Krugman : Disconnected

Krugman doesn’t get; he will never get it. In today’s piece,” Another Disconnect,” Krugman is more disconnected than ever.

“High profits,” he laments, “have not led to high investment.”

Scratching his head, he ponders what is happening. He trots out the usual liberal complaint about business being more interested in profits than in rewarding labor.

Then he offers up some possible answers:

1. Corporations are more interested in buying back stock than reinvesting.
2. Corporations might not be investing because of the cloudy U.S. economic outlook

I wonder if Krugman can spell “China?” (Obviously, “developing country” is too long a phrase to spell.)

Where does he think major corporations are making these profits? Who does he think making these goods we buy and then exporting them back to the states? Does he understand that sixty per cent of China’s exports are from foreign companies inside China? Does he realize that U.S. companies are a substantial part of that FDI?

Question: Where are our corporations making the goods they sell to us?

Answer: C-H-I-N-A and other “d-e-v-e-l-o-p-i-n-g” countries.

At some point, Krugman will have to take a long hard look at globalization, at wage arbitrage, at tax arbitrage, and at environmental arbitrage. Meanwhile, he is just another liberal who whines about poor labor but who hasn’t a clue as to why U.S. labor is getting screwed.

It is clear Krugman will never be and never was a businessman. Who can blame corporations for off-shoring? That’s good business. That’s globalization.

Let him write his textbooks and leave the real business to someone else. He is just too disconnected.