When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Peter Robinson ·
August 22, 2011 at 11:56pm
If he listens to Paul Krugman, he will.
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Comments:
Oct '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Did so enjoy the scene from Mars Attacks when the Alien addresses Congress...
Oct '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
From the guy who said that 9/11 "could even do some economic good", and who argued that Greenspan needed to "create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble".
Edited on August 23, 2011 at 12:11amDec '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Krugman said there was a Twilight Zone episode like this -- shows how much he knows. It was The Outer Limits, "The Architects of Fear." (And The Watchmen - the graphic novel - also has this plot point.)
May '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
So he's in favor of directing lots of money into military buildups, even when he believes it is unnecessary? I'm no historian of Paul Krugman's work, but I assume he supported Ronaldus Magnus's large defense budgets. In fact, "Star Wars" must have been one of his favorite programs since it was criticized for being so expensive. I bet he even supports all the defense money we are pouring into the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. He must love Presidents Reagan and Bush 43.
Paul Krugman, defense hawk!
Edited on August 23, 2011 at 12:38amApr '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
What's with his eyes? I feel like he is trying to hypnotize the masses with his otherworldly glare.
Sep '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Mr. Krugman is the Chief Alien Economist. That's the only way to explain is other-worldly economic theories.
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Creating meaningless jobs to produce a product/service that has zero market value sounds like a really smart idea. After all without any demand there's no customers to deal with and with no customers to deal with there are no expectations and without expectations there really isn't any reason to go to work in the first place. Wait a minute... how does this work again?
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Th things that you learn on Ricochet. Thanks for this.
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
The main difference between Krugman's space alien rhetoric and Perry's metaphysical rhetoric regarding the country's dismal economy is that the latter literally believes in his metaphysical solution (prayer) for the country's problems.
Put another way, Krugman believes that an exogenous threat (even a metaphysical one if necessary) would be a sub-optimal means to force the nation to do the right thing (namely, use its accumulated wealth to dramatically increase employment). Perry, on the other hand, believes that an exogenous metaphysical threat (specifically, the Christian God) is an utterly necessary means to save us all from what would surely be a fiery damnation on earth (namely, resorting to the legalized theft of prying accumulated wealth from obviously well deserving haves in order to employ obviously parasitic have-nots).
Put yet another way, Krugman believes that widespread misery is something that Americans can and should avoid collectively and deliberately. Perry, not so much.
But yeah, that Krugman. He's a real loon.
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Giberson: ...namely, resorting to the legalized theft of prying accumulated wealth from obviously well deserving haves in order to employ obviously parasitic have-nots...
ยท Aug 22 at 4:34pm
Could you please explain what you are referring to? By what means do you suspect he is going to pry wealth away from people and who are the haves and have-nots you refer to? Honestly, I would like to know if he has a track record or a stated affinity for such a thing at any time in his past.
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Think So
Giberson: ...namely, resorting to the legalized theft of prying accumulated wealth from obviously well deserving haves in order to employ obviously parasitic have-nots...
ยท Aug 22 at 4:34pm
Could you please explain what you are referring to? By what means do you suspect he is going to pry wealth away from people and who are the haves and have-nots you refer to? Honestly, I would like to know if he has a track record or a stated affinity for such a thing at any time in his past. ยท Aug 22 at 5:00pm
You know, taxes from haves. And, you know, paychecks to have-nots (i.e., teachers, policemen, construction workers, home health aids, truck drivers, factory workers, scientists, bridge builders, etc.).
I was just doing my best in this medium to speak with a Perry accent, my friend, about some "horrific" policies that his presidency (God willing, of course) would save you from. Sorry about the confusion.
Oct '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
I think this is the first time I've ever heard Krugman tell an outright lie. World War 2 negatively affected productivity? Oh really? Defense spending has probably been used to amp up productivity growth since economists first noticed it's importance in the late 1700s.
Don't kid yourself: Krugman's plan is to borrow massive amounts of money from abroad, than inflate away the debt. Most of that money would come from the poor working classes of Asia. Tell me Mr. Krugman, why do wealthy Americans--the poorest of whom are unimaginably rich by the standards of peasant Chinese factory workers--have the right to steal the money those peasants have worked hard, long hours to save? Money they need to send their kids to school, cover health care expensive, and retire?
Are we so sick as a people that we will steal the bread of impoverished foreigners to maintain our own entitled attitude? If Krugman were truly serious he'd be advocating a national wage cut (via a VAT/payroll tax swap or some such thing). But of course, than his precious Obama wouldn't get re-elected.
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Joseph Eagar:.. Tell me Mr. Krugman, why do wealthy Americans--the poorest of whom are unimaginably rich by the standards of peasant Chinese factory workers--have the right to steal the money those peasants have worked hard, long hours to save? . . .
Are we so sick as a people that we will steal the bread of impoverished foreigners to maintain our own entitled attitude? . . . ยท Aug 22 at 5:20pm
(Emphasis supplied.)
Mr. So: See there! Mr. Eagar speaks with the same Texas twang as what I imagined for Governor Perry in this medium.
Mr. Eagar: Actually, I think that Professor Krugman would rather also tax the rich in this country so as to minimize the admittedly burdensome menu costs of inflation. Besides, the lion share of the burden of what (modest) inflation would occur would not fall on Chinese peasants, but instead on the comparatively wealthy institutions and individuals who choose to store wealth in the form of dollar denominated debt. No?
By the way, you sound pretty intelligent, so what is your proposed solution to our current fiscal woes? I trust not waiting for divine intervention like the wildly popular (among Republicans) Governor Perry.
