Doom! - Paul Kurgman

[Skip_In_Boulder]

September 20, 2011, 4:39 pm
Doom!

That’s the title of a new article by John Judis about how policy around the advanced world is now aggravating the slump — and how things look likely to get even worse looking forward. It’s not very different from what I’ve been saying, but Judis offers more historical depth in the comparison with the 30s.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about that parallel — and how truly remarkable it is.

I was recently asked to give a talk on “capitalism and democracy”; that’s bigger-think than I usually do, but I gave it a try. I took as my starting point the famous Fukuyama thesis that liberal democracy — meaning basically a market economy plus democratic institutions — was an end state, a final resting point for state organization.

I always had my doubts about that, largely thanks to the 1930s: what we saw there was that a severe economic crisis could put liberal democracy very much at risk. And it was a close-run thing: slightly better strategic decisions by the bad guys could have made totalitarianism, not democracy, the end state.

(snip)

A lot of the blame goes to the economists, by the way, who abandoned what they used to know — and many of whom are giving bad advice now, I firmly believe, based more on ego and political affiliation than on analysis. That is, I believe that we’re looking at a moral failure as well as an intellectual failure.

Anyway, awesome. And depressing.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/doom/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

[SteveM]

1. Even before theGOP re-established control of government in 2010...

It was predicted by MSM that the GOP would set the agenda for all debate around deficit spending and government cut-backs. They have, and no one will brook any other view that does not comport with the terms of that debate.

The GOP is a true party with hard, bright-line ideologies marked by brevity and clarity. They promote this over and over and over again. In terms of political strength -- the ability to back them up (even from a position of numerical weakness)-- there is no opposition.

BTW, George Will (the conservative pundit) said just this last Sunday there is no GOP establishment vs the Right Wing. The establishment of the GOP "died at the Cow Palace in 1964."

Yet we hear this man-behind-the-curtain refrain from MSM: "The GOP's base (as opposed to some fictional establishment) vs the Democratic "Left." Leaving aside the obvious intent to degrade any view to the left of Jimmy Carter by calling it "left," this dichotomy is as false as Oz.