Republicans. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. All the titles they gave themselves in the '80s were lies. Titles like fiscal conservatism, moral majority, and family values. We knew these were lies then and we for sure know it after Trump. I was a kid in the '80s growing up in a single-parent household and I remember hearing how single-parent kids were going to go on welfare and end up in jail. Well, who is the welfare recipient now? Farmers, corporations and the rich. Funny how nothing ever changes with Republicans over the decades.
1
Paul can (and does) point out the flagrant hypocrisy of the Republicans, but do Trump supporters care? No, they don't.
They didn't vote for Trump because of the economy. He gets his support from several single issue groups who essentially care about one issue each. The evangelicals vote for him because he is anti-abortion and has appointed anti-abortion judges. The business community wants less regulation across the board. The uber-rich like his stance on lower taxes. Scared white voters like him because he hates immigration and believes in a Christian, white-first nation. Those groups make up his coalition.
As long as each group gets their way on their issue, anything else he does is fine to them. Lie all the time. Dismantle the Department of Justice. Weaken our intelligence services. Install dopes in cabinet and other key posts. Destroy the media. Alienate our allies. Let Russia meddle in our elections. It's all fine so long as they get their one issue handled.
He also has found a single issue against which all of these groups can rally around: Fear of perceived socialism, in the form of Bernie Sanders. Clearly the Russians want Sanders to be the nominee. And the Democrats are falling right into his trap.
So Paul can argue logic and hypocrisy all he wants. Nobody is listening.
1
@Jack Sonville
"He gets his support from several single issue groups who essentially care about one issue each."
Though one thing ties them together. The credible studies, cited in this paper, told us that, on average, the single most important motivation for all of them in 2016 in the voting booth was racial resentment. It was more important than abortion, economics, judges.
1
A massive national debt and associated annual interest outlays may not be a problem in the medium term.
Debt service will go to around $1,000,000,000,000 a year by 2030 or so. Maybe still a modest problem, as we can borrow more to keep afloat.
However, to mix metaphors, compounding interest is a helluva drug.
$2,000,000,000,000 a year by 2050. Pretty soon we're talking real money.
Maybe someone should speak for those will reasonable can expect to live that long. And our kids too.
People everywhere have always been willing to look the other way when horrific governments gave them what they wanted. Trump is the king of buying voters by appealing to their deepest needs. He bought gun owners loyalty by promising not to take their guns, and bought anti abortion votes by providing judges. I heard so many people say “I hate his tweets, I hate his immigration policy, I hate his personality, but my business is doing so well that I will support him.” As long as voters get some need met, Trump can do anything disturbing to someone else and he won’t lose a vote.
Oh the only reason the V.S.P.s are silent is they're too busy licking Trump's made-in-china shoes. And we know they cared about the budget deficit about like they cared about Impeaching Clinton because he lied about a consensual extra-marital affair. And don't worry, when they do manage to bankrupt us like a Trump casino -- and they will -- they'll still blame Democrats as they walk of into the sunset, enjoying the millions of dollars they somehow made while being "public servants." It's not just hypocrisy, it's plain criminal.
1
I’m so sick and tired of pundit election predictions. Just let the people vote for the person they want. I have hope, but that hope rests on the will of the people. It’s all the media manipulation and proclamations that I have a problem with.
1
If people were actually aware of these figures, trump would lose.
I dare say most of the nation neither understands the situation nor is even aware of the situation. They watch FOX news which only tells 10% of the truth. And those people believe whatever they are told.
It's the people that vote in the president (when it isn't the Electoral College.
People are poorly educated, have no understanding of our democracy (except of course the right to own guns).
They don't even listen to the news or read it.
And so they vote as they are told.
If only we could get farmers to say, yeah, I'll take your money now, but I won't vote for your later.
Farmers aren't stupid and their work is hard work. They see what Trump has done with their work and perhaps won't be so easily bribed into voting for him. No one who gets favors from Trump escapes eventually being burned by him, especially anyone who works.
Democrats need to keep in the minds of farmers that who and where this "gift" came from and it's sad payback for disrespecting their work.
Democrats need to make sure farmers know it's tainted money, the sweat of other workers whose work is being exploited by Trump just like he did the many construction workers he stiffed, just like the Trumps and Kushners who stiffed countless renters out of their apartments.
I know because I'm one of them. And eventually each of them will be too. There is not enough tax money for Trump to bribe forever. Farmers understand a Trillion with a T.
The people are just too stupid to realize what our national debt really is and what is bad about it, like our forever wars, or the good parts, health care, infrastructure, space exploration. It also keeps us occupied from the real enemy.
First off Trump can win because the Dems have made it clear that no matter what they will always try to circumvent it's own voters so they still don't have a candidate yet because of their stupid archaic process which is clearly broken.
How stupid can they be? Over and over the same mistakes no one ever loses power or their jobs for doing such a horrific job instead they get honored for their "experience". And the media is their all the way making sure real information is suppressed (what happened to repoorting crimes by cops?) and then trivialize the rest.
This is the same economic scam the Republicans have been pulling since Ronald Reagan: Blow up the deficit in order to funnel wealth upward and break our government from within. Then, once a Democrat takes office, scream about deficits in order to kill off spending on social programs and privatize what used to be public.
What both amazes and infuriates me is that, for decades, no one from the left has been able to point out this scam for what it is. No one was able to be devastating with messaging: Republicans are ripping us all off, and wrecking our country from within, for the benefit of the 1%. Instead, "Centrist" Democrats always whimper and cower in front of those same Very Serious People who helped to create the mess in the first place and allow the scam to be reset for another round.
It is the most stupid, blatant, and costly game of bad cop / good cop in history. Only one candidate in our Democratic primary seems able to expose this scam for what it is and finally defeat it: Bernie Sanders.
Cynicism indeed. Trump voters who are upper middle class or higher know that the economy isn't Trump's doing. They just don't care that he lies. They think he has their back, and that's all that counts.
And Trump voters who haven't done as well (other than those who received farm subsidy welfare checks) don't care, either.
But Trump isn't some sort of political savant here. Any older white man with a ton of money and frankly racist views would have won the 2016 election. And this is all it will take for Trump to win the next one.
There is only one issue that drives Trump voters, and that is race. White resentment, albeit divorced from any factual support, has been building for decades. Trump voters (the majority of whites) do not vote their pocketbooks. They are single issue voters despite their claims to dislike "identity politics".
All of these folks who voted for Trump and are still "left behind" will line up to vote for him again. Their views have recreated the Republican party as nothing more than a party for white nationalism.
And Trump voters are all still in lockstep with him - even those who have been most hurt by his economic policies. And for the expansion of white nationalism in this country, Trump voters will trade away any chance at living in the middle class, the rule of law, fair and honest elections, and even their Constitutional rights.
Whites will be the single largest voting bloc for many years to come. This election is Trump's to lose.
1
The Democrats need to clearly expose that t and cronies are using our tax money (that of the 99% that does mostly pay; many of the richest and big companies do not pay their fair share) to cover up the damage caused by his failing and wasteful trade wars, i.e., pampering to the farmers. This transfer is a form of massive theft and the Democrats should use such terms and explain in simple words to the uninformed what is going on here, the total hypocrisy of these actions.
Republican hypocrisy knows no bounds. What happened to the Tea Party? Oh, they never cared about deficits or government spending. Republicans don't care about morals either or "life" for that matter. They just want to tell women what to do with their bodies, have massive tax cuts... but only for corporations and billionaires. What a horrifying world we live in where they are able to rule with just 40% of popular support.
In 2009 in the teeth of the financial crisis, Obama came into office with 60 Dem Senators and solid House majority. Yet this group managed only a $800 billon stimulus which trickled out over three years (I know, I was on our Library Board in 2011 when we were considering applying for stimulus money for solar.). So Prof Krugman is right, Dems are suckers to repeatedly play the fiscal responsibility game, while the GOP just doesn’t care and spends like drunken Republicans. Dems have been a ship of fools for a long time — no wonder the young yearn for something and someone better.
Yes, Krugman, this is all true, but as Forrest Gump's mama used to say: Stupid is as stupid does.
Fiscal discussion of any sort is mostly barking at the moon. Forty percent of Americans vote Republican because Republicans aren't Democrats. Us vs Them.
If anybody is still on the fence about items like deficit spending or whether trickle up is good economic stimulus, I think it's because they like sitting on fences.
Paul, while your outrage at GOP malfeasance is worthy, I do have to wonder why you would expect anything different. It reminds me of a funny Bill Burr line, "It's not that [my wife] thinks that I'm a jerk [that bothers me]. It's the nerve to be surprised."
We're forty years into the Reagan Restoration now. It's just about complete, and I fear irreversible for generations, if ever, for it has not come at a forgiving moment in human history. The fabric of civilization is thin, and the safeguards of democracy and the American Experiment have been severely sabotaged by Reaganism's reckless anti-government rhetoric and excessive and corrupt deregulatory crime sprees.
Dangerously unbridled plutocracy and kleptocracy rule the day, and disgraceful authoritarianism and fearmongering rule the populace. And Republican (and too many Democratic) politicians have been their cheaply retained and manipulated handmaidens.
The Corrupted United States of America.
No thinking caring American should ever again listen to any Republican politician concerning any matter of public interest including but not limited to debt, deficits and taxation. The Washington Post's count of that party's leader's lies is now over 16,000 in the past 3 years. What ever happened to the boy who cried wolf?
The GOP deficit scolds will return to claim that Social Security and Medicare are killing the country.
The economy is going to hang on by its fingernails just long enough for Trump to be reelected. Then, like in Ronald Reagan's second term, it is going to take a huge dump. By that time, Democrats will control both bodies of Congress. So the Republicans, Trump, and Fox News will have a scapegoat for all of the problems created solely by Trump.
The American system is thoroughly corrupt. Trump and the GOP are proof positive of that.
The US has always claimed to be a democracy. It is nothing of the kind and the list of anti-democratic institutions is long. The red-state-bias built into the government's very structure is astounding.
The US has always claimed to be a capitalist country. But it's more cronyism, and cronyism is the antithesis of capitalism. ("Crony capitalism" is an oxymoron -- there is no such thing.)
The list of evil in which the US is engages is too long to list here. But just look around the country to see the evidence for it. In the wealthiest nation in history there is outrageous income and wealth inequality, massive, frequent gun violence and death, and mental illness (mostly drug and alcohol addictions) is off the charts. The nation is divided and hate, fear and suspicion abound.
The US is the most extreme capitalist nation in history, and that capitalism does generate wealth... but it's wealth for the very few and misery, slave wages and oppressive work conditions for the masses. American capitalism brings out the worst in people, while dividing the population and destroying the environment. Never more so then under Trump and the GOP. This is one ugly, racist and irredeemable nation.
1
What the heck! Republican wealth has been pillaging our nation for generations. Sanders has a strong energy like Franklin Roosevelt. He cares like Democrats always have, and then some. Let's elect the guy. Trump is a gambler, we can be too. I don't care what the cryin' Republicans say about him. The man has guts. He wants to fight crooks. I'm tired of getting ripped off. I'll vote for him. I never wanted to but he's a fighter. We need another fighter, not a dignified appeaser. Hey Bernie; I'm a convert. make Warren your veep. What a team!
I posted this on August 1, 2016: "
There he (Krugman) goes again. Putting "the budget deficit has withered away" into a list of accomplishments of the "Obama economy". I realize this is far from the point of the column..., but reinforcing the utterly wrongheaded belief that federal deficits are bad for the economy when they are necessary (but not sufficient) to avoid economic disaster is probably the greatest economic problem we have today."
Now he writes the opposite:
"And the austerity of the Obama years definitely slowed recovery; without those spending cuts, unemployment might well have fallen to 4 percent as early as 2014."
This is not the same thing as the Republican hypocrisy; K is entitled to change his mind. He can continue to inch his way towards MMT, BUT at some point he should admit it was right & he was wrong. This should have been clear by 2016,
And at some point (probably in the past) he should admit the the financial crisis of 2008 was caused by the same reason as the previous 6 financial crises. For a number of years prior to the crisis, money was leaving the private sector. In the previous 6 cases, that was because we had a period of "fiscal responsibility" in which the federal gov spent less than it took in in revenue thus sucking money out of the private sector & into the federal sector.
While there was some of this during the 2nd Clinton administration, the main outflow was due to the trade deficit which exceeded the federal deficit in 1996 - 2008.
Until recently I thought Republicans really believed what they said about deficit spending, austerity and big government spending. I didn't agree with them and wrote it off as an honest difference of opinion.
I was so naïve, such a sucker. They were and still are lying. They don't care and now with the Biggest Liar in The History of Lying as their President they don't care who knows they're lying.
1
The real problem is a poorly educated electorate. I’m guessing the Republicans would rail against the kind education for democracy that would rectify this problem. Ignorant people are easier to manipulate.
I suspect that people to fall for the V.S.P. line about having to run government like a business. After all, if you ran a business on a constant deficit, it'd fail! Duh!
