34 Replies to “Paul Krugman Has A Nobel Prize in Economics”
Darn.The author beat me to the space aliens residing in this gumba’s head! But then,isn’t the Zero’s Nobel for Peace working wonders also???Alfred Nobel must be wishing he could test his dynamite on the Useless Nations.
Somehow, I don’t think that building a fence along the U.S. southern border would be as much economic stimulus as Paul Krugman thinks it will.
Host Zakaria commented: “…wouldn’t John Maynard Keynes say that if you could employ people to dig a ditch and then fill it up again, that’s fine, they’re being productively employed, they’d pay taxes, so maybe Boston’s Big Dig was just fine after all.”
The error – and it’s an obvious one to all but the clueless – is thinking that the ditch-diggers are productively employed (this is not the same scenario as the Big Dig, which did build a road). They’re not making anything for consumers, and the economic decisions of business are supposed to be made to satisfy consumer needs or wants. What if everybody dropped what they were doing and instead dug ditches and re-filled them for two or three years?
I suspect the reason the economy seemed to do fairly well during the major wars is that people cut their consumption, either voluntarily to help the war effort or because they had no real choice.
Krugman’s comments started out saying if we discovered space aliens were planning to attack, but the second part finished up by saying “we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus”, so it’s unclear how far he goes.
But if he really believes all this ditch-digging crap, the Nobel Committee should rescind his Prize.
“No, there was a “Twilight Zone” episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace.”
No, there was an “Outer Limits” episode sort of like this. In the end the doctor, transformed by the meddling group of “United Labs” scientists into the alien intending to create panic with a ray-gun and spaceship to force a UN-agreed global order, is killed by three duck hunters with shotguns before the plan can be hatched. The “Twilight Zone” episode he’s thinking of is when an alien race comes to Earth and gives us one day to prove our worth as a species. Next thing you know all the leaders unite and declare world peace– but the aliens really wanted to see Earth prepare to defend itself, so they just take over.
So there you have it… even in discussing a fictionalized world, the facts prove Krugman to be dangerously confused.
So, if it wasn’t for Iraq and Afghanistan the economy would be even worse?
nv53, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nobel Committee believes the ditch digging crap, too.
Government spending did have a stimulating effect on the economy during WW2. The problem with that theory is it only works up to a point. If government spending going from up from 5% to 10 % of the economy has a stimulating effect, it doesn’t necessarily follow that if it foes from 55% to 60% it wil have the same effect. At that point it has already been stimulated to death.
One factor that’s being ignored by these “intellectuals” is that cheap energy and advances in technology are what drove the post WWII recovery. Things got built in a hurry in the 1940’s and I’m sure that building the equivalent of the Alaska highway nowadays would take decades, and that’s before any actual construction took place.
The post WWII era was one where gasoline was cheap, electricity was cheap, and I remember reading in elementary school how nuclear power would make electricity so cheap it would no longer have to be metered. The other thing that was abundant supply back then was optimism and a feeling that if any problems came up during a major project, people would be able to improvise solutions as they went along.
Now, we have a huge bureaucracy whose only job is to make sure that nothing gets done and anything that might involve some risk, however tiny, requires years of investigation before people are allowed to proceed. There weren’t many millionaires during the dark ages and that’s the direction the world’s economy is headed if the watermelons have their way.
Space aliens could be useful in getting us out of this economic mess by sending down 50 m spheres of rock at about 20 km/sec precisely aimed at all of the major capitals of the world. The sudden disappearance of the majority of stifling bureaucracy in the world would lead to an instant economic revival. In the US Wall Street would need to be included as a target as it seems to be occupied by individuals who have forgotten that the purpose of stock markets was to raise money for companies who actually planned on doing something with it rather than the current state where it is viewed as a game to be played to walk away with free money and not producing anything.
If he keeps this up, Krugman will have to move into Friedman’s basement.
Krugman, professionally speaking, has become a joke. He won his Nobel for work in microeconomics; meaning, he is not even as expert in macroeconomics as are the know nothings who steered the American economy into a ditch, then gunned the engine.
The NYT ombudsman wrote this about Krugman: “Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” In other words, he’s just another leftist troll in the blogosphere.
The other economist in that spot is Ken Rogoff, who has urged Bernanke to crank up US inflation for a few years, to burn away the value of some of the US treasury debt. And citizen’s savings.
There is no reason why public universities should have macroeconomists in their employ, given their repeated demonstrations of the harmfulness or at best irrelevancy over the last few years. They all are either leftists themselves, or are too fearful to buck the conventional liberal ” wisdom ” of the macroeconomic establishment.
@minuteman…I believe the term is “the law of diminishing returns”…I learned that in Economics 101.
