Instaputz points out some real lack of self-awareness in Paul Krugman’s column today attacking the rage of the rich:
You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence. It’s partly a matter of campaign contributions, but it’s also a matter of social pressure, since politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy.
Instaputz:
Fella, I get the Fitzgerald reference, but if you have two three homes (one of which cost $1.7 million) and no kids, you’re rich. And if you also have a Nobel Prize and a column in the Times, you have more influence than any Times readers — i.e., “you” — can possibly imagine.
It’s tone-deaf at best.
It’s nice to see Krugman sort of acknowledge this in a blog post today. Tom “Green Revolution” Friedman, meanwhile, still owns an 11,400 square foot suburban mansion.
— Bloomberg pulls a good news story out of Warren Buffett sidekick Charlie Munger’s appearance at the University of Michigan.
Charles Munger, the billionaire vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., defended the U.S. financial-company rescues of 2008 and told students that people in economic distress should “suck it in and cope.”
“You should thank God” for bank bailouts, Munger said in a discussion at the University of Michigan on Sept. 14, according to a video posted on the Internet. “Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else, there comes a place where if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies.”
It’s true that had we not had bailouts we likely would have seen an economic catastrophe that would have made the current one look like a golden era. The problem is how they were implemented and how nothing happened to those who got bailed out—institutionally or individually. Happily, Bloomberg gets a quote in up high saying much the same thing:
“Charlie Munger is misrepresenting history, and that’s why the public is angry at Wall Street,” said Joshua Rosner, an analyst at research firm Graham Fisher & Co. “We could have wiped out the equity holders before we wiped out the taxpayer.”
Nice.
— Kevin Drum has a good post on income inequality and the various arguments that dance around the simple, plain fact that most of the gains of the last thirty-plus years have gone to the very top.
There’s long been a cottage industry in efforts to show that income inequality isn’t as bad as the raw numbers say it is. Until recently, the most popular tactic was to insist that we should look at consumption instead of income. This was mostly just an attempt at misdirection, but in any case the great credit bubble and bust has made it plain that a lot of recent middle class consumption was fueled by refi and charge card binges that ended disastrously. If anything, this strengthens the case of those who say that income matters after all, so we don’t hear this argument much anymore.
But there are plenty of others. We’re measuring inflation wrong. Cheap plasma TVs and Chicken McNuggets have made the life of the poor better than you’d think by just looking at their earnings. The whole thing is just a statistical artifact of the 1986 tax reform bill. The composition of households has changed, so household income goes farther than it used to. Income distribution looks better if you count government transfers. Etc. etc. etc…
But regardless of the answers to all these questions, there’s still the raw fact that the flow of money in America has changed dramatically over the past few decades.
Make sure to check out the chart.
I don't get your "tone deaf" ryan. You seem to have it in for Krugman. This isn't the first time you have slammed him unfairly. Krugman is very up front about his income, and the fact that he is "well into the range that will pay higher taxes under the Obama plan."
You and Instaputz should read what you are criticizing a little more carefully. Here try this one: The Sorrow And The Self-Pity - NYTimes.com Sheesh.
What, if someone is "rich" they aren't allowed to criticize the whining self-pity of other rich people? It's "tone deaf" to call out the rich people wallowing in the pity party that we are reading in all the major papers? How does that work?
I think you are way off base here, Mr. Chittum.
#1 Posted by James, CJR on Mon 20 Sep 2010 at 08:29 PM
Hi, James--
Krugman's the highest profile economic pundit in the world, so he deserves more scrutiny than most others.
In this case, I just don't think somebody who's very rich gets to claim the proletarian mantle--even for a joke.
Krugman admirably talked about his wealth in a blog post, which both Instaputz and I linked to. But most (an educated guess here) readers of his column don't read his blog.
Anyway, it's hardly a major offense, and I don't think we played it that way. It jumped out at me when I read it this morning and I saw Instaputz's post so knew I wasn't alone. It's just some more self-awareness is called for there.
#2 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Mon 20 Sep 2010 at 09:16 PM
I have no problem with the scrutiny, *if* you were arguing with his facts. But I don't see where he is "claiming the proletarian mantle." I guess you are complaining about his writing style -- you didn't appreciate the Fitzgerald reference. Is that it?
