Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist has a go at Republicans, claiming they are a “cult of selfishness”, that is “killing America". Is “selfishness" a step up or down from Hillary’s “deplorables”? Who knows.
Imagine this turned about. If we were to make as broad a generalisation about the Democrats. That they were all crazy-left socialists who want to “sacralize” state to control all the means of production and to compel and control your every activity. Fair? Well, no. It’s generally considered bigoted to tar whole groups with one brush. Even if in the converse case it’s truer of where democrats have got to than the alleged selfishness of Republicans. Repeated polls show that Democrats have shifted further left, while Republicans have stayed pretty much Center right.
Back to Krugman. This is a man who has got all the major calls wrong. He said in 1994 that the internet would have no more impact than the fax. On Trump’s election he predicted the worst stock market crash sine the Great Depression, just as it began its longest sustained bull run, that hasn’t quite finished even in this pandemic. He called a crash in 2019, before Nasdaq and Dow reached new records.
He’s also free and easy with figures.
Of course Krugman puts this bad US figure — exaggerated as it is — down to Trump. Whereas the measures to fight Covid are virtually all taken at the state level. And at the state level, as I showed yesterday, the top ten worst states are all run by Democrat governors.
To his main point about the alleged "sacralisation of selfishness” by Republicans, is this perhaps a projection? After all, what can be more selfish than wanting power so much that you attempt to invalidate an election by phoney charges of Russian collusion — as is now manifestly clear from revelations of FBI treatment of the Steele dossier, etc…
And how easy to invert Krugman. Here he is:
In all, Krugman’s piece strikes me as a bit of a rant. I’m guilty of rants myself. But then I’m not a New York Times columnist. A bit more fact-checking by the “paper of record”, would do wonders, especially given the importance of fact checking the Times itself claimed to be motivated by in the fracas over the recent editorial by Tom Cotton -- and editorial, let’s recall, that reflected the beliefs of 58% of the American populace.
Imagine this turned about. If we were to make as broad a generalisation about the Democrats. That they were all crazy-left socialists who want to “sacralize” state to control all the means of production and to compel and control your every activity. Fair? Well, no. It’s generally considered bigoted to tar whole groups with one brush. Even if in the converse case it’s truer of where democrats have got to than the alleged selfishness of Republicans. Repeated polls show that Democrats have shifted further left, while Republicans have stayed pretty much Center right.
Back to Krugman. This is a man who has got all the major calls wrong. He said in 1994 that the internet would have no more impact than the fax. On Trump’s election he predicted the worst stock market crash sine the Great Depression, just as it began its longest sustained bull run, that hasn’t quite finished even in this pandemic. He called a crash in 2019, before Nasdaq and Dow reached new records.
He’s also free and easy with figures.
Daniel Okrent, a former New York Times ombudsman, writes that 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.” [Link]In the article he links to this chart of Covid deaths, failing to mention America numbers are inflated by include previously unrecorded deaths from June whereas European deaths are deflated, by changed measures giving lower than trend figures. That’s why the US comes out so badly, an effect exaggerated by using a daily figure. Overall, the US is in the mid range of Europe as I show in my spreadsheet here. (Worse than France and Germany, better than Italy, Spain ams Britain).
Of course Krugman puts this bad US figure — exaggerated as it is — down to Trump. Whereas the measures to fight Covid are virtually all taken at the state level. And at the state level, as I showed yesterday, the top ten worst states are all run by Democrat governors.
To his main point about the alleged "sacralisation of selfishness” by Republicans, is this perhaps a projection? After all, what can be more selfish than wanting power so much that you attempt to invalidate an election by phoney charges of Russian collusion — as is now manifestly clear from revelations of FBI treatment of the Steele dossier, etc…
And how easy to invert Krugman. Here he is:
You see, the modern U.S. right is committed to the proposition that greed is good, that we’re all better off when individuals engage in the untrammelled pursuit of self-interest. In their vision, unrestricted profit maximization by businesses and unregulated consumer choice is the recipe for a good society.Support for this proposition is, if anything, more emotional than intellectual....And here’s the inverse:
You see, the modern U.S. Left is committed to the proposition that equity is good, that we’re all better off when the government engages in the untrammelled pursuit of control of all means of production. In their vision, unrestricted control by government and restriction of consumer choice is the recipe for a good society.Support for this proposition is, if anything, more emotional than intellectual....I don’t need to refute Krugman’s crude stereotype, nor substantiate the inverse -- after all, we’ve have plenty of evidence of the horrors of socialism in actual practice if not in theory.
In all, Krugman’s piece strikes me as a bit of a rant. I’m guilty of rants myself. But then I’m not a New York Times columnist. A bit more fact-checking by the “paper of record”, would do wonders, especially given the importance of fact checking the Times itself claimed to be motivated by in the fracas over the recent editorial by Tom Cotton -- and editorial, let’s recall, that reflected the beliefs of 58% of the American populace.
