Who Pays

It's been awhile since we've provided a takedown of Paul Krugman's NYT columns (it's not lack of material, just a lack of energy to keep up with the constant inanity and idiocy of the latest Krugman rant). William Anderson at Krugman-in-Wonderland, however, does a wonderful job at picking apart almost all of Krugmans nonsense and I highly recommend his site. His latest is particularly worth a read:

You see, the "vision" that Krugman has for us is of a society in which everything is provided administratively. The government plans our lives, tells us what we should eat, what we should wear, what we should use for transportation, and, frankly, what we should believe.

An economy, in Krugman's view, is nothing more than a mass of stuff that just happens. The mines, the factories, the capital, the farms, and the stores just appear, and they will operate just fine as long as the government manages to throw enough money at them to keep the "spending" machine in operation.

The entrepreneur, in Krugman's view, is not someone who moves resources from lower-valued to higher-valued uses while in search of a profit. No, the entrepreneur is a parasite, someone who works outside the Vision of the Anointed Ones (like Krugman) who are working to create the society that we should have.

I have come to believe that Krugman thinks that incentives really don't matter, and that one can have a great economy if the government just uses enough coercion, throws enough "uncooperative" people into prison, and confiscates enough wealth from "parasites" who actually create something. Here is someone who really thinks that price controls are an effective way to lower real costs, and that price controls and the like have no negative effects at all.

This is not economics, and it certainly is not the economics of a free society. However, people like Krugman believe that "freedom" is nothing more than government provision of everything -- and government attacks on the liberty of anyone who might disagree with what Sowell calls, "The Vision of the Anointed."

In the end, Krugman's "kind of society we want" is one in which everyone works for the state, whether or not one actually is a government employee. Like all Progressives, he believes that the highest measure of one's being is to support the "progressive" state, and if you don't like it, well, there is a nice jail cell waiting for you.

Read the whole thing here.