He's not allowed to call out his status peers for being whiney privileged assholes because he makes a lot of money -- a fact that he makes quite clear at every opportunity? I read that as absolutely self-aware, on his part. In fact, there should be MORE wealthy people calling out the unseemly pity party. Most of them are remaining silent, if not jumping in on the side of the whiners. Why not focus some criticism on them?
People of similar income levels are able to level more effective criticism because they cannot be dismissed as envious or ignorant of the travails of the very rich. See what I mean? They should be *encouraged* to criticize these privileged crybabies.
I just don't get where Krugman should be criticized for discussing the unseemly public belly-aching. Joining Krugman is DeLong, Sullivan, maybe Fallows, other top-1%-ers with different styles. I think you and Instaputz are really off base here, criticizing for a style issue and pretending it is on substance.
#3 Posted by James, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 12:22 AM
Style matters, James. That's the point of the original post. It's not nearly as important as substance, but it matters.
#4 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 11:05 AM
By James' standard, those conservative politicians caught canoodling (or trying to) w/ prostitutes or in airport bathrooms are not guilty of hypocrisy, because the measures they support would not benefit them and their peccadillos. Eric Pooley used the same pretzel logic to defend John Edwards against those who noted the disjunction of his left-wing politics and his right-wing personal lifestyle.
Let's put the rule this way - any pundit who urges higher taxes on those who have less wealth or income than the pundit should be called out as the clueless Krugman is being called out. I'll go further and argue that anyone working for a company in an almost unregulated industry - such as the press - should have to answer why he or she favors regulations on other industries but not on their own. Anyone heard of using the power of government to preserve one's own status?
James is apparently unaware that there are plenty of people who don't make $250,000 a year - but who hope to, or who depend somewhat on those who do.
It's nice to be able to praise Ryan for a change.
#5 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 12:24 PM
Okay, that post made no sense, Mark.
"By James' standard, those conservative politicians caught canoodling (or trying to) w/ prostitutes or in airport bathrooms are not guilty of hypocrisy, because the measures they support would not benefit them and their peccadillos."
Krugman's mistake was to claim he was of a kind in fiscal terms with people he is of a kind with in interests and affiliation. He is not a member of their anti-government, more for themselves and less for everybody else's crowd any more than George Carlin was:
(George Carlin link, NSWF of course) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
but they were in their club income wise. Essential philosophical differences between people of similar means and similar influence, though I'd argue Krugman's influence has been muted amongst those with power in spite of the fact that Krugman has a bigger general audience than say Robert Rubin or Jamie Dimon. Krugman wants to differentiate himself from that pampered, "I deserve my tax payer funded bonuses and DON'T YOU DARE RAISE MY TAXES BY 3%, YOU KENYAN KEYNESIAN NAZIS" club.
That's not the equivalent of Newt Gingrich cheating on several of his wives while decrying the decline of family values, that's not the same as fiscal conservatives who cry "Deficits! Debt!" when it comes to sustaining entitlements, maintaining infrastructure, and stimulating the economy and then wail for more trillion dollar holes in federal budgets for military / security pork and upper bracket tax cuts. This is not the same as Eliot Spitzer soliciting escorts while he was busting up the prostitution business.
And you should know better.
"Let's put the rule this way - any pundit who urges higher taxes on those who have less wealth or income than the pundit should be called out as the clueless Krugman is being called out."
That makes no sense. Policy expertise is independent of income. Let's put it this way, if someone puts forth a policy recommendation, evaluate the fricken recommendation on its own merits. Clueless is independent of income level, though, by watching how many of the upper bracket behave, I'm made to wonder.
"I'll go further and argue that anyone working for a company in an almost unregulated industry - such as the press - should have to answer why he or she favors regulations on other industries but not on their own."
Another nonsensical point. 3 for three. What's going on with you tonight?
I'll go further than you and argue that ANYONE should have to answer why he or she favors a set of regulations, period. By definition, we don't need regulations in an area where a need cannot be defined. People who make policy recommendations should be able to make a good argument for their recommendations.
So then, if a person can define the need and can make a good argument for regulation, then we should evaluate the need and the argument, not the status of the industry said recommender hails from. It's a distraction except in the cases in which the recommender has made a bad recommendation based on bad arguments or misrepresented needs. In that situation, we can discuss motivation behind the bad analysis.
