Krugman: GOP Hates The Poor

Marine1 · Sep 27, 2014

Agent_286 said: ↑

Krugman: GOP Hates The Poor

by Paul Krugman | nytimes | Sept. 21, 2014
Excerpts:

"Last week John Boehner, the speaker of the House, explained to an audience at the American Enterprise Institute what's holding back employment in America: laziness. People, he said, have this idea that "I really don't have to work. I don't really want to do this. I think I'd rather just sit around." Holy 47 percent, Batman!

It's hardly the first time a prominent conservative has said something along these lines. Ever since a financial crisis plunged us into recession it has been a nonstop refrain on the right that the unemployed aren't trying hard enough, that they are taking it easy thanks to generous unemployment benefits, which are constantly characterized as "paying people not to work." And the urge to blame the victims of a depressed economy has proved impervious to logic and evidence.

But it's still amazing - and revealing - to hear this line being repeated now. For the blame-the-victim crowd has gotten everything it wanted: Benefits, especially for the long-term unemployed, have been slashed or eliminated. So now we have rants against the bums on welfare when they aren't bums - they never were - and there's no welfare. Why?

First things first: I don't know how many people realize just how successful the campaign against any kind of relief for those who can't find jobs has been. But it's a striking picture. The job market has improved lately, but there are still almost three million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months, the usual maximum duration of unemployment insurance. That's nearly three times the pre-recession total. Yet extended benefits for the long-term unemployed have been eliminated - and in some states the duration of benefits has been slashed even further.

The result is that most of the unemployed have been cut off. Only 26 percent of jobless Americans are receiving any kind of unemployment benefit, the lowest level in many decades. The total value of unemployment benefits is less than 0.25 percent of G.D.P. half what it was in 2003, when the unemployment rate was roughly the same as it is now. It's not hyperbole to say that America has abandoned its out-of-work citizens.

Strange to say, this outbreak of anti-compassionate conservatism hasn't produced a job surge. In fact, the whole proposition that cruelty is the key to prosperity hasn't been faring too well lately.

Last week Nathan Deal, the Republican governor of Georgia, complained that many states with Republican governors have seen a rise in unemployment and suggested that the feds were cooking the books. But maybe the right's preferred policies don't work?

Why is there so much animus against the unemployed, such a strong conviction that they're getting away with something, at a time when they're actually being treated with unprecedented harshness?

Now, as anyone who has studied British policy during the Irish famine knows, self-righteous cruelty toward the victims of disaster, especially when the disaster goes on for an extended period, is common in history.

Is it race? That's always a hypothesis worth considering in American politics. It's true that most of the unemployed are white, and they make up an even larger share of those receiving unemployment benefits. But conservatives may not know this, treating the unemployed as part of a vaguely defined, dark-skinned crowd of "takers."

My guess, however, is that it's mainly about the closed information loop of the modern right. In a nation where the Republican base gets what it thinks are facts from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, where the party's elite gets what it imagines to be policy analysis from the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, the right lives in its own intellectual universe, aware of neither the reality of unemployment nor what life is like for the jobless.

You might think that personal experience - almost everyone has acquaintances or relatives who can't find work - would still break through, but apparently not.

Whatever the explanation, Mr. Boehner was clearly saying what he and everyone around him really thinks, what they say to each other when they don't expect others to hear. Some conservatives have been trying to reinvent their image, professing sympathy for the less fortunate. But what their party really believes is that if you're poor or unemployed, it's your own fault."

read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/opinion/paul-krugman-those-lazy-jobless.html?
.....

IMO: Everyone knows that the stampede of the wealthy corporations going overseas for cheap labor and bigger profits left the former employees without a job in the middle of a Bush inspired financial free-fall vacuum that the republicans have nourished, replenished with obstructive legislation, and corporations treated ex-workers with obscene contempt, who helped make them wealthy in the first place.

What jobs were left were taken by high schoolers, paid low minimum wages, but now those jobs are being taken by older males that previously held good paying jobs but now work for minimum wage just to have a job in today's market.