It's such a seductively simplistic idea, no analytical thinking is required. You can just snort your agreement about how obvious THAT is, move on, and then wonder what went wrong when the roads are full of potholes, schools are losing funding, colleges are getting more expensive every year, and you're stuck in a low-wage benefit-free insecure gig "job" paying off a student loan of $6.02 x 10^23.
A government's priority is the well-being of the nation and its people. But like so many other things in this country, the needs of the nation have been made secondary to the greed of the Zombie kakistocrats, and we all suffer.
Just another way in which Sanders is right that this fight between him and Trump is quite literally nothing but a battle of good vs. evil. Even if you think Sanders will never get his program passed, I dare you to criticize it morally, or him for that matter, whereas Trump really is a devil incarnate, starting with that famous epithet for Satan himself, "the father of lies." Satan is pure cynicism, whereas Sanders has been pursuing the same totally sincere vision of getting government to help those who need it, instead of serving the rich who don't.
Unfortunately, Democrats in something they call centrism. That means that they tell their constituents that they can’t have anything they want, while begging Republicans to be bipartisan with them.
Democrats won’t learnt Dr. K’s “lesson” because they are paid to take a dive. They are like the Washington Generals to the Republican GlobeTrotters. They are the designated losers.
Trump is lying when he equates himself with George Washington. Trump is leading a big trap for revolutionaries and it started paying off with the appearance of 22,000 unwitting victims in Richmond Virginia. A sheriff organized it and Trump egged them on. It's a big trap and I might get killed outright for disclosing it, but darn, I just can't stand the evil.
Democrats missed the game in round one by not aggressively defending the necessary spending to stimulate a more rapid recovery. They also failed to repeat and repeat that the recovery was being impeded by the Republican deficits screams.
Trump round, they have failed to repeat and repeat (trumpet) that,"The Obama recovery continues."
Round three, Democrats pass on drubbing Republican fiscal frauds for their fraud.
Krugman cannot bring himself to state the obvious: establishment Democrats lack anti-Republican nerve and wits.
1
“So who was responsible for all this austerity? The answer, overwhelmingly, is Republicans in Congress”. GOP dirty tricks at play. Dishonest government on display. The GOP maximized their congressional advantage in a most deceitful manner. On top of the fact, the GOP controlled the State elections with gerrymandering allowing them to gain control of both houses of Congress illegally to carry off the impeding of Obama’s economic plans to heal the economy after the great Recession. The GOP has been one step ahead of the Democrats for the past 12 years.
We all need to take accountability into the equation here. It is expected, demanded really, for Democrats to account for every penny in how to pay for Medicare for all or any other program they propose. Republicans can make up how they will pay for tax cuts, a fantasy of 6% growth. And they are let off the hook by the voters. So picture it this way.....you go out and overspend your credit card to the max. Then you do that with each other card you have. And when someone asks you how you are going to pay for all that, you say "I will get a 10% raise next year". And everyone around you shrugs their shoulders and says "Sounds good to me". And when the repo man arrives for the lexus, boat, and the house,"No big deal". When the democratic neighbor does the exact same thing and the repo man arrives at their house, the people in the neighborhood all shake their heads and say "What a loser. No big surprise. Spending all that money on his kids food and education. Should have lived within his means."
What's going to re-elect Trump and flip the House back to the GOP is the Democratic Party's total self-immolation under Sanders.
It's over folks. There is absolutely no way this country will opt for a socialist. The Democrats have now "legitimized" Donald Trump as the moderate in the race.
What a disgrace! To let a usurper like Sanders take over the Party is to ensure the Party's destruction.
The big mistake Democrats continue to make is that they will not learn that the best defense is a good offense. Democrats have become one big fact-check organization...because the Party of Trump and FOX have become one big misinformation organization...and the misinformation is winning. Dems have to realize that Republicans have succeeded in moving us away from realty and truth, and the reason is because they tell people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. So how do you counter that? Stop the laundry list of falsehoods by Trump. They know he lies all the time. They don't care. Democrats have to get off of issues. All Americans hear when Dems do that is a Democrat telling them their taxes are going to go up. Dems have to take the patriotism mantel from Republicans. That is how Republicans have been able to be such liars, so destructive to this country, to Americans who even vote for them (Trickle-down, etc.), yet keep winning when that party should be a distant minority. They wave the flag, and Americans will buy that garage over truth every day of the week. Take up Patriotism, Dems, stop being professors and teaching Americans what they need to learn and know..that is offensive to too man. Start declaring that we are all that stands between them and tyranny, the end of American democracy, and start talking not about the wealth gap but about ending trickle-down economics. Sheesh. Short sentences; buzzwords..this is what Republicans have down pat.
Amazing how Mr. Krugman's arguments reflect those of Bernie Sanders, the only Dem. candidate who has a proven record to support such proposals. Yet Mr. K refuses to endorse him.
Sad commentary on Times policy.
This political analysis of the election prospects for Trump due to the National Economy is garbage.
The Personal and Family Economies of many tens of millions of Americans are terrible and worsening.
The blacks are not going to vote for Trump, the Hispanics are not going to vote for Trump, the women are not going to vote for Trump, the Millennial generation is not going to vote for Trump, the formally-educated class is not going to vote for Trump, and the suburban women class is not going to vote for Trump.
The votes aren't there, at all, for his victory; not even close. People vote their Personal Economy, not the National Economy.
I hope the Dem's pound this message home in the general election. If they want to win the election, they should.
Don't back off! Hold the GOP accountable for being hypocritical cowards who don't care about anything but exercising power for their own self-interests.
Hypocrisy is when one’s stated beliefs and one’s actions don’t line up. Republicans aren’t hypocrites; they’ve been running a scam all along. They will ruin the economy to defeat a Democrat and then dump cash on their friends when they’re in power.
This is the US we live in.
When questioned at the town hall about costs, Bernie handed over a piece of paper and said that he come prepared and to go to his website.
I see nothing there regarding this at all
I'm I the only one?
I was just curious, has something changed?
I see no estimates or any numbers posted at all
stop trying to analyze and back into the republicans actions - they want to win. and they will lie to do it. analyzing that is a waste of time. we all know they are lying hypocrites. they will stop at nothing to win. rationality has little to do with it. they obfuscate and move on. is it outrageous - yes. we need to take a lesson from them - there is no fair play.
Not gonna lie I’m exited to vote for Trump again. It’s not fear of socialism but the economy, trade, judges, and his policies. He kept his word on conservative judges but he’s also taken care of some Democrat issues too. Criminal Justice reform & Trade have always just been given lip service in the past from Democrats, never mentioned by Republicans, yet Trump got it done. This is why am giving him my vote. He’s pragmatic. He looks at a problem and takes action. Even Van Jones was enlisted to help on CJR. I know Trump isn’t perfect, no one is, but he’s a man of action. We haven’t had someone like that in the WH for a very very long time. Everyone else paid lip service, went on talk shows, blamed the other side, yada yada yada. Trump wasn’t my first pick in the 2016 primary, but he won me over. In order to get things done, contend with the MSM and the left, you have to be a fighter. And a fighter he is. GWB, Romney, McCain, anyone else would have cowered down & given up, but not Trump. I am voting Trump 2020 because I’m optimistic, not cynical.
Deficit stimulus is all too real and the hypocrisy it is steeped in repulsive.
Jeffery Gundlach (the savvy bond genius) showed some math that the official figures are low. Very very low. (Who'd da thunk)
JG seems to think the actual deficit is about $2 trillion. An astronomical figure that would supercharge any economy on earth.
Smoke & mirrors. What happens when it clears?
"Senator Sanders, good morning. How much will your healthcare plan cost?"
"I don't know and won't discuss it. That's a gotcha question."
"I'm just asking, sir. But you honestly don't know?"
"Look, healthcare should be a human right, something they understand in Cuba, a nation far poorer than our own. And incidentally one we've helped keep impoverished by our..."
"I'm only asking about the estimated price for the plan."
"The people against it are neoliberals working for think tanks backed by major corporations and billionaires driven by greed, endlessly enriching themselves at the expense of American workers who have been getting shafted in this country for 50 years or more. Our Movement will put an end to that -- we're standing UP to the corporations and FOR American workers!"
"So, yes, I understand... but do you have... So what you're saying, Sen. Sanders, is that you really don't know the price because a human right is not something you can put a price tag on?"
"Exactly! I don't think it's communism to ask the millionaires and billionaires to pay a little bit more, to maybe not buy a new yacht this year, to help their struggling fellow Americans. Do you? In Denmark, they..."
"Sir, I'm asking in a spirit of inquiry, not of challenge..."
"No! I'm done answering! You answer. You don't think every American deserves healthcare? This is the world's richest nation, and we have people going bankrupt when they get an illness. Is that 'freedom'? Did they CHOOSE to get sick?"
The Republicans are hypocrites because they figure they can get away with it. And they usually can, because the Democrats usually whine instead of fighting back to win.
It seems Democrats are forever whining about the GOP -- this article is no exception -- how the GOP is a bunch of hypocrites and liars imposing their double-standard: Yes! What would they have done to poor Obama if he'd committed one fraction of what Trump has perpetrated?
They'd have removed Obama from office! We all know that. It is what it is.
I see no point in forever replaying the Democrats' indignation, denunciations and lecturing at a GOP for whom all this hot air is irrelevant and of no consequence.
Democrats need to do positive things, mind their own business, step away from giving Trump 24/7 coverage, and move on with their good work.
Democrats need to untangle themselves from complexities and learn from the naked simplicity of Republicans' tactics.
Unless Democrats sell their message to the American people, it means exactly nothing.
Stop trying to shame Republicans. The GOP long ago abandoned even the pretense of shame. Save your breath, Democrats, and do positive work. Bernie is doing that and he's winning. Get behind him nationally. Make it happen.
oz.
It is much worse than this. For eight years republicans willfully crippled the American economy to destroy Obama. They deliberated hurt America citizens. This is deliberate, premeditated violence. By crippling the economy Republicans crippled the nation and compromised world security. Well, they have the moral and intellectual leader they deserve - the pinnacle of Reagan’s conservative revolution. Bill Buckley could not be prouder of the intellectual vacuum he brought to America and what it was done to diminish us as a nation.
I deeply appreciate your scholarship Mr Krugman however this column seems a tad condescending.
“They might do better by pointing out that while Trump has rushed to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, he has been shortchanging the future. Ignoring his campaign promises....”
Are you suggesting your readers don’t see this problem? I assure you it’s hard to miss and the very reason why a critical mass of disaffected Republicans and middle American farmers will not vote for Trump again.
The Republicans would have us burger-flippers believe that our employers know best and therefore they should have most of the money to create new business, which would benefit us spatula carrying cogs greatly—it’s not good and we know it!—but at least it keeps inflation low.
The Democrats, on the other hand, would give each of us hot-plate masters a million dollars, which, I must admit, is that Emerald-City-Dream we’ve all had from day one! On that fine day, money in the bank, we’d all proudly tell our squawking bosses to shove it and go to a real family restaurant with fine china and real meat! But on day two, we’d notice something: Everyone had the same idea, same dream—and a cup of coffee would cost $10,000!
Something doesn’t work in both directions.
Most of us know that a type of compromise is needed; some percentage of both systems combined together with new ideas. The problem is: no one is offering it. It’s not on the list.
Europe has been experimenting with it; it’s not perfect. Some would say that, in its zeal to avoid the far right at all cost, Europe moved too much into the arms of the far left. Now, post Brexit, it has to reinvent itself.
We shouldn’t forget that we share this planet with others. The wild and domesticated animals would appreciate it if we would stop encroaching on them. They desire a normal life, not a life kept in a cage! Plants would appreciate it if we would not contaminate the soil so much and—no!—they don’t want less carbon dioxide!
...and a new John Deere tractor in every barn (at least in red states).
"Democrats should ignore them." That's about the most underwhelming advice I think I've ever heard. Right up there with "Get over it." The real story is the blind support the GOP gets from Fox News. No matter what is happening fiscally, the story will always have the GOP as the heroes. Black/white, smart/dumb, good/evil. Those are the themes hammered home daily by Fox regardless of historical fact. We are way beyond irony.
Ignoring Republicans is one thing. Ignoring Trillion dollar deficits is another. This gay liberal Massachusetts raised Democrat is indeed against huge Federal deficits and the attitude that we can just print money to cover our needs, no worries. If the Fed can ignore deficits, then why not the states and cities. Let’s just let the Feds bail them out as needed with more printed paper. I am all for spending as needed but with corresponding tax raises on the wealthy. It’s not that hard. Make the same folks, who raked in money from the tax breaks, pay it back In taxes. We don’t need to follow the awful economic programs of the Trump administration that have been akin to running up credit card debt to the max and pretending times are good. Well maybe that is OK the Fed can just bail you out and why not? Free stuff for everyone!
What really gets me about Dr. Krugman is that deep down he probably knows Bernie Sanders is the best candidate to beat Mr. Trump, but he just can't bring himself to be free of his corporado, middle of the road, third way incrementalism.
