Leftist Krugman Bashing

Leftist Krugman bashing is unfair and counterproductive.

Paul Krugman isn't perfect, but his is the best voice there is inside the mainstream media.  In fact, it's amazing that he says so much from a perch at the Grey Lady, not known for being friendly to the left.  (How many times has the Times presented a Chomsky op ed, for example?)  I pay to subscribe to the New York Times for only one reason…Paul Krugman!

Paul Krugman cheered on the Occupy Movement, and accepted and even adopted the 99% vs 1% rhetoric.

Paul Krugman has consistently pointed to inequality as the key issue of our time.  And I'm not just talking about "equal opportunity," which he has also shown is far from being true.  He is one of the best voices there is on topics like this.  He cuts through the right wing bullshit better than anyone.  He has showed how mobility in the US is not as many people imagine, or as good as it is in many other places.  And, regardless of mobility, that there still needs to be decent pay for all.  He favors raising the minimum wage, and making it easier for unions to organize.  (Where else in the mainstream corporate media do you hear people calling for more unionization???)  He has spoken positively of the examples set by Scandinavian countries in terms of equality and taking care of everyone.

Though Paul Krugman has defended Obamacare as better than what we had before (bringing him much anger from some quarters of the left) he has also always made it plain that he believes a Single Payer system would be better.  He favors lowering the medicare eligibility age.  He favors increasing the minimum wage.  He has strongly opposed cutting Social Security and has said it should be increased in several ways, including lowering the eligibility age.  He fought back strongly against cuts, including the cut disguised as a technical adjustment to the cost of living adjustment.  He fought back strongly against raising the eligibility age, pointing out that people with lower income are not necessarily living longer.  Back in the day, he wrote the best articles opposing privatization of social security, and he wrote the best articles showing that contrary to critics (and he pointed to their roots in the finance industry) the Social Security system is fundamentally sound, and the best way to run a government pension system.  (Fortunately, privatization of social security is no longer being actively promoted--and we owe Krugman much gratitude for this.)

Rather than falling in line (with the neoliberals) that unemployment has been coming down--so there's no problem anymore they claim) Paul Krugman has consistently pointed out the fall in employment to population ratio has not recovered, and that the great recession, aka depression, is not over yet, nor can we say it will just take care of itself over any time span.

Krugman has also been quite critical of many people in the Economics profession, almost inventing the Saltwater vs Freshwater divide, and pointing out many if not all of the problems with the economics profession as it exists now.  (It's that "if not all" that seems to bother many lefty econo-bloggers, such as Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism.)

I read Krugman daily and I think everyone should.

The Economics Profession

Krugman had a great and long post addressing the legion of major economists who ignore the obvious realities of depressions.  I highly endorse the ideas he represented.

However, in this long post he chose to specifically mention Milton Friedman and Larry Summers as ones who had far more pro-social ideas than Barro and others like him.

That inspired me to write this (but, actually, I'd put the beginning of our downfall back a bit further to the Kennedy Tax Cuts, which had the hands of Hicksian economists all over it--and John K. Galbraith was so right.)

Here here! And quite in line with Keynes himself, who did a great job putting down faith based classical economics in his day. But where there's money, there's always more faith proclaimed. Perhaps you need a new profession with public financing, independent of corporate funded institutions. Didn't said Larry Summers have a lot to do with the destruction of financial regulation started by FDR which had proven useful for decades, only to see unprecedented banking failure and public bailouts result? What does he have to say about this? I hear nothing. I see every weakening of the structure FDR created as having had ill effects, including say Nixon's abandonment of Bretton Woods. I realize these are all now said to have been inevitable, but I doubt both that and the pro-big-finance system which has been created were inevitable, but the result of deliberate choices made by people like and including Larry Summers. And now I see no going back, and THAT is still our biggest problem. I'd call it the neoliberal revolution, which also included the cited Milton Friedman. I suppose it's good that these people had some good ideas. Or was it? A few good ideas may have made the others more acceptable. And a similar thing happens when there is a powerless minority or majority of economists with good ideas. They candy coat the creeping pro wealth bias made inevitable by the others.

