What He Said
Posted on July 29th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »
I think Paul Krugman is spot on in his critique of journalism’s cult of balance.
Some of us have long complained about the cult of “balance,” the insistence on portraying both parties as equally wrong and equally at fault on any issue, never mind the facts. I joked long ago that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read “Views Differ on Shape of Planet.” But would that cult still rule in a situation as stark as the one we now face, in which one party is clearly engaged in blackmail and the other is dickering over the size of the ransom?
…making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.
And yet…Gallup reports that President Obama’s approval rating has hit an “all-time low” of 40%, and that 50% of Americans think he’s doing a bad job.
This is nuts: I wonder if any president since, perhaps, Abraham Lincoln has had to deal with a political bloc more intransigent and obnoxious than Obama must deal with. How do you negotiate with elephants who behave like ostriches?
10 Responses
7/29/2011 4:56 pm
Aw Richard, why did you have to bring up Krugman? Is this the same Krugman who has argued that the first stimulus package wasn’t enough and that he wanted more, more more?
Here is what some of the stimulus money went for; all worthy projects I am sure, but stimulus?
$250 million for states to analyze student performance
$290 million to upgrade IT platforms at the State Department $26 million to improve security systems at the Department of Agriculture headquarters
$300 million for energy efficient appliance rebates
$2 billion for manufacturing of advanced car battery (traction) systems and components. (isn’t it better left to private industry)
$1 billion in preparation for the 2010 census (isn’t the census expensed in the budget? oh, this is the preparation for the consensus, something different)
$2 billion for Section 8 housing rental assistance
$100 million for free school lunch programs (really great, but stimulus?)
and, of course, my favorite
$750 million for DTV conversion coupons and DTV transition education
And the list goes on.
Rather than some faux stimulus, you could have given $80,000 to 10 million unemployed (the same total amount for “the stimulus”) and if you used the food stamps method (nothing gets money into the economy at a faster rate than food stamps), it would have gone into the economy very quickly and the multiplier effect would have taken place. And there were even better ways to use 800 billion to get companies to hire. Instead, it went down the drain with very little effect on the economy, but people got an education in how to use their new television sets.
7/29/2011 6:14 pm
A little humor at Yale’s expense to lighten the mood: http://www.theawl.com/2011/07/yale-alumni-news-notes-from-alllllll-over
7/29/2011 6:16 pm
Sam, the items you have listed here add up to a few billion dollars. So what happened to the other, say, $750 billion dollars in stimulus money? Does that mean the successful results I have read about the stimulus from other sources are untrue? Misleading? Outright lies? Didn’t happen? If I were going to point out just the dumb stuff the past several American administrations have done, we would be here all day. That is at odds with what is still being accomplished by the most powerful and greatest nation in the world, stumbling as it is at the moment.
7/29/2011 8:04 pm
Sam, there is a good deal of credible economic opinion that the stimulus has helped. I don’t know how you define “very little effect on the economy.”
Richard’s post was about Krugman’s remarks re the journalistic cult of balance. Your argument would then seem to be that because you disagree with Krugman about the stimulus package, Krugman must also be incorrect about the cult of balance issue.
7/30/2011 2:02 am
Successful results Anon? Feste,” a good deal of credible economic opinion that the stimulus has helped”? The numbers tell the story and the numbers say that the stimulus and QE1 and QE2 have been a failure. I don’t know what numbers you are looking at.
I’m intimately familiar with the numbers re the economy (that’s what I did for a living), and the economy, any way you measure it, is poor, except for Wall St, and corporate profits (which are booming because of the cutback in workers). Main Street is hurting badly with no major turnaround in sight. The administration and Congress fiddle.
Longer term it is a question of a hugely expanded balance sheet to take on another 10 trillion in debt (and eventually no investors will be willing to fund it) or substantially cutting back expenses and raising taxes (both must be done). See how the hedge fund people who are Democrats deal with raising taxes.
The United States has been fat, dumb and happy for a long time with regard to its finances. The day of reckoning is upon us. Raise taxes and cut spending so that we are only spending money on essential items (and yes, social services is the most important one) and cut out those we can’t afford.
I’m willing to see my tax bill go up substantially, if the money is used “for good”, not bridges to nowhere. Unfortunately, The Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, doesn’t buy into that scenario.
