The Great Shrill One rises from the depths of reason to infect the Austerians with his beard-tentacles of sanity and common sense and tells a little bedtime story about a fairy (rent asunder by his self-same beard-tentacles, no doubt.)
Critics warned from the beginning that austerity in the face of depression would only make that depression worse. But the “austerians” insisted that the reverse would happen. Why? Confidence! “Confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery,” declared Jean-Claude Trichet, the former president of the European Central Bank — a claim echoed by Republicans in Congress here. Or as I put it way back when, the idea was that the confidence fairy would come in and reward policy makers for their fiscal virtue.
The good news is that many influential people are finally admitting that the confidence fairy was a myth. The bad news is that despite this admission there seems to be little prospect of a near-term course change either in Europe or here in America, where we never fully embraced the doctrine, but have, nonetheless, had de facto austerity in the form of huge spending and employment cuts at the state and local level.
So, about that doctrine: appeals to the wonders of confidence are something Herbert Hoover would have found completely familiar — and faith in the confidence fairy has worked out about as well for modern Europe as it did for Hoover’s America. All around Europe’s periphery, from Spain to Latvia, austerity policies have produced Depression-level slumps and Depression-level unemployment; the confidence fairy is nowhere to be seen, not even in Britain, whose turn to austerity two years ago was greeted with loud hosannas by policy elites on both sides of the Atlantic.
And with Spain and now Britain’s Q1 GDP numbers showing big fat recession signs (and a healthy chunk of the Eurozone following suit at this point) the notion that “austerity is the answer because it creates certainty and confidence!” is about as dead now as Sarkozy’s chances in France’s upcoming elections. Poor little Confidence Fairy didn’t have a chance, you know. You didn’t clap loudly enough, Europe. (Austerity can only be failed…)
Never forget of course that for the last several years, the “serious” people have been telling us that we had to follow suit or face economic ruin. US GDP numbers for Q1 came out this morning at 2.2% growth, and while that’s down from 4Q 2011’s 3.0%, it’s still better than what Europe’s austerity cultists are feeding upon right now. Our own zombie-eyed granny starvers (thanks, Chuck) have told us for years now that this was necessary if not vital to our survival, and failure to do so would mean another financial crash. Meanwhile, the actual application of throttling the spender of last resort in several European countries has — surprise! — led to a double-dip recession with no end in sight and even more cuts called for. We need more of the same stuff that not only isn’t working, it’s causing more problems. That never happens with conservatives and economics.
Yet, we face the same exact calls here from Republicans and more than a few Democrats. They’re hoping you don’t pay any attention to the fact that what they’ve said we have to do has been tried and is currently failing miserably in Europe. Mighty Krugthulhu has of course been saying this for a while now, and all but ignored in the halls of power. It’s looking like that particular era may be coming to an end and none too soon. Maybe those steely gray beard-tentacles of his can latch on to a few heads and extract the Stupid while he’s at it.
What a fairy tale that would make. Ia! Ia!
Corner Stone
Is this whole thing snark? I can’t tell anymore and I’m getting some hella whiplash.
Punchy
Me, the old lady, and the 7-month old spawn will be in Spain in a month. We’re a bit worried about Greek-style mass protests, Molitov cocktails, and train/bus/cab strikes, which would completely fuck us during that week of vacay. I pray the Spanicans can hold it together for at least another month before they go all LA Riots on Madrid and Barca.
Dan
Now I know you’re kidding about the beard tentacles but I honest-to-god believe the world would be better off if Krugman had a longer beard. The lizard-brain might recognize it as authority.
Knockabout
Ugh. More trolling. Cole, are you going to salvage what little dignity you have left and get rid of Zandar’s traveling circus of failure?
Sly
@Dan:
Charles Darwin wishes this were true.
MattF
Floyd Norris has a pretty scary column in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/business/for-germany-austerity-elsewhere-in-europe-is-a-harder-sell.html?_r=1&ref=business
He quotes a German central banker, a certain Andreas Dombret:
The solution, in other words, is “we get richer, you get poorer.” Of course, as you get poorer, you also get more virtuous, so there’s that.
kindness
I’m thankful many of those Blue Dog Democrats calling for Republican policies are going down like flies in the primaries or choosing not to run for this next general election.
We do need more Democrats elected but really it will only help Democrats if they actually believe in the policies of the Democratic party. Hell….we may even see Nancy Smash as Speaker of the House again. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
liberal
@MattF:
Heh. I’m sure he’d be fine with them “reduc[ing] domestic demand, becom[ing] more competive and increas[ing] their exports” by going off the Euro and simultaneously stiffing all their creditors (including lots of German banks).
liberal
@Knockabout:
Uh, what’s the fail here? It’s not exactly the most original post, but that’s not much of an offense in the blogosphere.
Suffern ACE
@MattF: Perhaps they should start by not importing those German manufactured products. They’re already cheaper labor wise. I think what the Germans want though is poor countries to buy those goods.
Bob2
“President Obama’s failure to fill the open seats on the Federal Reserve Board when he had 60 votes in the Senate is likely to go down as one of his costlier mistakes.”
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I believe that would describe the last 30 years of Republican economic policy. “I know I told you that digging this hole deeper would fill it up, and it will, you just have to give me more time. You’ll start to see results when you stop paying attention to what I am doing.”
Jay C
Krugman has been a voice in the wilderness decrying the bogosity and general fallaciousness of the Austrian/Austerian School of discipline/austerity/balanced budgets/confidence-fairy economics for some time now: during which developers have bought up the wilderness, built cheap subdivisions on it, oversold it to the rubes during the RE bubble, and are now trying to foreclose their way out of the hole….