So Mark, is it true you're a nigerian prince with an anti-colonialist background who wishes to protect his assets by sending them to the bank account of some lucky american? People want to know about these things.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 02:09 PM
@Ryan,
You did a fine and substantive critique of D'Souza's atrocity which I admired greatly and for which you have suffered undeserved slings and arrows from the rightwing trolls on the site. In that piece, you focused on the substance of what was written, debunking a number of distortions and calling out the abject racism and the outright lies in the Forbes piece. Of all the critiques of this piece throughout the blogosphere, yours was a standout because your solid background in economics and business allowed you to focus your critique on facts -- false assertions of economic and business policies -- rather than mere handwringing over the outright racism, which was bad enough. I greatly admired your piece, and said as much in the comments.
To see you nitpicking Krugman, then, is very disappointing. You are nitpicking a half-jokey reference to a literary piece. It is a standard of Krugman style -- he references literature, rock-and-roll songs, even old show tunes in his columns and blog posts. I can't imagine why that would be off-putting to you, but evidently it is. I can only roll my eyes at such nitpicky nonsense.
I'm given to believe that, having taken so much heat for your admirable debunking of D'Souza, you feel compelled to engage in some false equivalence with the liberal side, and finding nothing even close to the Forbes atrocity, nitpick Krugman, whom you evidently dislike, based on nothing. No, style is not as important as substance. It is not important at all.
Cheers.
#7 Posted by James, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 02:37 PM
Instaputz decries the Fitzgerald reference, but I think it has a place here:
Fitzgerald: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft, where we are hard, cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."
Krugman: "You see, the rich are different from you and me... So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.
And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices.
But when they say “we,” they mean “you.” Sacrifice is for the little people."
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 02:53 PM
James,
It wasn't a major deal and I don't think the way I wrote about it implied it was. I briefed it, basically, in a three-part post. That's just the way I saw it. Nothing against ol Krugsy.
#9 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 05:12 PM
To Thimbles, yes, my point does make sense if you apply the same standards of consistency across the board politically. Your exoneration of 'liberal' hypocrisy is tortured where it doesn't consist of non-sequitors or else no response at all; sometimes I think bourgeois liberal ideology constists almost entirely of attempts at watertight, self-exculpatory arguments that absolve them from any accusation of hypocrisy, in the event of bad behavior by their politicos, or bad outcomes of their policies. "It's not ever our fault! Because our intentions were noble!"
James excused Krugman's advocacy of higher taxes on the rich because Krugman is 'up front' about being in that class of earners who will be taxed. The idea is the old one of excusing rich liberals for apparent cognitive dissonance, on the grounds that they are advocating something that (supposedly) will not benefit them personally.
In the same manner, a politician who is a patron of prostitutes but urges laws against prostitution is 'principled' only in the sense that he is justifying his own possible arrest under some 'higher' principle, that of 'clean' streets. (In Krugman's case - people like me shouldn't take home as much as I presently take home, after taxes.) I think left-liberal people really underestimate how much that policies which sound good and progressive, principally in tax and regulatory policy, end up assisting people who already have their piles. Taxes and regulation reduce income mobility upward, and Krugman should have to answer the question from people who want to live like Paul Krugman - 'How do you justify making me work harder than you had to in order to have what you have?'
Even liberals should be trouble by a narrowing tax base. Critics of the volunteer military note that the military has become almost a separate class, whereas the draft did produce a certain democracy of sacrifice across class lines. In the same way, there is an argument to be made that all citizens should participate in the cost of government. Contrary to what you might think, I'm not a reflexive anti-tax or anti-government ideologue; I believe government should provide real services, and that consumers should pay for them. Liberals don't like the idea of 'two nations', one rich and one poor. In the same way, they should look askance at the progressive loading of the federal tax burden on slim number of people. This starts to strike me as Third-Worldish.
#10 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 05:38 PM
@ Ryan,
I'll concede that you didn't write it up as a major deal. In turn, I didn't bash your post as an egregious outrage but criticized it as needlessly nitpicky. So, we are agreed.
Peace.