The Liberal Case against a Universal Basic Income

I completely agree with Max Sawicky regarding the proposed (by certain utopian libertarians mainly) Universal Basic Income.  In many ways, I like the utopianism, and like Max I'm not worried about how it changes incentives for individuals.  It's just that it would wreck other programs that, while less utopian, are actually successful.  It would also be unfair to many, such as current and future social security recipients who had high income jobs.

What the idea is, actually, is a kind of hot potato used to smear existing programs while sounding even more "progressive" than they are.  Max spells this out in great detail.

Nix TPP !!!

Krugman shows there cannot be a big economic win from trade agreements like the TPP, as supporters claim.  But where does he show there will be no big negatives, which he claims in passing without any substantiation?  Fellow prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is more direct, be blasts both the TPP and the anti-democratic processes behind it, and the US Government's approach to trade agreements in particular.

Rather than reducing negative environmental externalities, consumer protections, and worker rights, these trade pacts are immediately used to attack whatever stands in the way of corporate greed, environment, workers, and democratic processes be damned.  This has been endlessly documented with regards to NAFTA, GATT, and WTO.

A leaked memo published by HuffingtonPost shows a bonanza of special rights TPP would grant to corporation.

Public Citizen calls TPP the Corporate Power of the 1%.     Here is their Take Action page, with multiple letters you can send regarding different aspects of the TPP and Fast Track authority supporters want.

I'd call for the abrogation of all existing trade pacts, and the defunding and abolition of the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR)--a corporate shill--which pushes them.  But more presently, write every message you can to stop this, starting with the Public Citizen's Take Action page.  The first is one  suggested by Senator Elizabeth Warren to release the full text to the public.  There is no excuse for the lack of transparency used to ram through these agreements.

Austerity is Crap

Large numbers of people are unemployed or underemployed.  Does that mean we should all tighten up our budgets, spend less, borrow less and save more, including the Government?

Of course not, that will only make more people unemployed.  To reduce unemployment, we all either individually or collectively need to spend more!

One person's income is another person's spending.  If you want incomes to go up, there has to be more spending!  So if people are unemployed, there needs to be more spending to get them employed.  This is basic Keynesian economics.

Now, I would hasten to add, of course we should be spending on the right kinds of things.  One of those right kinds of things is research.  But thanks to the Sequester, research spending by the US government has been going down.  The government shutdown didn't help.  And more cuts to things like research appear to be coming right up.  This is so counterproductive!!!

And we should be spending less on things which increase pollution, global warming, etc., or abuse natural resources.  But that is exactly where spending has been increasing, doing things like developing the tar sands in Canada, and it will be worse if the Keystone Pipeline is built.

Now, thanks to the tax cuts which have been driving by Reaganomics, rich people have been taxed less, so they have accumulated more of the total wealth.  Since rich people spend proportionally less of their incomes, this has depressed spending relative to what might have been otherwise--with more taxes collected and more government spending.  Reaganomics has created what looks like a permanent depression, in which the saving glut fueled by the ever increasing wealth of rich people sloshes around the world unproductively and even destructively in search of additional profits.  Of course those additional profits are not to be had overall, since income-from-investments also comes from spending.*

Tax and spend is the only answer, outside of a perfect communist revolution.

*The only kind of additional profits possible are those which are carved out of someone else's income, a zero sum or negative sum game.  This is Adam Smith turned upside down, the invisible hand becomes the not-so-invisible knife.  In such a world, markets don't increase the general welfare, they decrease it as they enable such destruction.  Actually, this is the general rule, the invisible hand only works as Adam Smith said when something else such as a comprehensive ethical system eliminates zero sum and negative sum activities (including all externalities).  No such ethical system has persisted except among a small part of the population, and when it does, it simply provides more incentive for others to steal their bacon (in a world with private wealth), along with stealing an unspoiled world from the future.

