I completely agree with you that a left-wing economic analysis of the Democrats' unpopularity is nuts. Of course it's the culture. Newspeak is pervasive, and its practitioners seem genuinely puzzled that they offend people with it.
It’s a really good book. And I don’t think in this particular case Krugman is making a clueless argument. He’s trying to ask and he should ask what got us to this point. Yes, of,course it was cultural but it was also economic. To make a much too broad a point the world changed (I see it with many of my high school classmates) and no one had any idea how to respond to the changes.
Demented? What evidence? Aged, certainly. And probably too old to be president...but calling him demented absent any clear evidence--and there is none, aside from his lifelong struggle with stuttering--is scurrilous and unworthy of you.
Joe, I feel sorry for him and think that he is being used - a clear case of elder abuse - but there is plenty of clear evidence that his problems are more than just being 80 YO. I don't think either he or Trump should be running.
We live in a time when people are doing remarkable work in their golden years. Mick Jagger. Marty Scorsese. Um, Joe Klein (sorry, Joe 🥴). Joe Biden’s judgement remains sound on most issues (the major exception: his decision to run again which, in a lifetime dealing with politicians, I understand). He believes in the America we have come to know and love. Don’t give in to easy cynicism.
Joe, Krugman's latest article talked about the inflation issue, noticing that the Buteau of Labor and Statistics clocked a ~20% inflation in groceries between Jan 2021 to Jan 2023, and 1.2% thereafter. "According to the bureau, prices of groceries for home consumption rose 19.6 percent between January 2021 and January 2023, then another 1.2 percent over the following year. Yes.". A you might expect for supply issues, ready cash, pent-up demand and unfettered corporate greed. Lighten up a little on the truth tellers like Krugman and Biden, OK?
In Iran and other authoritarian regimes, they rarely fall based on public opinion, Ukraine is the only exception that comes to mind. They fall when the enforcers feel they are not getting their fair share, whatever that translates to. Then all hell brakes lose for a few years, and if they get it right, the new boss is not the same as the old boss.
Back in grad school, I made a bet with professor (who was very pessimistic about the worker uprising in Dansk) that the Poles would shake off their Russian masters by the end of the decade (won the bet by about three months - October, 1989). Since the I have seen, against all odds, South Africans and Chileans and Czechs and the Baltics, among a few others, throw off their shackles. It has been exhilarating ride but I want to see two more people freed before I go: the Iranians and the Russians. And, ironically , a key to their emerging freedom is that WE do not slide into autocracy. Vote for freedom. Vote against the Republicans (Larry Hogan excepted).
The Poles, Czechs, Baltics all were able to free themselves because the system of Lenin and Stalin had not been maintained to any serious degree. Once Khrushchev condemned Stalin in 1956, it was all down hill for the Soviet Union.
Without threats backed up by force, torture, and death, the system was doomed to fail.
The South Africans had the benefit of working with a mostly British framework of government, which like with India, when the cost grew to high, granted freedom.
Chile had the fortune to have Pinochet, who voluntarily resigned from office and let things unfold, within his planned government. Again, without force, torture, and death as real possibilities, such nations tend to stay authoritarian or totalitarian.
Even with all that, am glad of their freedom and join with you in hoping for the Iranians and Russians but also the Chinese to finally enjoy political freedom.
I am wretchingly sick of all the sophisticated, academic explanations I read, month after month, about why Americans think the crazy things they do. About inflation, about Gaza, about the economy....name it. While you all contort ever more twisted logic, the well-focused evil cruises on. People outside any big city, from Cambridge to Berkeley, from Austin to Chicago, get their daily news from one source: Fox News. And it's recent cousin, Sinclair radio. The relentless brainwashing has gone on for decades, with results. In the concise words of a West Texas farmer, "You cain't fool me, I watch Fox News every day!"
Krugman is poorly represented by Joe here. The Krugman column specifically focused on a new quite good,book White Rural Rage which very much emphasizes the cultural and social aspects of what under Trumps hands is now a real threat to democracy. I don’t know anyone who understands this who hasn’t focused on what has happened to small towns and rural communities - meaning to the communities themselves. At the same time economics is inextricably linked to all of this.
I'm sure the book is good. Almost everything Tom Schaller writes is good. But Krugman's cluelessness is monumental...and as I go on to say, inflation is very important.
I completely agree with you that a left-wing economic analysis of the Democrats' unpopularity is nuts. Of course it's the culture. Newspeak is pervasive, and its practitioners seem genuinely puzzled that they offend people with it.