One would hope people (especially those in power) would listen to him now, but I’m doubtful: while the Beard Of Analysis is, of course, quite right in principle, I noticed his column skirted around a major factor in Europe’s current woes (and one that affects the US, too) – namely, the role of private banking/capital (i.e. the FIRE sector in general) in both provoking the recent crisis, and its influence in pushing the “austerity” measures to bail itself out of its various troubles mostly at the public’s expense.
Curious, that….
jon
Austerity must be maintained at all discount costs! I’m reminded of Einstürzende Neubauten, which could easily be translated from the German to be “New Austerity Solution”. And if anyone knows about Solutions….
Knockabout
@liberal: Because that is all he does. He hasn’t had an original thought in his head that wasn’t fed to him by Memeorandum or Reddit or Fark and passes it off here as his own.
SatanicPanic
@MattF: Isn’t this just a beggar-thy-neighbor strategy? That strikes me as a bad idea, but what do I know?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The entire GOP philosophy for decades has been based upon “Government is full of shit, elect me and I’ll PROVE IT!” What can you expect?
The sad thing is just how little it will all change. We’ve been feeling trickle-down for decades and its proven failure has meant only that it’s literally the only solution ever allowed consideration. It’s a constant state of failing upward, where Austerity can never fail, it can only be failed.
liberal
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
While Republican economic policy is far, far worse than Democratic econ pol, the latter is hardly perfect. Dem policy on finance regulation is at best poor. And Dem policy re free trade agreements isn’t much better.
Just to pick an example, look at Clinton’s role in eliminating capital gains on selling houses. (A rational real estate tax policy would tax capital gains on selling any real estate as close to 100% as possible, since any increase in the value of real estate controlling for added improvements is a free surplus the owner had no role in creating.)
General Stuck
And I didn’t see so much as a mention of Obama or the Obama administration, with a ‘wimp’ ‘failure’, ‘weak’ or ‘fold’ reference, or insinuation of such, in this excellent article by Mr. Krugman. He coulda used the term ‘confidence fairy’ a few more times though, to make sure we got that.
Tone In DC
@MattF:
I hope Merkel, her government and German bankers are not as obstinate as that column makes them seem. The point of view Floyd depicts is not going to work well in the end, IMHO.
liberal
@SatanicPanic:
Yeah, bad idea, as in unworkable idea, as in if they get too poor, they ain’t gonna purchase German exports.
liberal
@General Stuck:
OK, just to get your panties in a twist…
Sly
@MattF:
Arbeit Macht Frei.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
I can understand Krugman’s frustration: The lower-than-expected US growth, of course, will be taken as a sign from God Almighty that it’s high time to starve granny. But the UK’s double dip recession, also of course, will be politely ignored (or taken as a sign of insufficient austerity).
It’s like the old-time doctors, with their leeches… Bleeding the patient made things worse? Must be time for another bleeding.
While economics isn’t a hard science, it’s still a science. And a science can’t function without at least some consensus as to what comprises valid data, and what does not. Most “economists” left that path long ago.
Unless we as a culture figure out a path back to consensus reality, economics as a useful science is doomed.
Ash Can
@Knockabout: If Zandar needs to stop reporting on what he comes across in the news media and expressing opinions on it that happen to be in agreement with other opinions, then the entire blogosphere needs to go poof. And if that in fact is what you’re getting at, then why are you wasting your time fiddling around on the Internet?
Villago Delenda Est
Over two centuries ago, the French gave us the means to deal with dumbshits like Jean-Claude Trichet.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ash Can:
Knockabout is Zandar’s personal BJ stalker, and the method of the French could be easily adapted to him as well.
Roger Moore
@Knockabout:
Pot, kettle, black.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
Politics > Science, every single day, in the US. Science is always made to conform to politics, where politics is almost never required to conform to science anymore.
Xecky Gilchrist
Austerity cannot be failed…
I think you’ll find it can only be failed, at least if I’m aware of all internet clichés.
Ash Can
@General Stuck: If people need to be beaten over the head to make them see that Keynesian economic policies are empirically proven to work in the real world, then Krugman can repeat whatever silly phrase he wants, however often he needs to repeat it. (If only it would work.)
Pen
@Knockabout: This is an opinion/news blog genius. If you don’t like your front-pagers commenting on trending news stories set up your own damn blog. I’m pretty sure Cole’s on record as saying trolls like you can go get bent, not sure he’a going to change his tune. because the site has a new emo stalker to pie filter.
General Stuck
@liberal:
What? by linking to an article from 2010. You will have to do better than that. very lame.
I call em as I see em, and try not to hold grudges from what happened yesterday, or in 2010.
Villago Delenda Est
I know this is tiring, but Adam Smith, of all people, figured this shit out over two centuries ago, too. That if the wages of the workman rise, then economic output across the board will rise, and a tide that raises all boats, not just the yachts, will be created.
Of course, if you post appropriate passages from Smith supporting this claim on any wingtard board, you’ll be denounced as a Marxist.
Ash Can
@Villago Delenda Est: I see. And I realize, then, that it’s way too much to ask that this wanker at least try to make sense. Pie filter it is.
gene108
@liberal:
Sale of primary residence doesn’t trigger capital gains or losses, if you’ve lived in it for more than 2 years.
All other real estate properties are treated as capital assets and the gain or losses on sale goes to Schedule D to be taxed as capital gains at the capital gains tax rate.
Barry
@SatanicPanic: “Isn’t this just a beggar-thy-neighbor strategy? That strikes me as a bad idea, but what do I know?”
The bankers in Germany, France and the UK don’t mind beggaring everybody, so long as they win.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Oh, and one argument I’ve seen regarding the economy is that “Public jobs don’t matter, they’re not the proof of government bloating itself on our dime, the RAMPANT COMMUNNAZI MASSIVE UNPRECEDENTED SPENDING SPREE BY THAT THIEVING KENYAN ISS!!!!!!” Except, according to K-Thug….er…no, it isn’t that. In fact precisely the opposite.