It is true that corporations that are obsessed with greed and getting more profits don't have the morality to look back at what they have done to the American economy as a result of their obsessive greed, so we don't have to worry about owing them anything like loyalty anymore.

It has been evident for some time that republicans hate the poor, unemployed, women, blacks, gays, and their sick mentality of ignoring the plight of the poor in our country while they continue to rake in billions in profits while others cannot find jobs is repulsive and says much about their sense of any morality, manners, or justification of their continuing barrage against a theme of unemployed citizens (blacks) or anyone else that does not have a job, is just trying to shift the blame of the wealthy's flight overseas for cheap labor onto the shoulders of the average American worker that is now unemployed, his insurance cut off, and is waiting for Congress to finally DO SOMETHING !!

Congress should start making laws to force an extra temporary tax on the wealthy without the usual subsidies, perks, incentives, and lower taxes than an average worker pays. And they must pay their full share of regular taxes so that the President can create new jobs for the unemployed. The years of republican obstruction are coming to an end, and patriotic Americans will start to look out for each other in these days of limited jobs...we will create new ones that will bring back prosperity to all Americans, not just the 1%ers.

So if it isn't clear to everyone yet, it is the 1%ers against the 99%ers That used to be called social Darwinism (or the class system revisited) and the equality/opportunity of every citizen in a Democracy that signifies everyone's rights under the law.
This is a Pick 1....
Click to expand...

It doesn't look like all long term unemployed has had their benefits cut off, or that they want to work. Not saying that everyone out of work don't want to work, but there are a lot that don't. I know from experience that's true.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arOGHY27JwI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arOGHY27JwI

katzgar · Sep 27, 2014

"Everyone knows anything uttered by krugman is a farce. " and now for the funny guys...

creation · Sep 28, 2014

WallStreetVixen said: ↑

Actually, Krugman lost a debate a couple of years ago against Spanish economist Pedro Schwartz and resorted to nothing but ad hominem attacks.

It was rather sad...
Click to expand...

Assuming it was this debate;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX55BH97quk

It appears you are talking out your rear end. This in fact was a sometimes spirited but good natured debate on all sides. There was no resort to ad hominem attacks, Krugman did not attack Professor Schwartz. In fact it was the other way around, however both ended the debate on good terms.

Are you trying to foist some right wing low tax anti Krugman ideology on us by deception? Either way, what is your problem with this debate?

Anyway, its clear that the economy in the US is slowly improving as you yourself have shown. This situation is akin to Japan's long and dreadful 90s experience.

Austerity is a proven failure. You now must surely admit that.

Nat Turner · Sep 28, 2014

As for his economics positions, whom to believe, a Nobel Prize winning economist or the high school grad experts of the PoFo? Same problem as the whole global warming thingy. NASA climate scientists or a PoFo expert who looks out his double-wide to check the weather before he weighs in? Tough calls to be sure.

MVictorP · Sep 28, 2014

MolonLabe2009 said: ↑

Where did you get your extreme left-wing views from....MSNBC?....Rachel Madcow?.....CNN?....
Click to expand...

Extreme left-wing ???

The medias you qualify as "left" are in fact center-right. It only appears left for you because Fox is extreme-right. You Yanks have no idea what "left" is.

MVictorP · Sep 28, 2014

Wake_Up said: ↑

Berkley.
Click to expand...

Is it too much to expect you to write it right, then? Most educated people can correctly write the name of the institutions they had buisness with.

Ha ha ha.

Wake_Up · Sep 29, 2014

MVictorP said: ↑

Is it too much to expect you to write it right, then? Most educated people can correctly write the name of the institutions they had buisness with.

Ha ha ha.
Click to expand...

Apparently the sarcasm went right over your head...

TedintheShed · Sep 29, 2014

Mr. Krugman bartered and legitimate gravitas he may have had in the economic community for partisan hackery a good while back. Tis a shame when good minds submit to their inferiors over political pressure, but his is not the first.

