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Media Infiltrations: Deadly Rescue  National Review November 17, 2008 Krugman’s Posthumous Nobel National Review Online October 14, 2008
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Chronicle of the Conspiracy
Join us as we discover, document, expose and challenge the bad people, the bad institutions and the bad ideas that stand in the way of wealth creation -- and show you how to fight back!
Saturday, March 15, 2003
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It all started two weeks ago, on February 28, when the "Washington Wire" column of The Wall Street Journal reported (all emphasis in original):
"THE GOOD BOOK holds key to bin Laden whereabouts, author tells U.S.
"Michael Drosnin, author of bestselling 'The Bible Code,' gets meetings with Pentagon's top intelligence officer and CIA's No. 3, on his theory that bin Laden's hideaway is revealed in the Old Testament's ancient Hebrew.
"The Pentagon says it didn't know beforehand what specific evidence he had, but years ago he gave information about Soviet mind-control weapons. The CIA says he had 'pestered' them with faxes and calls. Drosnin says bin Laden is in the Mideast, but revealing where would compromise national security."'We've been criticized for not connecting the dots before, which is what Mr. Drosnin does,' says one spook."
Then about a week later, on March 8, Bill Keller's column in the New York Times repeats the story, with the meeting having morphed into a "briefing." Keller concludes by faulting the Bush Pentagon for wasting its time.
"Two weeks ago, a group of senior intelligence officials in the Defense Department sat for an hour listening to a briefing by a writer who claims -- I am not making this up -- that messages encoded in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament provide clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. One of the officials told me that they had agreed to meet the writer, Michael Drosnin, author of a Nostradamus-style best seller, without understanding that he was promoting Biblical prophecy. Still, rather than shoo him away, they listened politely as he consumed several man-hours of valuable intelligence-crunching time."
Keller is right when he says "I am not making this up" -- he's recycling a week-old Journal story without acknowledging the source. Anyway... three days later, on March 11, a letter from author Drosnin was published in the Times, including the following statements:
"Both American and Israeli intelligence are now using the Bible Code to hunt for Osama bin Laden. What possible loss is there in that?...
"We have a real enemy to find and fight, the one who attacked us: Osama bin Laden. Discouraging top American intelligence officials from checking out information that might lead to the Qaeda leader is bad for our country."
No doubt the snobbish Times felt that Drosnin's letter hilariously confirmed and reinforced Keller's condescending comments. Liberal bloggers have caught the proper tone -- Charles Kuffner says "Unbelievable...just laugh. He deserves no better," and Atrios reproduced the text of the letter in full with nothing more than the snotty heading, "Lord Help Us." I'm sure there was more in the leftist blogosphere, but I can't bring myself to read very much of that kind of thing.
That should have been the end of it, anyhow. But now -- yep, you guessed it -- Paul Krugman has dredged up the incident once again and has inflated it to a new level of fraudulent misrepresentation. He mentions the Drosnin Pentagon meeting in a post on his personal web site Friday, citing it as evidence that the Bush administration is too stupid to engage in a particular conspiracy that has been proposed:
"I've been getting a number of emails from people suggesting to me that this impending war is all about money - specifically, to ensure that the dollar, and not the euro, remains the world's #1 currency. The idea is that the US economy will be in danger if OPEC members start demanding payment in euros rather than dollars.
"With respect to my correspondents, this isn't a plausible argument. It's politically implausible - who, exactly, in this administration is supposed to be thinking about the role of the dollar as a key currency? The same people who invited the author of The Bible Code to brief the Pentagon?"
So now, in just over two weeks, a reluctantly granted meeting with a couple officials was morphed by one Times columnist into a "briefing," and then by another Times columnist into a briefing of "the Pentagon" -- the whole damn building, it seems -- and a briefing that the Bush administration "invited." At this rate, next week Maureen O'Dowd will probably be writing that Bush begged Drosnin to come to the Crawford ranch and lead the Bush family in prayer.
>> Postscript... Strangely, it turns out that Bible codes have been associated with the Pentagon before, long before Bush ever took office. From the pages of The Bible Code itself we find Harold Gans, a "senior code-breaker" spending not just "several man-hours of valuable intelligence-crunching time" but hundreds of hours, investigating the original Bible code research of Jewish scholars Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg:
"A senior code-breaker at the top secret National Security Agency, the clandestine U.S. government listening post near Washington, heard about the startling discovery in Israel, and decided to investigate.
