On the money comments…Krugman
Paul Krugman has two sentences on the money in this article on Kansas, ALEC, and failed economics:
The real lesson from Kansas is the enduring power of bad ideas, as long as those ideas serve the interests of the right people.
…
But the effect won’t last long, because faith in tax-cut magic isn’t about evidence; it’s about finding reasons to give powerful interests what they want.
The rich and powerful have so successfully channeled economics and economists into producing theories amenable to the rich and powerful that it makes the proposition that all of the climate scientists in the world are lying about the dangers of climate change to enrich themselves at the very least possible to the rich and powerful. .
Pity the poor folks in Kansas – they had their taxes cut – heaven forbid! I’d like to ask them if they wanted their taxes to go back up. I doubt that too many would say ‘yes’.
Kansas has a regional problem. It has to compete with Texas. Texas has next to no taxes (and its economy is thriving). So what should Kansas do?
Krugman has never met a tax he does not like. Some other deep thoughts from PK:
“I actually have a serious proposal which is that we have to get a bunch of scientists to tell us that we’re facing a threatened alien invasion, and in order to be prepared for that alien invasion we have to do things like build high-speed rail. And the, once we’ve recovered, we can say, “Look, there were no aliens.”
Or these:
Here is Paul Krugman, writing in 2006:
I know about a health care system that has been highly successful in containing costs, yet provides excellent care. And the story of this system’s success provides a helpful corrective to anti-government ideology. For the government doesn’t just pay the bills in this system — it runs the hospitals and clinics.
No, I’m not talking about some faraway country. The system in question is our very own Veterans Health Administration, whose success story is one of the best-kept secrets in the American policy debate.
Here is Krugman again, in 2011:
What Mr. Romney and everyone else should know is that the [Veterans Health Administration] is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform.
Bruce:
Did the tax cut result in an economic boom or not? And those who lost jobs due to the tax cut, would you be willing to ask them if they were in favor of it?
Not sure what you are going for with the VA; but, the VA healthcare is head and shoulders above that of private healthcare. A little more reading for you from the latest IG report on the VA. If you were in the military, you will know what an IG inspection is. http://www.va.gov/health/docs/VAAccessAuditSystemWideFACTSHEET060914.pdf and also some more here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_06/just_how_long_are_those_wait_t050776.php
Allow me to cut and paste the last section from my Open Thread comment above:
Moan progressives moan.
I read everybody from Joseph Stiglitz to Nick Hanauer to David Kay Johnston, moaning about how the right monopolizes the national conversation with their silly big government and big deficit fobias. Whoa, Whoa, Whoaaa is us!
Progressives could completely dominate the national conversation tomorrow if they ever came up with true game changing issues — not phobias — that would capture everyone’s’ imaginations and make an opportunity to really educate the public to what is happening to them. The issues are of course as fast a jump as possible to the minimally survivable $15 an hour minimum wage (not the virtual/impossible $10 minimum of the present — see above) and the ultimate labor market AND political forum make over, legally mandated centralized bargaining.
YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO WIN (at first)! The scales will melt away from everybody’s eyes when you take the opportunity to teach them what they really need.
People don’t really sit around coffee shops and discuss what the deficit will be 40 years from now or whether big government is the problem — unless there is nothing else to distract them. And they don’t spend a lot of time discussing climate change or Wall Street re-regulation. Single payer would be great (win OR lose) but most people are covered and everyone was/is scared of Obamacare.
What else can I say? Individual gatherers: Rock your boys! [You’ll have to read the Open Thread to find out what this means. :-)]
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3739
Texas has advantages that few states can replicate, and are not the result of tax policies=miracles. Far from it. What is true for tax policies are the lack of services for many Texans.
I am blessed with enough money after taxes. Sure don’t mean I let taxes rule my life and psyche.
Run – No, the tax cuts have not translated into an economic boom. The GDP in Kansas grew by 1.9% in 2013 (about the same as US total). Texas grew by 3.7%.
You ask about those who lost jobs due to the tax cuts. To answer that you also have to ask how many have jobs due to the tax cuts. The answer is that Kansas has an unemployment rate of 4.8%. The national average is 6.3%. So Kansas has what is often described as “full employment” (less than 5.5%).
On the jobs side Kansas is doing pretty good. As of May 2014 they rank 13th in the nation.
Bkrasting,
You conveniently failed to mention the Kanas budget deficit and it’s debt downgrade.
I don’t see the “shot of adrenaline” that Brownback promised.
Tax and borrow.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Tax-VOX/2013/0611/Is-Kansas-on-the-path-to-financial-crisis
How come all those jobs aren’t paying for the tax cuts?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Krasting economics (GOP economics) consists of: let’s run up the government tab and only credit the benefits we charge on the gov’t card, then blame the gov’t for irresponsible spending and wait for the Democrats to fix the problem. Sorry, but I’m tired of Krasting’s trolling. I come here to learn how to think about economics, not how to repeat predictable mistakes that have been made over and over for 30 years.
Smarter trolls, please.
I didn’t know Bkrasting was a troll. Bkrasting, can you tell us how high Kansas unemployment was before Laffernomics put the state into a giant deficit sinkhole — numbers not rhetoric please? If it is 4.8% now it couldn’t have been very high before. Why balloon up (to mix metaphors) a giant bill for Kansas’ children and grandchildren to pay — presumably ballooning ever gianter and gianter into the far, far future — just to keep unemployment at an “un-natural” low level of 4.8%? ???
Denis, google is your friend:
http://ycharts.com/indicators/kansas_unemployment_rate