But again, suggesting anything but trickle-down and Austerity proves you’re not Serious and therefore need to sit down and shut the fuck up until Austerity finally takes its course.
Culture of Truth
I concur. Cause last time I checked, the powers that be still believe in confidence.
SatanicPanic
@Barry: True, the bankers don’t care. You’d think the governments involved would be at least a little bit resistant to something that has had some pretty disastrous results for them in the past, but the bankers probably own them too.
Roger Moore
@gene108:
Not quite true. You can deduct $250K from the capital gain from selling your house ($500K if married filing jointly) but any gain beyond that is taxable. That obviously covers most homeowners, but still winds up charging some tax to the very wealthy. The flip side is that you can’t deduct capital losses on the sale of your primary residence.
Villago Delenda Est
@Culture of Truth:
The irony here of course is that a confidence man is a criminal in most civilized countries, unless he wears a three piece suit, and then he’s a role model.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
True. Thanks for the update.
Face
Saw on CNBC that Spain “downgraded two notches” today. Maybe they meant “nachoes”, I dunno. Anyone got a layman’s explanation of what this means, both present and future?
kthxbeye
burnspbesq
@Tone In DC:
“I hope Merkel, her government and German bankers are not as obstinate as that column makes them seem”
I hate to be Johnny Buzzkill this early in the morning, but they are, and there is no reason that I can see to expect them to back down. The number one priority of the German government seems to be keeping the German banks from having to publicly admit that they are insolvent. It’s not too dissimilar to a Ponzi scheme.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@General Stuck:
Would you consider something from a few minutes ago?
The Secret of Our Non-success
~
Litlebritdifrnt
On a related note
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17870304#TWEET134354
Clime Acts
Can one of you BJ Bots explain why the Obama administration has from the beginning rejected Krugman’s economic analysis and the cure(s) he recommends?
Thank you.
Culture of Truth
“Spain’s unemployment rose to 24.4%.”
“Spain’s government maintains that austerity should be the
main driver of policy….”
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Yep. And the end state of this trend takes us into the post-Enlightenment.
Good luck maintaining a technological society once most of the population has regressed, mentally and emotionally, back to the 14th century.
Time to take up Basket-Weaving for Jesus, I guess…
Culture of Truth
Spains’s unemployment is up sharply.
After austerity measures, the government aims to get the deficit down to 5.3 percent this year.
S&P has just slashed Spain’s credit rating.
“Germany expressed its confidence in Spain’s efforts to tame the crisis.”
General Stuck
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
Head on desk. He is talking about what republicans are claiming, but doing it in a very sloppy way. Insinuating, or Obama getting blamed for (or presiding over) spending cuts and job loss at the state and local level. Talk to Walker, Crist, and Kasich about that. jeebus .
eemom
@jon: @Sly:
I got a bunch of shit here a while back when I pointed out that Germany is doing with the euro what it set out to do with the Wehrmacht — yes, minus the Holocaust, thank God, but the basic goal is the same.
And the casualties are, in fact, mounting.
burnspbesq
@Clime Acts:
“Can one of you BJ Bots explain why the Obama administration has from the beginning rejected Krugman’s economic analysis and the cure(s) he recommends?”
That’s not a fair description of what the Administration did. Political considerations (I.e., the need to get Republican votes to pass any sort of stimulus) led to a stimulus package that was too small and too heavily weighted toward tax relief as opposed to spending. But the Administration got what it could.
Brachiator
@liberal:
What are you talking about? The Section 121 exclusion has always been in place, with some minor variation. However, capital gains in excess of a certain amount may be taxable. But it is not a straight elimination of all capital gains.
@kindness:
Still, the present Congress is making clear where their priorities lie. Here’s what’s hot on Accounting and Tax sites this morning:
Not a lot of support for any real stimulus programs, but lots of support for the secret sauce of corporate tax breaks and credits.
burnspbesq
In a perfect world, the Confidence Fairy and the Bond Vigilantes would go off together and
have a bukkake partybreed unicorns.Mark S.
@Culture of Truth:
Geez, I don’t think even Boehner and Willard would be advocating austerity if unemployment were 24%. Europe is like watching a slow-motion train wreck.
MobiusKlein
Listening to NPR, all talk about the Eurozone crisis is 100% austerity. Never a mention about alternatives, just debt and bank. I suspect they have a policy there to avoid Keynesian chatter as too partisan and confusing.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@General Stuck:
Sputter away.
~
Someguy
The evidence is that the European debt crisis was caused by governments (via national banks) making a shit ton of loans to a bunch of countries that can’t repay because they spend way more than they take in, and by the governments over there securing a shit ton of bankster exploits, most of which involved making a shit ton of loans to people who can’t repay. The idea that the debt crisis can be solved by pouring a shit ton more money down the twin holes into which the first several shit tons disappeared is novel. At what point do Germany and France cut off the nations that are essentially holding them hostage? And if sovereign debt is evil and at the root of the problem, exactly how is giving the PIGs an open checkbook the solution to it? We can impoverish Germany and France, and if the PIGs don’t get off the road they’re on, all it accomplishes is a forestalled sovereign debt crisis – with added German and French bankruptcy. That looks suspiciously like pre-WWII conditions to me.
burnspbesq
The Euro has to go.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@burnspbesq: Plus, he has no control over state governments, who have been slashing budgets and jobs faster than the feds are creating them and, like New Jersey, Florida, and others, refusing to take federal money.
burnspbesq
@Someguy:
“At what point do Germany and France cut off the nations that are essentially holding them hostage?”
Wrong question. The correct question is “Why shouldn’t the French and German banks bear the consequences of their abandonment of sound underwriting practices?”
Poopyman
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
Le plus ca change …
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Clime Acts:
Wall Street is bigger than the US government. Presumably the admin does not want to anger such a large aggregate actor.