#11 Posted by James, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 09:19 PM
"To Thimbles, yes, my point does make sense if you apply the same standards of consistency across the board politically."
No, it really doesn't. Just because Paul Krugman makes the same income as the rich does not mean he comes from the same culture or has the same attitudes as the rich. He sees himself as different and, by that measure, he is. Now maybe he should have made it more clear in the piece mentioned, but a small error in clarification does not equate to great errors in gross hypocrisy. You can't equate "I should have mentioned - I and these sociopaths, who steal money from your government after crashing the economy and taking the resulting bailouts... all the while complaining about how ungrateful we are to them, have big bank statements in common." to John Edwards or Newt Gingrich projecting the perception of wholesome family while living a debauched and unfaithful lifestyle. They're different in nature and in size.
"The idea is the old one of excusing rich liberals for apparent cognitive dissonance, on the grounds that they are advocating something that (supposedly) will not benefit them personally."
People advocate for things that are not in their immediate interest all the time. Parents buy school books and materials not for themselves, but for the greater good of their children.
People who advocate for climate change legislation, increased infrastructure spending, and increased taxes to pay for it are recognizing the greater good of the whole.
"Even liberals should be trouble by a narrowing tax base."
Yeah, that's something we worry about since that is a function of growing income inequality.
"In the same way, they should look askance at the progressive loading of the federal tax burden on slim number of people. This starts to strike me as Third-Worldish."
The reason why the tax burden is loaded on a slim number of people in the third world is because a slim number of people have all the money. This leads to corruption, instability, and mass poverty.
Social Democracies do not have these problems even with a much higher tax burden which pays for a much more through safety net.
#12 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 21 Sep 2010 at 11:10 PM
Ryan Chittum's work is extraordinary, but on this one he misses the mark by wide margin.
From a self-interest perspective, Krugman is writing against self-interest.
Does Ryan think the ideologues on the right in Congress actually read him? (I have seen some say on TV they do not or have only a vague familiarity when of course details matter a great deal).
And Krugman has zero influence of the kind that those with real influence in lobbying do. They draft language for laws and regulations and work on Capitol Hill mostly through secret meetings, access bought through campaign donations. Krugman deals in broad strokes with policy.
Columnists express opinions in public; lobbyists work in secret when they can and with minimal disclosure of what they are doing.
The columnist is part of the democratic process as envisioned by the Founders (who adopted the First Amendment in an era when newspapers just made things up), while what lobbyists represent today is largely a money-fueled perversion of First Amendment write to petition. Remember, in the 1870s corporations were severely limited, unlike the rules today.
And I'd defend Holman Jenkins on the same grounds if riffed off a line from, say. Ayn Rand.
Columnizing is not lobbying.
#13 Posted by David Cay Johnston, CJR on Wed 22 Sep 2010 at 05:40 PM
Thanks for the kind words, David.
I agree with all your points. I just don't think his little joke worked, even if he was not writing out of self-interest--and I agree that makes a difference. But I think this is one of those things that makes non-elites roll their eyes when they read it. An "oh, brother" moment.
Again, though, it's hardly a huge deal. And as always, I could be wrong!
#14 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Wed 22 Sep 2010 at 09:19 PM
Thimbles, if you read my last post again, I say why I emphatically disagree with the assumption that rich liberals are selflessly sacrificing their own interests for a higher good when they urge higher taxes and stronger regulations. Krugman got richer during a period of lower taxes for his income class. Now he is urging that others be denied the same playing ground.
People on the Left have a static view of a dynamic world. There are a lot of people not making $250,000 a year who nevertheless hope to some day. That's why they buy lottery tickets and try out for 'American Idol' . . . and start businesses that may be small today but aspire to grow. Krugman is saying to everyone below his income level: "I got richer while tax rates were lower; I oppose you having the same opportunity I had." This may help slow learners understand why so many rich people (Democrats represent most of the highest-wealth Congressional districts in the country, from Malibu to Martha's Vineyard) instinctively support so many 'left-leaning' causes, especially if those causes disadvantage other people, i.e., potential competitors for status, from getting richer.
#15 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 23 Sep 2010 at 12:59 PM
Mark, that makes no sense.