"Harold Gans had spent his life making and breaking codes for American intelligence. He was trained as a statistician. He spoke Hebrew. And he was sure that the Bible code was 'off-the-wall, ridiculous.'
"Gans was certain he could prove that the code did not exist. He wrote his own computer program, and he looked for the same information the Israelis had found. He was surprised. It was there. The dates that the sages were born and died were encoded with their names.
"Gans could not believe it. He decided to look for entirely new information in the Bible code, and thereby expose the flaw in Rips' experiment, possibly even reveal a hoax.
"'If this was real,' said Gans, 'then I figured that the cities where these men were born and died ought to be encoded as well.'
"In his 440-hour experiment Gans checked not only the names of the thirty-two sages Rips finally used, but also thirty-four others from an earlier list, checking all sixty-six against the names of the cities, and the results made him a believer.
"'It sent a chill up my spine,' recalled Gans. The cities also matched the names of the sages in the Bible code.
"The Pentagon code-breaker, using his own computer program, had independently replicated the Israelis' results. Men who lived hundreds and thousands of years after the Bible was written were encoded in detail. Rips had found dates. Gans had found the cities. The Bible code was real.
"'We conclude that these results provide corroboration of the results reported by Witzum, Rips, and Rosenberg,' wrote Gans in a final report of his investigation.
"'In evaluating the Bible code,' he later said, 'I was doing the same kind of work I did at the Department of Defense.'
"'At first, I was 100% skeptical,' said the Pentagon code-breaker. 'I thought this was all just silly. I set out to disprove the code, and ended up proving it.'"
It's not at all clear from information available on the web, but from what I can tell Gans was probably retired from the NSA when he did this work. But be that as it may, on June 3, 1997, shortly after the book was first published and started to climb the best-seller lists, Gans issued a statement confirming what had been claimed about him in the book. While Gans is careful to assert that there is no scientific reason to expect that Bible codes can predict the future, he concludes,
"After exhaustive analysis, I have reached the conclusion that the only information that can be derived from the codes discovered in Genesis is that they exist, and the probability that they are mere coincidence is vanishingly small."
Gans continued with his experiments, and on March 24, 1998 he issued a second statement to quell rumors that his further investigations suggested lack of conviction in his original results. Needless to say, Bible codes and Gans' research in support of them has been the subject of significant skepticism from the scientific community (see here, here and here).
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:50 PM | link
Friday, March 14, 2003
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- "When do cash deficits begin? In the 2002 report, cash deficits begin in 2017. When payroll tax revenues are insufficient to pay promised benefits, Social Security must redeem the government bonds in its trust fund. The multi-trillion dollar cost to the government of redeeming these bonds would require tax increases or reductions in non-Social Security programs.
- "What are Social Security’s total cash deficits? Once payroll taxes are no longer enough to pay scheduled benefits, the government must produce extra cash—either to redeem trust fund bonds or to pay benefits directly. In the 2002 report, Social Security’s cash shortfall over the next 75 years totals $23.9 trillion in 2002 dollars, or $4.7 trillion in present value. Total cash deficits are expected to increase in this year’s report.
- "What’s the cost of paying benefits today? In 2030? In 2050? In 2070? Even if Social Security appears affordable on average, what matters is the cost to workers in any particular year. In the 2002 report, Social Security’s cost of paying today’s benefits was 10.8 percent of payroll, rising to 17.2 percent in 2030, 17.9 percent in 2050, and 19.5 percent in 2070.
- "When is the trust fund exhausted? The government bonds in the Social Security trust fund don’t put off the problem of paying for Social Security, as Social Security’s two public trustees noted in 2002, “since the U.S. Treasury is the ultimate payer of the programs’ benefits and the trust fund assets are also debts of the U.S. Treasury, neither the interest paid on the bonds, nor their redemption, provides any net new income to the U.S. Treasury.” However, the trust fund is still important: when the fund’s bonds are exhausted then, by law, Social Security must reduce benefits by 25 percent or more, to the level payable through Social Security’s dedicated tax revenues. In the 2002 report, the trust fund is exhausted in 2041."