Is Krugman’s alien comment the best he can come up with to sell liberalism? No wonder these liberal “intellectuals” create and vociferously defend their PC intellectual hothouses: they need an environment where critics bearing valid criticisms of their work are forbidden entrance, lest everyone immediately realize what a fool the liberal is.
Here’s a hint for Krugman: Private investment is what produces investment, jobs, and growing national income. Presently, private investment is very low because sane people recognize that a $1.5 trillion deficit in the US requires $1.5 trillion in new taxes and Obama considers corporations villains. To close the gap, Obama will propose $1.5 trillion in taxes, and virtually all will be levied on the evil corporations, leaving the after tax return to shareholders of those investments lower than passbook savings. Given these facts, the rational manager or investor will keep an unusually large portion of cash in on hand, until the Obama storm looks to be passing. As of right now, investors, realize their investment will be expropriated by Obama, the first chance he gets.
Poor doggie!
It’s not uncommon thinking. On, I think, Arlene Bynon last week some expert declared laying government workers off would help the US debt problem. They would ago on unemployment, you see, and tax revenues would decrease, thereby increasing the deficit. No taking their full salary into account when figuring the deficit.
The comment went completely unchallenged.
Correction above: Should read, “… some expert declared laying government workers off *wouldn’t* help the US debt problem.”
Amazing eh! Both Turdeau and Robert Mugabe had University degrees as well. Turdeau saddled Canadians with so much structural debt we still haven’t climbed out of the hole and Robert Mugabe printed so much stimulus money that it has attained the status of a*swipe, albiet poor a*swipe as it rips Zimbaweans hemmoroids. I’ll bet on the your dog as having more brains than Krugman, Turdeau and Mugabe. At least he knows when to quit digging a hole…..
Paul Krugman actually advocated space aliens attack earth thereby requiring a massive defense buildup by the United States that would stimulate the economy
Yeah? And I’m considered the weird one???????
“the know nothings who steered the American economy into a ditch, then gunned the engine. ”
They say not to worry because they called the tow-truck, but when nobody is looking they slash the tires and beat the engine with sledgehammers.
The keynsian econimists point to USA deficit spending as to what finally pulled the world out of the depression…..in that they are only partially correct.
{rior to Pearl Harbour, the US government had invested in the Hoover Dam and the TVA with no real improvement in the economy.
Then overseas markets began buying US military assets…especially Britain and France…but when war was declared full employment…as the war industries were assembled…labour and steel shortages occurred. Rationing controlled consumer spending and War Bonds absorbed the civilian savings.
When the dust cleared the US had sustained little physical damage but had drained a huge proportion of the worlds wealth..selling armaments…
Problem was with defence contracts cancelled and the reintroduction of veterans, the influx of what had ecomically speaking unproductive millions into the labour force…the industries and the economy had to retool to consumer production……
OBUMER’s stimulus didn’t finance a captive overseas market for goods(armaments).
By VJ day the US was rich and the rest of the world was broke…and burned out literally.
On the bright side, their ears are cropped the same.
Maybe Paul is interested in an “illudium 238 space-modulator”.
Hasn’t been used since a 60’s Buggs Bunny cartoon. Only fired once…. and worked at that time!
Ah,the earth-shattering kaboom!
In _V for Vendetta_ part of the reason the Norsefire party got elected was their willingness to do something about the rampant violent immigrant communities.
In _Starship Troopers_, the Federation was formed by military veterans who were the only ones ready and willing to fight back against the lawless elements of a collapsed social democratic state.
In _Watchmen_, the archvillain schemes to get the world’s governments to unite in common cause against a fake space alien invasion.
Suddenly my wasted youth of gaming and comics doesn’t seem so wasted after all.
So now we have a Nobel prize winner in economics who has embraced the business case of the Underpants Gnomes:
Phase 1: Prepare for alien invasion
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Prosperity
Yes, but your dog is a thoroughbred.
Yeah Paul, before the episode of The Twilight Zone you mentioned, there was a fable called Chicken Little. You should go back and read the ending you delusional a**.
Correction… Paul Krugman has a Noble Prize in Economics, and your dog doesn’t… YET
If Krugman can get a Prize in Economics and Obama get a Peace Nobel, I think there is a good deal of hope for little Rover yet.
Both of them eat their own shit, but your dog didn’t get $50,000 from Enron.
Given the pedigree of recent Nobel winners I’m pretty sure your doggie is better than that.
My dog does _not_ eat his own shit.
Paul Krugman Has to justify his Marxist messiahs failed economic policies. Not failed really, they are meant to disintegrate.
So he resorts to space men to justify Keynesian lunacy. To absolve his beloved Obama.
JMO
You guys need to google “project bluebeam”.
Krugman is just telling us what the plan actually is.
