The Blame Game Would Only Get Worse--The Unwisdom of Elites by Paul Krugman

Kirk Here:  Jas, don't forget that "Krooksman" completely ignores how "his side" of the political spectrum encouraged blowing up the housing bubble as it meant all the poor could buy homes they could not afford. They got political credit plus higher property taxes.  They used those higher taxes to reward left leaning voters (mostly public employee unions - police, fire, welfare, prison guards and teachers) with higher salaries then they could get in a free market with FAR better benefits than the public paying taxes get at a time most who work for themselves or big business were seeing falling income, especially when you add in higher medical insurance costs that the public unions didn't have to pay for.

BTW, couldn't the Democrats in the Senate filibuster to block Bush's FREE DRUGS FOR SENIORS program?  At the time, I thought they were all for it as it was a liberal type spending program and the only opposition was from Libertarians such as myself who wondered who would pay for it.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	See If This Works -- RE: The Blame Game Would Only Get Worse--The Unwisdom of Elites by Paul Krugman
Date:	Mon, 9 May 2011 09:39:05 -0700
From:	Jas Jain

The Blame Game Would Only Get Worse--The Unwisdom of Elites by Paul Krugman

It is fascinating to watch the blame game among a group of people where almost everyone is at fault. America at the present time happens to be such a place. The list of persons and groups that are responsible for the recent economic troubles and far greater future troubles includes pretty much every born-and-bred American of voting age and older. Herr Professor Paul Krugman, as the current gang leader of the neo-Keynesian school of economics, must be placed at the top 100 troublemakers in America because he is serving the interests of banking and finance Crooks by advocating more consumption debt via large deficit spending. Being a propagandist he claims that the general public is not to blame. In a democracy the voters are not to blame for the bad polices of the elected officials, especially, when they keep voting for the same people or the same organized political gang time after time? Reagan-GWB-Limbaugh tax cuts dopes are not responsible, especially since the troubles began under GWB and the root causes go back to Reagan-Greenspan policies? Who appointed Greenspan and Bernanke? Anyone who honestly proposes meaningful cuts in welfare benefits, especially for sickness-care, and increase in taxes would lose the election. The solution would not come until after things breakdown. When would the next cyclical recession (a weak recovery after a sharp downturn is only a recovery for economists and not a real recovery for the people) begin within a secular depression?

There is a good reason why born-and-bred Americans are the biggest dopes on the planet today. And there is lot of blame to go around in a society of born-and-bred dopes. Krooksman is simply doing what all born-and-bred American dopes do these days--blame others.

Jas

 

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Monday, May 09, 2011

Paul Krugman: The Unwisdom of Elites

The "self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing" are trying to shift the blame for the troubles we are having;

The Unwisdom of Elites, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NYTimes: The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. ... How did it all go so wrong?

Well, what I've been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it's mostly the public's fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate's foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn't just self-serving, it's dead wrong.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren't responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. ...

Let me focus mainly on what happened in the United States... These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. ... What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First,...President George W. Bush cut taxes in the service of his party's ideology... — and the bulk of the cuts went to a small, affluent minority.

Similarly, Mr. Bush chose to invade Iraq because that was something he and his advisers wanted to do,... it took a highly deceptive sales campaign to get Americans to support the invasion...

Finally, the Great Recession was brought on by a runaway financial sector, empowered by reckless deregulation. And who was responsible for that deregulation? Powerful people in Washington with close ties to the financial industry...

So it was the bad judgment of the elite, not the greediness of the common man, that caused America's deficit. And much the same is true of the European crisis. ...

Why should we be concerned about the effort to shift the blame for bad policies onto the general public?

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