Oct '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Giberson
It comes down to fixed exchanged rates. To keep rates low, many Asian central banks borrow the savings of their working classes to purchase foreign exchange (U.S. treasuries). It isn't as if China's central bank can magically print money out of thin air to buy dollars; it borrows almost all of it (central banks call this "sterilizing").
Also developing nations in general tend to use the dollar as a store of value.  . A lot of the world's working poor hold their savings in dollar-denominated assets; some nations even use the dollar as their official currency. Many developing markets tend to suffer unpredictable bouts of inflation, making them unsuitable for the average saver.
Edited on August 23, 2011 at 3:52amOct '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Also, the solution to our fiscal woes are rather obvious: raise taxes to 19% of GDP, and lower spending to 22%. This is what Ryan Roadmap does. To achieve full employment, the economic equivalent of a national wage reduction should be engineered--a VAT/employer payroll tax swap (which is economically equivalent to a wage cut). The Obama administration is even considering cutting employer payroll taxes, which is essentially the same thing (due to the implied higher tax burden later).
We're in the same boat the Germans were in the early 2000s, and our solution will be the same. They also had to cut wages (though they were able to delay fiscal tightening, something we aren't in a position to do).
Oct '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Oh, and the reason you cut wages has to do with why our economy isn't growing. Basically, we can only export more, no other sources of growth can work. But exports take a long time to ramp up, and thus the only way to achieve full employment in the meantime is with wage cuts.
A VAT/payroll tax swap has the advantage of not affecting real debt burdens. If Congress imposed wage controls and mandated a 5% across-the-board wage cut, real debt burdens would go up because of the deflationary impact of lower nominal wages. There are also good reasons to use a VAT swap independent of the need to lower wages (our current tax code is highly distortionary).
The VAT swap would undo previous market manipulations, as opposed to wage controls (which would add another layer of distortions without fixing the distortions that caused the problem in the first place).
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Mr. Eagar: My recollection is that China holds something like 10% of our national debt. Are you saying that "many Asian" (or for that matter foreign) central banks together constitute much more than that?
In any event, whenever there is unanticipated inflation, the individuals who pay the tab are those who store wealth in assets denominated in the currency being inflated. I do not think it is accurate to generalize this group as "Chinese peasants" anymore than it makes sense to characterize them as "pension fund beneficiaries." Unless of course your goal is to garner sympathy for an otherwise difficult to defend fiscal policy.
To be clear, my position is that anyone who is attempting to store wealth is doing so at considerable risk. Whether it is in the form of hard assets that require storage, guarding and predictions about future scarcity, or in the form of a financial securities that require sophisticated knowledge and predictions about geopolitical, industrial and monetary policy, risk is always inherent in the enterprise. Therefore, your assertion about "stealing" from dollar denominated wealth storers (no matter how sympathetic) is not well grounded, in my humble view.
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Joseph Eagar: Also, the solution to our fiscal woes are rather obvious: raise taxes to 19% of GDP, and lower spending to 22%. This is what Ryan Roadmap does. To achieve full employment, the economic equivalent of a national wage reduction should be engineered--a VAT/employer payroll tax swap (which is economically equivalent to a wage cut). The Obama administration is even considering cutting employer payroll taxes, which is essentially the same thing (due to the implied higher tax burden later).
We're in the same boat the Germans were in the early 2000s, and our solution will be the same. They also had to cut wages (though they were able to delay fiscal tightening, something we aren't in a position to do). ยท Aug 22 at 6:35pm
Ok, then I am with you. So long as the "wages" you are referring to are of those who can most afford the cuts (as in Germany where the wealth gap is far smaller than here) and both numbers are somewhat higher (similar to Germany, for example, but unlike the Ryan plan) to ensure the health of the polis.
Oct '10
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Giberson, you are misunderstanding how China's sterilized foreign exchange interventions work. They hold, what, 2 trillion of our debt now? It isn't possible to undervalue an exchange rate unless a nation's population saves a high proportion of their income. Also, all loans are matters of trust between creditor and debtor. We are the reserve currency. Our creditors had no other choice. You, sir, are blaming the victim.
Let me explain how Chinese peasants will lose out. Imagine a fictional Chinese family, called the Xiang family. The head of household, Li, spent fourty years with his wife in the textile factories, where they regularly saved half their income for the future. These savings have to cover retirement, health care, and education for their single child.
To accumulate savings over and above investment as an economy, you have to lend real goods to foreigners. That's why China has a trade surplus. In essence, the Xiang family loaned hundreds of thousands of T-shirt to their central bank, who loaned these real goods to Americans. They expects to be paid back in goods of equivalent value when they retires or sends his kid to college.
Conclusion follows.
Aug '11
Re: When He Leaves Martha's Vineyard, Will the President Tell Us Aliens Are About to Invade?
Giberson
You know, taxes from haves. And, you know, paychecks to have-nots (i.e., teachers, policemen, construction workers, home health aids, truck drivers, factory workers, scientists, bridge builders, etc.).
I was just doing my best in this medium to speak with a Perry accent, my friend, about some "horrific" policies that his presidency (God willing, of course) would save you from. Sorry about the confusion. ยท Aug 22 at 5:14pm
Okay, so by have-nots you mean primarily unionized labor. You still didn't define haves but I'll assume you mean business owners or anyone else with more money than the aforementioned. As for the frothing-at-the-mouth-religious-nut-job projection you make of Perry's evangelicalism - don't you think your own moral views are a bit extreme?