Darn.The author beat me to the space aliens residing in this gumba’s head! But then,isn’t the Zero’s Nobel for Peace working wonders also???Alfred Nobel must be wishing he could test his dynamite on the Useless Nations.
Somehow, I don’t think that building a fence along the U.S. southern border would be as much economic stimulus as Paul Krugman thinks it will.
Host Zakaria commented: “…wouldn’t John Maynard Keynes say that if you could employ people to dig a ditch and then fill it up again, that’s fine, they’re being productively employed, they’d pay taxes, so maybe Boston’s Big Dig was just fine after all.”
The error – and it’s an obvious one to all but the clueless – is thinking that the ditch-diggers are productively employed (this is not the same scenario as the Big Dig, which did build a road). They’re not making anything for consumers, and the economic decisions of business are supposed to be made to satisfy consumer needs or wants. What if everybody dropped what they were doing and instead dug ditches and re-filled them for two or three years?
I suspect the reason the economy seemed to do fairly well during the major wars is that people cut their consumption, either voluntarily to help the war effort or because they had no real choice.
Krugman’s comments started out saying if we discovered space aliens were planning to attack, but the second part finished up by saying “we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus”, so it’s unclear how far he goes.
But if he really believes all this ditch-digging crap, the Nobel Committee should rescind his Prize.
“No, there was a “Twilight Zone” episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace.”
No, there was an “Outer Limits” episode sort of like this. In the end the doctor, transformed by the meddling group of “United Labs” scientists into the alien intending to create panic with a ray-gun and spaceship to force a UN-agreed global order, is killed by three duck hunters with shotguns before the plan can be hatched. The “Twilight Zone” episode he’s thinking of is when an alien race comes to Earth and gives us one day to prove our worth as a species. Next thing you know all the leaders unite and declare world peace– but the aliens really wanted to see Earth prepare to defend itself, so they just take over.
So there you have it… even in discussing a fictionalized world, the facts prove Krugman to be dangerously confused.
So, if it wasn’t for Iraq and Afghanistan the economy would be even worse?
nv53, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nobel Committee believes the ditch digging crap, too.
Government spending did have a stimulating effect on the economy during WW2. The problem with that theory is it only works up to a point. If government spending going from up from 5% to 10 % of the economy has a stimulating effect, it doesn’t necessarily follow that if it foes from 55% to 60% it wil have the same effect. At that point it has already been stimulated to death.
One factor that’s being ignored by these “intellectuals” is that cheap energy and advances in technology are what drove the post WWII recovery. Things got built in a hurry in the 1940’s and I’m sure that building the equivalent of the Alaska highway nowadays would take decades, and that’s before any actual construction took place.
The post WWII era was one where gasoline was cheap, electricity was cheap, and I remember reading in elementary school how nuclear power would make electricity so cheap it would no longer have to be metered. The other thing that was abundant supply back then was optimism and a feeling that if any problems came up during a major project, people would be able to improvise solutions as they went along.
Now, we have a huge bureaucracy whose only job is to make sure that nothing gets done and anything that might involve some risk, however tiny, requires years of investigation before people are allowed to proceed. There weren’t many millionaires during the dark ages and that’s the direction the world’s economy is headed if the watermelons have their way.
Space aliens could be useful in getting us out of this economic mess by sending down 50 m spheres of rock at about 20 km/sec precisely aimed at all of the major capitals of the world. The sudden disappearance of the majority of stifling bureaucracy in the world would lead to an instant economic revival. In the US Wall Street would need to be included as a target as it seems to be occupied by individuals who have forgotten that the purpose of stock markets was to raise money for companies who actually planned on doing something with it rather than the current state where it is viewed as a game to be played to walk away with free money and not producing anything.
If he keeps this up, Krugman will have to move into Friedman’s basement.
I think you mean he has the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences
So, if I’ve got this right, massive debt plus going to war = economic recovery. Brilliant!
And your dogs are much better groomed than Krugman too, Kate. Although they don’t have a nice a doghouse…
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/paul-krugmans-house/
Krugman, professionally speaking, has become a joke. He won his Nobel for work in microeconomics; meaning, he is not even as expert in macroeconomics as are the know nothings who steered the American economy into a ditch, then gunned the engine.
The NYT ombudsman wrote this about Krugman: “Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” In other words, he’s just another leftist troll in the blogosphere.
The other economist in that spot is Ken Rogoff, who has urged Bernanke to crank up US inflation for a few years, to burn away the value of some of the US treasury debt. And citizen’s savings.
There is no reason why public universities should have macroeconomists in their employ, given their repeated demonstrations of the harmfulness or at best irrelevancy over the last few years. They all are either leftists themselves, or are too fearful to buck the conventional liberal ” wisdom ” of the macroeconomic establishment.
@minuteman…I believe the term is “the law of diminishing returns”…I learned that in Economics 101.
