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Friday, July 25, 2014

Krugman of the NYT Confuses Wealth Transfers with Job Creation and Calls for Higher Taxes or More Spending

From 12.1.2009

Krugman of the NYT Confuses Wealth Transfers with Job Creation and Calls for Higher Taxes or More Spending

Abstract: Krugman tediously advocates more and more spending and bigger and bigger government with higher and higher taxes for all known government problems. There is nothing else of interest in this current blurb from the New York Times. The old stale leftist clichés are artfully twisted into a circular argument that is unassailable. This is the same old Tax and Spend song with new notes in a place or two. Our economy will probably collapse.

Today, we are treated to an amusing circular essay on jobs and non jobs and phony jobs and government jobs and the quest for more money to create jobs by an inefficient and costly wealth transfer process. The notion of tax cuts, the process that brought us up from the Jimmy Carter Malaise, is belligerently absent here. We need to spend more! The mumbos and jumbos of government job creation are neatly explained by the teachings and guiding counsel of one Paul Krugman[1][2][3][4] of the New York Times--known affectionately as the Walter Duranty Papers[5] in honor of their Pulitzer Prize winner whose portrait proudly hangs on the wall in New York City to inspire all leftist journalists. The theme is that although jobs were promised they didn’t materialize so the only solutions are, as usual, more taxes and more government spending.

Getting up to date:

“If you’re looking for a job right now, your prospects are terrible.”[6] --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

This comment seems to present evidence that American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the Stimulus Package or the pedestrian notion of redistribution of wealth[7]—aka Stimulus [or porkulus] has failed to stimulate the job markets. We were promised better by President Obama. What happened? It seems Obama promised “…to create or save 600,000 jobs by the end of the summer.”[8]Then we observed some strange accounting gimmicks from recovery.gov that purported to list where the new jobs came from and we find that the government paid out $92,000 per new job.[9]  Many of these jobs were ‘created’ in nonexistent congressional districts? We are thus informed of those facts on the government website recovery.gov. This is a great way to create new jobs: just print money and spread it all around.

Hindsight reconstruction of the need to spend more:

To be fair Krugman was originally in favor of more spending than the mere .787 trillion dollar outlay—the biggest in the history of the know world--and what that insufficient stimulus would be doing would ”... provide only 600 bln in a 2 trillion dollar hole.” He got that right.

On the question of double digit unemployment he comments: “It would peak out to 9%.” [10]  But to be more fair, there is no discussion I could find where Krugman tells us how we handle such massive debt and what it might do to the economy. Spending is just a one note of a two note song for Paul Krugman. Spending rings properly and delightfully in the leftist economic ear in all keys and octaves. He was all for nationalizing at least some banks in Feb 2009: “Why not just go ahead and nationalize? Remember, the longer we live with zombie banks, the harder it will be to end the economic crisis.”[11] Krugman argued in that reference that government support to the banks to rescue them from their zombie status: “To end their zombiehood the banks need more capital. But they can’t raise more capital from private investors. So the government has to supply the necessary funds.” What permeates this circular essay is that Krugman fears that the stockholders [dreaded capitalists] might get some unearned profits or other benefits here. This is just printing money.  As an aside, all our banks are zombies now.

Humming right along…..

“You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. …. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

Can we ignore the other stimuli that failed to do much and wasted money as in the cases where we spent $92,000 per job![12] And, then,  we spent $24,000 per car on the Clunker Follies and a mere $43,000 per house on the housing scam. [13] Now, that is ‘serious’ by liberal standards. We are stunned and mortified that these measures failed. This is how liberal Democrats think:--they avoid direct job creation with tax cuts and stimulation to small businesses by printing money to redistribute the wealth[14] and are surprised that this doesn’t work. That becomes the excuse to spend more!

This essay goes nowhere as Krugman will never acknowledge that small business with appropriate tax cuts and fewer government regulations can create real 70% of the desperately needed jobs—not the phony ones we read about every day. So, he is partially correct but heard in a different pitch that there is no priority in job creation if we have cut taxes and offer profits to capitalists. Thus, our economy is collapsing from massive debt and the bubble machine[15] will make more noises in the near future.

The hopelessness drones on:
“The Federal Reserve, for example, expects unemployment, currently 10.2 percent, to stay above 8 percent — a number that would have been considered disastrous not long ago — until sometime in 2012….So it’s time for an emergency jobs program.” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist
We anxiously wait for the crescendo and the economic solution!