Agent_286 said: ↑

Krugman: GOP Hates The Poor

by Paul Krugman | nytimes | Sept. 21, 2014
Excerpts:

"Last week John Boehner, the speaker of the House, explained to an audience at the American Enterprise Institute what's holding back employment in America: laziness. People, he said, have this idea that "I really don't have to work. I don't really want to do this. I think I'd rather just sit around." Holy 47 percent, Batman!

It's hardly the first time a prominent conservative has said something along these lines. Ever since a financial crisis plunged us into recession it has been a nonstop refrain on the right that the unemployed aren't trying hard enough, that they are taking it easy thanks to generous unemployment benefits, which are constantly characterized as "paying people not to work." And the urge to blame the victims of a depressed economy has proved impervious to logic and evidence.

But it's still amazing - and revealing - to hear this line being repeated now. For the blame-the-victim crowd has gotten everything it wanted: Benefits, especially for the long-term unemployed, have been slashed or eliminated. So now we have rants against the bums on welfare when they aren't bums - they never were - and there's no welfare. Why?

First things first: I don't know how many people realize just how successful the campaign against any kind of relief for those who can't find jobs has been. But it's a striking picture. The job market has improved lately, but there are still almost three million Americans who have been out of work for more than six months, the usual maximum duration of unemployment insurance. That's nearly three times the pre-recession total. Yet extended benefits for the long-term unemployed have been eliminated - and in some states the duration of benefits has been slashed even further.

The result is that most of the unemployed have been cut off. Only 26 percent of jobless Americans are receiving any kind of unemployment benefit, the lowest level in many decades. The total value of unemployment benefits is less than 0.25 percent of G.D.P. half what it was in 2003, when the unemployment rate was roughly the same as it is now. It's not hyperbole to say that America has abandoned its out-of-work citizens.

Strange to say, this outbreak of anti-compassionate conservatism hasn't produced a job surge. In fact, the whole proposition that cruelty is the key to prosperity hasn't been faring too well lately.

Last week Nathan Deal, the Republican governor of Georgia, complained that many states with Republican governors have seen a rise in unemployment and suggested that the feds were cooking the books. But maybe the right's preferred policies don't work?

Why is there so much animus against the unemployed, such a strong conviction that they're getting away with something, at a time when they're actually being treated with unprecedented harshness?

Now, as anyone who has studied British policy during the Irish famine knows, self-righteous cruelty toward the victims of disaster, especially when the disaster goes on for an extended period, is common in history.

Is it race? That's always a hypothesis worth considering in American politics. It's true that most of the unemployed are white, and they make up an even larger share of those receiving unemployment benefits. But conservatives may not know this, treating the unemployed as part of a vaguely defined, dark-skinned crowd of "takers."

My guess, however, is that it's mainly about the closed information loop of the modern right. In a nation where the Republican base gets what it thinks are facts from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, where the party's elite gets what it imagines to be policy analysis from the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, the right lives in its own intellectual universe, aware of neither the reality of unemployment nor what life is like for the jobless.

You might think that personal experience - almost everyone has acquaintances or relatives who can't find work - would still break through, but apparently not.

Whatever the explanation, Mr. Boehner was clearly saying what he and everyone around him really thinks, what they say to each other when they don't expect others to hear. Some conservatives have been trying to reinvent their image, professing sympathy for the less fortunate. But what their party really believes is that if you're poor or unemployed, it's your own fault."

read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/opinion/paul-krugman-those-lazy-jobless.html?
.....

IMO: Everyone knows that the stampede of the wealthy corporations going overseas for cheap labor and bigger profits left the former employees without a job in the middle of a Bush inspired financial free-fall vacuum that the republicans have nourished, replenished with obstructive legislation, and corporations treated ex-workers with obscene contempt, who helped make them wealthy in the first place.

What jobs were left were taken by high schoolers, paid low minimum wages, but now those jobs are being taken by older males that previously held good paying jobs but now work for minimum wage just to have a job in today's market.

It is true that corporations that are obsessed with greed and getting more profits don't have the morality to look back at what they have done to the American economy as a result of their obsessive greed, so we don't have to worry about owing them anything like loyalty anymore.

