Topic: Economics
Krugman's War On Liberty Paul Krugman's policy prescriptions for Obama will only lead to war, poverty, empire, and Fascism.by Darren Wolfe
(libertarian)
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The liberal economist, Paul Krugman, has seen fit to advise the president elect on how to solve all the country's ills in the latest edition of the Rolling Stone magazine. The article is entitled "What Obama Must Do - A Letter To The New President". As of this writing it was not available online.
I will leave it to the trained economists to debunk all the economic fallacies Mr. Krugman puts forward in this article. My goal here is to focus on his contradictory views of war.
Many on the left are holding up President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's (FDR) New Deal as a guide for Mr. Obama. Mr. Krugman is no exception. He clings to the fallacy that FDR got us out of the Great Depression. While acknowledging that the New Deal didn't end the Depression (he thinks it wasn't aggressive enough) Mr. Krugman states in the article that "It took the giant public works project known as World War II - a project that finally silenced the penny pinchers - to bring the Depression to an end." The idea that WW II ended the Depression or that military spending can bring prosperity is easily debunked. (See here.) Why, Mr. Krugman, strangely, provides us with an excellent example on the next page. He writes, "It's possible that reviving the economy might cost as much as a trillion dollars over the course of your first term. But the Bush administration wasted at least twice as much on an unnecessary war." Let me get this straight, Mr. Bush spending of more than two trillion dollars failed to keep us out of the recession, but Mr. Obama spending less than half as much will get us out?!?! Mr. Krugman contradicts himself, tripping over his own feet as he engages in nothing but naked partisan propaganda.
As if that weren't bad enough Mr. Krugman seems to be endorsing war, or at least preparation for war, as a means of keeping the economy growing. True, he nowhere explicitly states this, but notice that he has not taken care to clearly state his opposition to war as economic policy while claiming that WW II got us out of the Depression. That is an implicit endorsement of the war economy. The immorality of killing for profit needs no further going over.
This leads to the question, what, then, are the real differences between liberals and neoconservatives? They both, in their own ways, are advocating the same things, big government, war, and empire. It is very much as Bill Clinton's mentor, Carroll Quigley, wrote:
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.
This is leading us down the road to Fascism. At this point many readers are perhaps thinking that I've just ruined this article. But when one takes a good look at what Fascism really is one sees that it's the direction we're going in. The only difference between our system and pure Fascism is that we get to elect our dictator. As John T. Flynn warned in his book "As We Go Marching" back in 1944:
Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans who have been working to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which such a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our nation's greatest industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning, regeneration, and domination, all to be done under the authority of a powerfully centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers, with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society.
We can only save our liberties by turning away from these Fascistic policies and embracing freedom. This country can't take another FDR. I only hope it's not too late.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of Darren Wolfe only and do not represent
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Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2009-01-10 21:10:49
Hi Darren,
It isn't too late. I can tell because I woke up breathing this morning and the day got better from there. Things will always change, there will be bad times and better times. It is never too late to set in motion the forces that will one day result in the consequences you seek.
Posted By: Jake, the champion of the constitution
Date: 2009-01-10 22:34:54
good stuff Darren! I haven't read this latest piece from Krugman but I enjoy reading his stuff - although I mostly rip it all to shreds with my little pea-sized Austrian brain
i am picky here, i do object to "road TO fascism" :) we are already a fascist state, the only degree is its hardness. I am betting you have seen Russo's movie - he called it "freedom TO fascism" for a reason. To a neutral observer (like me grin grin) the US is already a SOFT fascist state, you dont need to look too closely, just watch the revolving door in our govt between corporations
Rumsfeld - SecDef, 2000s, shook hands with Saddam Hussein 1980s. Got his start from Friedman's Chicago School of shock economics and became a US Congress Representative at 30. In between Saddam and the War on Terror: Chairman Gilead Sciences (some wacked out stuff with Tamiflu and company stock WHILE he was SecDef), CEO Searle Pharmaceuticals, on the board for Sears, Kellogg, Gulfstream jets, the Swiss firm ABB which sold nuclear tech. to North Korea AND MORE
Now, you might say, well that's now
Robert MacNamara, SecDef 1960s of Vietnam fame. President of Ford previously.
I've for one have figured out why the top leaders of car firms and drug "cures" for terrorist attacks are Dept Defense, and in brief its all about war profiteering, which is the WWII "lesson" that you accurately discuss in your article. Nice work!
To me, the nomenclature of "Department of Defense" is just as laughable as today's "Israeli Defense Forces", although I do strongly believe in national defense in its proper context.
Don't forget that Krugman had suggested that the 9/11 attacks would have an economic benefit:
"And there will, potentially, be two favorable effects.
First, the driving force behind the economic slowdown has been a plunge in business investment. Now, all of a sudden, we need some new office buildings. As I've already indicated, the destruction isn't big compared with the economy, but rebuilding will generate at least some increase in business spending.
Second, the attack opens the door to some sensible recession-fighting measures. For the last few weeks there has been a heated debate among liberals over whether to advocate the classic Keynesian response to economic slowdown, a temporary burst of public spending. There were plausible economic arguments in favor of such a move, but it was questionable whether Congress could agree on how to spend the money in time to be of any use -- and there was also the certainty that conservatives would refuse to accept any such move unless it were tied to another round of irresponsible long-term tax cuts. Now it seems that we will indeed get a quick burst of public spending, however tragic the reasons."
In 1850, Frederic Bastiat totally debunked the myth that war is good for the economy. I guess a nobel prize winning "economist" like Krugman is too busy to read "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen" (http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html), where Bastiat tells the story of shop keeper who's window is broken.
The "seen" part of the story is the added business of the glazier, who gets to make a new window. The "unseen" part of the story is the shop keeper who didn't buy a new pair of shoes, because he had to spend the money on a new window. In the end, the economy had the same number of windows and one less pair of shoes.
Imagine all the economic activity that Krugman could generate by slowly dying of cancer!
Posted By: patrick henry
Date: 2009-01-13 20:22:00
Try War is a Racket by Smedley Butler, or War is the Health of the State by Randolph Bourne
Look up Jim Brooks and the interceptor body armor. How nice of him to throw his daughter a $10 Million dollar bat mitzvah. Talk about war profiteering. Crap makes me sick that we bleed for the profits of the few to the cheers of the many.
Good article Darren. As has been noted, we are well down the road to fascism. I will be willing to bet that Obama's policies will confirm we are there.
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