If Obama is Listening to Krugman on the Economy, It's No Wonder We're in Trouble

It's Monday, and time for more economic idocy from alleged economist Paul Krugman. In his latest NY Times online column, he really hits one out of the park.

If anyone in Washington is reading any of his columns and acting on them, can there be any wonder that we're in the mess we're in? Sky-high unemployment, record-low comsumer confidence and the wreckage of countless American futures litter the landscape. The answers are obvious, at least they are to anyone outside the Beltway. Our country has been taken over by progressive college professors whose understanding of the world beyond the ivy walls of academia is, um, lacking.

Yeah, that's it, lacking. I'm being extremely nice this morning, don't you think?

Krugman's latest foray into fantasyland would have you believe that the cutbacks in once-essential services are the fault of knuckle-dragging bitter-clingers who just hate government. In noting a few of the more extreme things being cut by cash-strapped local governments, he cites roads not being paved and dark streetlights as a symptom of anti-government zealots who relish the thought of cutting programs.

They're pure evil.

The lights are going out all over America — literally.

...local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled...

We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

So, if we can just somehow manage the grit to hike taxes even higher, then we can turn all of those streetlights back on again? It's just that simple?

Oh, then by all means, let's increase taxes. That's a great idea! Why has no one thought of that before now?

Um, I have a question for you, Mr. K. Whatever happened to the private sector? You know, that area of the world outside your window. The one that you and lots of your friends in Washington seem to dismiss? The sector that the Obama administration looks down upon as evil? The part of the economy that protects those mythical doctors who amputate legs so they get more money?

That part?

You know, it wasn't all that long ago that we had politicians who understood that the private sector was the engine of the country. These dinosaurs knew that the private sector had to remain healthy for government to receive their tax income.

You almost act like you get it, almost. But statements like this make us all wonder just what, if anything, you really understand about our economy, especially when you say things like this;

When we save a schoolteacher’s job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there’s a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

Just sit idle? Um, no. See, that's where you've got it all wrong again, Paul. Instead of engaging in class warfare that doesn't solve any problems but merely serves to pit one American against another for no good reason other than for someone like you to gain political power, you fail to realize just how our economy really works.

You see, wealth is generated, not taken from someone else, as you seem to mistakenly believe. Our free market system doesn't exploit people like you think it does. It's not a zero-sum game where one worker gives up his money to make an evil rich person even more evilly rich. Both make money. Ane when both make money, both pay taxes, which goes into our local governments who maintain the roads and the streetlights and the schools and the teachers. If it truly were a zero-sum game, our economy would never grow. It would remain at some level, never to increase, because the money one person made would be subtracted from someone else.

But you just don't seem to get that part, do you, Mr. Krugman. You insist that it's all the fault of the dastardly right wing.

How did we get to this point? It’s the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can’t do anything right.

Hmmm, so if you're against wasting our tax dollars on something that we really don't need to know, like the effects of cocaine on monkeys for example, then you're also against streetlights? So it's all our fault for wanting our tax dollars to be spent logically? You don't think that the money we spent on coked-up stimulus monkeys could have maybe been spent instead on, oh I don't know, teachers salaries? Or would you prefer that we pay $1.5 million dollars to our elected officials for a part time job?

So, um, yeah Paul, you keep on believing what you just wrote there.

I'll get my economic information elsewhere.