Too bad Dr. Krugman. As Jim Hightower said, the only things in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos.
@John Farrell: Not only laugh at them,but give them a gift.One they would return.On 11/4/2020.Michael Bloomberg President elect,U.S. Senate,U.S. House ,Democratic majorities.
He can keep his ag handouts, they all go the rich ag-business and even foreign corporate farms anyway. Smaller farmers like my son got a couple of pennies per bushel....they are the ones in trouble, not the big corporate farms.
Vote Blue straight across the ticket or kiss this supposedly Democratic country good bye.
1
The audacity and shamelessness of Republican hypocrisy is what made it possible for them to nominate a flaming conman and unqualified candidate named Trump to be their presidential candidate in the first place. Truth, reality or even basic human decency no longer hold any currency in the G.O.P.
1
Historically incuments win in a good economy.
The Dems must change the discussion to focus other critical and pressing issues and must do so effectivelly.
Lord knows, there are vital issues out there.
Since the Reagan lesson of 'deficits don't matter', the deficit and the GDP have roughly grown together. What hasn't grown are median household incomes. Since the moon landing, our debt has added $20.5T, the GDP multiplied by 21X while median income only about 7X. Our tax policy has been used to reward unearned incomes making the fruits of all that growth and borrowing have been inequitably shared.
We need to see our politics fix that.
Trump's original election was one of the most improbable events in recent american history. In the republican primaries few republicans supported him, Clinton was unbeatable...until he beat her. But who was Trump other than a billionaire anti-establishment candidate, his message being americans need protection from china and immigrants. Later showing interest only in protecting the rich.
Trump is now running again but this time he is in Washington and even if he does not like it , anti- establishment rhetoric will sound hollow. He can bail out farmers with socialist welfare measures, but will not discuss the failure of tariffs. He can pretend to be anti-establishment but wall street knows otherwise. Discussing deficits leads to talking about cuts in social security and health care programs that his base does not associate with " the establishment "..so he is stuck there.
Democrats too are facing a continuation of the "anti-establishment wave" that dominated the last election and elected Trump. Riding that wave is Bernie Sanders who attracts attention to his own brand of "anti-establishment-ism " , a brand that may well appeal to americans that feel that washington has worked for the rich but not the middle class, the in need of decent health care and affordable education. Such people may want to try another anti-establishment candidate. In such an environment we may see a very unlikely candidate win again in the next election and it could turn out to be... Sanders !
$30 for the hat ? Most campaigns give them away.
Paul, you need to do an article on the aggressive fund raising of the Trump campaign. I've seen a friend, every day he gets solicited, by name, and with a variety of "double matches" and very personal come-ons.
Deficit only matters when Dems are in power, and the GOP wants to block them. When GOP is in power, they dust off the "trickle down" lie, give it a fresh spin, and do what they want. Corporations are people, my friend, and they have much better lobbyists. We are supposed to have some of those too, but the GOP Senate is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.
Rebuilding our infrastructure to prepare the country for the challenges that climate change is already presenting should be a top priority. Mitch Mc Connell kept Obama from doing this and now Trump could care less.
Rebuilding our infrastructure will result in good paying jobs that will also provide insurance. We will once again be in a position to lead the world. Why is this vital work ignored by Congress in favor of tax cuts for those who do not need them?
1
Obama inherited an economy at rock bottom. It had (almost) nowhere to go but up. Second, Obama lost the house , and then the Senate. Congress, while rarely fiscally responsible, has fiscal responsibility. Not Presidents.
1
@B Obama lost the house because he passed the ACA. Mainly, Pelosi did the heavy lifting. Thank goodness she has moral courage.
I’ll take the “Republican” deficit over the deficit the Democrats will conjure up if Trump is not reelected. Having said that, there will eventually be a reckoning as both parties shamefully keep kicking the can down the road.
Why would you ever take a deficit that went to stock but backs and the rich? Give me a defector that gives us healthcare and infrastructure
1
Wow, you may want to google “US Budget”, to learn where our hard earned dollars are being spent.
This is really half an article. Everything builds to a repudiation of people who care too much about deficits, but Krugman just got through telling us in his last piece that he wasn’t an advocate of Modern Monetary Theory, which means that he does care some.
So we’d like to know: what’s too big, what kind of expenditures make sense, and what do we need to do to prepare for downturns. That’s pressing, because there are lots of big ticket items on the table, starting with healthcare and climate change.
If he wants to have an influence, we need that piece.
When I was young, I could eat all the ice cream I wanted. In fact, my Dad was an executive at an ice cream factory. I seemed to grow big and strong even while I ate something of little nutritious value that was high in caloric content as well as the stimulant sucrose. Somewhere in my late thirties, I started putting on excess weight which lead to multiple physical problems as I aged. At a certain point, I had to cut way back on ice cream and the other tasty but junky foods I had been weaned on. I dropped 20 lbs. and all the attendant health problems.
Debt, when you need to grow, is OK. But, at a certain point it catches up to you and wreaks havoc.
3
Krugman should have quoted the Republican motto from the years when President Obama was fixing the damaged economy he had inherited from Bush -- "I HOPE HE FAILS".
2
I agree with ignoring the “very serious people”. I’ve got a list long enough to show my Republican friends that will counter their “that was then, this is now” arguments against federal spending. As a longtime politico here in Texas told me years ago, “all politicians want to raise taxes to pay for their interests, only Republicans feel bad about it the next day”.
2
And voters go along with this because their deepest, fondest faith is that The Government is taking Their Hard-Earned Money and giving but away to Those People who Don’t Work and Don’t Know How Good They Have It.
You’re not up against logic or sense here, Mr Krugman.
4
Democrats need anecdotes and testimonials. After producing a chart that clearly shows the disparity between financial accountability when each party controls the budget, Dems need to highlight GOP big ticket items such as the current corporate giveaway and earlier "amnesty" for American corporations with international operations who hid funds offshore until their GOP friends essentially rewarded them for doing so.
Testimonials should include real people who have survived possibly fatal maladies because of Obamacare and successful adults whose childhoods were made bearable by federal lunch money and Medicaid.
Ronald Reagan proved that people often believe the most arrant nonsense if such garbage is persuasively offered. We don't need to make garbage palatable; indeed, our problem is that we see the truth that supports our side of the argument as so self-evident that we forget that even good ideas need to be marketed.
Let's remind Americans that the GOP is the party that went all-in for war in Iraq (it would be preferable if our own candidate wasn't one of the dupes who voted to give GWB the power to invade) and almost immediately after the 2008 meltdown wanted to resume the same hands-off policies that allowed the morally weakest in the banking community to run the show.
The next time Trump claims Lincoln as a Republican forbear, let someone ask our Orange Dear Leader his views on human slavery. Was it a good idea at the time? You know that many in his base would say yes.
5
The biggest threat to a Democratic presidential win in 2020 is the quality of the candidates running for election, not the economy. Democratic cynicism has prevented the emergence of a dynamic candidate who could unite and lead the nation from a center-left position, and the primary process gives preference to identity politics and crazy policy arguments that have no possibility of ever becoming reality in the U.S. The Putin/Trump ticket is salivating over the possibilities.
4
John Boehner famously said that we had a “spending problem “ and he was wrong. What we have is an under taxation problem. Any reasonable person should be able to see that EVERY DOLLAR of the GOP tax cuts since the time of Reagan has been deficit spending. The right wing mantra of “ all government spending is wasteful “ (except defense)
Has turned us into a nation of tax cheats. NO politician on either side can win a campaign on a platform of increased taxation or even increased enforcement of taxation. But so much of our economy has been driven underground, or I should say under the table. The “gig” economy is a more visible manifestation of this. Trump, a very accomplished tax cheat, has cut back funding for the IRS to do investigations. There is so many ways that businesses people are hiding income from the fed, and this on top of the already substantial advantages of being incorporated. The “starve the beast” mentality has legitimized cheating by otherwise hardworking law abiding citizens. If taxation was enforced in proportion to the TRUE economy, it would go a long way toward balancing the budget.
3
The increase in revenue is not higher than revenue would have been under the prior tax code. If you can play “stimulus worked” so can we, where deficit spending for the other 99 percent would have created at least the same level of growth, with the added benefit of greater tax revenue to ease your conscience for not cutting school lunches and SNAP.
But here in reality land, the tax cuts never came close to “paying for themselves” or “producing massive growth” and charlatans that said it would should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town.
4
Scratch a Republican and he/she will tell you they are all about "justice." But there are two types of justice -- retributive and distributive. The Republican sound and fury is all about retribution -- we must worry that "the other" is ruining our way of life. And if retribution works, then there may be some trickle down distribution. So, who is worried about "distributive justice?" Almost no one, unless they want to be tarred as "socialist," which is a euphemism for "the other" and "the other" is to be feared. I'd draw attention to Christian teaching, especially Catholic teaching. "Justice" is meant to be distributive. Retribution is for God.
5
Paul, you've presented this analysis often, and it is certainly right on. You really opened my eyes to what the Republicans have been doing all these years.
The question I have is this: if/when a Democrat is in the WH again, what is the best way to explain to voters that the Republicans -- who will then be jumping up and down about the need for austerity -- are lying? Democrats are going to need some catchy words (probably less than one sentence) that encapsulates Republican perfidy on this issue.
5
And why, pray tell, was there a GOP Congress so soon after Mr. Obama was elected with a super-majority in the Senate and control of the House, not to mention a lop-sided majority of Dem governorships and state legislatures? I’d suggest two reasons: one, a near unanimous hatred of Obamacare’s ‘individual mandate’ and two, the realization that Mr. Obama himself was a timid, ineffectual leader who was in way over his head.
If Bernie does turn out to be the Dem nominee, there may indeed be a Party exodus of Wall Street lobbyists and academic economists of the sort who repealed Glass-Steagall, deregulated swaps, and gave us Obamacare. Win or lose, Bernie will have done us a great favor.
2
@kbaa
It is funny that you mention ObamaCare but do not say anything that shows when you call it by its correctly call it the ACA it is not hated.
And I disagree with you about President Obama. He was not "timid, ineffectual leader" and he was NOT over his head.
Just what is your problem with the ACA?
1
"[Trump] has been shortchanging the future."
Nope. And, Krugman, you know it.
Total federal revenues have increased 6.2% over the last 12 months relative to the prior 12 months. That means, Corona/Covid virus notwithstanding, we are back. It means that, relative to the negative growth of 2016, the unfunded liabilities are $40 trillion lower.
We now have 60 years and 150 countries of panel data to know that high income tax rates are poisonous.
And, that panel data is constantly being reinforced. Japan's negative 6.2% growth is a weakness induced not just by the shock of the Covid virus but by 86% combined personal and Social Security income taxes.
By comparison, when Black Monday hit President Reagan, the equivalent of a modern day plunge of $7 trillion hit to the stock market, his economy kept right on trucking, 3.6% growth in 1986 and 4.2% in 1987.
When the Dems took over Congress, with their 90% marginal tax rate ideas, the stock market plunged $5.5 trillion, consumer confidence fell ten points and business investment trend swung $100 billion negative but our economy still grew $440 billion real in 2019. Pray tell, what was the growth in your beloved high tax Europe, with their negative interest rates? $140 billion real for a population double ours!
When Poland marks an exception and grows 5% instead of the EU's 1%, we know why. They have combined personal and Social Security income tax rates much lower than the U.S., rates closer to those of Reagan.
Big numbers are scary.
Get ready for a Tea Party revival if trump loses. Mitch is familiar with a fighting the debt do-over.
3
Deficit spending is as big a risk to America's viability than the global warming issue or even the lawlessness tendencies of President Trump. Current projections are that in about ten years, the interest payments on the federal debt will equal or exceed the spending on military.
America has been living in a fiscal fantasyland for some decades and this will eventually end on a very sour note! When the politicians say .."this will cost the taxpayers x$" they are misspeaking. It is NOT costing taxpayers anything. The bill is sent to later generations who can vote yet.
2
The differences between the auto bailout and the farm bailout are vast. 1) The auto bailout was not caused by the president, this farm bailout was cause directly by Trumps tariff fetish ; 2) the auto companies that took the bailout money had to pay it back with interest, which they did. In the farm bailout the taxpayers will never get their money back; 3) the auto bailout was designed to get the auto industry back on its feet and to become productive again which it did; the farm bailout does not restore the markets Trump's tariffs have destroyed. Those markets have already gone to other suppliers, and are gone forever, so the penury of farmers is long term, probably permanent in most cases. It is Trump's cynical effort to use taxpayer money to buy the votes of those he had hurt the most, with the exception of the taxpayers themselves. Obama's bailout actually saved the auto industry. Trumps bailout is a waste of money caused by ego and incompetence.
9
As usual, many fine points here, Mr. Krugman. Is it true that Trump and his “team” want to attack Social Security and Medicare? If so, whoever is the Democratic nominee should broadcast this matter as unmistakably as possible.