None of this is new. I’m old enough to remember the noise before Clinton (prodded by Sens. Graham and Schumer, among others) signed the Bill that repealed Glass-Steagall. A big part of the spin back then –from both sides BTW– was that NYC/Wall Street would lose its status as the financial capital of the world if all those terrible, outdated regulations weren’t repealed. Those mean, nasty banks in the UK, Germany and Japan were going to eat our lunch if we didn’t repeal those regulations.
In other words, shorter Wall Street: Nice economy you’ve got here, but your regulations annoy us: it’d be such a shame if we were forced to pick up and leave NYC for London, Berlin or Tokyo, wouldn’t it?.
This isn’t FDR’s time. We’re squabbling over the government’s right to have a post office or to build bridges, fer-krissakes. So I’ve come to realize that there’s not all that much the Obama admin could do, by itself, to restrain the excesses of Wall Street.
Villago Delenda Est
@General Stuck:
No, they will not talk to Walker, Scott, and Kaisch. They will blame Obama, for the national trend, missing the redwoods in their own fucking eyes.
Obama gets the blame for the fuckups of tumbrel-fodder like Walker, Scott, and Kaisch. “Conservative” economic theory cannot fail, it can only be failed, and not by those who actually implement it, only by those who are near.
TK-421
Watching European (and American) political leaders respond to the latest irrefutable data, I think this is yet another example of how big and bad the problem is. The problem is psychological, and it runs deep throughout western culture.
We all instinctively believe that our economies are tales in morality- that “virtuous” economic behavior is rewarded with growth and employment, while “sinful” economic behavior is punished with recessions and job losses. But as Krgthulu occasionally reminds us, an economy is NOT a morality tale. Recessions happen, often without “sinful” debts being piled up (his babysitting co-op is THE classic example). Therefore, dealing with recessions does NOT necessarily require “purging” ourselves of debts through massive spending cuts (and as we’ve seen, that actually makes things worse).
Our economy is not a morality tale. That our leaders can’t seem to accept that represents a deep psychological problem, for all of us. No, I don’t know how to fix this, but this psychological issue is the root cause.
Schlemizel
@Knockabout:
Perhaps you would be happier reading some other blog – might I kindly suggest you do that and leave us poor morons here, so unworthy of your valuable time, the hell alone?
General Stuck
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
So you must agree that Obama is responsible for spending cuts and job loss at the state and local level. I’m not the one sputtering here.
Though I am getting a big headache trying to understand clowns and their clowning around.
Krugman just isn’t worth the effort to comment on what he blathers from one minute to the next,
Tone In DC
@burnspbesq:
Every so often (admittedly, not very often), the conventional wisdom is wrong. In politics, economics and other areas. Personally, I hope the Greeks, Portuguese, Irish and Spaniards tell Merkel and the French to go jump in the Mediterranean.
Hope springs eternal. Just ask the Brazilians.
burnspbesq
@Brachiator:
In fairness, a couple of those extenders (like the active financing exception to Subpart F) are sound tax policy.
SatanicPanic
@burnspbesq: Bad idea from the start. State’s rights fanatics in the USA either don’t understand what’s going on in Europe or are hoping to reproduce the results here. Not sure which.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@burnspbesq:
Amen. Nobody held those banks at gunpoint and forced them to go balls-deep into Greek or Spanish debt. If you loan the homeless/jobless guy on the street $200 and try to collect the next week, you deserve whatever outcome you get.
I disagree with you about the Euro, though. The world needs European unity– the continent has a nasty tendency to drag the rest of us into depressions and wars without it. IMO, getting out of the Euro would be a very… ugly process.
beergoggles
Saying Krugman was right about something is tantamount to admitting that DFHs were correct. I do wonder how long it will be before the Greeks and Spanish decide to guillotine their bankers alongside their David Brook’s.
Schlemizel
@MobiusKlein:
Actually that has been changing slowly. Just this week they had a couple of European economists one, one of whom has been saying austerity is a bad idea from the very beginning. They did an extended interview on All Things Considered.
It was only one point out of many but it is starting to seep in.
burnspbesq
@Tone In DC:
” I hope the Greeks, Portuguese, Irish and Spaniards tell Merkel and the French to go jump in the Mediterranean”
I am right there with you on that.
superluminar, esq
@burnspbesq:
This won’t happen, more likely some southern countries will leave. Agree with your comments regarding Germany having to own up to their banks’ insolvency though.
Culture of Truth
Spain is in 2nd recession since 2009, and half the young people in the country are out of work.
As Spain’s debt edges closer to junk, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos expects foreign investors buy assets from banks, and ruled out using public funds to shore up the Spain’s banks.
“In the case of Ireland it was BlackRock, don’t you think
BlackRock wants to buy assets in Spain?” he said.
The jobless rate will peak at 25% and stabilize next year, he said.
Steeplejack
@ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©:
Fail. Stuck is right. You either misread Krugman or are just
trollingbaiting Stuck.ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@TK-421:
__
Spot on. The problem is wider than just being a leadership/elite failure. A inability to grasp the difference between macroeconomics and the dynamics of one’s personal household budget is deeply rooted in the general population. Probably less than 5% of the electorate understand Keynesian economics now, and if it were carefully explained to them in detail you might be able to push that number up to 10%. The rest just don’t get it, and for the most part refuse to listen to reason.
__
And unfortunately for us all of the people who do get it are already voting for the party which is at least open to the idea of Keynesian policy, because the various schools of macroeconomics have been politicized along partisan lines in ways that are shocking by comparison with say the Eisenhower thru Nixon administrations. Heck, even Reagan was a backdoor Keynesian by comparison with today’s GOP.
