I had no more than published the QOTW yesterday, and this one popped up. I’m of the opinion now that NYT economist and columnist Paul Krugman has gone insane, because nobody with any intact cognition would make a statement like this. Even Al Gore hasn’t gone this far, this is in nucking futz territory.
The scene is set on HBO’s Real Time Friday. Krugman is a guest, pitching his book, but at the same time pitching an idea that he’s totally serious about. It involves aliens and scientists and lies to the public on a grand scale, plus a shout out to California’s high-speed rail boondoggle. Here’s the transcript, brace yourself.
PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: This is hard to get people to do, much better, obviously, to build bridges and roads and healthcare clinics and schools. But my proposed, 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.”
But look, I mean, whatever it takes because right now we need somebody to spend, and that somebody has to be the U.S. government.
Watch the video here: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/05/26/krugman-scientists-should-falsely-predict-alien-invasion-so-governmen#ixzz1w5zk6aAO
UPDATE: one commenter thinks he’s being sarcastic or tongue in cheek, here’s my response –
If he had left the comment at that, I’d agree with you, but he added this without saying “I’m joking” or “That’s silly but…”
But look, I mean, whatever it takes because right now we need somebody to spend, and that somebody has to be the U.S. government.
He’s a big boy, he knows the ropes of these interviews, and he didn’t insert an appropriate caveat. – Anthony
UPDATE2: This is now a theme with Krugman. Obviously he stands by his words or he would not have repeated it. See 1:01 in this Aug 14th, 2011 video.
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The signs have been there. In Feb 2011, Krugman pulled another whopper. Paul Krugman’s opinion in the NY Times blamed climate change for the unrest in Egypt.
Dr. Ryan N. Maue wrote then:
Based upon this quote from Krugman:
But the evidence tells a different, much more ominous story. While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.
There is no other way to interpret this than “I told you so” from Krugman directly linking climate change and the disparate weather events of the past year or two to food prices and the crises in the Arab world. To various commenters who are defending Krugman religiously, do you doubt that Krugman is linking the events implicitly or explicitly? Remind you, this is the same Nobel prize winner that less than a few hours after Congresswoman Giffords was shot blamed conservatives for the so-called “Climate of Hate“. How does he have ANY credibility at all — especially with anything related to physical sciences?
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Indeed.
h/t to WUWT reader “good business”
Related articles
- Krugman: scientists should falsely predict alien invasion (motls.blogspot.com)
- Krugman: Scientists Should Falsely Predict Alien Invasion So Government Will Spend More Money (newsbusters.org)
- Krugman : Scientists Should Lie – To Force The Country Further Into Debt (stevengoddard.wordpress.com)
Krugman might just as well align himself with the CAGW clowns–he has all the necessary accoutrements.
Each week I think things can’t get any worse for The Team supporting The Cause, and I’m wrong–it DOES get worse.
Each week I think things can’t get any worse for the current US administration, and I’m AGAIN wrong–it gets worse for them, too.
Two losers; two parallel causes; two dispicable wastes of time, energy and money. It’s pathetic.
Krugman isn’t nuts in the “he believes in aliens” sense. He’s nuts in the “gov should lie to the people” psycho sense. The guy believes that gov has a “moral responsibility” to lie to us in order to do what *he* thinks is the right thing (no matter how many times he and Keynesian-ism have been discredited).
This thinking should sound pretty familiar to the skeptics here at WUWT… It permeates the environmental movement and AGW activists. He (and they) live by the code that the end justifies the means. And yet they fail to see the irony that anyone who believes as they do are people no one should believe in the first place… But they’ll always be around to serve as useful idiots to the Machiavellian schemes of politicians.
Actually, Krugman IS an Alien! He is attempting to destroy us economically so his masters can take over without our being able to fight back. 😉
What you all don’t seem to realize is that the really insane ideas are the austeriry and deficit reduction myths that the Republicans have touted for decades, that they made Obama buy into, and that are swirling Europe down the drain as we speak, likely swirling us along in due course. Krugman is right as rain on the economy, and wrong as can be on climate. That’s the way it is with human beings,… and we all don’t have the same sense of humor either. Relax, everyone. Let’s go chew on Gavin or someone deserving.