3
Bigger tax cuts for the well to do also cause urban sprawl and central city rot (as flight occurs farther and farther away from central cities - almost everywhere in America). Government pays for utilities and roads, while it cannot maintain what it has already built. More commenting equal more greenhouse gasses destroy the planet.
The very well to do also withdraw from the public square by sending children to private schools, and their children play in private parks inside gate guarded communities. It causes more speculative behavior on Wall Street and skews housing markets.
It reinforces polarization, fear and racism, among other things.
It's just another bad policy choice along with all the deregulation of transportation and allowing supply chains in Communist dictatorships (China) while dismantling unions, the EPA. It's supporters constantly attack healthcare (the ACA). And debts pile up to pay for the trillion dollar wars, and untold deaths (thinking of you Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan).
It seems quite a few Americans think it's all good for them personally and support it.
4
Thank you for another interesting and really informative article. If the candidates for the Democrat nomination could incorporate what is written here into there speeches then I think they would have a better chance of defeating Trump.
4
How can the economy be strong when so many Americans are living pay check to pay check and many don’t have regular pay checks at all since they are now by necessity independent contractors? How can the economy be strong when real wages have fallen and the employment rate is based on jobs that don’t pay enough to pay the rent and buy food at the same time.
The stock market is not a real measure of how the economy is working for the bulk of the AMERICAN people and I wish people like Krugman would stop giving the “economy is strong” Republican talking point credence!
3
Trump is more than likely done, his attitudes and what he is trying to do conflict with what God has said will happen to the Anglo-American world power. God never lies his words always come true.
Intellectually interesting but irrelevant in the Trump era
Our current President says - or rather shouts - that before him the economy was a disaster and now it’s the best ever and we will all pay double tax if a Dem is elected. His base apparently believe him enough to come out in droves on Election Day
The only things worth discussing is 1) why so many people believe outright lies, 2) how can that be countered, and restore sanity to our country, and 3) how to get turnout on the Dem side.
10
I’m not so sure about the economy staying strong until the 2020 elections. There are some very concerning articles in today’s NYT pointing to a drastic slowdown. Corona virus escalated world wide. Start ups failing. Tar sands production in Canada halting. Oil prices dropping. Stock markets falling. I got a bad feeling that we are due to see the chickens coming home to roost.
2
In the short-sighted tunnel vision of the demagogue’s fan base the wall is the important piece of promised infrastructure they care about. Highways? Wind and solar? Meh.
6
There is even a substantial difference between Obama’s bailouts and the farmers...Obama’s bailouts were paid back, with interest. Trump’s is just a plain giveaway.
20
Mr. Krugman should debate my proposal presented here instead of the GOP approach.
That would force him to finally address the real issues.
This situation reminds me of the pre-housing-bubble-burst stage in 2006.
Everybody was aware of the problem and did their best to enlarge it hoping that strategy could make it disappear?!
Please, show us your proposal. Spread it out on the table. If you need something to hold it down, perhaps you can use your Nobel Prize in Economics. Oh, wait...
Krugman has been spot on about the utter hypocrisy of the Republicans and their bankrupt (heh) claims about trickle down prosperity and tax cuts that magically pay for themselves. Enough fiscal policy from amateurs and thieves!
1
Unless the Democratic Party unites with vigor behind one candidate, and drives voter turnout to unprecedented levels - despite the robust voter-suppression tactics the GOP is pushing - our Republic as we know it is doomed to become a Turkey-styled autocracy. Period.
18
I strongly agree with Krugman about the hypocrisy of Republicans not caring about huge Trump deficits. I even agree with Krugman that we should have been less concerned about Obama deficits when unemployment was high and recovery from the Great Recession slow.
But while the moment when they finally bite us is uncertain, Trump's massive deficits are a problem that Trump's economic nationalism makes the rest of the world less willing to ignore.
6
The fiscal austerity that President Obama sufferred was due to Democratic party ineptitude in their political strategy. Republican Political strategists like Karl Rove and Phil Gramm strategy after President Obama was elected was to win the 2010 congressional and Senate elections. The Republicans did win controlling gerry mandering for a decade and being able to block "deficit spending"
by the Democrats on improving the economy. I read little these days about Senate and Congressional elections coming up in 2020 major Newspapers. If a Democrat gets elected President this year and faces a hostile Republican legislature, history will repeat itself.
5
You still haven't made your case that deficits remain harmless as they keep increasing much faster than GDP indefinitely. Maybe it's ok to have the amount interest being paid and borrowed back exceed the size of the real economy. But where does it stop being ok? When interest and borrowing are ten times GDP? A billion times? That's where Republicans are taking us.
7
Monetization of debt usually inflates a nation’s currency eventually.
Paul. Great article. My opinion. The democrats are so busy fighting amongst themselves, they are letting trump skate by. They should be highlighting this travesty of giving farmers billions to watch grass grow. Paying his supporters to vote for him. The democrats will never win that part of the electorate anyway. Give it up. No they won’t though. It is part of the Pelosi doctrine of always play fair, like a true Christian believer which they are not, while we go down in flames. Is she still speaker? Not for long, i suspect.
1
The VSP's are not silent, at least not the Democratic ones. Those "centrists who spent years insisting that government debt was the most important issue of out time" on the left side of the aisle are currently the "vanity candidates who continue to fragment the field despite having no realistic chance." Dr. Krugman is right: "Democrats should ignore them."
3
No. Trump's re-election will be entirely on Sanders and his supporters. They are handing it to him.
9
Democrats and/or third parties could attack the republicans’ fiscal hypocrisy by not only pointing out that republicans are shortchanging the future, but also starting a national debate on the relationship of money, credit, debt issues. Such debate would also include the present system of money creation by the privately owned banking systems and the future of public banking systems where the public and its representative government are setting the direction of the economy and are receiving the income of interest rates.
The latter view is in full accordance with Lincoln’s monetary views where “Money will cease to be master, and become the servant of humanity.”
1
Here in one of the Super Tuesday states, also considered one of the swing states, we're seeing a number of very well done television ads hitting very hard at the reality of Trump. I'm sure these same ads are airing in all the Super states. While most of the Dems candidates are still playing softball, especially Bloomberg's ads go to the heart of the hypocrisy, and to the heart of Trump's character. We'll know in a week whether they've had adequate effect. I am optimistic because I have recently heard several Trump voters say they have had enough. All television series run their course, and I don't recall Trump being on Survivor. And Senator Tom (Tea) Tillis has a very viable potential Dem opponent, Cal Cunningham, who is also playing tv ad hardball. Things are looking up.
8
Many Americans are going to view aid to farmers differently than other industries given concerns over food security and supply, and the belief US Ag output is a key national strength. Regardless of whether these concerns and this distinction is valid, another bailout example in another sector is likely to work better to support the argument for smart government spending.
1
We need a 28th Amendment to say if you create a deficit you don't get paid.
I don't know why the House isn't stripping the pay away from these swamp creatures anyway.
What exactly do they do again?
We could save 15% right there.
No one should be surprised by any politician hypocrisy, least of all a GOP member. To be perfectly honest, the current USA cumulative debt is not really worse than that of many European democracies, the difference being that the USA can usually print money to get out of any serious problem. Nonetheless Paul Krugman is right in the sense that the Trump tax cuts have benefited few people, and that it will diminish the capacity of the USA to deal with a future, inevitable economic crisis.
1
Good points, as usual, but I would note that the government dole to the agricultural sector ends up in the pockets of foreign agribusinesses as well as American farmers. Add that fact to the ballooning deficit as topics not for discussion by Fox presenters.
7
Beautifully articulated piece of economic art! Love your work, Leonardo da Krugman!
8
By that theory $4.4 trillion Government spending on a $22 trillion dollar economy would result in a much higher GDP, right? In fact it would be record levels. And here’s the tell, government spending has doubled since 2009, heck we don’t even have a budget, in its place we have these political weapons called CR’s.
The problem with the auto bailout was that it bypassed our bankruptcy laws, leaving certain parties on the outside looking in with zero recourse.
And Krugman? Good luck with that socialist agenda.
5
I am 68 years old and remember very well the effects of Reaganomics which is exactly what Donald Trump's "economy" reminds me of. After Reagan's Tax Cuts the economy did great and got Reagan re-elected. Very soon after Reagan's 2nd Inauguration the economy tanked and we got the Reagan Recession.
12
Major difference is that we had the fiscal wiggle room in place with Reagan...with interest rates being near zero there is not much area the fed can squeeze out and more juice in the event of a downturn.
1
Mr. Krugman's point is well taken, but he is leaving out a huge source of future catastrophic spending: climate devastation. The models show massive flooding in the very near future for most of our major coastal cities. We also have another drought developing in California, where we saw a city of 20,000 vaporize in a terrifying instant due to wildfires. And I guess we can ignore the destruction of Puerto Rico if we are Donald Trump, but any president with a heart and soul would be spending billions to help rebuild that island.
But you won't hear a word about this from the party in power.
13
Trump's claim to the thriving economy is based only on the stock market, which is paper thin, and which creates little of use value. It is a stick man. I can't believe that Democrats are making a bigger deal of our tax dollars funding (Iowa farmers) Trump's tariff war!
12
@Gordon Alderink
Yeah that farmer bailout is pure Soviet style 5 year plan extreme socialism. The obscene tax cut for the rich is extreme capitalism. The worst of both worlds.
Bernie gets attacked for literacy programs and health care guarantees.
Krugman has never met a deficit he didn't like... even those accommodated with loose, Fed 'punch bowl', "free money".
The U.S. is the largest (relatively) economically successful debtor nation in world history (by any measure) that hasn't collapsed from it, or been negatively impacted by it viz PIIG (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece).
And what's happened to countries that tried to spend it's way to prosperity? Take a close look at Japan over the past 25 years.
Deficits DO matter; they aren't ALWAYS either all good or all bad; are SOMETIMES smart investment/economic choices, etc. But chronic deficit spending is contrary to free market capitalism... and invites currency debasement (which could be CATASTROPHIC to the world's global currency nation - US).
3
Not when yours is a fiat currency. Trump could mint a coin tomorrow that could erase all of the US debt. Just FYI.
I wonder why the Democrats don't play the same game the Republicans played when Obama was in office. They could force a reduction in Government spending and slow the economy. History would suggest Trump would get the blame for that.
Would be a very cynical move though.
Can't help but feel that if the Democrats win the presidency they'll get lumped with a declining economy and get the blame again.
5
@Rob All indicators suggest Trump winning handily over Bernie. The old adage holds true: Republican party is cynical, Democrat party is idealistically inept.
Economics will not decide this election. The conservative media, including TV preachers, are just demonizing the opposition with divisive and constant attacks. Minimal facts, just playing on emotions. They want their sliced white bread vision of America only seen in 1950’s TV shows. It will end up costing them their savings and their homes.
9
@EW
I agree. It is disconcerting that the Right is already twisting the Russian assistance narrative. It was clearly revealed that they are helping Bernie in the Primaries and Trump in November. But all we hear is that the Russians are helping Sanders. They conveniently suppress that the Russians are helping Trump in the main election. There is no limit to the duplicity, dishonesty and bald face hypocrisy of the party formerly known as the Republican Party... the cabal now more accurately described as the Trump Regime- or the Trump Junta. It's not a government as the bills are not brought to the Senate Floor. It is a multi national racket. It is a kakistocracy or government by the worst people. The Gotham-esque clown made an utter goose of himself at the Ahmedabad cricket match yesterday. He has no idea how important Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli and cricket generally are to subcontinental culture. He couldn't even say their names right- if he ever took advice he might have learned that before butchering their names. It was the equivalent of coming to America and calling MLK "that Luther Martin fellow". DJT is such a goose. He really is.
(2nd try)
I posted this on August 1, 2016:
"There he (Krugman) goes again. Putting "the budget deficit has withered away" into a list of accomplishments of the "Obama economy". I realize this is far from the point of the column..., but reinforcing the utterly wrongheaded belief that federal deficits are bad for the economy when they are necessary (but not sufficient) to avoid economic disaster is probably the greatest economic problem we have today."
But today, he writes the opposite:
"And the austerity of the Obama years definitely slowed recovery; without those spending cuts, unemployment might well have fallen to 4 percent as early as 2014."
I realize this is different from the hypocrisy of the Republicans; K is certainly entitled to change his mind as he inches towards MMT.
BUT
I think it might be nice, if he admitted he was wrong, and it was right. And while he is at it, perhaps he should admit that the economists who used MMT and predicted the crisis of 2008 like Steve Keen, were onto something when they pointed out that from 1996 to 2008 (except for a brief period in 2003), the federal deficit which added money to the private sector, was LESS than the trade deficit, which took it out.
Thus we had a period just like the 6 periods prior to the 6 previous financial crises in which money was LEAVING the private sector net. But I am afraid, it may take a while for him to admit that,
3
Why is Sanders attracting so many young people? Because his is a message they have never heard. Since 1992, when most people under 35 were too young to have political awareness, Democrats have run on a business-oriented platform that gave up on FDR social concerns. Foreign policy no longer focused on America’s voice as a force for good against authoritarianism or corporate profit. Sanders is merely returning to the Party’s roots, and he realized early on that he would have to renew the party from outside, because it was beyond reform from the inside.
