Krugman - When Zombies Win

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/opinion/20krugman.html?_r=1


When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything — yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.

How did that happen? How, after runaway banks brought the economy to its knees, did we end up with Ron Paul, who says “I don’t think we need regulators,” about to take over a key House panel overseeing the Fed? How, after the experiences of the Clinton and Bush administrations — the first raised taxes and presided over spectacular job growth; the second cut taxes and presided over anemic growth even before the crisis — did we end up with bipartisan agreement on even more tax cuts?

The answer from the right is that the economic failures of the Obama administration show that big-government policies don’t work. But the response should be, what big-government policies?

For the fact is that the Obama stimulus — which itself was almost 40 percent tax cuts — was far too cautious to turn the economy around. And that’s not 20-20 hindsight: many economists, myself included, warned from the beginning that the plan was grossly inadequate. Put it this way: A policy under which government employment actually fell, under which government spending on goods and services grew more slowly than during the Bush years, hardly constitutes a test of Keynesian economics.

More at the link --

[zipplewrath]

1. The defeat of reason

The right has had a 30 year war on reason, science, and education. And they have succeeded. No one on the right worries about being "proven wrong" on anything because that would require reasoning. The right does no such thing, it is entirely "faith based". "I believe it must be true so it is".

[Bandit]

2. Well Duhhh.

What truly amazes me is that no real Media will assert these facts..Reaganomics was a dismal failure and it was shown to be doubly so under Bush*..Why would Obama adopt these same policies??? I completely fail to understand the Logic.. I understand that Obama felt he had to give something to get something, but was the price really worth it? I guess we will see how it plays out.. We already got repeal of DADT so we are off to a good beginning.. Now if Democrats will hold tough and actully allow these tax cuts for the wealthy to really expire in two years, it could all end up in the positive area for Democrats..

[emulatorloo]

5. Right wing successfully pushed the "Liberal Media Bias" lie to that "reporting" turned from

"This is what A said, this is what B said. We investigated and B is not telling the truth"

to

"This is what A said. This is what B said." Everything given equal weight.

But that's not exactly right either.

More like so afraid of the right wing that they became afraid to question them.

[notesdev]

3. There's nothing free market about what's been going on

it has been organized, coordinated looting and pillaging

In every one of the major financial problems we have, the government has been up to its eyeballs messing around in it for decades. The government is a tool which those who buy our representatives use to steal from us. And now we're seeing the end result of turning a blind eye to it since the days of Nixon (and arguably beyond).

[kenfrequed]

4. Let us call them what they call themselves.

They call themselves pro-free market all the time. I don't see any usefulness in trying to reassert that they are not. What is the gain in this? Saving the term 'Free-Market' so it can once more be reappropriated and misappropriated by the next cycle or generation of oligarchs and corporate powers?

We must acknowledge its failures and throw all of the failings of market exuberance into the same stupid pile before we can free ourselves of the nonsensical ravings of CNBC, fox, and the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal.

We will have to turn back to labor and citizen activism to assure a more balanced division of wealth between the wealthy and poor.

[Crankie Avalon]

6. Pretty depressing.

Hard to see a future and a way back for this country's economy if people are content to keep doing the same things that got us here. Not just keep doing them at the same pace, but to even accelerate, actually.