Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Paul Krugman: The Nasty Truth That Trump Distracts Us From
________________________________________
Paul Krugman: The Nasty Truth That Trump Distracts Us From
By Janet Allon [1] / AlterNet [2]
December 28, 2015
Donald sucked up all the air in the room in 2015, Paul Krugman notes in
Monday's column [3], but however much the GOP establishment laments him,
their frontrunner has helped them out in one important way: "I has
distracted pundits and the press from the hard right turn even conventional
Republican candidates have taken, a turn whose radicalism would have seemed
implausible not long ago."
Krugman recounts how, unbelievably, instead of the party engaging in some
serious reexamination after the "debacle of George W. Bush's presidency,"
what we've seen is "a doubling down, a determination to take whatever didn't
work from 2001 to 2008 and do it again, in a more extreme form."
There is the matter of tax cuts:
Big tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy were the Bush administration's
signature domestic policy. They were sold at the time as fiscally
responsible, a matter of giving back part of the budget surplus America was
running when W took office. (Alan Greenspan [4] infamously argued that tax
cuts were needed to avoid paying off federal debt too fast.) Since then,
however, over-the-top warnings about the evils of debt and deficits have
become a routine part of Republican rhetoric; and even conservatives
occasionally admit that soaring inequality is a problem.
Moreover, it's harder than ever to claim that tax cuts are the key to
prosperity. At this point the private sector has added more than twice as
many jobs [5] under President Obama as it did over the corresponding period
under W, a period that doesn't include the Great Recession.
You might think, then, that Bush-style tax cuts would be out of favor. In
fact, however, establishment candidates like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush are
proposing much bigger tax cuts [6] than W ever did. And independent analysis
of Jeb's proposal shows that it's even more tilted [7] toward the wealthy
than anything his brother did.
All of the GOP candidates have similarly embraced the idea that banks should
operate without any regulation as well as the debunked notion that it was
the government that somehow caused the financial crisis. They have, Krugman
allows, moved away from W's monetary policy which called for "aggressive
monetary policy" [8], but in the wrong direction, of course, the direction
of "right-wing fantasyland." Then there's Cruz's crazy call for a return to
the gold standard. And this man stands a chance of gaining the nomination.
In foreign policy, this crop of extremists running for the oval office is,
almost unimaginably, just as bad or worse than Bush, with Jeb actually
reassembling the same team that was behind the whole Iraq catastrophe.
Trump is the least of the GOP's (and our) worries, Krugman concludes. "The
point is that while the mainstream contenders may have better manners than
Mr. Trump or the widely loathed Mr. Cruz, when you get to substance it
becomes clear that all of them are frighteningly radical, and that none of
them seem to have learned anything from past disasters."
Simply not being Trump is no guarantor of reasonableness, and not nearly
nearly enough.
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [9]
[10]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-nasty-truth-trump-distracts-us
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/janet-allon
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/opinion/doubling-down-on-w.html?action=cli
ck&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-co
l-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-
left-region&_r=0
[4] http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/01/25/economy/greenspan/
[5] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/USPRIV.txt
[6]
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/11/10/jeb_bush_and_marco_rubio_want
_absolutely_insane_tax_cuts.html
[7] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/doubling-down-on-w/
[8] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/economic_reports/2004.pdf
[9] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Paul Krugman: The Nasty
Truth That Trump Distracts Us From
[10] http://www.alternet.org/
[11] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Paul Krugman: The Nasty Truth That Trump Distracts Us From
Paul Krugman: The Nasty Truth That Trump Distracts Us From
By Janet Allon [1] / AlterNet [2]
December 28, 2015
Donald sucked up all the air in the room in 2015, Paul Krugman notes in
Monday's column [3], but however much the GOP establishment laments him,
their frontrunner has helped them out in one important way: "I has
distracted pundits and the press from the hard right turn even conventional
Republican candidates have taken, a turn whose radicalism would have seemed
implausible not long ago."
Krugman recounts how, unbelievably, instead of the party engaging in some
serious reexamination after the "debacle of George W. Bush's presidency,"
what we've seen is "a doubling down, a determination to take whatever didn't
work from 2001 to 2008 and do it again, in a more extreme form."
There is the matter of tax cuts:
Big tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy were the Bush administration's
signature domestic policy. They were sold at the time as fiscally
responsible, a matter of giving back part of the budget surplus America was
running when W took office. (Alan Greenspan [4] infamously argued that tax
cuts were needed to avoid paying off federal debt too fast.) Since then,
however, over-the-top warnings about the evils of debt and deficits have
become a routine part of Republican rhetoric; and even conservatives
occasionally admit that soaring inequality is a problem.
Moreover, it's harder than ever to claim that tax cuts are the key to
prosperity. At this point the private sector has added more than twice as
many jobs [5] under President Obama as it did over the corresponding period
under W, a period that doesn't include the Great Recession.
You might think, then, that Bush-style tax cuts would be out of favor. In
fact, however, establishment candidates like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush are
proposing much bigger tax cuts [6] than W ever did. And independent analysis
of Jeb's proposal shows that it's even more tilted [7] toward the wealthy
than anything his brother did.
All of the GOP candidates have similarly embraced the idea that banks should
operate without any regulation as well as the debunked notion that it was
the government that somehow caused the financial crisis. They have, Krugman
allows, moved away from W's monetary policy which called for "aggressive
monetary policy" [8], but in the wrong direction, of course, the direction
of "right-wing fantasyland." Then there's Cruz's crazy call for a return to
the gold standard. And this man stands a chance of gaining the nomination.
In foreign policy, this crop of extremists running for the oval office is,
almost unimaginably, just as bad or worse than Bush, with Jeb actually
reassembling the same team that was behind the whole Iraq catastrophe.
Trump is the least of the GOP's (and our) worries, Krugman concludes. "The
point is that while the mainstream contenders may have better manners than
Mr. Trump or the widely loathed Mr. Cruz, when you get to substance it
becomes clear that all of them are frighteningly radical, and that none of
them seem to have learned anything from past disasters."
Simply not being Trump is no guarantor of reasonableness, and not nearly
nearly enough.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [9]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[10]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-nasty-truth-trump-distracts-us
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/janet-allon
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/opinion/doubling-down-on-w.html?action=cli
ck&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-co
l-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-
left-region&_r=0
[4] http://cnnfn.cnn.com/2001/01/25/economy/greenspan/
[5] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/USPRIV.txt
[6]
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/11/10/jeb_bush_and_marco_rubio_want
_absolutely_insane_tax_cuts.html
[7] http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/26/doubling-down-on-w/
[8] http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/economic_reports/2004.pdf
[9] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Paul Krugman: The Nasty
Truth That Trump Distracts Us From
[10] http://www.alternet.org/
[11] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