19
Trump's approach to the US economy mirrors his approach to his multiple failed businesses: Borrow big, gold-plate and paint in fluorescent colors, strike up the band - and when they fail - default, blame and shame.
Politicians and skillful money managers are polar opposites. When was the last time a competent economist was voted into office? Smart politicians bring in the best and listen - and smart economists stay out of politics, saying only what must be said.
Obama drew on the best - Trump draws only on himself.
For me, the best example of politicians arguing the toss over economics was between JFK and Charles de Gaulle;
de Gaulle to JFK - 'Lower your dollar'.
JFK to de Gaulle: 'Up your franc'.
4
Ah, but wait ... Don’t forget that brilliant “economist” Larry Kudlow, as well as Stephen Moore and Kevin Hassett ... Obviously, I’m being facetious. The notion of a potus listening to top level economists for good advice on economic policy has been turned upside down by this administration. With this potus (whose myth of economic success was, indeed, a false parable), we have unqualified political shills posing as “economists” making up post-hoc excuses and rationalisations for trump’s primitive and wrong headed policy blunders.
The day of reckoning approaches. The march of the Democratic Candidate egos has been disappointing. As usual, the Democrat strategists are asleep at the wheel, or, their bosses have be paid off to remain unorganized.
5
Prof. Krugman and the headline writer showed great restraint by not referring to this cynicism as Democrats' anomie #1.
A Trump anomie list would include all the ways he has eroded our traditional ethics and values -- not least by encouraging his voters to perceive their own values as under assault by Democratic extremism.
2
There is not a “strong economy” that supports Trump’s claims. There was up until recently a hyper inflated stock market. Last year there was an industrial recession in the US as reported by the Washington Post in January. There’s an industrial recession in Asia (except China which was already decelerating before the Covid 19).
4
@Enri Tell it to the 98% of the fully employed Americans. We love what Trumponomics has done to our standard of living.
It sounds like you’re saying that tax cuts for corporations worked to boost the economy. Maybe Obama should have worked with Republicans to cut taxes on corporations in exchange for less fiscal austerity. In fact, why tax corporations at all? Many of them don’t pay taxes anyway. I think we should make the corporate tax rate zero and collect all of the taxes from individuals.
1
hey, I have an idea too. why not tax only corporations and make taxes on individuals zero?
Well, the economy isn't ONLY fueled by debt. Cheap energy has a lot to do with it too. And that isn't because of Trump-- it's fracking, and fracking grew from a little niblet in 2007 to more than half of our energy production by 2016 BEFORE Trump took office.
6
Of course Krugman argued back when the stimulus package was going forward in 2009 that deficits should not be a limiting factor in the govts efforts to get out of the recession. The package was marred by some Democrats that insisted that tax cuts be added to the spending program. It ran out of steam and the GOP and tea party won the election in 2010 with their massively hypocritical campaign against the rising national debt. Now in the midst of economic growth the GOP is going to run trillion dollar a year deficits. Their solution? Cut important medical programs which the Corona virus has made plain are necessary. Sacrifice the public health to the ballooning relentless growth of income inequality.
6
It was Republicans, not Democrats, who refused to back the 2009 stimulus without tax cuts.
12
Republican Tax cuts and consumer tariff taxes to pay for them, not a care about the deficit as though there was no future, sabotaging democracy and angering traditional allies we will need? The Republicans are caught and they're slipping away. Epstein didn't make it.....or did he?
3
The Republicans are going to sit out the revolt they deliberately started as they will be in other lands with their businesses and treasure while the carefully cultivated military dispatches the population. They did sabotage our relationships with allies in a divide and conquer denial of help for us. This is why I have been telling everyone to leave.
3
I have been advocating emigration for the past few years. It doesn’t solve our countries problem but will for those few wise snd adventurous courageous families who will follow our advice.
2
@Yuri Pelham
Yawn. Always with the threat to leave, but they never do. Wonder why? Oh, I know.
This “Republican” party could not care any less about America. Their game is all about power and control hiding behind the flag, a gun, and a Bible. After years of being in the closet, Trump has provided them the example and given them the cover to come out and actualize who they’ve really been for decades. They are organized and they are dangerous.
26
Sadly, Republican hypocrisy is not limited to fiscal prudence.
But, on that front Mr. Krugman is spot on. Credit and debt are tools and ones that should be used for the right jobs (which notably don't include padding the bank accounts of people that already enjoy tax-advantaged forms of income distribution - carried interest anyone?).
No, sadly the hypocrisy extends to things like States' rights. Just ask Governors Cuomo or Newsome what happens when the people of a state wish to assert their constitutionally-appointed rights in 2020.
Oh, did I mention foreign policy? No? You know, where formerly hawkish Republicans have suddenly found religion (the Russian Orthodox kind apparently) in supporting an expansive Russian foreign policy that involves not only the Crimea but also Ohio/Michigan/Florida/Pennsylvania?
7
Trump will not win re-election because Sanders will lead something rare and unpredictable in U.S. politics, which is a democratic socialist will finally undo the toxic Reagan revolution because real democrats never had the guts to do so!
Millennial are paying the highest of the almost half century of GOP governing philosophy of tax cuts, corporate welfare, industrial monopolies, etc. are revolting. The Irony is that Millennial who were born during the St. Reagan march to our plutocracy will get Bernie to put a nail in its coffin. In Bernie they have found a hero.
12
But while the Trump stimulus probably didn’t deliver much bang per buck, it involved a heck of a lot of bucks.
In 'a heck of a lot of bucks' Professor Krugman has finally put the true dimensions of the cash grab by corporations and the wealthiest into language any taxpayer ought to be able to understand.
4
Krugman is right that Republicans will be hyporocites on the deficit. But he is wrong that this is the reason he will win re election. When Democrats put up a guy who is a self proclaimed Socialist who wants to take health care from 180 million people and give it to a government run program, legalize marijuana nationally, and spend upwards of $50 trillion on free college and free everything which he can’t pay for .... guess what? A bunch of smart people walk into the voting booth, hold their nose and vote for Trump. So stop blaming the Republicans for being part of a progressive movement that is so wrong-headed it can’’t garner the necessary support in the middle to win. That’s why Trump will win.
8
Let’s look at your concerns logically...
Kicking 180 million people off healthcare. No, just merely changing the way you pay for it. Medicare is the largest health plan in America and it operates at a fraction of the overhead of private insurance. I, personally am for a public option period so people can opt it, and that is what would most likely happen given the congressional make up.
Legalization of marijuana. So?
Free college. Increased taxes would pay for it so it isn’t free, but on that note, you already have free public education for 13 years of your life and I don’t hear anyone screaming “socialism” about it. What’s the big deal about the government guaranteeing 4 more years of continuing education for those who want it?
1
@John Chachas spot on. I didn’t know financially literate people read Paul Krugman columns.
Cheney said, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."
I agree with Mr. Krugman: Reagan proved that Republican deficits don't matter to Republicans.
14
@Lester Jackson
Gee, and all this time I thought spending originates in the House.
You know, run by Democrats.
A $20 + trillion economy can mask a lot of bad policy (as Adam Smith noted). Hence pandering comes at a low political cost. Both parties are guilty, although the Republicans more so. As Nixon once noted, honesty isn't always the best policy, but should be tried now and then. I would like to think we are presently at "now and then." I hope some candidates will commit to honesty.
Dr. K,
You write the truth in your economic history and your advice on how to run against Republican "fiscal hypocrisy" is well taken, I would only suggest that candidates should emphasize how the promise that the tax cuts would generate enough tax revenue to pay for the cut has proven to be wrong. Revenues did not happen and it is clear that the deficit's dramatic growth is mainly from the huge drop in revenues.
I believe, Democrats should give emphasis to investing in infrastructure. There are plenty of serious problems with our highways but highways have peaked. Further lane expansions are not productive. Obama and Biden tried high speed rail but they should have launched a 300 mph Maglev initiative with the capability to haul delivery vans from producers to metro area terminals for overnight delivery to urban consumers and retail, as well as carrying passengers at very low fares, about 5 cents per passenger mile, and freight at only 10 cents per ton mile. This system is all electric, all weather, extremely efficient and with zero emissions. It has the capability for using Maglev adapted trackage to enter central city rail stations and can mainly use the rights-of-way of Interstate Highways to build a guideway system that would ease congestion on our highways and make it possible to evolve Amtrak passenger rail off of freight rail to this national network. Clearly, we need this system: the U.S. should build a test guideway and prototypes of the system for testing.
3
A lot of people seem to be in a dither because they think Bernie might be the democratic nominee.
But I actually doubt that it matters much who the democrats nominate. I just don't think that any of the democrats can get it together to defeat The Donald.
Many of the democrats equate modern day national politics with the Good Government Society or the League of Women Voters. Groups where we discuss issues and everyone is nice and sincere and earnest and we don't want to hurt anyone's feeling or to make anyone feel bad. Everyone wants to follow the rules and do the things that we should do.
The republicans on the other hand play to win and are willing to do or say whatever it takes. The Donald does things just to show everyone that he has the power to do whatever he wants to do. They want to hurt the democrats or anyone who gets in the way.
The democrats are they types who would take flowers to a knife fight or try to follow Marquess of Queensberry rules in barroom brawl. I actually think that many democrats are intimidated by The Donald and the republicans.
At any rate, the 2020 campaign will be a vicious and cruel campaign and the republicans will be shameless in their use of smear and propaganda.
Bernie might be the best one to stand up to the republican onslaught. He is a good speaker and actually talks about things the average voter is interested in and understands.
13
@Aubrey
I think one of the bigger issues is that the only path to a Senate majority in 2020 lies in red-leaning states.
Go to 270 to win - online and look at the Senate map.
One thing we do not want to do is lose Congress while we are trying to win the White House and this is the biggest issue with Bernie.
Candidates are already trying to distance themselves from him in hard won areas and the GOP are already trying to tie these candidates to Bernie and "evil socialism" etc.
It would be a shame if we lost the White House - but can you imagine if we also lost the House and Senate with Trump in office! There would be no stopping him!
Terrifying.
Bernie is simply not worth the risk - especially since it is very unlikely that he can win the Senate with where most of the open seats will be - red states!
If he should win, he would not be able to get his agenda though anyway - so what is the point?
We would be risking a lot for nothing.
8
@Meg
Some of the moderate candidates could get those Senate seats in red-leaning states and then we could get things done.
3
Sanders is the best chance you and I will ever have in our lifetimes to halt the landslide of US politics toward the far right and fascism.
Otherwise, look forward to the US becoming even more dangerous to the world and its own working class than ever before.
1
Sanders just said at a South Carolina town hall that his campaign promises aren't like Trump's because "I've been fighting all my life against people like Trump."
If that's what Sanders has been doing for the past 40 years, he's a colossal failure judging by the state of the nation.
Sanders has made a good living collecting a federal paycheck as a career politician for 40 years -- as Representative and as a Senator -- despite his disdain for politics and politicians. He's done well for himself. He's a millionaire now, which is why his vilification of the rich is focused on billionaires and no longer includes his fellow millionaires.
Fortunately for Sanders Trump has lowered the bar for incredible campaign promises. Sanders now enjoys an unprecedented political suspension of disbelief that allowed deplorables to cheer a border wall paid for by Mexico and Bernie Bros Boys to cheer a tax on the rich to pay for free college going forward as well as retroactively. Oh, the asterisk is for a footnote that Sanders will have to raise taxes on the Middle Class too. But that's still about $30 trillion short of the conservative estimate for two chickens in every pot.
Forget about corona-virus contagion. Forget about Republican cynicism. What threatens us now is Democratic gullibility and a Pied Piper from that pimple state of gun-loving Vermont handing the White House back to Trump.
12
Infrastructure may be one of the best and most needed things we can do for the economy - but it is not exciting to talk about on the campaign trail
It is about as fun as conversations about cables, solar panels, and concrete can be - not very
People of all ages have student loan debt or medical debt these days
Addressing those big issues will win votes
It helps people eliminate debt. It helps people immediately with everyday bills and it will lift the heavy loads they bear. It gives the poor and middle class a lot more disposable income-all this will cause a much bigger boost for the economy
Another issue is people on medicaid often have to worry about making too much or they lose benefits and have to switch to the exchange which can be difficult and confusing.
It should be the case that if they go over the income limit, they simply pay a small percentage to keep benefits and there should be a cushion that is penalty free once someone has qualified for the year
Income limits for medicaid should be increased and buying into medicaid could be the public option rather than a new program. Medicaid has no deductibles. People over 55 can buy into medicare
One might pay for 'some' of these things by raising the capital gains tax to match the income tax, but one must make exceptions for the elderly who may be selling a home to finance retirement & to not discourage long term investments, gains on assets held long term can be divided by the # of years held to find the rate
3
My election prediction takes a few things into account: current economic climate, stock market performance, underlying world events, mass movements and cultural state. On all those indicators but the first, Bernie wins. If the stock market and the coronavirus drag down the economy, then he wins in a landslide.