Is Krugman’s alien comment the best he can come up with to sell liberalism? No wonder these liberal “intellectuals” create and vociferously defend their PC intellectual hothouses: they need an environment where critics bearing valid criticisms of their work are forbidden entrance, lest everyone immediately realize what a fool the liberal is.
Here’s a hint for Krugman: Private investment is what produces investment, jobs, and growing national income. Presently, private investment is very low because sane people recognize that a $1.5 trillion deficit in the US requires $1.5 trillion in new taxes and Obama considers corporations villains. To close the gap, Obama will propose $1.5 trillion in taxes, and virtually all will be levied on the evil corporations, leaving the after tax return to shareholders of those investments lower than passbook savings. Given these facts, the rational manager or investor will keep an unusually large portion of cash in on hand, until the Obama storm looks to be passing. As of right now, investors, realize their investment will be expropriated by Obama, the first chance he gets.
Poor doggie!
It’s not uncommon thinking. On, I think, Arlene Bynon last week some expert declared laying government workers off would help the US debt problem. They would ago on unemployment, you see, and tax revenues would decrease, thereby increasing the deficit. No taking their full salary into account when figuring the deficit.
The comment went completely unchallenged.
Correction above: Should read, “… some expert declared laying government workers off *wouldn’t* help the US debt problem.”
Amazing eh! Both Turdeau and Robert Mugabe had University degrees as well. Turdeau saddled Canadians with so much structural debt we still haven’t climbed out of the hole and Robert Mugabe printed so much stimulus money that it has attained the status of a*swipe, albiet poor a*swipe as it rips Zimbaweans hemmoroids. I’ll bet on the your dog as having more brains than Krugman, Turdeau and Mugabe. At least he knows when to quit digging a hole…..
Paul Krugman actually advocated space aliens attack earth thereby requiring a massive defense buildup by the United States that would stimulate the economy
Yeah? And I’m considered the weird one???????
“the know nothings who steered the American economy into a ditch, then gunned the engine. ”
They say not to worry because they called the tow-truck, but when nobody is looking they slash the tires and beat the engine with sledgehammers.
The keynsian econimists point to USA deficit spending as to what finally pulled the world out of the depression…..in that they are only partially correct.
{rior to Pearl Harbour, the US government had invested in the Hoover Dam and the TVA with no real improvement in the economy.
Then overseas markets began buying US military assets…especially Britain and France…but when war was declared full employment…as the war industries were assembled…labour and steel shortages occurred. Rationing controlled consumer spending and War Bonds absorbed the civilian savings.
When the dust cleared the US had sustained little physical damage but had drained a huge proportion of the worlds wealth..selling armaments…
Problem was with defence contracts cancelled and the reintroduction of veterans, the influx of what had ecomically speaking unproductive millions into the labour force…the industries and the economy had to retool to consumer production……
OBUMER’s stimulus didn’t finance a captive overseas market for goods(armaments).
By VJ day the US was rich and the rest of the world was broke…and burned out literally.
On the bright side, their ears are cropped the same.
Maybe Paul is interested in an “illudium 238 space-modulator”.
Hasn’t been used since a 60’s Buggs Bunny cartoon. Only fired once…. and worked at that time!
Ah,the earth-shattering kaboom!
In _V for Vendetta_ part of the reason the Norsefire party got elected was their willingness to do something about the rampant violent immigrant communities.
In _Starship Troopers_, the Federation was formed by military veterans who were the only ones ready and willing to fight back against the lawless elements of a collapsed social democratic state.
In _Watchmen_, the archvillain schemes to get the world’s governments to unite in common cause against a fake space alien invasion.
Suddenly my wasted youth of gaming and comics doesn’t seem so wasted after all.
So now we have a Nobel prize winner in economics who has embraced the business case of the Underpants Gnomes:
Phase 1: Prepare for alien invasion
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Prosperity
Yes, but your dog is a thoroughbred.
Yeah Paul, before the episode of The Twilight Zone you mentioned, there was a fable called Chicken Little. You should go back and read the ending you delusional a**.
Correction… Paul Krugman has a Noble Prize in Economics, and your dog doesn’t… YET
If Krugman can get a Prize in Economics and Obama get a Peace Nobel, I think there is a good deal of hope for little Rover yet.
Both of them eat their own shit, but your dog didn’t get $50,000 from Enron.
Given the pedigree of recent Nobel winners I’m pretty sure your doggie is better than that.
My dog does _not_ eat his own shit.
Paul Krugman Has to justify his Marxist messiahs failed economic policies. Not failed really, they are meant to disintegrate.
So he resorts to space men to justify Keynesian lunacy. To absolve his beloved Obama.
JMO
You guys need to google “project bluebeam”.
Krugman is just telling us what the plan actually is.