2^nd American Revolution

Where do you start with Paul Krugman, the NY Times economist? He is the modern day John Maynard Keynes - never at loss espousing new ways for the Government to spend or borrow us into economic salvation. Even the title of his posts, "The Conscience of a Liberal," betray his understanding of what words mean.

 

The word 'Liberal' in it's classical sense has meant:

late 14c., from O.Fr. liberal  "befitting free men, noble, generous," from L. liberalis "noble, generous," lit. "pertaining to a free man," from liber  "free," from PIE base *leudheros  (cf. Gk. eleutheros  "free"),

Pasted from <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Liberal>

 

Or as it was used through the 1800s:

1) favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties. 2) favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief or expression

Pasted from <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Liberal>

 

Liberalism is the force that moved the West from oppression to Liberty, from despotism to Freedom. It should never be confused with Paul Krugman's distorted form of Progressivism which is nothing more than Socialism and Fascism slipped in disguised as Liberalism. Anyone who believes and espouses this approach can have no conscience.

 

Krugman's article is twisted logic. He contends 'excessive private debt' caused the economic debt without clarifying that it was Government that provided the credit. He calls it 'naïve' to believe that paying down the debt is good. Such actions by people would cause defaults, a depressed economy, and falling inflation. He then drags out the Paradox of Thrift argument again. The notion that individual virtue is a collective vice.

 

This is nonsense. Individual virtue, like Individual Liberty, is good for each Individual as it is for any number of Individuals. Any collective vice is only in the eye of Government and the Banking system who exist on easy credit and ever increasing debt.

 

Krugman's alternative of injecting 'moderate inflation' into the system to effective reduce debt is another amazing slight of hand. In his mind it is okay for the Federal Reserve and Government to create money out of nothing and dump it into the money supply. In Krugman's mind as well as most of today's economists, it's okay to destroy the savings of individuals, it's okay to crush those on fixed incomes, it's okay to drive up the costs of food, housing, and health care on Individuals in order save the economy.

 

The Austrian School of Economics has long argued that the Economy, like Society, is not real. The economy is created by Individual human action. It is the sum total of billions of small individual transactions, decided upon and acted upon by the Individual. That is the absurdity of Keynesian economics, it destroys the Individual, it destroys capital, it destroys the future - all for the egos of economists, the Government and the banking system.