When Do Deficits Matter?

[Sanguine]

by Kevin D. Williamson
January 9, 2017 7:32 PM

When there are Republican presidents, of course. It has long been rumored that Paul Krugman does not write the New York Times column that appears under his name. I have no reason to believe that that is true, but I hope it is. There are not many situations in which the reputation of a winner of the Nobel prize and the John Bates Clark medal would be improved by an act of intellectual dishonesty, but this is one of them.

Like homelessness and military casualties, U.S. government deficits are an issue that bleep into visibility on the progressive radar almost exclusively during Republican presidencies. On October 23, 2016, Professor Krugman wrote that the “debt scolds should be ignored,” and that Hillary Rodham Clinton, then presumed to be the next president, should engage in “years of deficit-financed infrastructure spending, if she can.” A grand total of 78 days later, Professor Krugman declared, “Deficits matter again.”

As the kids say, Life comes at you pretty fast.

There is some explanation for this beyond simple hypocrisy.

In her very clear-eyed 2010 profile of Professor Krugman, Larissa MacFarquhar, of The New Yorker, considers the economist’s late-life discovery of politics. “In his columns, Krugman is belligerently, obsessively political, but this aspect of his personality is actually a recent development,” she writes, noting that his work has been strongly influenced by his economist wife, who has focused on making his prose “angrier.” She finds Krugman to be an out-of-touch new-media partisan...

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443696/deficits-matter-always-not-just-when-republicans-occupy-white-house?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-01-10&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

[corbe]

Interesting parallels from the article:

The president-elect seems to have similar if less thought-out views, and he is hardly the first. George W. Bush, of the Harvard Business School, was to be the “MBA president,” putting his business expertise into the service of reforming the schools, entitlements, and the tax code, among other things. The events of September 11, 2001, ensured that he never got the chance, but what Bush promised was not so different from what Trump promises and what Ross Perot promised before him: the familiar, ancient formulation of “running the government like a business.”



Of course deficits matter. They mattered during the George W. Bush administration, they mattered during the Barack Obama administration, and they will matter during the Donald Trump administration, though it is always an open question whether congressional Republicans will act like they matter.

   Thanks for posting @Sanguine

 

[Frank Cannon]

Is this the same Kevin D. Williamson shitbag that called me a loser and a retard for not living where educated people live? You know. Places like DC, LA and NYC.

[Sanguine]

Is this the same Kevin D. Williamson shitbag that called me a loser and a retard for not living where educated people live? You know. Places like DC, LA and NYC.

I don't think so, Frank.

[txradioguy]

Krugman was an advisor to Enron...thatbtells me all I need to known about his economic prowess. 

[Frank Cannon]

I don't think so, Frank.

And @Sanguine you would be mistaken.....

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432796/working-class-whites-have-moral-responsibilities-defense-kevin-williamson

I like to point out that this bald fat sack of worthlessness also penned pieces blaming the collapse of black communities on the Progressive govt' running them in previous articles. Not one word about hoping that they up and die and leave his downward gaze. 

[Sanguine]

And @Sanguine you would be mistaken.....

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432796/working-class-whites-have-moral-responsibilities-defense-kevin-williamson

I like to point out that this bald fat sack of worthlessness also penned pieces blaming the collapse of black communities on the Progressive govt' running them in previous articles. Not one word about hoping that they up and die and leave his downward gaze.

But he was talking about the welfare supported places in West Virginia.

[Frank Cannon]

But he was talking about the welfare supported places in West Virginia.

That's the spin now. Anyone really believe that heroin junkies and oxy fiends were heading to Trump rallies? The whole article isn't available because you need a subscription, but I got to read it when it came out and it was dripping in pure hate for anyone voting Trump. He focused on white disaffected voters and all the worthless value they add to his world. Add to that the fact that this guy thinks he is always the smartest guy in the room and has an ego equal to Trumps and it is easy to see that what this piece of shit phony azzhole wrote was a hate screed on a class of people he doesn't like and not what the spinners came up with later to bail him out.

[Sanguine]

And @Sanguine you would be mistaken.....

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432796/working-class-whites-have-moral-responsibilities-defense-kevin-williamson

I like to point out that this bald fat sack of worthlessness also penned pieces blaming the collapse of black communities on the Progressive govt' running them in previous articles. Not one word about hoping that they up and die and leave his downward gaze.

Frank, quoting directly from the piece:

Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432796/working-class-whites-have-moral-responsibilities-defense-kevin-williamson

[Night Hides Not]

That's the spin now. Anyone really believe that heroin junkies and oxy fiends were heading to Trump rallies? The whole article isn't available because you need a subscription, but I got to read it when it came out and it was dripping in pure hate for anyone voting Trump. He focused on white disaffected voters and all the worthless value they add to his world. Add to that the fact that this guy thinks he is always the smartest guy in the room and has an ego equal to Trumps and it is easy to see that what this piece of shit phony azzhole wrote was a hate screed on a class of people he doesn't like and not what the spinners came up with later to bail him out.

I usually like what Williamson has to say, but this was not one of those occasions. Kevin's too far removed from Joe Six-Pack, not unlike opinion writers on the left.

I didn't vote for Trump, but I completely understood why millions did. I described it to a brother-in-law that Trump's appeal was the opportunity for the average American to give DC the finger with both hands. In reply, he said I nailed it.

There are too many editorialists that need to get over the fact that Trump will be in office next Friday, and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. I'm not a fan of Trump, but I like many of his Cabinet picks, and I'm willing to give him a chance once he's in office.