Hunker down. The next ten years is going to be very rough in terms of economic growth, economic dislocations and investment opportunities. It is quite possible that we will have another lost decade in terms of stock appreciation, unless the country is willing to make the difficult, but necessary, decisions.
I’ll leave it at that.
7/30/2011 6:59 am
Sam—I think Krugman and many other liberal economists would agree with you that much of the stimulus was poorly designed. That said, while the stimulus clearly hasn’t brought the unemployment to where anyone would like it to be, it’s impossible to know where that rate would be *without* the stimulus.
As to spending, no one questions the medium- and long-term need to reduce spending and restructure entitlements. But there are quite a few economists—your friend LHS among them, but Laura Tyson also comes to mind—who believe that the recovery is too fragile to simply yank billions of dollars out of circulation now. As the Economist said, Do spend more for the next year or so, then spend less.
Since this is clearly not going to happen, we will have the opportunity to observe the impact of major budget cuts at a time of high unemployment, low growth and low consumer spending. Are you optimistic?
7/30/2011 6:59 am
Sorry, in that first paragraph, make that “the unemployment *rate*”.
7/30/2011 7:58 am
I’m not optimistic either short or long term about anything this Congress and administration are going to do. As I said before, it is all posturing without any sense of reality behind it. It’s as if The Congress believes that there will be a deus ex machina. Wishful thinking.
I would be in favor of not cutting spending for the next year, IF there were an ironclad agreement to balance the budget (and hopefully creating a surplus) after that, using a combination of cutting out non essential items and tax increases. I believe strongly in social service nets to help those who need it, but I don’t want to spend ONE PENNY on anything that is not essential. Both the Republicans and Democrats have never met one program that they didn’t want to fund and there is no reason to believe that they will start now. There are in denial and don’t want to believe that it is not the debt ceiling, but the debt and the deficit that are the real problems, problems that they are not willing to completely face. They want (perhaps!) to put a band-aid on a major wound.
I want us to stop spending money on defense of Europe. Europe should pay for much of its defense; the American people should pay some but not what it is paying out now. It is one of the reasons that Europe, and Italy is where I’m most knowledgeable, has great social services for its citizens; it doesn’t have much of a defense cost… America takes care of that at an enormous cost to its taxpayers.
Let’s face it Richard. What I want, a combination of tax increases and spending reduction (and you can exclude that for the coming year if you’d like) over the next five years, is not going to happen. I have yet to hear one leading member of Congress propose it.
What we have is a great great country that is slowly declining. It doesn’t have to be that way, but unless people are will to sacrifice for the commonweal, it will happen. That makes me sad.
Best,
Sam
7/30/2011 12:16 pm
This is not the day of reckoning. That day must not be chosen until we have responsible leaders. You imply that there are none such: this is wrong. Obama is leading a responsible party (look at how much Pelosi compromised and then got behind a health plan that was against her strong preferences). The day of reckoning comes in 2013 with a new Congress. Then I agree about the need for surpluses, which means canceling the insanely stupid Bush tax cuts and also cutting spending AFTER the economy is growing again. This is Econ 101.
Your pox-on-both-their-houses rhetoric is deeply unproductive (just like Harry’s was when it participated in the pro-Scott-Brown phenomenon that, regardless of the merits of Brown or the defects of Coakley, nearly killed Obamacare). This is easy to prove: your kind of thinking makes it more likely that Obama will be defeated for reelection. This might be okay if there was any prospect of sane leadership by any of the people who would replace him. The only hope in that scenario is that Romney will do and say very unpopular things to rein in his party: unimaginable.
Also, as RB and Feste say, you are quite wrong on the stimulus. The economy is bad; without the stimulus it would have been much, much worse. Full stop. It should have been bigger, as Krugman said at the time. That guy has been right over and over and over and people still pretend he lacks credibility, which is some kind of illness that you sheld get checked by a physician.
Glad to engage on the merits of any of this. Please forgive insults in passing; I get cranky when people implicitly support the deeply insane and reckless brinksmanship, with an incredibly important national treasure, that we are seeing this week.
SE
7/30/2011 12:31 pm
SE, I wish you well.