REPLY – Better watch out someone doesn’t chew on you. I, for one (as a big gummint liberal), happen to strongly support tax cuts and austerity measures. A tax rate of 100% is too high. A tax rate of 0% is too low. Once you have accepted that, congratulations, you have accepted the principles of Reaganomics, and, as Shaw once put it, we are merely haggling over a price. And you don’t wanna know my opinion regarding Krugman. Suffice it to say that intelligent opinions differ. But this is not an economics blog, so let’s just stick to talkin’ ’bout the weather. ~ Evan
Elliot says:
“As for high speed rail America really needs to build this in places where it makes sense.”
It makes no sense anywhere.
There is already an infrastructure in place: airlines. The High Speed Rail [HSR] boondoggle proposes laying tracks costing well over $100 BILLION to connect San Francisco to Sacramento to L.A. and San Diego. The project will never pay for itself; taxpayer-funded operating subsidies will always be necessary, forever. Property tax-paying land will be converted to government-owned land, thus eliminating that tax income. And the government always lies thru it’s teeth regarding ridership projections.
“High speed” rail is projected to take 3.5 – 5 hours to travel from S.F. to San Diego. But I can fly from S.F. to San Diego in just over an hour, for a little over a hundred dollars. The airline infrastructure is already in place, and it is very efficient. Krugman is just shilling for politicians and the self-serving unions that vote for them. Between buses, airlines, and existing trains, there is plenty of capacity. Indebting an overspending, profligate state $100,000,000 more, for something completely unnecessary, is the same kind of irresponsible thinking that has caused our current budget problems.
hewhotypes says:
“Rail takes decades for ROI, so government help makes some sense. The US government helped the railroads way back when, and helped the airlines and the auto companies (the national highways) in the middle of the 20th century. It builds the economy. Current interest rates are near zero, so borrowing is affordable. In fact, if you have something really useful to build, it’s almost crazy not to borrow at 0% and build it.”
HSR makes zero sense, and it would harm the economy. The state and the country would be much worse off with government HSR. Read this short description of Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy, and you will understand the problem. We see the proposed HSR. But it is what we do not see that will cause huge economic problems.
Typical keynesian drivel. I’m surprised, after the keynesian model has been REPEATEDLY shown to be a failure (especially 70’s stagflation), why it won’t die. A few fallacies demonstrated here: First of all, it’s not *consumption* that drives the economy it is *production*. Savings and investment come first, not spending. Another, is that the great depression ended when we began arms build up during WWII. By all metrics *except for employment*, the depression became WORSE during the war, and didn’t get better until around 1946, when the gov’t implemented policies that promoted savings and investment…which of course the keynesians cried that it would become a disaster, and actually turned out the opposite. Added on the improper use of the physical scientific method to a social science. I can’t wait til keynesianism dies.
Hey, is he suggesting that scientists could be PAID, to CREATE a scare..
how rude !!
Could never happen !!
/s
GoodBusiness says:
Keynesian theory has never worked one time – it extended the Great depression under FDR and we are still paying for people to be on the dole of government employment doing little or nothing.
Keynes was in charge of British economic policy during World War II. Thanks to his policies the British government was able to raise enormous sums of money at a much lower rate of interest than in World War I. Britain was practically bankrupt after World War II but that did not matter. It was a war of survival and without Keynes the total financial commitment Britain made would have been smaller. Thus he had more influence on the outcome of the war than any other economist or civil servant.
Keynes also had a major say in the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 which gave the world two and a half decades of stability in which the global economy thrived, in marked contrast to the period between the two world wars. Of course the Bretton Woods agreement wasn’t perfect and it eventually broke down, but perhaps some of the problems with it could have been avoided if some of the proposals put forward by Keynes had not been blocked by the Americans.
He was a complex character and you can find contradictory things in his works. That is not surprising because the economic situation is constantly changing and what it the right policy at one time might not be the right policy at another time. The detractors of Keynes frequently fail to understand him – unfortunately his supporters are often equally ignorant!
But you already have the Afghanistan conflict for useless spending. You didn’t even have to invent the Taliban.
