Source: Facebook

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/a-manifesto-for-economic-sense/KRUGMAN WATCH: NAME CALLING BY SELECTIVELY IGNORING FACTS

(Krugman has written a manifesto – a petition – blaming the private sector and demanding government spending, and repeating his claim that we the public don’t understand.)

As laudable as the effort is, it’s still a half-truth: human beings object to involuntary transfers and ‘cheating’ no matter who is doing it, and which direction it’s going.

People are not confused. They do not fail to understand. They just place higher priority on preventing moral hazards, involuntary transfers, and all forms of cheating than they do on any upside. People will gladly pay to deny opportunity to, or to punish cheaters. THey are demonstrating that they will pay. The rhetoric is just chaff.

People do not trust their governments. Heterogeneous populations never do. They do not want to fund expansion of the government or taxes. Every politician I talk to says the same thing: the people are done with taxes. But they are exasperated by their government as well.

The problem is not that people are confused. The problem is that the polarized political system is supported by equally polarized economists.

The left economists will not forge a compromise with the middle and right economists and propose a solution that consists of fiscal, monetary, trade, strategic and human capital. The right wants one thing: to end the department of education, and federal control of schools. That will happen anyway over the next decade. Not to trade it right now is foolish. With that one trade they would release all resistance to fiscal policy.

We have no statesmen. Only politicians and ideologues.