A grim reminder that Social Security remains the great unexploded bomb in American public finance. Tick... tick... tick...
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:02 PM | link
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"Nobody I see is changing sides and I haven't heard one person who supports Bush suggest that he is not up to the job. Quite the opposite in fact, I've heard numerous people express the feeling they are glad he is the one in the chair. Given the typical razzle dazzle of economic pundits, Krugman can try to get away with whatever economic theory he wants to sell, but he can't manipulate much less change the polls which show 60% of the American people support a unilateral war against Iraq if necessary. And those numbers appear to be firming slightly as Americans get more and more angry over the United Nations issue.
"...Anyway, your words are appreciated and they've helped me to relieve myself of one more burden in life -- specifically of buying the New York Times. It's gone the way of French and German products which are now, and for a long time to come, out. Have to believe most Americans concur."
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:37 AM | link
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"Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. A long list of pundits who previously supported the Bush administration's policy on Iraq have publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who wouldn't want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job. And more people than you would think — including a fair number of people in the Treasury Department, the State Department and, yes, the Pentagon — don't just question the competence of Mr. Bush and his inner circle; they believe that America's leadership has lost touch with reality."
Where's the "long list of pundits"? He doesn't even name one (although he could have easily named the New York Times edit page, which changes its mind on Iraq almost daily). Who are the "fair number of people in the Treasury Department, the State Department and, yes, the Pentagon"? He doesn't name even one. If this is supposed to be an appeal to authority, an appeal to consensus, why can't he name even one?
The only source quoted in the entire column is The Nelson Report, which Krugman describes as "an influential foreign policy newsletter" -- and the quote doesn't name names either, or for that matter do much more than throw its own tantrum in the form of the metaphorical likening of President Bush's Iraq and Korea policy to Clinton's Waco fiasco. And The Nelson Report, I assure you, is not itself one of the "long list of pundits who previously supported the Bush administration." Josh Marshall, who describes its author Chris Nelson as "my friend," was quoting it last December -- the same Waco thing, with Ruby Ridge thrown in for good measure. Marshall describes The Nelson Report as "the news and gossip sheet of choice for DC's Asia policy hands and trade policy mavens. ...Yes, such a thing actually exists..." Riiiight... an "influential foreign policy newsletter."
But of all the unnamed pundits and their epiphanies, perhaps the best epiphany is Krugman's own, at which he arrives at the end of his column: "The odds are that by the time you read my next column, the war will already have started."
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:35 AM | link
Thursday, March 13, 2003
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First, it's not a "plan" at all. It's a rule that was proposed by the New York Stock Exchange.
Second, the rule would not have "restricted" stock options, it would have made the issuance of stock options subject to a ratifying shareholder vote.
Third, the rule would not have given shareholders "veto power," only the ability to vote in the same manner that they already do on many other matters.
Fourth, the rule would not affect the way companies "dole out" options -- as though the distribution of options were a matter of charity or welfare -- but rather their ability to issue them and award them in the context of compensation plans.
Fifth, the rule never had "nearly universal support." The NYSE's competitor, the NASDAQ -- on which a larger total number of public companies are traded -- has always favored a significantly different version of the rule.
But other than that, Kvetchin' got it all exactly right.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 3:05 PM | link
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"Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about life on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, in the Persian Gulf, misstated the cost of the jets near which the sailors were playing football. They cost upward of $50 million, not up to $50 million."
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:10 AM | link
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
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First impressions can be the best impressions, Mickey. Trust your instincts, my friend -- not Brad DeLong's econo-babble!
Mickey, when you caught Paul Krugman in a contradiction, noting that in one of his New York Times columns he said that deflation is a crisis and then in another column he said that inflation is a crisis, you were right -- it was a contradiction. Good catch! Bravissimo!