Next time the NYT bemoans the high cost of Afghanistan forces, tell’em it’s Krugmannian spending.
It seems to me truth telling is the number one element that will allows societies and the human condition to truly progress forward. Echoing someone else’s comment, should we even listen to people who tell lies? The left does it (ends justify the means), Islam does it to infidels (taqiyya), too much of the corporate world does it (under the shield of advertising), and as a result it is infecting our younger generations as acceptable. Sure lying is part of the human condition but must it become so institutionalized?
Perhaps it has always been as extensive as now and this is just the 1st time in human history when the magnitude is being revealed and shared more widely through Gore’s www invention.
Here’s the way I understand Krugman’s statement. He firmly believes in government spending to save the economy. Now since the government has no money, it all has to come from the taxpayer. So what Krugman wants looks suspiciously like the CAGW swindle: Get a group of allegedly highly intelligent “scientists” to state that there is a serious problem coming our way, and the only way out is to start some huge and hugely expensive project that can only be accomplished by the government using taxpayer’s money and employing taxpayers. The approaching disaster could be anything… global climate disruption, Borg invasion, mass halitosis, whatever. The future disaster doesn’t matter, as long as the experts proclaim it so, and the gullible media spreads the word, and our elected superiors do what they “must”.
The problem is, of course that this simply moves money to less productive uses and to those riding the gravy train. Eventually people see this, realize that they are being fed lies and are having their money ripped from their pockets. That never ends well.
Too much hot air here. He was obviously making a point without being completely serious about the aliens.
You are all missing the most telling message in his statement: He’s not suggesting that the Air Force lie, or that the government lie; he’s suggesting that SCIENTISTS should be the ones who lie. Krugman sees scientists as the most willing liars.
Barefoot boy from Brooklyn says:
May 27, 2012 at 2:06 pm
What you all don’t seem to realize is that the really insane ideas are the austeriry and deficit reduction myths that the Republicans have touted for decades, that they made Obama buy into, and that are swirling Europe down the drain as we speak, likely swirling us along in due course. Krugman is right as rain on the economy, and wrong as can be on climate. That’s the way it is with human beings,… and we all don’t have the same sense of humor either. Relax, everyone. Let’s go chew on Gavin or someone deserving.
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Holy Crap!! There has been no austerity in the U.S……. or did you not notice the unparallelled growth in our debt in the last 3 1/2 years?
Europe isn’t going down the drain because they quit spending. They quit spending because there is no more capital to spend. What part of “debt payments” is hard to understand? The thought that government can run an economy is exactly why Greece is in such peril. They tried to spend their way out of trouble and now they can’t meet their debt payments. It wasn’t their reluctant cuts in spending which put them there. It was unrestrained borrowing and spending that got them to where they are today.
To the other people saying WWII got us out of the depression, sure, it played a part. But don’t we see that we’re in a war at this very moment? Yeh, wow, look at our economy go! The idea that if we just printed and spent more money that we’d be okay is absurd. The U.S. has been doing that for many years now, and we haven’t decreased it, we’ve increased it by a lot in these recent years.
I’m looking forward to the dreaded space alien menace threat being used to whoop us into line, I’m really over the AGW rubbish and It’s believers. The science of space aliens could be even more ridiculous than inferno Earth from beer bubbles. Is such a thing even possible? yes it is.
Beam me up, Scotty…..no really, beam me up please…there’s no intelligent life down here!
Well, calling on imaginary threats from extra-terrestrials has worked really well for religion: why shouldn’t it do the same for science?
Mario martini says:
May 27, 2012 at 2:21 pm
“Too much hot air here. He was obviously making a point without being completely serious about the aliens.”
America incarcerates a higher proportion of its population than any other Western country. This costs enormous amounts of money. Does Krugman think that this is a boon to the economy?
Could one of the Keynesian commenters tell me about the position Krugman has about this?
The theme of alien invasion has been raised before, on a number of occasions, both by (retired) Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the 50s and 60s, and again by President Ronald Reagan in the mid/late 80s, in the context of uniting humanity.
