Paul Krugman On The Ignorance Caucus

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/opinion/krugman-the-ignorance-caucus.html?hp

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"When a man has put a limit on what he will do, he has put a limit on what he can do." (Charles Schwab)
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Paul Krugman has come up with a way to showcase just how much our elected representatives miss the boat in terms of critical thinking skills. In this case, he's following Eric Cantor, House majority leader, on calling for a complete end to federal funding of social science research (the entire National Science Foundation budget for social and economic sciences amounts to 0.01 percent of the budget deficit).

He goes on to point out that Cantor's support for medical research is "curiously limited." He's all for developing new treatments, but he and his colleagues have adamantly opposed "comparative effectiveness research," which seeks to determine how well these treatments work. After all, who would want to do that?

Here's a quote from Krugman: "The truth is that America's partisan divide runs much deeper than even pessimists are usually willing to admit; the parties aren't just divided on values and policy views, they're divided over epistemology. One side believes, at least in principle, in letting its policy views be shaped by facts; the other believes in suppressing the facts if they contradict its fixed beliefs."

So, when Hilary Clinton left the Sate Department, she said of her Republican critics, "They just will not live in an evidence-based world." As Krugman points out, "She was referring specifically to the Benghazi controversy, but her point applies much more generally. And for all the talk of reforming and reinventing the G.O.P., the ignorance caucus retains a firm grip on the party's heart and mind."

I have become convinced over the years that Krugman has had to become a "political economist" just to counter politician's ideas on what to do with the economy (especially since December, 2007). Krugman would never be one to "kick the can down the road" but I read the other day that he would rather see the U.S. do that than engage in massive budget cuts that would only cause more unemployment both directly and indirectly. As I have pointed out before, both Krugman and Buffet took the position that the U.S. did NOT do enough infrastructure spending as the recession began and that's too bad for many reasons. Probably the most important of those reasons is that we have crumbling (or about to crumble) bridges and roads - in other words, we have real need for infrastructure spending.

It's nice to see that we have good news about jobs - as Catherine Rampell points out in her 2/1/13 "Economix" post, for the 28th straight month, the country added jobs: 157,000 non-farm payroll jobs in January, to be precise. But, to get back to where we were when the recession began (at 5% unemployment) within 2 years, would require job growth of 284,984 jobs created per month. There are 12.3 million workers looking for work and not finding it. Counting the "underemployed," there are 21.4 million. And, the Republicans are arguing about what to "cut" from the U.S. budget.

Really.

I (continue to) just love the WSJ summary of "economists" reactions to the most recently reported GDP growth number (4th quarter): 0.1% contraction. "Stripping out defense and inventories, GDP growth accelerated to 2.6%." Of course, if those defense cuts eliminated your job, that hypothetical 2.6% isn't helping you any.

Really.