Sunday, August 18, 2013

The Paul Krugman Roller Coaster Ride

In a recent post, Paul Krugman is all over the place. It's a damn roller coaster. At times he is terribly wrong, at other times, he is absolutely correct. He rehashes some old nonsense that he must know is not true. The stuff is so absurd that I am not going to provide further focus on the nonsense smears, here. That said, at the same time, in the same post, Krugman makes some important points that, instead of being smear-like, recognize the differences between libertarians and conservatives. Indeed, he correctly points out that conservative politicians occasionally attempt to paint themselves as libertarians, when they are no such thing.

Including the title of his post, Krugman correctly writes:
  • "Conservatives Are (Mostly) Not Libertarians"
  •  most conservatives are not libertarians, even if they like to use libertarian rhetoric now and then.
  • there are some real libertarians out there, particularly in the realm of economics bloggers

14 comments:

  1. 1. Krugman says:

    Even when politicians claim to be libertarian, there are telltale giveaways: the two R. Pauls, father and son, may be unusual in questioning the national security state, but they both have a remarkable tendency to cater to and/or employ white supremacists.

    and

    In its heyday National Review was a staunch supporter of free markets; but it was also a staunch supporter of Jim Crow — which wasn’t just about the right of white business owners to discriminate against blacks, it was about a system of laws designed to protect white privilege.

    2. He then posted my snotty comment.

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/conservatives-are-mostly-not-libertarians/?comments#permid=48

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    1. Krugman is still bitter over how bad a country doctor made him look in his debate. Bad enough to write three highly emotional and excuse riddled blog entries that were highly defensive. Origami showed up to it expecting to just walk all over Ron and instead was humiliated all over the Internet to anyone but the nerdiest ny times fanboys.

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  2. What's amazing is how in his short post he managed to smear the Paul's as racists. Sure, Rans ain't his daddy, but to take the trouble to throw that in shows what a POS Krugman is.

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    1. He did not smear them as racists. He stated a fact about who they associate with.

      Ron Paul is not a libertarian. He is a paleo conservative. He calls himself a libertarian to attract young people's donations.

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    2. So then by that same logic, anyone who supports Keynesian econ is also anti semetic since Keynes "catered" to anti-semites with negative comments about Jews? Or anyone who follows Obama is also a racist, bc his pastor of twenty years was full of racial comments that obama claims he never heard? Or anyone who watches MSNBC, with convicted racial fraud and liar Al Sharpton, is also a racist who makes up crimes about a race he doesn't like to make themselves more powerful?

      Believe me when I say you don't want to go down that line of thought, what with progressive roots in abortion, the drug war, gun bans, etc all directed at blacks bc of racism.

      Besides - what else says "anti-racism" and "tolerance" more than the obama drug war, drone strikes on those evil browns in the mid east, and the fast and furious op in mexico that resulted in hundreds of dead mexicans? Nothing speaks progress and diversity than the actual policies almost all of the leftists and obama supporters favor.

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    3. Don't forget also that Keynes was a strong believer in Eugenics. In fact, he hated the "little people."

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    4. I have not read that about Keynes but just about all progressives from that error had those views so it is not surprising if true.

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  3. Plus, Krugman is quoting some real dense and extremely dim-witted "progressive" writers in Mike Konczal and Corey Robin.

    It's always hard with these folks to know when exactly the stupidity ends and the lying begins.

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    1. I still remember when Krugman said that people have no need for firearms for protection bc that is what the police are for - I think a whole 15% of the nation might agree with Krugman on that! They are so out of touch with mainstream america, and always seem shocked when the facts bear that out. Luckily, they are a dying breed as the newspaper goes the way of the telegram.

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  4. This nitwit Konczal writes in the post that Krugman cites:

    Meanwhile, as Josh Barro notes, the federal deficit spending kept the economy afloat, while local and state governments crumbled under the economic stress. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, inequality grows and median incomes stagnate. There’s nothing about the challenges faced by our economy in the early 21st century that allows us to retreat into fantasies of a purely private world.

    And to bring us back to the beginning, it also means that the Federal Reserve’s policies are serving as a stand-in for bigger, ideological arguments on the right about the public and the economy. The argument coming out of the Great Depression, and it is a radical argument, that the economy as a whole needs public steering rather than an “invisible hand” still manages to confound many conservatives, who’d prefer to eliminate any notion of the public from their ideology.


    Nothing we say ever penetrates the mind of a "progressive". There are no words.

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    1. They heard you loud and clear. Cutting the Fed funds rate to .25% in 2008 was going to cause the dollar to collapse and result in hyperinflation.

      5 years later, the CPI shows an annual rate of inflation of 2%/year. In August 2008, oil was $116/barrel. Today it's $106/barrel.

      The response? The CPI is rigged, inflation is measured by the money supply, the dollar collapse is still imminent, etc etc.

      So people do listen. They just don't take you seriously.

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    2. This sounds like a troll visiting from Dr. Robert Murphy's site. But who?

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  5. "So people do listen. They just don't take you seriously."

    More seriously, why should we take you seriously?

    I'd love for you to demonstrate why "The CPI is rigged, inflation is measured by the money supply, the dollar collapse is still imminent, etc etc." is untrue. Because these are all true statements. Hyperinflation predictions only demonstrate how difficult it can be to apply economic theory to unravelling the why's and wherefore's of a particular situation.

    5 years later, I'd like to see how smug you will be when the Fed grows incapable of controlling interest rates and paying banks to sit on money for much longer.

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    1. Paul "Argentina is a miracle" krugman?

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