__
So the pool of potential swing voters who are receptive to a more Keynesian policy is so small as to effectively be a non-factor in our elections, and in a democracy what is to be done if the voters are determined to be idiots?
burnspbesq
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor:
“The world needs European unity”
No disagreement on that point, but I think you can get there without a single currency. In fact, I would argue that the progress toward a single market that has been made over the last 20 years has given you all the unity you need.
liberal
@General Stuck:
Fair enough. Just trying to get a rise out of yah.
srv
Can anyone guess which commenter?
liberal
@Roger Moore:
The point I’m making is that regardless of how wealthy you are, the capital gains on your residence, primary or not, are completely unearned, since they’re not gains on capital.
AxelFoley
ph’nglui mglw’nafh Krugthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn
Chris
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
What’s infuriating is that it only took ONE crisis, and comparatively mild at that, for people to start bleating that Keynesian/liberal/interventionist economics had failed and we were all DOOOOOMED… and that crisis wasn’t even related to Keynes (an Arab oil embargo will wreck your shit no matter whose textbook you’re following).
And yet no matter how many times the laissez-faire model fails, it’s always “PLEEEEEEAAAAASE, give us another chance we just need MORE laissez-faire economics.” And everyone goes along with it.
liberal
@srv:
Heh.
Linda Featheringill
Good post Zandar. I really enjoyed it.
And probably those people who confused the serious words and the snark also suffer from other cognitive difficulties.
Keep it up!
liberal
@burnspbesq:
I don’t get the single currency area fetishism either.
It would be very interesting to see who make accurate claims about the viability of the Euro back when it was introduced.
Steve in Iowa
Another failed prediction is that the austerity measures themselves were supposed to make for borrowing on more favorable terms. Only problem is that the lenders decided to raise rates on the austerians. Oops! I guess people who finance public debt don’t like it when you destroy your economy.
Marc
Since the economy is actually getting better, for whatever reason, that comment is actually wearing pretty well.
PeakVT
@Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: For the Euro to survive, the 20+ Eurozone countries would have to implement a system of cross-border fiscal transfers approaching the flows the US sees between states via the Federal Government. I don’t see that happening in the next 30 years. In the meantime, a European currency basically run for one country would continue to produce all kinds of friction.
Also, European unity won’t go to zero if the Euro is eliminated. There would continue to be all kinds of other cross-border cooperation on regulations, on projects like CERN and ESO, etc.
gene108
@liberal:
??????????
Capital gains are treated differently than earned income because capital gains are considered unearned income.
Should capital gains be taxed at higher rates? Sure. No issues, if that’s the argument you are trying to make.
chopper
@Clime Acts:
because krugman’s reco came down to this:
1) we need a way bigger stimulus!
2) ????
3) the president signed the bill!
and there’s a note on the side of the page that says ‘i have found a truly marvelous solution to number 2, which this margin is too narrow to contain.’
General Stuck
@srv:
I have no problem with what I said in that comment. I think Krugman is right using the ‘confidence fairy’ term for those who are clamoring for immediate spending cuts in a floundering economy, as I define ‘austerity’. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a confidence fairy, or factor outside of that, such as longer term debt reduction, and that the government cares about dealing with that. Job hiring is done by human persons, not a slide rule. I have made that DELINEATION whenever talking about spending cuts, and so has Obama.
I try to comment of what Krugman says, and to give credit when it’s due, imo. And I don’t think it’s due when he blames Obama for things not his fault.
edit – but all this attention from trolls hanging on what seems like my every word, I can’t help but be a little flattered by that. Momma Stuck would be so proud, up there in heaven.
Yutsano
@liberal: The Euro was considered a method of ensuring the European Union would have a firmer backing by giving a sense of all in it together economically as well as politically. The big issues coming to light now are that the EU basically green-lighted everyone who expressed a desire to join regardless of the shape of their economies and taxation structures coupled with inflexible central bank policy. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s failing on the execution side.
Brachiator
@Clime Acts:
Because while Krugman’s analysis is good, his policy recommendations are too broad to be useful. Krugman is excellent at macro economics, but his recommendations came down to “if there is a deficit of umpteen billion, simply spend umpteen billion to make up the gap.”
This is obviously blind to political realities, but it is also blind to any idea of where, on a micro level, stimulus might have done the most good.
In a related way, the conventional wisdom that the stimulus was too small is blind to any reasonable analysis of where the stimulus helped and where it was a waste of time. Quick example, the First Time Home Buyer’s Credit merely slowed, but did nothing to contain the larger housing crisis. But the credit cost $16.2 billion through September, 2010. The expansion of the Earned Income Credit and Child Tax Credit provided more useful bang for the buck, but did not do much to help single or childless low income earners.
And so it goes.
The problem wasn’t about following Krugman, it was about having a stronger depth of economic advisors than the Treasury focused team that Obama depended on.
Xenos
The Euro still makes sense for the core countries. Italy ought to stay in, and the periphery needs to escape, and Greece probably needs a complete divorce so it can be the capital of the Balkans, a region that can get unified with Europe in 50 years if it makes sense at that point.
chopper
@Chris:
exactly. people forget that there was another embargo before that one and it really didn’t effect us much. because at that time our production had just peaked and we were not so dependent on imports. keynesianism did just fine during that one.
when they tried it again, our production had dropped markedly and our consumption rose to the point that the embargo kicked our asses hard.
MobiusKlein
@Schlemizel: I was listening to Morning Edition, business section. About 7:50 am. So that section tends to not suffer Keynesians gladly.
David in NY
@liberal:
That doesn’t make any sense. Gains on a house are unearned, so are gains on other stuff (stocks, paintings, other real estate …). This little side trip has gone off the rails, I think.
Martin
@burnspbesq:
I think that simplifies it a little. Even the Democrats weren’t willing to go with a bigger stimulus at first. There were a number of Dems that expressed that between TARP and the stimulus, $1.5T was as large a number as they could swallow. There was the thinking that if TARP worked and the banks could start paying that money back and they got a sense of what the stimulus would accomplish, that they could approve more stimulus if it was needed.