Now don't let Krugman's understudy DeLong spin up an apologia for him and snow you with a bunch of elephant-shit about how, well -- ahem! -- if you were an economist like me you'd understand this... it's all very complicated and I know you don't understand algebra... but, you see, deflation is a short term problem and then after that there will be inflation...and then... well, you see it has to do with demographics, and…
Really, Mickey, more than three economists can't even agree on what deflation and inflation are, or how to measure them. The track record of economists at predicting either one of them, or anything else for that matter, is abjectly embarrassing. Krugman himself repeatedly predicted accelerating inflation throughout the 1990s, when just the opposite was the case (proof: see the various editions of his book The Age of Diminished Expectations: U.S. Economic Policy in the 1990s). We really should agree to get together over a drink in five or ten years, and look back at how DeLong's first-deflation-then-deflation scenario played out. I guarantee you it will be good for a laugh or three.
Who the hell knows if DeLong's complicated rationale for Krugman's contradictory crises really matches Krugman's thinking at all -- if Krugman even has any thinking on this beyond manufacturing political arguments. Even if it is what Krugman had in mind, believing either one of them when they tell you that first there will be deflation because of this and then there will be inflation because of that -- well, it's like taking a couple of blind men to the race track and having them pick the trifecta for you.
Mickey, you're modest enough and honest enough to want to accept a credible-sounding explanation in a specialized subject when it comes from a credentialed source, but trust me on this... don't overestimate the powers of economics or of economists. If DeLong could make predictions of this complexity with any accuracy at all, he wouldn't be hanging around the faculty lounge at UC Berkeley downing doughnuts and ripping off reams of other people's copyrighted material on his website.
>> Update... Here's Robert Musil's excellent vivisection of DeLong's apologia.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:05 PM | link
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Today's edit page carries what at first appears to be an op-ed commentary by St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank president William Poole, titled "''Unforecastable Shock,'" warning of risk to the economy if the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae") were to suffer losses beyond its arguably too-small capital base. In the print edition it's positioned at lower right on the main edit page, just where third-party commentaries often go -- and on the Journal's web site it's labeled "Commentary."
But Poole's commentary isn't quite "commentary." This morning St. Louis Fed spokesman Randy Sumner told me, "We didn't submit anything to the Journal." Poole's apparent commentary was, as the Journal properly disclosed, "...an excerpt from a speech he gave in Washington on Monday."
Another St. Louis Fed spokesman, Joe Elstner, told me, "They called -- left a voice mail actually -- and asked if he would do an op-ed piece. I replied that he's in the middle of a pre-FOMC meeting blackout period. CEO's never discuss policy-related items this close to a meeting. Apparently they decided if he doesn't agree to it we'll just excerpt what's on the web site."
Obviously Poole's remarks are in the public domain, and the Journal is certainly entitled to reproduce them without permission. The issue is whether reproducing them in the form of an op-ed commentary could give the false impression that the author had deliberately submitted the commentary for publication. Yes, the disclosure was there -- as Elstner told me, "If it had run without the disclaimer I would have had to take some action." But the potential false impression was there, too. By the way, I have communicated with a spokesman for Dow Jones, the parent of the Wall Street Journal, but as of this writing they have not come back with comments.
The question of the appearance of the author's intent is critical, because an opinion that is published at the author's initiative underscores the strength of his conviction -- the fact that he would seek to have the views republished makes them seem more emphatic than if the same views were simply quoted in a news item. That distinction is especially true for this author, and for this publication.
When Poole made his speech on Monday, his remarks sent shares of Fannie Mae plunging -- and raised new worries in a market that already has plenty to worry about. Fed officials normally don't like to roil the markets with their remarks -- so the appearance that Poole has chosen to repeat his controversial concerns in the edit page of the Journal suggests that he must feel very strongly indeed about the matter. Especially, perhaps, on the edit page of the Journal, which has written many editorials warning about risk at Fannie Mae and harshly criticizing its management (one such editorial ran today, next to Poole's commentary).
I share the Journal's and Poole's concerns about Fannie Mae -- and I continue to admire the Journal's edit page as a powerful and all-too-lonely voice for freedom and capitalism (in fact I've been honored to have one of my own commentaries appear there). And I hope I don't piss off my friends there by writing this sincere criticism. But I do have truth-in-labeling concerns about this case -- I think the bright line between news and opinion must be scrupulously maintained both on the news pages and the editorial pages.