It has been evident for some time that republicans hate the poor, unemployed, women, blacks, gays, and their sick mentality of ignoring the plight of the poor in our country while they continue to rake in billions in profits while others cannot find jobs is repulsive and says much about their sense of any morality, manners, or justification of their continuing barrage against a theme of unemployed citizens (blacks) or anyone else that does not have a job, is just trying to shift the blame of the wealthy's flight overseas for cheap labor onto the shoulders of the average American worker that is now unemployed, his insurance cut off, and is waiting for Congress to finally DO SOMETHING !!

Congress should start making laws to force an extra temporary tax on the wealthy without the usual subsidies, perks, incentives, and lower taxes than an average worker pays. And they must pay their full share of regular taxes so that the President can create new jobs for the unemployed. The years of republican obstruction are coming to an end, and patriotic Americans will start to look out for each other in these days of limited jobs...we will create new ones that will bring back prosperity to all Americans, not just the 1%ers.

So if it isn't clear to everyone yet, it is the 1%ers against the 99%ers That used to be called social Darwinism (or the class system revisited) and the equality/opportunity of every citizen in a Democracy that signifies everyone's rights under the law.
This is a Pick 1....
Click to expand...

Bluesguy · Sep 29, 2014

creation said: ↑

Anyway, its clear that the economy in the US is slowly improving as you yourself have shown. This situation is akin to Japan's long and dreadful 90s experience.
Click to expand...

It is struggling to improve inspite of the lack of a pro-growth government policy the last 8 years.

Austerity is a proven failure. You now must surely admit that.
Click to expand...

What austerity?

creation · Sep 30, 2014

Bluesguy said: ↑

It is struggling to improve inspite of the lack of a pro-growth government policy the last 8 years.

What austerity?
Click to expand...

What's a pro growth etc etc?

European austerity. In fact all historical Austerity

creation · Sep 30, 2014

TedintheShed said: ↑

Mr. Krugman bartered and legitimate gravitas he may have had in the economic community for partisan hackery a good while back. Tis a shame when good minds submit to their inferiors over political pressure, but his is not the first.
Click to expand...

If he won't speak with an authoritative voice on public policy then who will?

Spiritus Libertatis · Sep 30, 2014

I don't care how intelligent he is, Paul Krugman is a self-righteous blowhard who is absolutely convinced that everything he thinks is right and everyone who disagrees is not only wrong, but morally evil.

So you'll have to excuse me for not giving a (*)(*)(*)(*) about what Paul Krugman thinks.

TedintheShed · Sep 30, 2014

creation said: ↑

If he won't speak with an authoritative voice on public policy then who will?
Click to expand...

The issue is that when such outlandish statements such as this are made he no longer has an authoritative voice because it is beyond reason. Political hackery destroys an such voice.

creation · Sep 30, 2014

TedintheShed said: ↑

The issue is that when such outlandish statements such as this are made he no longer has an authoritative voice because it is beyond reason. Political hackery destroys an such voice.
Click to expand...

What is the outlandish part ?

- - - Updated - - -

Spiritus Libertatis said: ↑

I don't care how intelligent he is, Paul Krugman is a self-righteous blowhard who is absolutely convinced that everything he thinks is right and everyone who disagrees is not only wrong, but morally evil.

So you'll have to excuse me for not giving a (*)(*)(*)(*) about what Paul Krugman thinks.
Click to expand...

Um no thats not what he thinks, and he has the anyone has the right, including you, to think he is right.

Judicator1 · Sep 30, 2014

In Denmark, people used to get unemployment benefits for up to 5 years. Now they can only get it for 4 years. Nonetheless, this provides us with a nice experiment on the impact of unemployment laws on incentives:

Unsurprisingly, there is a huge uptick in the likelihood right around the time benefits end. This isn't laziness, it is simply a response to economic incentives. If you can collect $15k/year in unemployment benefits or work for $40k/year, then work is really only paying $25k/year more than what you had before...not as a large as the difference between $40k and $0 and therefore not as large as a motivation to work.

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