Krugman: Climate of Change (flashback)

[ProSense]

Climate of Change

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 27, 2009

Elections have consequences. President Obama’s new budget represents a huge break, not just with the policies of the past eight years, but with policy trends over the past 30 years. If he can get anything like the plan he announced on Thursday through Congress, he will set America on a fundamentally new course.

The budget will, among other things, come as a huge relief to Democrats who were starting to feel a bit of postpartisan depression. The stimulus bill that Congress passed may have been too weak and too focused on tax cuts. The administration’s refusal to get tough on the banks may be deeply disappointing. But fears that Mr. Obama would sacrifice progressive priorities in his budget plans, and satisfy himself with fiddling around the edges of the tax system, have now been banished.

For this budget allocates $634 billion over the next decade for health reform. That’s not enough to pay for universal coverage, but it’s an impressive start. And Mr. Obama plans to pay for health reform, not just with higher taxes on the affluent, but by putting a halt to the creeping privatization of Medicare, eliminating overpayments to insurance companies.

On another front, it’s also heartening to see that the budget projects $645 billion in revenues from the sale of emission allowances. After years of denial and delay by its predecessor, the Obama administration is signaling that it’s ready to take on climate change.

And these new priorities are laid out in a document whose clarity and plausibility seem almost incredible to those of us who grew accustomed to reading Bush-era budgets, which insulted our intelligence on every page. This is budgeting we can believe in.

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If this isn't a counter to the Obama=Bush arguments, then nothing is.

[mkultra]

1. ahh, hes changed so much in a month.

[BzaDem]

2. He has not changed ONE BIT.

He supports Obama's great budget, and he doesn't support what he thinks is Obama's flawed plan for the banks.

Why is this idea so impossible for people to understand? Why is it that unless you display 100% support for all of Obama's policies, you are anti-Obama? (Unless you support positions farther to the left and your name is not Paul Krugman?)

[ProSense]

3. That's not hard to understand. What's hard to understand

is why some people cannot accept that despite the dire characterizations of the plan, the critics haven't been able to convince the administration that they're right. If the administration wasn't listening, it would be one thing, but it appears they've heard the criticisms and simply don't agree with them. Also, in recent days, some of those same critics have said the plan could work.

[BzaDem]

5. So a critic is only correct if the Administration agrees with that critic?

There are many reasons that the Administration might be ignoring Krugman's ideas, even if Krugman's ideas are the correct way to go about solving the problem. Obama's policymakers are very much entrenched within the system, and might honestly believe that the solution must adhere to certain constraints within the system because of that (even if that is not actually the case). If you were to ask a hedge fund manager about whether or not we should severely regulate derivatives, the manager would of course say no (and he honestly would believe that we shouldn't). If that hedge fund manager all of a sudden became treasury secretary after holding his views for many years, his views probably would not change a whole lot.

The idea that a critic's views are only worth listening to if the Administration agrees with the critic would result in all criticism being considered illegitimate (since if the Administration agreed with a critic, that person would no longer be a critic, but instead a cheerleader).

[ProSense]

7. Who said that?

The administration's position doesn't prevent people from continuing to criticize.

If people want to continue believing that the plan will cause the collapse of the economy by maintaining Bush's policies or that it's a sinister plan to hurt Americans, they're free to do so.

I simply see the criticisms as a disagreement. I think the dire characterizations are over the top.

[mkultra]

4. why does anyone have to kiss the ground on which your criticisms lie?

[BzaDem]

6. Um, what does that even mean? n/t

[mkultra]

8. It means that we are under no obligation to accept and embrace your criticism.

[BzaDem]

9. Did I ever say you were under any such obligation?

No.

I was mainly talking to the idiots who think that anyone who criticizes Obama is a freeper or a puma. Of course anyone is free to disagree with criticism, just like they are free to disagree with Obama.

[mkultra]

17. just keep bitching

and well keep fixing.

[Jennicut]

14. Because the other 50% of Obama's plans gets no support at all. No one mentions the budget at all.

The #'s are falling for the budget on Gallup per the moderates and liberals. If Krugman dislikes the bank plan then the budget must suck too. Hero worshiping comes in many forms.

[ArchieStone1]

10. I never thought Obama=Bush

And I doubt more than 5% wuld think that way here.

[ProSense]

11. Well, it's a very loud and well-supported 5% n/t

[ErinBerin84]

12. hell

from what I've read here today, some DUers won't even give him credit for the budget, and make it sound like he was in cahoots with Evan Bayh all along.

[ProSense]

13. I've read that

Obama is worse than Bush and Geither is worse than Paulson.

Maybe they can start a campaign to at least bring those two back.

[Jennicut]

15. Yawn. Are we being invaded or something?

[geek tragedy]

16. The NeoNaderites don't have the balls to read stuff like this.

If it's from the left and praises Obama, they scurry like cockroaches from the light.