Of course, the GOP shut that down based on the teatard freakout. Further, it’s not Obama or Congress’s fault that voters went insane and demanded massive austerity at the state and local level, which is responsible for about 1% of the unemployment rate right there.
Nemesis
War and austerity have something in common.
If it aint working, you aint doing it right.
What is needed is MORE and BETTER austerity. Then, you will see results. In fact, the lack of austerity success proves that more austerity is the only cure.
Like we oft hear about war. You know, if we fully and properly committed to war with plans to completely destroy the opponent, we wouldnt end up with messes like Nam and Iraq.
Its just the lack of pure conviction which dooms us.
japa21
@Mark S.: Not until the uppity black guy was out of the WH.
Brachiator
@burnspbesq:
Agreed, but I figured that going into detail about this would be too “inside baseball” for a general forum.
Martin
@Clime Acts:
You’re right. It all went to shit when Obama signed that tax pledge with Grover Norquist.
Steeplejack
@Someguy:
I don’t know where you got your “evidence,” but that story is pretty much wrong from start to finish.
Krugman on “What Ails Europe?”:
(Emphasis mine.)
David in NY
You know, I think austerianism has infected this comment thread. There should have been more stimulus, there should still be stimulus. There’s really not much doubt that those things are right. Getting from that to the actual enactment of stimulus was difficult in Obama’s first term and is impossible now. But this latter fact doesn’t make Krugman wrong on the fundamentals. Austerity strangles the economy — just look at England. A little stimulus helps some (see the U.S.), but the more stimulus we can do, the better. Probably in their hearts the Republicans know this too, which is why they so fiercely oppose any stimulus. If only we could get from here to there …
Martin
@Mark S.:
Boehner would have insisted on more direct stimulus had McCain been elected. It’s really that simple. This isn’t a principled stand by the GOP – they have no problem with spending when it’s their guy in the White House.
But if it’s Obama in the WH and 24% unemployment? Yeah, more tax cuts for the job creators.
MattF
@TK-421: Yep. This was Keynes’ original sin– making the point that leaving pots of money lying around in the streets would help lift an economy out of recession, and no one would go to Hell for doing that. Or even Purgatory, probably.
gene108
@Schlemizel:
But “government is the problem, not the solution”. Thus spoketh Reagan on his inauguration in 1981, and lo these many years it has come to pass that a huge friggin’ swath of this country has come to believe this is absolutely true 100% of the time.
Therefore, we no longer live in an era, where solutions that worked in prior decades can be possible.
Many voters feel we should “drown government in a bath tub” and let the chips fall where they may.
I don’t know how to change folks minds, but like racist or homophobic attitudes in the “Greatest Generation”, I think we may just have to wait for time to run its course.
Someguy
@Steeplejack:
So, in other words, if Germany is willing to inflict heavy inflation on is people and start spending much more than it collects in tax revenue – for the common good of course – it will fix everything.
Sure, why not. I don’t see how high inflation in Germany, inflicted by agreement of a number of foreign governments, could possibly go wrong.
Culture of Truth
why the Obama administration has from the beginning rejected Krugman’s economic analysis
False.
The Bobs
@Face: You realize that nachos are an American food? And that Spain and Mexico are entirely different countries?
Frankensteinbeck
I have a problem with this statement. Krugman is absolutely right that austerity is not what we need right now. It was baldly obvious to anyone but a TV pundit, although I thank him for beating that drum so the message gets out to the non-economically inclined.
It is not being all but ignored in the halls of power. The ONLY reason there has not been more stimulus at the federal level is that the Republican Party swore a suicide pact to destroy Obama. We’ve been complaining about that fact for four years now, haven’t we? Blue Dogs tipped the balance when we had more power, but the pattern has been baldly obvious. The GOP will try any trick, exploit any loophole, fuck any chicken, to sink the economy and make Obama look bad. They don’t give a rat’s ass about austerity, they hate Obama with a mouth-frothing insanity. They generally don’t like the safety net, but assholes like Ryan are just useful figureheads to try and kill the economy to make an example out of the black man in the White House.
I personally am deeply thankful we’ve got a president who’s such a skilled negotiator, because he’s fought them to a draw over and over these last two years when they had all the advantages.
PeakVT
@Someguy: The idea that inflation caused the Nazis isn’t true. NSDAP had only a very few seats (12, I think) in the parliament in 1928; in 1930 that exploded to 100, and 200 in 1932, due to the Great Depression, which was meet by the German government with – you guessed it – austerity. The hyperinflation in Germany was over by 1924 and its economy did pretty well until it was sucked into a global recession.
Steeplejack
@Someguy:
“Higher inflation” does not automatically equal “heavy inflation.” And, as for the Germans being martyrs to the “common good,” they willingly donned the euro straitjacket with everyone else and have been by far its biggest beneficiaries.
As for the story line in your original post, it doesn’t help to perpetuate the myth that Europe’s current crisis is entirely the result of irresponsible (socialist!) governments pissing away (someone else’s hard-earned) money. The other part of Krugman’s piece (which I didn’t quote) deals with that.
Brachiator
@Martin:
But bigger isn’t always better. From the beginning, the stimulus was used not to create new jobs, but to shore up weak state economies and help the states balance their budgets. Jobs were preserved, but the overall stimulus effect was a lot weaker than many are willing to admit.
And if anyone really thought they could come back to the well and ask for more stimulus,they clearly were not paying attention. The rise of the Tea Party People in the Congress insured that the Republicans would control the budget, and this, along with partisan rancor, made asking for any subsequent stimulus impossible.
PeakVT
@Face: “notches” is marketspeak for bond credit rating levels (AAA, AA+, BB, etc.). Many entities are limited on how many lower-grade bonds they can invest in. Fewer bidders for a class of bonds means higher interest rates for an issuer (all other things being equal), which most governments are on a regular basis because they have to roll over portions of their debt every month or so.