Krugman didn't get his opportunity from lower taxes, he got his opportunities through his talent and his education, one that was less expensive for students in the 70's, partly because the public educational system was subsidized by higher state tax rates and partly because the union organized manufacturing sector did not require university graduates to produce a affluent middle class lifestyle. Therefore, the demand for university education was less, producing a lower cost.
Republicans have taken these opportunities away from the general public as they have transformed them opportunities away from being public goods and more towards being expensive and unregulated commodities.
Plus, I don't see what the huge opportunity being lost is. "My income, above $250,000, is going to be taxed AN EXTRA 3 to 4 PERCENT! I HAVEN'T BEEN TAXED LIKE THAT SINCE 1999! GOOD GOD, INNUMERABLE ARE THE DREAMS THAT SHALL REMAIN UNREALIZED, KRUGMAN!"
When you combine that with your statement "People on the Left have a static view of a dynamic world," as opposed to say... "Conservatives" I just have to shake my head.
What am I supposed to argue with here? I don't mind having discussions with coherent people whom I disagree with, but things like the above are inane arguments. I don't want to argue with you about stuff like "how sharks should part their hair." because I don't care whether it's left or right; I care about the shark not having any hair to begin with.
And rich people who make over $250,000 have not suffered, nor will suffer, a dearth of opportunity. They'll get an expiry stamp on the Bush tax cuts, which should never have been set up in the first place, because they cost the country the opportunity to pay debt down and to maintain a balanced budget.
And, once upon a time, that was the very essence of being conservative.
#16 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 23 Sep 2010 at 03:21 PM
Tone deaf? Is Krugman complaining that he is asked to pay taxes? No, he is not.
Chittum is the one who is tone deaf.
Krugman is influential because of what he writes, not because he is rich. He is rich because he is influential, unlike, say, Steve Forbes, who is influential because he is rich -- with money he never made.
#17 Posted by Harry Eagar, CJR on Thu 23 Sep 2010 at 07:42 PM
Thimbles, you argue that Krugman got his lucre through his talent and education. Fair enough. But so did a lot of other people who aren't teachers and journalists. And so will a lot of other people (including some younger Paul Krugmans) if they have the opportunities to get rich that he had. People who have gotten rich under (economically) more liberal rules, and now want to change those rules, have some explaining to do to those with similar aspirations, whether you want to concede that or not. Ryan's hardly a conservative, but it was more than even he could take with a straight face, and he is being truer to genuinely leftist analysis by doing so than are the apologists for the champagne socialists.
To try again, taxes and regulations favor the 'ins', not the outs wanting in. The Democratic Party has turned into a coalition of the affluent and the poor, if you look at voting results by district over the years. That's why people on 'the Left' - really a social category rather than an economic one - are perpetually frustrated, in spite of every experiment you can think of in the 20th century at reducing income inequality while trying to promote wealth creation. Based on your exoneration of Krugman, you seem, like a lot of people on the Left, to be in favor of people getting rich by writing and lawyering and teaching, but not by financial risk-taking or producing things that people can drive, wear, live in, take for an illness - one of the conflicts unrecognized in our political discourse, which still is mired in the 'rich vs. poor' theory of American politics and remains, Thomas Frank-style, bewildered at more complexity than that. So we get people who are rich talking about 'the rich' as if that doesn't mean themselves, too. A lot of this 'left-right' stuff really boils down to a struggle for status (as Krugman himself hints with his 'social pressure and influence' remark) among elites, rather than selfless interest in the higher good. The tendency of entrenched wealth to regard as 'parvenus' and vulgar 'strivers' those wishing to become rich, or who are newly rich, is not exactly a new or previously unknown social tendency.
It strikes me that Paul Krugman has done very well under this supposed reign of economic terror that has been conducted since he got out of college, but his career indicates a self-awareness factor of approximately nil.
Citing the rising cost of higher education as a factor in inequality is really - well - rich. Pardon my asking, but isn't Krugman an academic? Working in an industry whose prices have outpaced inflation by a healthy margin for 30 years or more, in no small part thanks to the heavy subsidies of the state? Your contention that higher education costs have risen because of lack of state subsidy has it exactly backward. If you give people financial aid in buying fuel, do you think the prices and profits of oil companies are going to go down? Higher education has never been as subsidized as it is today. A close friend is an academic, and states flatly that the main skill necessary to be hired by a university lies in writing grant applications, not teaching. I live near a large university and have had dealings with it. Great people, but the school is a giant property-development corporation with classes as a side business, compared to what it was in the 1970s. It is the largest employer in the wide area, and whatever it wants, it gets from the public sector in a way that a profit-making corporation could only dream of.
