[jeffkrol]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Paul Krugman's Unfortunate Case Against Social Security Reform - Business - The Atlantic
Fun With Paul Ryan and the Washington Post | Beat the Press

Today, Republican Representative Paul Ryan stepped up to the plate. The Post felt the need to give him an oped column after Paul Krugman cruelly subjected Mr. Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" to a serious analysis last week. This violated the long accepted practice in elite Washington circles of not holding proponents of Social Security and Medicare cuts/privatization accountable for the things they say. It is therefore understandable the Post would quickly give a coveted oped slot to Mr. Ryan to make amends for such a grievous breach of protocol.

The rest of us may not have the power to invent the facts that would be needed to push our policies, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun. Let's count the inaccuracies (they call them something else outside of DC) in Mr. Ryan's piece.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/12/AR2010081204...d=opinionsbox1
since religion seems to be the preferred topic of the day I just want to expand this thread a bit and comment on the Japanese "lost decade".. I find it's history quite interesting and it will be probably become a "talking point" in the near term.. so I'll start a bit early.. with some irony:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/11/paul-krugman-japan-lost-decade

How, then, should we regard a country that has 5% unemployment, the lowest income inequality, healthcare for all its people and is one of the world's leading exporters? This country also scores high on life expectancy, low on infant mortality, is at the top in numeracy and literacy, and is low on crime, incarceration, homicides, mental illness and drug abuse. It also has a low rate of carbon emissions, doing its part to reduce global warming. In all these categories, this particular country beats both the US and China by a country mile.

Doesn't that sound like a country from which Americans and others might learn a thing or two about how to get out of the hole in which we're stuck?

Not if that place is Japan. During and before the current economic crisis, few countries have been vilified as an economic basket case so much as Japan: it's been hard to find any reference to the country without some mention of its allegedly sclerotic economy, its zombie banks, its deflation and slow economic growth. This malaise has even been called "Japan syndrome", sounding like a disease to warn policymakers, as in "you don't want to end up like Japan.".......................No one has been more influential in defining this narrative than Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Throughout the 1990s, and still today, Krugman has skewered Japan's economy and leaders. In the late 1990s, Krugman wrote a series of gloom-and-doom articles, complete with equations and titles like "Japan's Trap" and "Setting Sun", bluntly stating:

"The state of Japan is a scandal, an outrage, a reproach … operating far below its productive capacity, simply because its consumers and investors do not spend enough.".................But let's look at some of the Japanese metrics during that time. Throughout the 1990s, the Japanese unemployment rate was – ready for this? – about 3%, half the US unemployment rate at the time. During that allegedly "lost decade", Japan also had universal healthcare, less inequality, the highest life expectancy, low infant mortality and low rates of crime and incarceration. Americans should be so lucky as to experience a Japanese-style lost decade.

Reopening the case of Japan raises some important questions. How do economists such as Krugman decide what to value and prioritise, or what to measure? What is an economy for? To produce the prosperity, security and services that people need? Or to satisfy economists and their equations, theories and models?

In the current debate over fiscal stimulus versus deficit reduction for economic recovery, various economists now are criticising Germany. Krugman has written that the Germans "seem to be getting their talking points from the collected speeches of Herbert Hoover". Krugman, a stimulus hawk, is criticising Germany for the same thing for which he has criticised Japan – not spending, or consuming, enough to stimulate its economy.

Yet, in the early 1990s, when the US was plagued by large deficits and recession, the Clinton administration didn't employ Krugman-type fiscal stimulus. Instead, it cut the deficit. By the end of the decade, the US budget showed a sizable surplus and the economy was booming.

Japan's economy has been and remains successful. So is Germany's. They have reached an economic steady state in which they don't need roaring growth rates to provide for their people. But for the economic Cassandras, apparently, it doesn't matter if people's needs are being met; what matters is whether their theories and equations balance...........................If the US didn't have such a trickle-down economy that has produced so much inequality – if it was, in fact, better at sharing its wealth – perhaps it wouldn't need so much fiscal stimulus and growth.

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Last edited by jeffkrol; 08-16-2010 at 06:23 PM.