Krugman: Panic of the Plutocrats

[ProSense]

Panic of the Plutocrats

By PAUL KRUGMAN

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

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Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

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Last year, you may recall, a number of financial-industry barons went wild over very mild criticism from President Obama. They denounced Mr. Obama as being almost a socialist for endorsing the so-called Volcker rule, which would simply prohibit banks backed by federal guarantees from engaging in risky speculation. And as for their reaction to proposals to close a loophole that lets some of them pay remarkably low taxes — well, Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group, compared it to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

And then there’s the campaign of character assassination against Elizabeth Warren, the financial reformer now running for the Senate in Massachusetts. Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical — it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

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[lunatica]

1. Krugman has his finger on the pulse of Americans as always

Maybe being a professor is what keeps him in touch with what's really going on. He sure seems to get it all the time.

[wtmusic]

4. Create a post discussing Krugman's column "In Praise of Cheap Labor"

(and watch DU enter a similar state of panic)

"Such moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization--of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries and the resulting growth of labor-intensive Third World exports. These critics take it as a given that anyone with a good word for this process is naive or corrupt and, in either case, a de facto agent of global capital in its oppression of workers here and abroad.

But matters are not that simple, and the moral lines are not that clear. In fact, let me make a counter-accusation: The lofty moral tone of the opponents of globalization is possible only because they have chosen not to think their position through. While fat-cat capitalists might benefit from globalization, the biggest beneficiaries are, yes, Third World workers."

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html

[pa28]

2. K&R

[WinkyDink]

3. What????!

[Remember Me]

5. LOVE Krugman

I don't think there's a single time I've ever disagreed with him.

[Fool Count]

6. Krugman's voice would carry much more weight here if

he wasn't historically such a staunch defender of capitalism and free trade.

[WillyT]

7. K & R !!!

:kick:

[applegrove]

8. Love Krugman. He is so fine with his analysis.

[EV_Ares]

9. Great read, thanks for posting this.

[burrowowl]

10. K&R

[Ichingcarpenter]

11. "The real extremists here are America’s oligarchs,"

"who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth."


At the very end of his masterful editorial piece.

[ProSense]

13. Yup, case in point:

Business groups whine: leave millionaires alone

[malaise]

12. Brilliant

Rec