Paul Krugman- Trump Is Right on Economics

[n2doc]

So Jeb Bush is finally going after Donald Trump. Over the past couple of weeks the man who was supposed to be the front-runner has made a series of attacks on the man who is. Strange to say, however, Mr. Bush hasn’t focused on what’s truly vicious and absurd — viciously absurd? — about Mr. Trump’s platform, his implicit racism and his insistence that he would somehow round up 11 million undocumented immigrants and remove them from our soil.

Instead, Mr. Bush has chosen to attack Mr. Trump as a false conservative, a proposition that is supposedly demonstrated by his deviations from current Republican economic orthodoxy: his willingness to raise taxes on the rich, his positive words about universal health care. And that tells you a lot about the dire state of the G.O.P. For the issues the Bush campaign is using to attack its unexpected nemesis are precisely the issues on which Mr. Trump happens to be right, and the Republican establishment has been proved utterly wrong.

To see what I mean, consider what was at stake in the last presidential election, and how things turned out after Mitt Romney lost.

During the campaign, Mr. Romney accused President Obama of favoring redistribution of income from the rich to the poor, and the truth is that Mr. Obama’s re-election did mean a significant move in that direction. Taxes on the top 1 percent went up substantially in 2013, both because some of the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire and because new taxes associated with Obamacare kicked in. And Obamacare itself, which provides a lot of aid to lower-income families, went into full effect at the beginning of 2014.

more (I think he is trolling us)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/opinion/paul-krugman-trump-is-right-on-economics.html

[Mass]

1. Sorry, Krugman is WRONG on Trump.

Obviously, his take down of Bush and others is correct, but there is NO VALID reason to believe that Trump believes in the ideas he is vaguely pushing.

We do not know what his plans would be, and, after all, Paul Ryan's plan would not touch to Medicare and Medicaid for people above 55. Who knows for a fact that this is not what Trump is proposing.

The man is a master of misdirection. I imagine that Krugman is not serious with his praises, but I would prefer he avoided these types of idiotic statements. Mr Trump is exploiting his workers just as the next capitalist is. Stop praising him, even if it is only to make a contrast with other capitalists.

[pampango]

2. True the "Republican establishment has been proved utterly wrong". False that "Trump is right".

The Donald is just serving up right wing populism to his base.

So am I saying that Mr. Trump is better and more serious than he’s given credit for being? Not at all — he is exactly the ignorant blowhard he seems to be. It’s when it comes to his rivals that appearances can be deceiving. Some of them may come across as reasonable and thoughtful, but in reality they Are anything but.

Mr. Bush, in particular, may pose as a reasonable, thoughtful type — credulous reporters even describe him as a policy wonk — but his actual economic platform, which relies on the magic of tax cuts to deliver a doubling of America’s growth rate, is pure supply-side voodoo.

And here’s what’s interesting: all indications are that Mr. Bush’s attacks on Mr. Trump are falling flat, because the Republican base doesn’t actually share the Republican establishment’s economic delusions.

Again, I’m not making a case for Mr. Trump. There are lots of other politicians out there who also refuse to buy into right-wing economic nonsense, but who do so without proposing to scour the countryside in search of immigrants to deport, or to rip up our international economic agreements and start a trade war. The point, however, is that none of these reasonable politicians is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

[Turbineguy]

3. When it comes to healthcare....

A sick country is a republican country!

[hedda_foil]

4. This is from 2015.