6
Oh the irony. The only realistic way to campaign against Republican hypocrisy is to champion the progressive causes that Warren and Sanders advocate, the very candidates the media feels are incapable of winning.
7
When this bubble breaks, let it be in the hands of those who created it in the first place...
3
not hypocrisy, but a consistent strategy, for decades, well before Trump.
5
Yes, a consistent strategy at the heart of which is hypocrisy and contempt for the voters they manipulate and deceive.
The fiscal hypocrosy is just an extension of what the good folks at Vox called 'tribal epistemology'. Fox isn't talking about the deficit under Trump. Therefore, it's no longer a concern.
3
Have a look at the data
https://usafacts.org/articles/federal-farm-subsidies-what-data-says/
By historical standards, current farm subsidies are LOW
They go predominantly to those three crops
Corn: $2,344,810,000
Sugar: $1,517,340,000
Soybeans: $1,207,190,000
Americans could get sugar for half the price, but this is not
how Nations set their farm policies.
Crucial products protected, and have been protected by very high tariffs, long before Trump took office.
ALL countries, including the US , consider farming too important to national security to expose it to global competition. What happens in times of war ?
Thus corn based ethanol is protected by tariffs from competition from Brazil
NY Time readers generally applauded the Canadian tariffs of over 200% on some US dairy products .
They understood that having a a domestic diary industry is important for Canada
Same for the US farm industry
1
You’re evidently not a farmer. I believe what the farmers have to say about the effects of Trump’s tariffs. The tariffs have harmed American agriculture. No amount of rationalization can obviate that.
9
Then why do farmers support Trump?
One of the happiest days of my life was Obama's inauguration. Apparently, though, it was not a happy day for many Republicans, who seem to have gone off the deep end ever since we elected our first African-American President.
I know there are complex reasons for people supporting Trump, but I believe racism is a big one. Trump, of course, spread lies in an attempt to discredit Obama's right to be President.
Narcissists cannot abide the fact that some people are superior to them.
27
@Richard Waugaman, M.D. Good comment.
Many people, particularly in the area where I life, suffer from Obama derangement syndrome. Many of them did not know anything about his policies or programs but they did see him on television and obviously could see his skin color. That was enough.
Many people love The Donald because he said hateful things about President Obama (the birther issue for one) and dark-skinned immigrants.
I like President Obama but he turned out to govern like a moderate republican. All the republicans could see was skin color.
Best wishes and stay positive.
9
@Aubrey With Republicans determined to openly sabotage ANY policies - inc republican ones he put forward. As one earlier said - Dems, and especially Obama come to a fight with flowers - less against knives, but assault weapons. Literally.
3
Stay positive? I’ve been in despair for over 3 years. It’s not Trump that bothers me . It’s the American people. They are committing national suicide and have tolerated the shift toward fascism. Our culture is in a
shambles.
And in defense of what seems like extreme rhetoric on my part, evidence reveals that we are killing ourselves literally with our addictions and a pathogenic health care delivery system and wealth
maldistribution such that life expectancy in the past few years has fallen... not in Europe, not in. Canada but here in the US.
4
What the professor has just said is that republicans lie unabashedly and it makes no difference to their voters. How to counter this cult like behavior?
Call it out regularly and loudly. Use graphs. The line of increasing GDP from 2010 with a slight decline in 2019, the total number of jobs created per annum, the dollar amount of the tax break the rich got, the deficits the republicans rack up ... Make them pop with bright colors and fifth grade writing,
If the population cannot understand simple facts we are finished as a country anyway.
14
@kirk 60 Million don't believe simple facts.
You can accuse your opponent of hypocrisy without having to be completely consistent yourself. Frankly, all the Democrats need to do would be to say they will roll back the corporate tax cuts and return the top brackets to where they were during Clinton, for example, and then claim that this will be enough on its own to return deficits to sustainable, with anticipated generous spending on infrastructure and growing SS, Medicare and so on. Obviously, no-one knows what will happen, given that we are already past due for a recession. Ignoring the Very Serious People and other scolds is perfectly fine. They are dishonest too, given that they won't let data get in the way of their theories...
3
Bernie nailed it during the last debate. The government bailouts handed out by BOTH Republican and Democratic administrations amount to socialism for the rich. The bulk of the soybean payments will go to large agribusiness. The Obama bank and insurance bailouts were a boon to wealthy shareholders. If we're going to have socialism, let's at least have it benefit working people who are getting by from paycheck to paycheck (until they aren't).
16
Trump's base has no interest in his deceptions or cynicism or that of his Party. It has no interest in the findings of the Mueller report or the impeachment process. It has no interest in anything said or written by liberals or by any critics of their leader. Nothing interests them as much as four more years for their esteemed leader. And that base is growing.
4
I think it's time for everyone to accept that tRump is almost certainly going to be re-elected.
The upside is that he will no longer be electable -- even if the GOP changes the Constitution to allow more re-elections -- because he'll have been re-elected under the former rules.
The Dem party is being kept in constant chaos by billionaires who got rich while the GOP dragged the country into the mud. They are fully complicit with tRump and his GOP.
The ironic upside is that the US economy is a cesspool of cash, sloshing about looking for a place to get soaked in. There is no growth anywhere to attract it.
The world's population is declining at unexpected rates. At this moment, no one's business plans take this into account. Indeed, no one understands it yet.
tRump's overt and covert supporters are probably going to learn the meaning of "be careful what you scheme for, you may get it."
Once a person gets to the top of the mountain, there's nowhere to go but down.
3
Paul, you recently penned a column praising Bernie.
What will win him re-election will be someone who is unpopular with Americans who are not extremists, ie. most of us.
Bernie eminently qualifies.
I cannot think of anyone other than Trump who is more polarizing than Bernard.
His recent praise of Castro with Anderson Cooper on 60 minutes, his twice being an elector ( 1980,1984) in Vt for the Trotskyite communist Socialist Workers Party ( the FBI has an extensive file on Bernie, of that you can be sure since he has a long history of communist and extreme socialist support), and many more things.
This is the same man who had a high rating of the NRA for voting many times against all gun control. Contrast this with Mike Bloomberg who is the most hated person with the NRA for his successful financing of gun control.
Bernie will have the power to get the most hated president in recent history reelected as well as having the Dems lose control of the entire Congress.
Not bad for one man.
11
Sanders has a D rating from the NRA.
Sanders condemned Castro’s authoritarianism while praising Cuba’s progress in literacy, which was a welcome achievement after the darkness of the Batista dictatorship.
Just as Nixon praised China when he opened up trade with it. I don’t recall Republicans or Democrats accusing Nixon of being a communist.
The Times story about Sanders carefully quotes only from hypocrites like Bloomberg and equally hypocritical leaders of various organizations who condemn Sanders for simply telling the truth.
1
I don't know if Jonathan Swift ever met a potato when he wrote The Modest Proposal about the danger Irish peasants were in having no economic benefits to lend the Irish food export economy. I have little doubt he would understand The Economist and its neoliberalism demanding the starving peasants were not to be fed but would have a hard time understanding how a vegetable he may have never heard of kept Irish peasants alive for over a century. I understand globalists, isolationists and protectionists but as bad as liberal democracy was made out to be I still don't understand why the American public elected a Nihilist President and continue to support plutocrats, kleptocrats and kakistocrats in the richest most powerful nation that ever was.
3
@Montreal Moe « A Modest Proposal » was cultural satire. Thus is something rather more serious.
1
@ejones
No, A Modest Proposal was a plaintive cry of Ireland before potatoes and the poor were malnourished starving and barely human.
It is the story of a country owned by absentee landlords and a food export economy and an indigenous population that had very little food.
1
@ejones
Modest Proposal was not cultural satire it was the same satire with which Twain wrote his War Poem.
It is satire from the depths of Hell. It is the pain one feels when need to escape to sinecure away from a world where you show your humanity by the tears in your eyes.
Do you have any knowledge of peasant life in Ireland before there was potatoes? Swift was a privileged upper middle class Anglican living among Ireland's poorest Catholics. Malnutrition and starvation were not just normal they were ubiquitous. Ireland's poor were barely human.
Jonathan Swift was a very angry man, I guess that happens when you hang out with great French Enlightenment philosophers.
1
Spending on infrastructure will occur under enlightened Democratic leadership, and all those people doing useless bureaucratic jobs for the commercial healthcare industry will be redeployed into burgeoning industries, leading to massive improvement in healthcare, and massive improvements in GDP.
Dump Trump. Feel the Bern.
8
The hypocrisy of the Republican fiscal policies bodes poorly for the economic future of America. They will exacerbate the social and economic inequalities in America, but the Republicans will blame liberal elites and immigrants for this and all our problems. As you have emphasized, they are not serious in their policies and disinterested in maximizing the use of government tools to solve our economic problems.
7
What good did President Obama's 580 billion deficit in 2016 do him? Total federal revenue growth in calendar year 2016 was negative, a full percentage point.
That discontinuity between revenues and gdp, nominal revenues shrinking while gdp grew $295 billion real, $58, meant that taxes matter. The tax free side of the economy blossomed in 2016 while the taxpaying side shriveled.
It took 3 years for President Obama's 2013 huge tax increase to come home to roost, but roost it did.
Another tenth of a percent growth and Hillary would have been president.
You can be sure that if Trump (god willing) loses, the republican deficit hawks will instantly come to life.
Zombie ideas are almost refreshing compared to completely reversing policy depending on who’s in power. It’s becoming hard to be optimistic about our being a functioning democracy at this point.
4
Good advice re campaining against Trump. But despite its importance, campaigning on the future of the economy is not very effective with the American public. It's attention is very short range and predominantly concerned with the sense of the immediate situation.
1
Anybody remember what kind of fiscal situation Jim Florio inherited and what kind Christine Whitman inherited and did with it? Voters don't care about deficits, only promises.
1
Republicans have never been interested in most things they campaign on. They may talk a lot about how they care about regular people in middle America but what they show time and again is that they care most about money and power. Now that Trump is in the White House they don’t have to pretend. So yes they are hypocritical, but I think it’s more accurate to say that they are revealing their true colors. Hopefully some of their minions will see this, but I really don’t think most care as long as Republican lawmakers seem tough.
2
There is going to be a whole lotta ignoring going on post Trump.
Between the Very Serious People who lied about caring about fiscal restraint, the Very Religious People who lied about caring about morality and the Very Patriotic People who lied about caring about democracy and the rule of law, Trump has fully exposed the Republican Party as containing just one type of politician:
Very Dishonest People who care ONLY about power. They have earned political irrelevance.
Now Democrats and independents just have to make that happen regardless of the state of the economy in the near term. While they still can.
16
Democrats have nobody to blame but themselves. A reasonably good turnout would have won in 2016. In 2020 all they have to do is continue the strategy that won big in 2018. Obviously that’s not going to happen. The future of our democracy is at stake & they’re more concerned with feeling “empowered” by nominating an 80 year-old leftist whose signature legislative accomplishment in 40 years in Congress is: S. 885 (113th): A bill to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 35 Park Street in Danville, Vermont, as the “Thaddeus Stevens Post Office”.
2
Sanders has introduced many bills to benefit working people that his more conservative colleagues have rejected. He has fought the good fight. What did your representatives ever do for you?
Sanders has had his name on more bills than anyone else in Congress. That’s why he’s been called “the amendment king.”
Originating a bill is only one step in thr process.
1
While you are correct Mr. Krugman that the farmer bail out is the biggest hypocrisy of Republicans, the reason that Trump will win is because of outright cheating voter suppression, not the bail out.
Farmers know better than anyone the bailout is temporary and will not fix the decades it took to build those soy contracts with China. That’s why they’re not planting new soy despite the bailouts... especially because it’s large corporations like the Koch network’s petrol fertilizers getting that money, not small farmers.
But it’s the Koch network who is purging Democratic votes. Go ask Greg Palast, who through his Palast Investigative Fund is struggling to reregister hundreds of thousands of purged Democratic last names through the Republican Interstate Crosscheck program that stole the election for Trump and the GOP and threatens to do so again.
8
"Democratic bailouts bad, Republican bailouts good — that’s because it is." That's how smart people operate and get ahead.
Republicans are richer and smarter than Democrats. Minorities are far more prevalent among Democrats who have to be very sensitive to minorities' interests & concerns. This irritates some white Democrats.
Despite all our (Democrats') problems, hopefully we will capture the W.H. this Nov. as we regained the House with a bang in 2018.
There is much better than an even chance for Bernie Sanders to be the nominee. His candidacy may cost some down ballot seats. So be it. Hope we will manage to keep the House. We may not get the Senate. But presidency is the most important prize. He will be able to make some definite progress especially in the immigration area.
I wish he would take Pete Buttigieg as his running mate, which won't be a drag on the ticket. If he wants a woman, I hope he will pick Amy Klobuchar over Elizabeth Warren.
Once again, my choice for president is Mayor Pete. You have to settle for the best you can have.