AnotherPhilC says:
May 27, 2012 at 12:59 pm
“So when Keynesian economics fail, it’s always because it’s imperfectly implemented? Rather like Marxism then?”
If Keynesian economics fails then we are all up sh*t creek without a paddle 😮
Currently we only have two tested forms of economics Neoclassical (which is what 99% of all current economists are including Krugman) or Keynesianism, we know from past situations that Keynesianism works in the current situation, however it hits the rich and market speculation (it is better for the poor and the average man as it creates employment). The mess we currently have is a result of 40 years of Neoclassical economics which removed constraints to what banks could do (just like in the 1920’s).
Keynesian economics isn’t perfect (it doesn’t work when you have stagflation), however it is the best we have for the current situation. The only reason the west escaped the 1930’s depression ultimately was due to WWII, and that was a classic Keynesian expansion (we expanded because we had too).
What many people putting down Keynesianism are forgetting the massive expansion of the US in the 1950’s and 60’s which was down to following Keynesian economics, if Neoclassical economics had been in place the USSR would have been first to the Moon!!!!
Why did we never get out of earth orbit for the last 40 years? Because we have had a neoclassical system in place.
Keynes was once asked why his economics was based only on the short term benefit and his answer was “In the long term we are all dead!”
No country currently is implementing pure Keynesianism and that is why it isn’t working, it is like only taking half a dose of antibiotics it won’t cure you and you’ll not get any better, taking the full dose will not be good for the wealthy (who are those in power) so we are fiddling while Rome burns. If they really go for it then we know from history that things will get sorted out, however the rich will be worse off.
However to quote another great economist “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” and “go sell everything you own and give it to the poor and come follow me” by some commentators views here he was probably an extreme communist 😉
“Now since the government has no money, it all has to come from the taxpayer.”
Try to at least get your facts right
The US Govt is Monetary sovereign (google it) so has unlimited money and does not have to get money from taxpayers.
Which is what the US Govt is currently doing. It spends using Fed reserves (created by a journal entry) and then drains the Fed reserves using either bonds or tax
So the spending comes first and the tax or bonds second
Roy says:
May 27, 2012 at 2:16 pm
“He was a complex character and you can find contradictory things in his works. That is not surprising because the economic situation is constantly changing and what it the right policy at one time might not be the right policy at another time. The detractors of Keynes frequently fail to understand him – unfortunately his supporters are often equally ignorant!”
Hayek said the same thing in an interview; he knew Keynes. So we don’t know what Keynes would propose today. But “Keynesianism” has a fixed meaning now, whether you like it or not.
Don’t forget that Krugman believes that he is more intelligent than the rest of us, and deserves to be our overlord.
“Keynes was in charge of British economic policy during World War II. Thanks to his policies the British government was able to raise enormous sums of money at a much lower rate of interest than in World War I. Britain was practically bankrupt after World War II but that did not matter”
Agree. But the world is a very different place today. No gold standard and floating currencies means that the restrictions on Govt (running out of money) with their own central bank but forced to settle in gold if required no longer exist. So Govt’s like the UK and US can spend without limit. The danger is inflation or a depreciating currency.
The US and UK can never out of money. This has applied since the gold standard was removed around 1972. (even though many economists still have not caught up with this significant change yet).
Barefoot boy from Brooklyn says:
May 27, 2012 at 2:06 pm
“What you all don’t seem to realize is that the really insane ideas are the austeriry and deficit reduction myths that the Republicans have touted for decades, that they made Obama buy into, and that are swirling Europe down the drain as we speak, likely swirling us along in due course.”
Barefoot Boy From Brooklyn, the southern European countries don’t actually do austerity. Instead they have all proposed a “mixed approach” of tax increases and government spending cuts, of which the tax increases came to pass while the spending cuts largely stay promises. Greece has promised for 3 years now to privatize their many state-owned companies and not one has been privatized. Their biggest private company is still Hellenic Bottling as far as I know, the local Coke licensee. Railways? public. Airports? public. Athens harbour? public etc etc etc.
Of course, when you increase taxes while keeping your public sector spending, you slaughter the private sector by draining the spending power and that’s where the enormous unemployment comes from.