AA+ Bonds
The Paulers have gone absolutely ape shit on the comments there: non stop moralizing about ‘prudence’, fantasies about FDR causing the Great Depression, and stupidity casting all inflationary policy as theft even when too-high inflation is not a serious risk and unemployment is annihilating future gains
These cultists will destroy us if we let them
superluminar, esq
@David in NY: I’m not seeing Austerianism taking over this thread, at all. I think most people here reject that kind of analaysis as fucking stupid from the outset. Please provied some alternative evidence.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF:
His secondary sin was the advocacy of a euthanasia of the rentiers.
The rentiers run this economy right now for their own benefit and that of no one else.
Again, the French came up with a treatment for this disease more than two centuries ago.
Bokonon
Keynsian economics work, but the Europeans (and to a lesser extent, the U.S.) are not choosing them for a reason. We are making a deliberate policy choice to pursue austerity … and preserve capital and prevent inflation … rather than do things that will actually spur growth and hiring.
As Krugman keeps pointing out, that is a CHOICE rather than our central bankers and policy makers having an actual lack of options. And all the framing that that austerity policies are somehow a morality issue (in a field littered with moral hazards) just shows this isn’t really a pragmatic choice about what really works.
Someday, about thirty years from now, someone smart will be able to look back and write a brilliant analysis about why it was that smart people adopted contrarian, Austrian-style economic ideologies and then fiercely held on to them like a faith, despite the hard numbers that the resulting policies weren’t working.
But I strongly suspect that when you untangle things, the answer will all be about money and influence – and who it is that writes the paychecks for those financial columnists and economists who have headed down that contrarian road, and who it is that has big enough influence on governments to make them focus on capital preservation and risk avoidance rather than growth. Those people and institutions are the real “confidence fairies” that are swinging this debate. And we won’t call them by name. We just refer to them as abstractions.
AA+ Bonds
@Someguy:
LOLLLLLLLL
AA+ Bonds
What ‘austerity’ is really about is material exploitation combined with utter contempt for the ability of the masses to produce and guide production, practiced as a class warfare strategy by capitalists
Sadly neither liberals nor economists, even Keynesians and semi-Keynesians such as Krugman, are immune to the inevitably blindered perspective of the bourgeoisie
AA+ Bonds
Of course it would take some effort to come up with fire and brimstone flatulence more thick-headed than ‘malinvestment’ – the Austrians can always be counted on to turn economics into a televangelist sermon
AA+ Bonds
“You did the wrong thing, you stupid proles,” moans the Austrian. “I hope you have the common sense to blame democracy!”
liberal
@David in NY:
I’m using “unearned” in an economic sense, not an accounting sense.
If you produce value through labor or capital, you’ve made a contribution to production and thus have “earned” it. Here I’m referring to capital in the sense of classical economics, not the bastardized sense of neoclassical economics.
If you reap gains through collecting economic rents, you’ve contributed absolutely nothing to production, and your gain is entirely unearned.
Some Loser
@Brachiator:
So you are saying the stimulus was weak to begin with because we had to prop up state governments? And then the states drunk the austerity kool-aid in 2010 . . .
liberal
@Brachiator:
Depends. It was understood from the outset that certain parts of the stimulus package were not going to have large multipliers.
Krugman et al. claim with reasonable evidence that it worked pretty much as it they would have predicted.
liberal
@Brachiator:
Huh? Presumably money sent to states kept state employees on the payroll, which would be a very effective stimulus measure, given that states pretty much can’t deficit-spend.
liberal
@Some Loser:
I think Brachiator’s point about money sent to states is wrong. About states drinking the cool aid, Krugman claims that the ones who’ve really drunk it are the really Republican ones.
Some Loser
So, yeah. If we ever do acquire another stimulus package, where would we distribute the money? A fairly sizable chunk would have to go to weaker states just to slow their declines, right? Where else would we put the money?
liberal
@burnspbesq:
No, the record is pretty clear that they stupidly thought they’d get another bite at the apple. Krugman actually predicted this in advance, in real time.
You can argue that it doesn’t matter because they wouldn’t have gotten it, but the fact is they dropped the ball badly on that one.
Mino
Well, our economy is gonna get a couple extra billion injected into it over the next six months as some of all that capital sitting on the sidelines is expended in the election. Rather ironic, isn’t it.
Steeplejack
@Some Loser:
Just start shoveling away on the ASCE’s (civil engineers) wish list of infrastructure projects.
General Stuck
@Mino:
Never thought of it that way. Pretty brilliant of you to put that together. The Citizens United stimulus program. One small step for man, one giant leap for Peak Wingnut.
Linda Featheringill
@Mino:
So Rove’s PAC will help the economy overall, which will help Obama? Cool!
All kidding aside, you may have a point there. If the tons of dough spent by Republican PACs improve Obama’s chances by 1%, that might be enough.
[“Happy days are here again . .. “]
AA+ Bonds
@Mino:
Too bad that spending is far too small to have any real effect – and as those familiar with the industry know, a surprising amount of that cash will flee the country through contractors
AA+ Bonds
For all the errors of Marxians, they have a lot of solid answers for this ‘why’ question that everyone from the Von Mises cult to MMT has real problems answering
Citizen Alan
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
ScienceReality is always made to conform to politics, where politics is almost never required to conform tosciencereality anymore.Fixed that for ya. Seriously, what’s to be done when half the nation rejects objective fact in favor of politically convenient fiction. One of the later posts deals with whining about Obama’s vacations. I’d bet good money that a poll would show a plurality of Americans now believe that Obama has taken more vacation time than Bush.