2
@A.G.
If Republicans are “smarter” than Democrats than why are they selling our Democratic Republic to the Saudis and running a deficit that will accelerate the flipping of the dollar to the yuan as world currency?
The Party of Trump are corrupt criminals. That’s only “smart” until you run out of things to steal or tax breaks because you broke the tax system and economy permanently.
1
Stacie Abrams for VP.
A good economy but an unbelievably great economy for the wealthy. You are better off than you were 4 years ago, but you should have been way better off than you are now. Better healthcare, better roads and bridges, better childcare, better education and better retirement. The $600 billion to which Trump added $400 billion is amazing.
2
Paul, As for the sound economy I think the last two weeks and today in the famous Wall Street Mr. Trump the good times are over and now the bills need to be paid. More farm aid what a joke maybe farmers that can't make it should find another job and by the way most of that aid for the last two it turned out when to corporate farms and lots of money to outside the country. There is this myth of the small family farm even here in Canada nice to live in a time long gone. Here even in Canada giant farms with giant warehouses for pigs, chickens and turkeys. For everyone else it is welfare or that terrible word socialism. Interesting billions upon billions for farmers, tax cuts for the rich a deficit and debt through the roof, but mention universal health care and the Republican cry from Rand Paul we can't afford it - it will bankrupt the country same line he used with money for 9/11 responders and for benefits for men in the Vietnam War for Agent Orange. Had no trouble with the tax cut that put money in the corporate pockets - oh, I forgot it would pay for itself how is that working out. Next up another demand the Fed cut the rate you know pump more into the failed market. Hey, they don't care they sell the worthless stock on like the mortgage crash of 08. Then the next cry will be to invest since shares are low - hey, I have a basement full of Beanie Babes. Jim Trautman
2
I'm all for borrowing as much money (or printing it) as is necessary to assure that every human being born in (or migrating to) this country is taken care of by the government from cradle to grave.
God bless America, at least before we bankrupt it.
We are morally bankrupt. Financial bankruptcy will follow.
1
So immigrants who receive food stamps or Medicaid for a year are “public charges” who can forget about becoming legal residents or citizens. But farmers who rely on government subsidies for a third or half of their income year after year after year and get billions in Trump bribes when disastrous trade policies cost them export markets for their already subsidized commodities are held up as no-nonsense, self-sufficient “real Americans” of the kind we should all aspire to be. Excuse me while I laugh so hard the price-supported milk comes out my nose.
12
Professor Krugman, you've been talking about Barack Obama just slightly less than Joe Biden for the last several weeks. For heaven's sake, stop tiptoeing through the tulip bubbles, come right out, endorse a 'vanity' candidate & get it done. The anyone but Sanders trope is getting old.
1
Why not just start sabotaging right back? We are already heading for a nasty constitutional crisis, or worse, might as well get something out of it.
"Trump suggested that he may be about to give U.S. farmers — who have yet to see any benefits from his much-touted trade deal with China — another round of government aid."
Mr. Krugman,
Why haven't the farmers seen benefits yet?
Why is Trump giving another round of aid?
You know the answer but you are feigning naivete like Colombo.
I wish you had revealed the answer to both, which is the same: Coronavirus.
China's economic growth is expected to slow down to 4.5% in the first quarter of 2020.
So China is not able to buy from us and our farmers are not able to sell to them.
Let us hope this pandemic gets under control. If we do not, any republican cynicism will be the least of our problems.
Dr. Krugman,
You're right, of course. But maybe, in the face of the extreme ignorance of the MAGA crowd, Democrats should simply sit out this next election. Let Trump win. Keep Mitch McConnell in charge of the Senate. Hand the House back to the Republicans.
Maybe the best way to destroy the zombie ideas is to let them eat the brains of all their supporters. Maybe things have to get very, very bad before they can get better. Clearly, Farmers in the Midwest still support the man who's destroying their markets.
Disaster is assured under a Republican Party government. But Democrats forever ride to the rescue and not only fix the crisis, but take the blame for causing it. Republicans don't remember George W. Bush at all, anymore, and believe the crash of 2008 was caused by Barack Obama when he took office in 2009.
Let's let Republicans clean up their own messes for a change.
1
Everything Professor Krugman writes here makes sense with little to challenge him on .
However what he is forgetting is 2018 and the blue wave, in 2020 that wave is a Tsunami. No matter who our candidate is even it is 'Bernie' ,Democrats will be out in full force November 3rd and voting Dem's down the ballot .
Trump may enjoy 95% support among Republicans. However under Trumps leadership it is an increasingly shrinking Republican Party.
Perhaps one of the NYT Opinion writers would like to take on this subject . It would be a nice break from what feels like the constant Dem bashing.
1
"V.S.P.s have gone oddly silent under Trump — funny how that works — but they’ll surely be back if Democrats retake the White House. .. Democrats should ignore them."
Maybe they should sign you up to give this micro lecture--on video. Maybe it will go viral.
Donald Trump's premise is that everyone can be bought for a price. That includes farmers suffering from his trade policies and people whose children still lack adequate educational opportunities and access to afforable healthcare. Watch as Trump struts around offering these groups bribes in the form of tax cuts not yet passed or even in writing and other Promises Not Kept as he did in 2016. Someone can make a lot of money producing Promises Not Kept ads and offering them to Bloomberg and the DNC. They will show Trump as the fraud and huckster he is.
1
All deficits are not created equal. I can create a $1 trillion deficit by cutting taxes by that very same amount. Or I can keep tax rates where they are and spend $1 trillion over and above any taxes I collect.
The "tax deficit" puts money in the pockets of people who don't really need it. And one of these lucky recipients might spend $5 million on a new McMansion, which doesn't do much good for the 50 people who would really appreciate the opportunity to buy a $100,000 affordable housing unit. Multiply this kind of investment decision many times over and its no wonder the middle class is vanishing.
Alternatively, a "spending deficit" on, say, infrastructure repair, puts money in the pockets of workers and increases the productive capacity of the entire economy. And by leaving tax rates alone, it signals to the wealthy that they're just going to have to postpone the purchase of that yacht or an island retreat in the Caribbean.
The profound difference here is that a spending deficit promotes the general welfare while a tax deficit caters only to those already well off.
So when we rail against "deficits," we ought to be clear about what kind of deficits we're discussing.
831
@WDG ; well said! you articulate what Dr. Krugman implies in his advice to ignore the V.S.P.s. Imagine the positive outcomes of "deficit" spending that supports Green Energy initiatives, rebuilding infrastructure, expanding healthcare, education, and job training for our evolving economy; this spending support the common good, health, and equality which in turn promotes the ideals of our democracy, which have been so eroded under Trump.
66
@WDG Nicely put. However, there is still the issue of a debt to be paid off and the interest accruing on a large amount of debt. A deficit means a shortfall that has to be made up in some way. Then it becomes a matter of weighing the pros and cons of a given deficit in terms of what it provides to the economy and to the majority of our citizens, and figuring how to minimize the long-term debt implications in which interest payments on the debt are a major part of the govt's expense. Right?
7
@TRJ But interest payments on Government debts are paid to the Government in Government created money! This is not like individual Bank or Credit Card debt which is paid to creditors from the earnings of individuals.
16
As Krugman correctly notes, the fiscal deficit has exploded under Trump - rising from $600 billion when he took office to $1.0 trillion now. It is also unprecedented. Never before in peacetime US history has the deficit, as a share of GDP, been so high as it is now at a time of full employment. The sole exception is during World War II.
And while the primary cause has been the tax cuts forced through Congress in a rush (and with little debate) in December 2017, an acceleration in the growth in government spending (primarily for the military) has also been important. Calculations at https://aneconomicsense.org/2019/08/09/the-growing-fiscal-deficit-the-keynesian-stimulus-policies-of-trump-and-the-fy20-21-budget-agreement/ found that roughly two-thirds of the increase in the deficit under Trump can be attributed to the tax cuts, but one-third to an acceleration in the growth of government spending.
This is significant. As Krugman notes, the Trump tax cuts, with their focus on corporations and the wealthy, do not and did not provide much of a boost to growth. But the higher pace of government spending did.
1
Ah, infrastructure. I have yet to see a new, truly first-world airport or other project--the ones Trump lamented we lacked--even hit the drawing board let alone the ground. And this was supposed to be on the very few areas of possible bipartisan action. What happened? Was Trump just blowing smoke again?
1
@Art
No,just his ace in the hole to buy union votes. He fully understands the self serving nature of the American people. E pluribus unum is dead.
Although the economy is very important, Trump won in 2016 employing all the tricks of demagoguery, exploiting the fears of voters and making promises he knew he could not keep. In effect, he ran as a populist and promised workers the sky, but when he was in office, backed legislation that cut taxes for corporations and the filthy rich. The old bait and switch. This time, he can't run on his record so the demagoguery will continue. If he wins, it means that we have an electorate of gullible voters who aren't bothered by a president who lies to them constantly.
681
@Whole Grains
True - we definitely have an electorate that meets that definition, but let's just hope enough people on the other side wake up and understand the danger ... and votes him far out to pasture. Or shortly thereafter, prison.
55
@Whole Grains WHEN he wins again, it will be because Putin AGAIN interfered with our voting procedures. I've heard some hand-wringing about Putin's interference in the last election, but nothing about how folks propose to prevent him from doing it again. He already knows how to hack into our system, and makes no secret that he fully intends to do it again. If somebody has a solution besides a return to paper ballots, I'd like to hear it.
34
@Joy Abbott
Get rid of as many congressional republicans as possible in November. Only then will your congress be able and willing to do anything about this.
For now, Republicans seem to be willing - rather: eager - to ignore every warning because they are fully aware that Russian interference is designed to aid THEM, not their opponents.
And since they believe that electing republicans is good for the country, they happily welcome the Russian assistance.
58
You're right about the cause but wrong about the best way to fight against GOPpers. Democrats MUST do exactly the same thing. Simply refuse to allow the debt ceiling to rise under a GOPpish administration unless ALL Democratic policy demands are met. Bringing flowers to a knife fight is a good way to end up as a trophy on your opponent's wall.
259
@Doc Caldwell That won't work, mainly because the debt ceiling has been suspended for this year as it is an election year. The only way this will happen is if Trump wins re-election and Democrats control one of the chambers.
6
@Andrew Eden-Balfour
It won't work because the Republicans will scream about Democratic budget sabotage. That's what the Democrats should have done instead of letting the Republicans blackmail them, but I'm still waiting for the Democratic Party as a whole to develop guts and spine.
32
@Thomas Zaslavsky Rep. Adam Schiff was a great start. We need more like him.
11
The Democratic candidate for president, whoever that turns out to be, should make it clear that her or his administration will actually DO the things Trump only PROMISED to do. People do, in fact, want an administration that will actually DO those things.
Looking out for the needs of the "forgotten" Americans? Tax relief for the working class and the middle class? Rebuilding our infrastructure? Draining the swamp? Those are exactly the things that Democratic presidents do. All we have to do is say so.
225
Swamps CLEANSE and provide habitat for a rich species diversity.
Trump is turning our healthy swamp into a sewer.
2
@Boneisha Those are things we try to communicate...but way more important is a plea! for a democracy Democratic Senate and House to hash out the details and pass the best options to deal with the needs of the people...I don't hear this from ANY candidate yet! Hopefully this will be a preface to any solicitation for support and platform come November.
@Boneisha
This is the answer, actually do those things. Fund the right programs (health care, infrastructure, education, etc), tax away the plutocracy, and make our elections and government much more democratic.
If you do those things, you can get people to believe in government again, and you will build an unbeatable coalition for a generation.
The key: ignore the Republican Party. They are not legitimate, and they don't represent the majority.
This means you pass the bills in the House, and you ignore the Senate. You reform the courts, especially the Supreme Court, and you ignore the Senate. The Senate is an undemocratic institution, and always has been. It needs to go. The House actually represents the country. Most of the power of government should reside there, less so in the presidency and courts.
Go ahead and enact your plans that actually help people, and don't let the dishonest and disingenuous stand in your way anymore.
If only Democrats would sound the ‘deficit alarm’ when it comes to Republicans’ tax cuts the way Republicans sound the ‘deficit alarm’ when it comes to Democrats’ non-military spending. The GOP simply should not be allowed to dominate the PR battle.
245
@NM The Republicans don't care. In fact to pass the tax cut as a budget reconciliation the Republicans had to pretend it was budget neutral. The dems tried to call them on this, but they were brushed off, and the media and Courts paid no heed to numbers that didn't make any sense.
20
Oh you'll hear about budget deficits come 2021.
Either because we have a Democratic president, in which case we have got to get ahold of this out of control spending! I.e., make sure there is supposedly no money available for anything a Democrat might ever want to do.
Or because Trump wins re-election and suddenly we need o get ahold of our spending by cutting the social safety net. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, you name it. Republicans love to explode the deficit then use deficit-reduction as a means to attack so-called "entitlements." It's hard to believe a person could actually hate the idea of medical coverage for the poor or guaranteed income for the elderly, but they do.