>> Update... After posting this story, a spokesman for Dow Jones, the parent of the Wall Street Journal, called me to say that the Journal declined to comment on the origin of the Poole op-ed, as a matter of policy.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:14 PM | link
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
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The self-determined definition of "rich" varied across sub-groups, but overall it was defined as annual household income over $122 thousand and net worth of over $1 million. Only something like 7% of American households are currently that "rich," and an even smaller percentage of poll respondents said that they were already that "rich." Yet in all age groups -- even among people over 65 -- hope springs eternal.
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Percent Who Expect to Be Rich, by Age |
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Very/somewhat likely to be rich |
Already rich |
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| Overall |
31% |
2% |
| Age | ||
| 18-29 |
51% |
0% |
| 30-49 |
36% |
1% |
| 50-64 |
22% |
4% |
| 65+ |
8% |
2% |
So much for this being an "age of diminishing expectations."
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:41 AM | link
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Fewer investors probably look to Paul Krugman's New York Times column for tips. Good thing -- his glowing story on Enron for Fortune magazine -- written while he was taking Enron's dirty money as a member of their advisory board) -- even makes a coat-tail investment in Coca-Cola look good. So hopefully not too many investors will be suckered in by Krugman's column today, in which he announces his latest investment -- "...last week I switched to a fixed-rate mortgage."
Let's set aside whether writing about this investment of his violates the New York Times' Code of Conduct, which prohibits writers from making investments "in anticipation of forthcoming articles." Wouldn't that be "based on exploiting insider status," as Krugman would say? Well, let's move on. Let's just look at Krugman's reasoning for making this investment to begin with.
The reasoning is just another rehash of Krugman's usual economic catastrophism -- a blend of well-known end-of-the-world problems like Social Security insolvency peppered with the usual charges of fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush administration. This week's clichéd metaphor is that it's a "fiscal train wreck." You see, it will all lead to deficits -- and deficits will lead to higher interest rates. Yep, it's the same old Rubinomics mantra.
Why is it OK for the Krugman family to go into debt to buy a house, but not OK for the government to go into debt to fight the war against terrorism, or whatever? Krugman never really gets into that (because he has no answer for it), but he nevertheless proves that deficits lead to higher interest rates by quoting a passage from a textbook by N. Gregory Mankiw, Bush's new head of the White House Council of Economic Advisors: "When the government reduces saving by running a budget deficit, the interest rate rises." Funny how when Bush administration officials say things that Krugman agrees with, he quotes them as corroborative authorities.
So what does Krugman -- putatively a great economist -- suggest that we do in order to avert the train wreck? Not much -- just two sarcastic sentences. The first:
"Or maybe a repentant Rush Limbaugh will lead the drive to raise taxes on the rich."
We should ask corroborative authority Greg Mankiw what he thinks about that. If interest rates will rise because "government reduces saving by running a budget deficit," won't they also rise when government reduces savings by raising taxes?
OK, then there's this:
"Maybe a future administration will use butterfly ballots to disenfranchise retirees, making it possible to slash Social Security and Medicare."
At least this would work -- though I suspect that Krugman intends little more here than to assert that a future Republican administration will use voting fraud to throw granny over a cliff in her wheelchair. If you subscribe to Krugman's bleak zero-sum vision of an age of diminishing expectations, then the alternatives of raising taxes or running deficits are just equivalent non-solutions, no risks are ever worth taking, and your only way out is to cut spending.
But there's a whole 'nother way of looking at the world, which apparently Krugman's cognitive apparatus is simply not equipped to grasp -- the possibility of growth. If you assume that the pool of wealth can be grown, then choices in public finance -- such as running a deficit or not, raising or lowering taxes, and so on -- can be made with an eye toward what will create additional new wealth. The problem of dividing up the pie becomes very different -- and very much easier -- when the pie is growing, and when you are not bound by the idea that a slice for one person necessarily comes at the expense of another person.
Liberals like Krugman are not the only ones who are blind to the possibility of growth -- the risk-averse zero-sum vision afflicts conservatives, as well, and leads them into the same intellectual paralysis. It need have nothing at all to do with politics -- in fact, in this way, Krugman and Buffett are really quite alike. Buffett's view of investing is strictly based on "value," not growth -- he wants to buy stocks cheap at distress-sale prices, when the seller is making a mistake by pricing them too low. A zero-sum game -- the seller is the loser, Buffett is the winner.