“So our best hope now is for a somewhat cheaper program that generates more jobs for the buck. Such a program should shy away from measures, like general tax cuts, that at best lead only indirectly to job creation, with many possible disconnects along the way. ” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

The ‘Tax Cut Zombies[16] [17] are thus detuned and thrown out of the band![18]

“One such measure would be another round of aid to beleaguered state and local governments, which have seen their tax receipts plunge and which, unlike the federal government, can’t borrow to cover a temporary shortfall. ” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

Translated as: “Let’s bail our California[19][20][21]!”

“Meanwhile, the federal government could provide jobs by ... providing jobs. It’s time for at least a small-scale version of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, one that would offer relatively low-paying (but much better than nothing) public-service employment.” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

Gather the chorus: “The government should be the employer of last resort!!”

First, let us peek deep down into a bottle of J&B Scotch to view the proper role of government:

“Last week Lyndon Johnson surprisingly came out hard for making the U.S. Government the employer of last resort for the "half million hard-core unemployed in our principal cities." In his television interview, he declared: "I am going to call in the businessmen of America and say one of two things has to happen: you have to help me go out and find jobs for these people, or we are going to find jobs in the Government for them. I think it will have to be done, as expensive as it is."[22]— Friday, Dec. 29, 1967 when LBJ was quoted in the Nation: Employer of Last Resort [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

What a way to keep more voters happy![23] How about jobs for illegal aliens too?

“Finally, we can offer businesses direct incentives for employment. It’s probably too late for a job-conserving program, like the highly successful subsidy Germany offered to employers who maintained their work forces. But employers could be encouraged to add workers as the economy expands.” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

Here Krugman refers to the phony German Kurzarbeitergeld [24]that pays workers for not working.[25] In our society that is termed a ‘government’ job.

Here is another thought:

“"...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."[26]—Margaret Thatcher

The echo from the brass section:

“All of this would cost money, probably several hundred billion dollars, and raise the budget deficit in the short run. But this has to be weighed against the high cost of inaction in the face of a social and economic emergency” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

Honking aloud in B-Flat and wheezing in C# over undefined deficits and costs with no firm numbers? Short term?? “High Cost”?? “Incentives to business?”

“Later this week, President Obama will hold a “jobs summit.” Most of the people I talk to are cynical about the event, and expect the administration to offer no more than symbolic gestures. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, we can create more jobs — and yes, we should.” --The Jobs Imperative Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist

Symbolic gestures like the words ‘stimulus?’ I an cynical about that too.

Predictably, Krugman offers nothing else other than tax and spend and never a tax cut to create real jobs in the private sector. Toot1 for new taxes and then a blast off a hearty Toot2 for more spending or reverse theme for retoots.[27] Let us re-sing the songs of depression.

Liberalism never changes.

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com




[1] Krugman Confuses Bacchus, Baucus and Baloney with the Threshold for Healthcare.  Not Enough Big Government in the Latest Episode
http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/09/18/krugman_confuses_bacchus,_baucus_and_baloney_with_the_threshold_for_healthcare__not_enough_big_government_in_the_latest_episode.thtml


[5] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death."Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[6] The Jobs Imperative By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: November 29, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/opinion/30krugman.html?_r=1&em  [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

[17] The Tax-Cut Zombies  By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist. Published: December 23, 2005. http://select.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/opinion/23krugman.html?hp
[18] Krugman Exhausts His Vocabulary by Monotonously Reciting the  Only Two Words He Understands In Economics: Tax And Spend. Let’s Tax the Stock Markets!!
http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/11/27/krugman_exhausts_his_vocabulary_by_monotonously_reciting_the__only_two_words_he_understands_in_economics_tax_and_spend_let%e2%80%99s_tax_the_stock_markets!!.thtml

[22] Friday, Dec. 29, 1967  where LBJ was quoted in the Nation: Employer of Last Resort http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,844296,00.html

[25] Paul Krugman Juggles Apples and Oranges until He has the Perfect New Economic Stew:  Government Subsidies for Idle Workers.
http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/11/14/paul_krugman_juggles_apples_and_oranges_until_he_has_the_perfect_new_economic_stew__government_subsidies_for_idle_workers.thtml

[27] Krugman Exhausts His Vocabulary by Monotonously Reciting the  Only Two Words He Understands In Economics: Tax And Spend. Let’s Tax the Stock Markets!!
http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/11/27/krugman_exhausts_his_vocabulary_by_monotonously_reciting_the__only_two_words_he_understands_in_economics_tax_and_spend_let%e2%80%99s_tax_the_stock_markets!!.thtml

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