1055
@Tim Re your last sentence. It is true "but they do" in the USA but not in the rest of the democratic world. And to claim that the USA government would be broke if it implemented the policies needed to effect this is either a claim that the USA government lacks the competence of every other democratic government or is a statement that is made with out any knowledge about how governments operate in the whole rest of the democratic world.
52
@Tim Agreed. If Trump is re-elected and Republicans hold onto power, the entire working and middle class will be decimated by cuts or elimination of the social safety net that Republicans have been after for decades - Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc....not to mention our environmental protections - NEPA, NHPA, ARPA, NAGPRA that keeps toxic chemicals and pollution out of our air and drinking water. For Trump/Republican policies, cruelty foisted on those less fortunate, including their own supporters, is the point.
104
@Tim , When I asked my Republican office mate about some awful Trump executive order (it was about gutting EPA regulations, but it could have been anything), he responded: “I don’t care.” He said he’s happy as long as his 401K is doing well.
That’s how many Republicans feel. Maybe not all, but a lot. Like Trump, they really care only about themselves. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how people can be so uncaring about the rest of the world. It’s sad, but true.
178
"...the biggest factor working in Trump’s favor is a strong economy — not as strong as he claims, but good enough to provide a significant political lift (unless growth is derailed by the coronavirus)."
This is the sentence that resonates more to me than almost anything else that has appeared about this election. It is a sad thing that moderates and liberals have to hope that the economy tanks in the near future but it appears to be our only hope.
Trump is in his position of power, captivating voters and decimating rational Republican thinking, by offering panaceas and proffering lies. I don't think there is a way to combat this...Trump has such a big (four year) leap on the Dems. And the Dems seem to be unable, or unwilling for some reason, to effectively counter.
He will try anything to explain away a moderate downturn. I hate to say it but I'm personally hoping the economy tanks, and soon (and I have over half my 401K in the market).
4
There are more store closings every day in my NYC neighborhood, and real estate sales have dried up. Some boom this is.
2
@j. courtney Bet your 401Ks are not looking too good! In the UK we have ISAs (Individual savings accounts) mostly in stocks. Mine are down 4% this week... (and - 12% this 12 months)
It matter little who's in the WH or congress.
Conservatives have the Supreme Court for a generation and that's all they need to destroy democracy in the United States!
6
Let's try understand our government.
Instead of taxing us to pay for the benefits we requested, it's borrowing the money from us so it could pay us an extra interest on it.
It is too good to be true or last long!
4
Nobody any sense would let Mr. Trump run their condo association or coop board because it would put future equity at risk; or pick him to head a groundwater advisory board or Great Lakes future commission; or run a university's vision development team; or pick him for any other job that needs to weigh serious consequences to or in the future.
The risks would be too high to be left to someone who's fact-averse, makes decisions based on emotions instead of logic; and is much busier trying to keep the job than to do it.
If Sen. Sanders ends up being the Democratic nominee, perhaps he should expound on the market, economic and taxation distortions caused by 40 years of GOP dogma, and how correcting them is not leftist ideology but a grave necessity for the future value of our country.
Apparently the businesses in Burlington, VT thought he was a great major back then, so he must be able to sound practical and responsible.
7
The GOP doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to fiscal responsibility. They do nothing but drive up the deficit with gifts to the 1% while a solid half of the American public is barely able to survive. The media and the eventual Democratic candidate should call them out on this relentlessly.
11
@Boggle the problem is that many Americans hear the words tax cut and love the result. They don't realize that tax cuts are another way to destroy the social safety net, charge user fees for formerly free items, and that they benefit the richest far more than the rest of us.
5
He and the gop are ,literally, buying votes. Quid pro quo. They sold their souls to oligarchs and now they are buying votes from farmers. And they are mentioning an additional "middle class" tax cut. We Americans will sell them too.
5
False equivalence?
In auto bailout, the car companies were required to pay it back
In the sense, the money to the farms is not a "bailout," its outright welfare.
Its more akin to cutting welfare, having work requirements, to get welfare etc., while giving money (to the some of the most well-healed) farmers and not expecting anything in reture.
5
The Trump Administration is fueling the economy by running huge deficits and pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates. The only problem seems to be that if we do have a crash set off by the Corona virus, the Fed won't be able to lower interests further to stimulate the economy and the debt will keep rising. To get out of the crash, we'd have to embark on a large dose of Keynesian spending that would make the debt even larger. Oddly, the Republicans would be likely to favor that. As Cheney once said to the Treasury Secretary Paul O"Neil early in Bush Jr.'s first term: "Deficits don't matter." Cheney then fired the fiscally conservative Republican.
1
It’s hard to let go of the American Dream of an individual working hard and earning their wealth.
I believe a lot of people who support Trump (or at least most conservatives) tend to think in black-and-white. For example, immigrants who snuck across the border broke the law. They should be treated as criminals. Simple as that. Also, abortion = murder = it should be against the law. If a woman doesn’t fight back physically and immediately go to the cops then it wasn’t rape. They are easier messages to rally behind because they’re straightforward.
I think most liberals acknowledge the complexities of these and other issues. It’s more difficult to agree on what to do. It is harder to communicate and consolidate support.
Economically, taxes and social supports get disdain from many because: People have the right to get rich and enjoy their wealth. It’s anti-American to redistribute so it shouldn’t be done.
A counter-argument if we can simplify and rally behind the message was mentioned by Mr. Krugman— people got rich with the support of the government including infrastructure and financial policy. Infrastructure needs support and financial policies should not help support such extreme wealth. Getting into more of the complexities is important but politically dilutes the message.
I’m rambling but I hope I got the point across.
4
@David Only to the thinking voters. Just hope there are enough of them (Oh, there are) BUT in the right states...
What is anti American is to make a fortune and refuse to pay your fair share (Or any for that matter) taxes. Pay your workers correctly. Pay some taxes. I get that companies contribute by creating employment and doing many things that are often not recognized by the Democratic Party and it annoys me as a business owning Democrat that this is the case. However, it is the greed we are seeing today that has turned a whole generation of Americans against capitalism and has contributed to the call for more fairness in our system..
Why did G.H.W. Bush break his campaign promise to not raise taxes? Was not it was because the deficits were hurting the economy and government was competing for cash and jacking up interest rates? Did not those tax increases allow strong economic growth? Trump and the Republicans are borrowing money to pay budgeted funding and with global warming and national defense issues persisting in a manner that makes more wars more likely, unfounded demands upon the federal government are likely. If we don’t raise taxes and try to fund all the needed expenses for infrastructure and health care and feeding the hungry and funding higher education for all who can benefit from it and replace all of our global warming accelerating energy systems while growing, we are left with printing money and praying for low inflation.
1
Unfunded not unfounded, struggling with a stupid algorithm, again.
It would be interesting to know who Kruggy thinks are the VSPs.
3
@Koala
I wondered that, too, whether it includes any Democrats. His line, "...centrists who spent years insisting that government debt was the most important issue of our time ..." suggests that the Clinton and Obama administrations might have contained some VSPs.
1
This was your best paragraph. It just took you a long time to get here
"They might do better by pointing out that while Trump has rushed to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, he has been shortchanging the future. Ignoring his campaign promises, he has done nothing to raise much-needed spending on infrastructure. And despite its obvious indifference to budget deficits, his administration seems determined to deprive children of the adequate health care and nutrition they will need to become productive adults"
It was interesting to watch. the stock market continued to move upward until Trump opened his mouth. Tarriffs. Then the market declined. It was as if the economy was in an upward spiral from the Obama years until Trump opened his mouth. Yet he continues to claim credit with what should be due President Obama.
I grew up in Detroit and I will always remember Mayor Cavenaugh at the time saying," the first administration always benefits from what the previous administration did". G-d help us if Trump gains another bite of the apple.
16
@JBG3 From another angle, any Democrat who might win in November would be held responsible for the fiscal mess (for one thing) that has been created by this president.
The biggest problem is that fiscal responsibility as well as expansion of needed social programs like providing health care to all Americans and infrastructure repair as well as more optional things are all going to require tax increases .. just like yesterday's article says. But people don't want tax increases .. even if they are paying less today than 5 years ago .. And, while the idea of a wealth tax or high incomes to trigger higher tax brackets sounds good, you can only really raise money by lowering that high tax bracket down into incomes that many Americans earn or aspire to earn.
Dual income families will also remember that the state income tax deduction (SALT) is now per household, which is not fair. Dual income families have a lot of expenses that are not deductible, like childcare and yes housekeepers and lawn mowing services ..
The real Trump tax cuts were to businesses and very high income and net worth individuals and those will be harder to roll back (and dark money will make that very unappealing even to a lot of Democratic law makers).
Bernie's tax hikes will be the highest and that will be the hardest sell to independents and former Republicans ..
1
Democrats can win the way they shelled Republicans in the 2018 elections- fight for the demands that the working people need: universal affordable or free health care coverage (which practically can only be delivered by the government) release from a lifetime of student debt, tax reform that puts the burden on the super wealthy, infrastructure rebuilding with decent paying jobs, and a national commitment to stop climate change before it's too late. Funny- this is the program of the two progressives, Sanders and Warren.
12
@Paul from Oakland my kids took loans for their education and will be paying for years but should not be absolved of their obligation. However, the government should let all loans transfer to ginnie mae at 3%. It would pull money out of all those predatory banks that charge 7 to 12% and enable people to pay their loans more quickly. Do the math and see the difference....astronomical. It wouldn't be fair to forgive all loans.
4
@Paul from Oakland
The only way the Democrats can really win is to take control of both Senate and Congress - until then the Democrats are lame ducks.
Democrat controlled Congress has put forward at least 300 bills to the Senate which get stopped at the desk of McConnell who doesn't pass them to a vote unless he or Trump likes them.
The Democrats, as they are now, can try and get things done but can't. Trump calling them "Do Nothing Dems" is another one of those tricks of his where it's true, but he doesn't tell the truth of why - it's a situation he has made.
America is becoming a one party America - Republicans control everything. If it was a fair democracy, and really two parties, McConnell would put things to a vote even if he didn't agree with them - normally that's how it should be done, and would be, except under Trump's authoritarian regime.
4
One big difference between Obama's auto bailout and Trump's farm giveaway: the auto companies paid back all but about $9 billion of the money. So for $9B in public funds a huge chunk of U.S. manufacturing was saved. Trump's giveaway is just a handout. There is no plan to pay it back.
25
@Ken L —The auto loan “loss” was from the Treasury’s sale of GM stock not from the TARP loans. Two different animals altogether.
3
@Ken L ...and the handout is required because of Trump stupid tariffs
@Ken L I agree. $9 billion is a small amount of money. But then why is Trump's wall, costing about half as much considered expensive?
Where do you Democrats learn arithmetic?
1
Really good article. Bernie tonight in his town hall, emphasized how there is ‘corporate socialism’ in the United States. Wall Street speculators have been the beneficiary of this. Pork barreling special interests, like the farming industry is the same thing.The weird thing is , the anti-socialists in the GOP, can’t wait to get their hands on the public purse, and to distribute it to their special interest support groups ie corporate socialism again.
28
Here is what Mr. Krugman failed to explain.
Out of $1 trillion budget deficit, a half, or about $500 million goes to paying off the interest on the national debt, thus it doesn’t go at all on keeping the US economy strong, rebuilding the national infrastructure or investing in the education.
If the US defense budget is about $700 billion, it means about 70% of the that amount is spent on paying off the interest.
Of course, America doesn’t have to pay off the interest at all.
The taxpayers and the voters could simply change the law, print $23 trillion, pay off the creditors and be debt-free.
The economists who believe that we need the extra cash to grease up the economy should be happy, shouldn’t they?
There is the enormous fiscal burden hurting our economy and threatening our solvency, but the US government is refusing to implement the best measure.
Why?
Well, those freshly printed $23 trillion would be actually the tax on the wealthiest Americans. They know it and will block implementation of this measure at all cost.
They prefer receiving $500 billion in interest every year…
That’s why the federal government will continue borrowing the money to pay off the debt.
That’s why it cannot break out of this closed loop…
3
@Kenan Porobic We owe much of the national debt to ourselves. The interest paid on government notes / bonds etc goes to people (or communities, universities, etc w endowments) who have retirement pensions & other types of investment funds that include these bonds. I believe foreign ownership is somewhere around 10%. Small time savers & retirees in the US make up a large faction of the beneficiaries, & you can bet they aren't stashing it in the Cayman Islands. They use it to live on. Paying for food, housing, travel, medical care, not to mention loans to their struggling grandkids, puts it right back into circulation. It's a solid investment in our own economy, especially when interest rates are as low as they are now.
2
My bad!
Obviously, I failed to understand that the people LOVE to pay $500 billion in interest every year so I stupidly proposed an instant solution to the chronic problem that would release the future generation off the hook regarding our reckless and lavish spending and colossal national debt....
@will b
Are you saying that we borrow the money to ourselves to profit from ourselves?
You see nothing wrong with this kind of financial speculations and gimmicks?