<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 9:54 PM Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:</span><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr"><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><i> <span class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">> </span>I put zero stock in Krugman and think he's a partisan hack. </i></blockquote><div><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"></font><font size="4">A see no evidence of that. A partisan hack will scream loudly that deficit spending will bring the end to western civilization when a Democrat is President but remain strangely quiet when a Republican is President even though the deficit is ballooning faster than ever, but Krugman doesn't do that. When a partisan hack has a economic theory he refuses to modify it one iota regardless of what new evidence arrives, but Krugman follows the scientific method and knows that regardless of how beautiful a theory may be if it doesn't fit the facts it must be rejected. </font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4"><br></font></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><font size="4">This is from Krugman's  Feb 3 column and all the facts in it are objectively true, so a scientific man would have no choice but to modify his previous belief that deficits are always bad and that high taxes always mean high deficits.</font></div><div class="gmail_default" style="">==</div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_default" style=""><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;font-size:20px">"A zombie idea is a belief or doctrine that has repeatedly been proved false, but refuses to die; instead, it just keeps shambling along, eating people’s brains. The ultimate zombie in American politics is the assertion that tax cuts pay for themselves — a claim that has been proved wrong again and again over the past 40 years.</span></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="gmail_default" style=""><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style=""><p class="gmail-css-exrw3m evys1bk0" style="font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;margin:0px auto 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;vertical-align:baseline;max-width:600px;color:rgb(51,51,51)">Back in 1980 George H.W. Bush called Ronald Reagan’s extravagant claims about the effectiveness of tax cuts “<a class="gmail-css-1g7m0tk" href="https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/flatview?cuecard=33292" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(50,104,145)">voodoo economic policy</a>.” Everything that has happened since has vindicated his original assessment. Deficits ballooned after Reagan cut taxes; they shrank and eventually turned into surpluses after Bill Clinton raised taxes, then ballooned again after George W. Bush’s tax cuts.</p><p class="gmail-css-exrw3m evys1bk0" style="font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;margin:0px auto 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;vertical-align:baseline;max-width:600px;color:rgb(51,51,51)">Voodoo has also crashed and burned at the state level: The <a class="gmail-css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax-cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(50,104,145)">Kansas experiment</a> in radical tax cuts was a dismal failure, while California’s tax hike under Jerry Brown, which conservatives declared a case of “<a class="gmail-css-1g7m0tk" href="https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/californias-economic-suicide-and-other-news-from-yesterdays-ballot-measures/" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(50,104,145)">economic suicide</a>,” was followed by a revenue and economic boom.</p><p class="gmail-css-exrw3m evys1bk0" style="font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;margin:0px auto 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;vertical-align:baseline;max-width:600px;color:rgb(51,51,51)">Yet voodoo economics has become unchallengeable doctrine within the Republican Party. Even fake moderates like Susan Collins justified their support for the 2017 Trump tax cut by claiming that it would <a class="gmail-css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.collins.senate.gov/sites/default/files/12.18.17%20Sen.%20Collins'%20Floor%20Remarks%20on%20Tax%20Reform%20Bill.pdf" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(50,104,145)">reduce the budget deficit</a>. Predictably, the deficit actually exploded, and now exceeds <a class="gmail-css-1g7m0tk" href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56020" title="" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;line-height:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(50,104,145)">$1 trillion a year</a>."<br></p><br><font size="4">John K Clark</font></div></div></div>