As usual, your energetic efforts at arguing 'who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes' do you some credit.
#18 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 23 Sep 2010 at 08:22 PM
"Thimbles, you argue that Krugman got his lucre through his talent and education. Fair enough. But so did a lot of other people who aren't teachers and journalists. And so will a lot of other people (including some younger Paul Krugmans) if they have the opportunities to get rich that he had. People who have gotten rich under (economically) more liberal rules, and now want to change those rules, have some explaining to do to those with similar aspirations, whether you want to concede that or not."
*shakes head* Don't believe me, believe your lying eyes.
http://www.slate.com/id/2266174/slideshow/2266174/fs/0//entry/2266218/
Study the whole slideshow. There's a lot of data to digest but come on, to be making that argument after the last decade we suffered through.
"To try again, taxes and regulations favor the 'ins', not the outs wanting in."
Wrong, or an overgeneralization at best. Taxes favor the outtie when they're levied against the innie to subsidize tuition, scholarships, and other benefits for the outties. Regulation favors the outties when it exists to protect the outties from innie malfeasance. Do I have to talk like a child to communicate this?
"Based on your exoneration of Krugman, you seem, like a lot of people on the Left, to be in favor of people getting rich by writing and lawyering and teaching, but not by financial risk-taking or producing things that people can drive, wear, live in, take for an illness - one of the conflicts unrecognized in our political discourse, which still is mired in the 'rich vs. poor' theory of American politics and remains, Thomas Frank-style, bewildered at more complexity than that."
Remind me, where is the support and opposition for stemcell research coming from. The left that I know is not in favor of lowest labor/environmental denominator, highest profit margin business. And so should you, unless you enjoy the pre-added oil with your fried fish.
"Citing the rising cost of higher education as a factor in inequality is really - well - rich. Pardon my asking, but isn't Krugman an academic? Working in an industry whose prices have outpaced inflation by a healthy margin for 30 years or more"
Krugman being an academic has no effect on the trend discussed, which is well established, as you can see from the ninth slide above or from this report
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/06/unemployment-rate-and-level-of.html
And the fact that the prices have outpaced inflation shows that the market is not functioning properly. This has nothing to do with state grants for research, this has to do with a high demand confronting a low supply and the states have done little to make the supply more accessible and affordable. Ryan presented the chart the other day showing how the student loan racket has students over a barrel while Sallie Mae rakes in the money. When it comes to education, conservatives have pulled up the ladders and barricaded the gates. Liberals want more education: accessible, high quality, and open, but that takes money.. Tax money. These are the taxes Europeans pay to grant free university education to students so that the academic competition is based on the quality of minds, not their inherited opportunities.
But not in America. No, in America people threaten revolt on the scenario that percentage point tax cuts are about to be rescinded. "Don't you see? You're taking a few percentage points of opportunity away from the very very rich. And what do you plan to use that money for? Jobs? Education and training? Simple basic nutrition? Libraries? How are any of those going to make opportunities for the "outties" who want to make over $250,000 but can't because, due to the... OH LOOK! A LEMMING!.., a reversion
#19 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 10:54 AM
This is usually a lunchtime activity for me, so I'll have to have more time to devote to Timothy Noah's thesis that everything's good under Democratic administrations and bad under Republican ones. Noah, an increasingly querulous Democratic journalist, may have fallen into the 'me or your own eyes' trap, too, to judge from consumer voting.
Let's just say that we're drifting off-topic, as frequently happens when Thimbles is giving his or her all on behalf of Paul Krugman. For now, I'll stick the what I wrote above and, as you do, let readers decide if they have any skepticism toward these limousine liberals in New York and Hollywood who do not often practice in their own lives what they preach to others. Money is to the Democrats what sex is to the Republicans - desired, distrusted, a source of excitement and guilt . . .
#20 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 12:40 PM
Krug does his own response to people like Mark.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/authenticity/
#21 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 27 Sep 2010 at 06:59 PM