No Negotiations With Terrorists

I was apalled to hear the upbeat tone on Al Jazeera about the negotiations over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling.  Obama's stand has been very simple, and correct.  He should not have to make any concessions to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling.  Because making concessions is rewarding hostage taking.

AG: But you say there should always be negotiation when you are talking about the middle east.

Me: First, there's no moral equivalency here, US Republicans are far worse than Al Qaeda.  At least you could say with regards to the latter, that they have claims to represent the true grievances of many moslems, arabs, persians, and others in the middle east.  Those true grievances do exist: those peoples in general have been the victims of western neo-imperial dominance and direct and client state aggression.  For the Republicans, whose interests do they represent?  Well, with respect to those I just mentioned, they are far more consistently the aggressors, not the aggrieved.  And more generally, the interests of never allowing taxes on the wealthy to increase, or benefits to the poor be anything but slashed, it's clear the Republicans represent the most direct interests of the plutocracy as well as the neo-empire and are willing to do anything (because they know their backers will reward them well) to serve those interests--at the expense of everyone else.

OK, so no concessions, but talks are OK.  And maybe Obama could negotiate over this: the abolition of the mandatory budget (budget act) for continuing operations, and the abolition of the debt ceiling, both of which should be (as I have argued) unconstitutional.

Anything less that that would be leaving a destroyed democratic system of government, because future terrorists could apply the same tactics, and the precedent will have been established for it to be an effective approach.

But we hear negotiations are over a mere 4 month suspension...then more hostages.  That's not worth a damn thing.  When will it end?

The Congressional Doomsday Machine

Laws like the Budget Act which require Congress to annually pass a budget have worked in the past because anti-government extremists had never gained plurality control of one branch of government before.  But such laws inherently created a doomsday machine, in which inability to agree on new items could close down previously authorized government programs...for an indefinite period.

The Constitution say nothing about a "budget."  It does say Congress should make accounts...but those accounts are for declarative reasons, to show where the people's money is being spent.  It says nothing about re-authorizing the spending for individual or groups of government programs on an annual basis.  That reauthorization is a creature of the Budget Act.  It used to be mildly abused on a frequent basis...a few days of shudown here, a few days there.  The first major abuse was under the Gingrich speakership, which featured a 28 day government shutdown.  And here we are again, with no definite ending in sight.

But as everyone points out, the bigger doomsday machine is the debt ceiling, another creature of congressional law.  It had been used as a negotiating ticking clock, or bomb, but never to the point where there was any inkling it might hit ground.  Until the first debt ceiling crisis in 2011, when it nearly did so.

I continue to say both these laws are unconstitutional.  Their mere existence led to hardball anti-democratic negotiation styles, which was always part of the game.  And they always inherently created an anti-government doomsday machine, which is now appearing right in front of us.

Democracy ought to be as transparent as possible.  And one form of transparency is to not build democracy on riders to laws, stuck in after midnight before the vote.  Laws or packages of laws (such as the Affordable Care Act, which needs to include both new taxes, new regulations, and new spending) ought to be freely debated as to what singular combined effect they are intended to have.  Essentially one new set of laws for each new act of Congress--that is the most transparent way of doing things.  (And so, rarely done...)

Even at best, Budgets and Debt ceilings create a way to reduce the transparency even more, more opportunities to hide or force things without a clear majoritarian vote.  And also permit anti-majoritianism and anti-democracy in various ways, some of which we are seeing right now.

Obama has been at his best in the current crisis, and the Republicans are being exposed as the traitors they are.  But how will this seeps into the right-wingophere remains uncertain.  And that exposes other anti-democratic biases, some even inherent in the Constitution--but mostly not mandated by it, how a comparatively small slice of American opinion can come to dominate, through concentration and monopolization of media, the corruption of campaign financing, unlimited corporate speech, district jerrymandering, and so on.