It’s a really good book. And I don’t think in this particular case Krugman is making a clueless argument. He’s trying to ask and he should ask what got us to this point. Yes, of,course it was cultural but it was also economic. To make a much too broad a point the world changed (I see it with many of my high school classmates) and no one had any idea how to respond to the changes.
'You must always remember, whatever your politics: We don’t want our kids thinking that this is what a President of The United States sounds like.'
Do we want them to think 'a President of The United States ' sounds like poor old demented Joe Biden?
Demented? What evidence? Aged, certainly. And probably too old to be president...but calling him demented absent any clear evidence--and there is none, aside from his lifelong struggle with stuttering--is scurrilous and unworthy of you.
Joe, I feel sorry for him and think that he is being used - a clear case of elder abuse - but there is plenty of clear evidence that his problems are more than just being 80 YO. I don't think either he or Trump should be running.
We live in a time when people are doing remarkable work in their golden years. Mick Jagger. Marty Scorsese. Um, Joe Klein (sorry, Joe 🥴). Joe Biden’s judgement remains sound on most issues (the major exception: his decision to run again which, in a lifetime dealing with politicians, I understand). He believes in the America we have come to know and love. Don’t give in to easy cynicism.
Joe, Krugman's latest article talked about the inflation issue, noticing that the Buteau of Labor and Statistics clocked a ~20% inflation in groceries between Jan 2021 to Jan 2023, and 1.2% thereafter. "According to the bureau, prices of groceries for home consumption rose 19.6 percent between January 2021 and January 2023, then another 1.2 percent over the following year. Yes.". A you might expect for supply issues, ready cash, pent-up demand and unfettered corporate greed. Lighten up a little on the truth tellers like Krugman and Biden, OK?
In Iran and other authoritarian regimes, they rarely fall based on public opinion, Ukraine is the only exception that comes to mind. They fall when the enforcers feel they are not getting their fair share, whatever that translates to. Then all hell brakes lose for a few years, and if they get it right, the new boss is not the same as the old boss.
I'm a romantic when it comes to Iran. I'm hoping they somehow flip the switch.
Unfortunately electrocuting Khamenei won't do it, there is always a successor, alas.
Back in grad school, I made a bet with professor (who was very pessimistic about the worker uprising in Dansk) that the Poles would shake off their Russian masters by the end of the decade (won the bet by about three months - October, 1989). Since the I have seen, against all odds, South Africans and Chileans and Czechs and the Baltics, among a few others, throw off their shackles. It has been exhilarating ride but I want to see two more people freed before I go: the Iranians and the Russians. And, ironically , a key to their emerging freedom is that WE do not slide into autocracy. Vote for freedom. Vote against the Republicans (Larry Hogan excepted).
The Poles, Czechs, Baltics all were able to free themselves because the system of Lenin and Stalin had not been maintained to any serious degree. Once Khrushchev condemned Stalin in 1956, it was all down hill for the Soviet Union.
Without threats backed up by force, torture, and death, the system was doomed to fail.
The South Africans had the benefit of working with a mostly British framework of government, which like with India, when the cost grew to high, granted freedom.
Chile had the fortune to have Pinochet, who voluntarily resigned from office and let things unfold, within his planned government. Again, without force, torture, and death as real possibilities, such nations tend to stay authoritarian or totalitarian.
Even with all that, am glad of their freedom and join with you in hoping for the Iranians and Russians but also the Chinese to finally enjoy political freedom.
I am wretchingly sick of all the sophisticated, academic explanations I read, month after month, about why Americans think the crazy things they do. About inflation, about Gaza, about the economy....name it. While you all contort ever more twisted logic, the well-focused evil cruises on. People outside any big city, from Cambridge to Berkeley, from Austin to Chicago, get their daily news from one source: Fox News. And it's recent cousin, Sinclair radio. The relentless brainwashing has gone on for decades, with results. In the concise words of a West Texas farmer, "You cain't fool me, I watch Fox News every day!"
Krugman is poorly represented by Joe here. The Krugman column specifically focused on a new quite good,book White Rural Rage which very much emphasizes the cultural and social aspects of what under Trumps hands is now a real threat to democracy. I don’t know anyone who understands this who hasn’t focused on what has happened to small towns and rural communities - meaning to the communities themselves. At the same time economics is inextricably linked to all of this.
I'm sure the book is good. Almost everything Tom Schaller writes is good. But Krugman's cluelessness is monumental...and as I go on to say, inflation is very important.