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9 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
For all the horror of this past week, this may matter more for America's future. Aggressive fiscal policy will be crucial not just for American families but for the future of American politics 1/
Republicans did better in November in part because some people — including nonwhite voters — paid more attention to the tight pre-pandemic job market than they did to Trump's fanning of hatred 2/
Democrats should do all they can to boost the economy and deliver tangible gains to American families looking forward — mainly because it's good policy, but also because it's good politics. And when the usual suspects bray about deficits, tune them out 3/
They were wrong on the substance, and they're hypocrites too — oddly silent when the GOP was in control. So it's now time to spend on good things and, you know, truly make American great again 4/

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More from @paulkrugman

Paul Krugman Profile picture
11 Jan
A really good question. Someone should do a careful archival study of when pedophilia became the go-to accusation; did it start with Q or was it already there? But in a way it fits a pattern 1/
Hofstadter's "The paranoid style" noted the preoccupation of conspiracy theorists with sex 2/ harpers.org/archive/1964/1…
Relevant passage 3/ Image
Read 5 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
10 Jan
What's so astonishing about this is that it's not responding to any real grievances. No, the election wasn't stolen. No, Dems aren't Marxists — or pedophiles. No, BLM didn't go on a deadly rampage (but rightists did). And many of these people have fairly comfortable lives 1/
And we're not like Mussolini's Italy or Weimar Germany, bitter over a catastrophic war and, in Germany, a catastrophic depression (no, it wasn't the hyperinflation that did it — it was the gold standard) 2/
The best guess is that it's about race — about white people infuriated by growing diversity. And maybe the GOP's cynical cultivation of racial hostility in the service of plutocracy encouraged it 3/
Read 7 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
10 Jan
So all the Trumpists seem far more upset about losing Twitter followers than they are over a violent assault on the US Congress. This isn't just digusting; it's terrifying 1/ Image
We're still learning about how the Capitol got stormed, but it seems obvious that responsible officials more or less deliberately avoided providing adequate security 2/ businessinsider.com/trump-attempte…
Given that, the absence of any sign of remorse or regret is frightening. Many bad things can happen over the next 10 days, up to and including violent disruption of the inauguration itself. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
8 Jan
Thoughts on Josh Hawley: One thing we should have learned long ago is that politicians' character extends across multiple issues. I realized that Bush etc were lying about Iraq bc the selling of the war sounded just like the lies used to sell tax cuts 1/
Until now the most striking thing about Hawley was the way he lied about health care — pretending to support protection for pre-existing conditions while actually trying to destroy it 2/
This may have seemed like a wonkish argument, although if he had actually gotten his way it would have ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans. But it also told you who he was 3/
Read 4 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
1 Jan
This was a good post, and the Pozen-
Scheppele paper it relies on is eye-opening (Kim was my office neighbor at Princeton, and posted about Hungary on my blog). But I think there's more to add 1/
The P-S paper doesn't exactly explain why authoritarians like Trump and Bolsonaro have refused to deal with Covid; it suggests that they might have various reasons, and that their belief that they can deny reality empowers them to refuse action 2/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
This is clearly right. But I might somewhat speculatively add one specific reason why authoritarians don't want to deal with disasters: a punitive mindset. That is, people like Trump get satisfaction from hurting people, not helping them. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Paul Krugman Profile picture
31 Dec 20
Tis the time to be thinking about the future, and one big question beyond 2021 is the prospects for technology. For background, here's the BLS measure of multifactor productivity — how economists (try to) measure the overall level of technology 1/
You can see the big slowdown beginning around 1973, the decade of IT-led growth from 1995 to 2005, and the Great Stagnation since then — when we were promised flying cars but got 280 characters instead (good line, even if Peter Thiel is loathsome) 2/
For what it's worth, I'm tentatively on the side of the techno-optimists 3/ noahpinion.substack.com/p/techno-optim…
Read 5 tweets

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