Just remember when you read Buffett or read Krugman that the history of the human race -- the parts worth remembering and repeating at least -- are the parts about growth. The really great men in history aren't necessarily the richest ones, like Buffett, or the ones with the loudest voices, like Krugman. They're the men who believed that you could take a little risk and make the world not just a better place, but a bigger place.
>> Want a good laugh? Visit the Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive -- maintained by a tirelessly devoted fan known only as "Bobby" -- for a little celebration of Krugman's 50th birthday. As "Bobby" puts it,
"Today marks half a century of Paul Krugman. It is a milestone in the life of one of the great Americans of our time and one of the great economists."
A smiling studio portrait of Krugman follows, set against drawings and photographs collected by "Bobby" of those whom he must consider to be Krugman's historical antecedents: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, John Hicks, Paul Samuelson, James Tobin and Robert Solow.
>> Update... My friend Dave Nadig points out that I should have been clear here that I was not particularly disagreeing either with Buffett's junk bond buy, nor with Krugman's mortgage move, as personal investment plays at this time. However politically motivated Krugman's column may have been, "go ahead -- get a cheap mortgage," as Dave puts it.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 1:50 AM | link
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Here are some Socratic questions for multilateralists:
- If it's right for the United States to take military action against Iraq, then why does the US need UN approval to do it?
- Is military action only right if the UN approves it -- and so the very same action would be wrong if the UN didn't approve it?
- Does military action, then, have no intrinsic rightness or wrongness -- all that matters is UN approval?
- If there is no intrinsic rightness or wrongness to military action, then on what grounds would the UN approve or disapprove of it?
- If there are no grounds for UN approval other than UN approval itself, how would any individual Security Council member know how to vote until everyone else had already voted -- and how would they know?
- And if there is intrinsic rightness or wrongness to military action that would guide an individual nation's vote, then why wouldn't that same intrinsic rightness or wrongness determine that nation's actions, with or without approval of other voting nations?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:04 AM | link
Monday, March 10, 2003
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Krugman could afford it -- he's a DINK (double-income no kids) who claims to be "definitely comfortable" and says "My wife and I hope to be even more comfortable when the...textbook we're writing starts to yield royalties." He adds, "Hey, it's OK to make money as long as it's not based on exploiting insider status, and as long as you pay your proper share of taxes."
I have no doubt that this former Enron consultant has sufficiently sterling ethics to scrupulously assign only Greg Mankiw's or Glenn Hubbard's textbooks to his Princeton economics students, rather than his own, to avoid even the appearance of "exploiting insider status." But what about Krugman's paying what he calls "your proper share of taxes," considering that in this case it would be his proper share of taxes -- or his and "the little woman's," so to speak.
William Quick at The Daily Pundit links to an item in the Boston Herald showing that -- not surprisingly -- people don't pay more taxes than they absolutely have to, even when the idea to pay more voluntarily is suggested to them directly. In Massachusetts this year, it seems that not very many taxpayers have chosen to pay the state's new "optional tax rate" under which "Taxpayers have the option to pay a higher tax rate on certain types of income. Taxpayers may pay 5.85% as opposed to 5.3%..."
According to the Herald item,
"According to the Department of Revenue, of 855,786 filers thus far this year, 345 have generously chosen to pay at the higher rate... The gesture by the 345 good liberals has raised $34,668... To put it another way, thus far 0.0004 percent of Massachusetts' taxpayers have endorsed the mantra of higher taxes - with their own wallets."
I have no idea whether Krugman & Wife will choose to give a little something extra to the state of New Jersey or the US Treasury when they pay their taxes this year, even though there's no formal "option" for them to do so. It's probably safe to assume that they will not. Why not? Certainly they would pay if what Krugman advocates came to pass -- if higher tax rates were legislated for the rich. So why don't they pay them now voluntarily, rather than only advocate paying them if a law were passed requiring it? If it's the right thing to do, why wait until everybody is forced to do it at the point of a gun before you, who advocate it, will do it yourself?
It's an interesting subject for Krugman's textbook.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:37 AM | link