Paul Krugman correctly summarizes why the Republican party can not solve the problems they promise to solve. “they have systematically deprived themselves of the ability to analyze policies and learn from evidence, because hard thinking might lead someone to question received doctrine.” From: nytimes.com
Noticeably lacking in argumentum ad Venezuela, any reason why Venezuela is a better analogue than Canada or Western Europe. “Maybe you disagree with all these policy ideas. But if your first response, literally, is to scream “Venezuela,” you’re demonstrating both your unscrupulousness and your lack of any serious arguments for your position.” Source: Opinion | The […]
the philosophy of the party’s base is, in essence, big government for me but not for thee. Stick it to the bums on welfare, but don’t touch those farm subsidies. Tellingly, the centerpiece of the long G.O.P. jihad against Obamacare was the false claim that it would hurt Medicare. … if you have libertarian leanings […]
if we look across America there is a correlation between violent crime and the prevalence of undocumented immigrants — a negative correlation. That is, places with a lot of immigrants, legal and undocumented, tend to have exceptionally low crime rates. The poster child for this tale of un-carnage is the biggest city of them all: […]
The story itself, although ugly, isn’t that important. But it offers a window into a reality few people, certainly in the news media, are willing to acknowledge: the bad faith that pervades conservative discourse. And yes, I do mean “conservative.” There are dishonest individuals of every political persuasion, but if you’re looking for systematic gaslighting, […]
while there are many conservative economists with appointments at top universities, publications in top journals, and so on, they have no influence on conservative policymaking. What the right wants are charlatans and cranks, in (conservative) Greg Mankiw’s famous phrase. If they use actual economists, they use them the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for […]
Chinese Wages Are Showing Paul Krugman Is Right Once Again Turns out that Krugman knows something about economics after all.
According to press reports, the Trump administration is basing its budget projections on the assumption that the U.S. economy will grow very rapidly over the next decade — in fact, almost twice as fast as independent institutions like the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve expect. There is, as far as we can tell, […]
Reagan, Trump, and Manufacturing What produces manufacturing decline is not “trade deals” but stupid industrial and macroeconomic policies–like those of Reagan, and now Trump. This is a must read.
(via The Opposite of Carnage – The New York Times)
