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Leave it to the New York Times blowhard economist Paul Krugman to exploit the pandemic and dance on the imaginary grave on one of his oldest foes: Reaganism.
Krugman declared in a new op-ed that “The government promised to help — and it did.” This was a pathetic attempt at repudiating late President Ronald Reagan’s famous 1986 warning: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
Krugman based his assessment on the federal government’s stimulus spending, including the recent 5,593-page pork-infested relief package. Krugman was just giddy about what all this abuse of taxpayers’ money meant for Reaganomics. He continued: “So this year is closing out with a second demonstration of the lesson we should have learned in the spring: In times of crisis, government aid to people in distress is a good thing, not just for those getting help, but for the nation as a whole. Or to put it a bit differently, 2020 was the year Reaganism died.”
But the economist didn’t mention how the recent joke of a $2.3 trillion relief package, also included a ton of waste. This included $10 million for gender programs in Pakistan, $86 million for assistance to Cambodia; $130 million to Nepal, $135 million to Burma, $453 million to Ukraine, and $700 million to Sudan, according to The Hill opinion columnist Joe Concha.
But Krugman continued with ridiculous hyperbole for Reaganism: “What I mean by Reaganism goes beyond voodoo economics, the claim that tax cuts have magical power and can solve all problems … No, I mean something broader — the belief that aid to those in need always backfires, that the only way to improve ordinary people’s lives is to make the rich richer and wait for the benefits to trickle down.”
Did Krugman forget that it was “government” at the state levels that forced businesses across the country to shut down, causing massive spikes in unemployment? Krugman himself had spent the year supporting the ongoing lockdowns, and even questioned why the U.S. couldn’t be more like — wait for it — Italy. Krugman even wrote March 28 in support of lockdowns: “What good is increasing G.D.P. if it kills you?”
And yet, Krugman wrote haphazardly that “All this big-government intervention worked,” while admitting in the same paragraph that government lockdowns “temporarily eliminated 22 million jobs.” This is like if Krugman was praising that old Joseph Stalin legend where the Soviet dictator was said to have tortured a chicken before tossing it a “crumb of grain” saying, “That … is how you govern our people.”
According to Krugman, there was “no visible downside” to big government intervention, such as his claim that “huge government borrowing” allegedly didn’t “have the dire consequences deficit scolds always predict. Interest rates stayed low, while inflation remained quiescent.”
This is economic absurdity. The Mercatus Center had noted in July that “the idea that lower interest rates make excessive borrowing essentially painless ignores the future costs of the total stock of debt and debt service repayments.” Mercatus said the “cost is simply shifted into the future in the forms of both higher levels of debt repayment and crowded-out private investment.”
Krugman concluded his propaganda by taking another shot at the Gipper:
[W]hile Reaganism will still be out there, it will now, even more than before, be zombie Reaganism — a doctrine that should have been killed by its encounter with reality, even if it’s still shambling along, eating politicians’ brains.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The New York Times at 800-698-4637 and demand it distance itself from Krugman’s attacks on Reaganism.
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