Brachiator
@Some Loser:
No, I am saying that much of every portion of the stimulus, from tax credits to state bailouts, did little more than try to maintain a shaky status quo. Another major portion of the stimulus, the education credits, may bear fruit in the future, but have little immediate impact. And the promoters of the stimulus underestimated the degree to which states needed shoring up. Apart from the idea of infrastructure spending, which met a lot of opposition, most of the details on how the stimulus would be deployed represented a massive failure of imagination.
@liberal:
The stimulus was sold as a job creator. While preserving some jobs may have been a good thing, you still ended up confusing and disappointing voters.
And in California, the stimulus money did little more than kick the problem of the larger state structural deficit down the road. And you are still ending up with layoffs and reductions in service.
RE: Jobs were preserved, but the overall stimulus effect was a lot weaker than many are willing to admit.
Really? Where was this shown? A great deal of the First Time and Long Time Home Buyer Credit was money down a rat hole. We are already seeing homes bought with First Time credit money being lost through foreclosure. The increased adoption credit, while worthy socially, does nothing to stimulate jobs. The increased business credits for accelerated depreciation and extended net operating losses have done little to increase the success of small businesses or create new jobs.
Where has Krugman or anyone else done a comprehensive review of the impact of the specific stimulus programs on the economy, and their impact on jobs and wages, as opposed to the typical macro stuff such as GDP?
burnspbesq
@liberal:
Economic rents don’t magically appear from out the arse of a unicorn. There was an investment made and risk taken, and those things get a return. Even Marx understood that.
PurpleGirl
Over the last two decades or so many states and localities adopted Balanced Budget Amendments. Therefore when state and local revenues shrank, they had to let people go and cut programs. I’m not saying this is right or good, just that it happened. And they adopted these rules because the Republicans (and some Democrats) convinced people that government budgets were “just like” personal budgets. (People forget that once upon a time, they were told in school that governments should borrow money for long-term infrastructure projects and the like.) We are seeing the results of those policy ideas now.
Tone In DC
@Frankensteinbeck:
Amen to that.
Ben Wolf
@AA+ Bonds: What “why” questions would those be?
AA+ Bonds
Overall, ‘states’ in the American sense have panned out horribly as anything but incubators for fascism
Mino
@AA+ Bonds: There is surprisingly little critical study of the affect of campaign spending on an economy.
One, based on an analysis of a general Philippine election, suggested an one-half percent increase in GDP, which is nothing to sneeze at.
A retail analysis in this country of elections since the 60’s found a correlation in higher retail sales.
Citizens United spending in this election will dwarf anything ever seen before, so we’re in new territory.
AA+ Bonds
@Ben Wolf:
Why policy makers appear to be acting like suicidal morons when it comes to growth strategies
Marxian perspective argues that the material conditions of the bourgeoisie as a class move them and us toward crisis despite any good intentions (even if you dispense with the orthodox Marxist idea that as a class, they simply cannot help but see the world in a disastrously limited way)
TK-421
@burnspbesq:
Except that if your risk is eliminated via, say, massive infusions of free money to underwrite your bad debts, losses, etc., then in fact there was no risk and therefore no justification for the risk premium.
Just sayin’.
El Cid
We have to stop all the damn spendin’, ’cause the inflation’s eating us up. Or it will. Or at least we might have to keep predicting terrible Weimar Germany hyper-inflation, because I heard on the radio machine that that’s what happens when governments spend money.
AA+ Bonds
@Mino:
It will be interesting to see and you have made sure that I will watch (although I doubt even we could match the intertwining of cash and politics in Manila; I will have to check how conservative those measures were)
Ben Wolf
@AA+ Bonds: No offense, but “Marxian” (Marxist?) perspectives on the material conditions of the bourgeoisie have little application without an understanding of how our system actually functions. Hence you get the Krugmanesque obssession with symptomatic spending rather than the underlying disease.
Mino
@AA+ Bonds: Marxians should not be throwing stones from their own glass houses. Did they ever solve their problem of power transforming revolutionaries into the worst of bourgeoisie overnight?
El Cid
@Mino:
Many uses of the term “Marxian” or “Marxist” refer to Marx’s work in diagnostic studies, i.e., a study of capitalism, which included views of how society changes and must change (according to what he viewed as lawlike theoretical consequences).
Plenty of people think that Marx contributed to the understanding of class interests and conflicts and societal changes in capitalist countries without overdoing it (turning his writings into a new Bible, as many did), or who are less interested in Marx’s brief and fairly threadbare suggestions about what to do differently.
Plenty of anti-authoritarian revolutionary soshullists respected Marx’s analytic works while opposing much of what he recommended or engaged in during his active political life.
Unfortunately, a lot of people also seem to think that only Marxians or Marxists engaged in or engage in analysis involving class conflict in capitalist societies. This isn’t the case. American class power and elite mobilization sociologists C. Wright Mills and G. William Domhoff differ greatly from many root Marxist assumptions, but still outline a model of US power based in overall upper-class domination based within economic class power.
So “Marxian” may refer to class conflict analyses similar to those of Marx (in a general sense) or to specific arguments adopted from Marx, but you never really know.
Anoniminous
@burnspbesq:
Not if the “investor” (sic) can use their monopoly power and/or the State to force people to give them money.
ETA: And what @TK-421 said. Also. Too.
Ben Wolf
@El Cid: What specific economic policy recommendations have emerged from Marxian thought?
David in NY
@superluminar, esq: I certainly exaggerated.
Anoniminous
@Ben Wolf:
Social Democracy, for one.
Mino
@El Cid: Reading the wiki entry on Mills reminded me he was before his time:…that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were ruled by similar bureaucratic power elites and thus were convergent rather than divergent societies.
We need more Wobblies nowadays.
Mino
@Anoniminous: Which seems, at least in Europe, to be devolving into our disease, welfare capitalism.
Ben Wolf
@Anoniminous: Social Democracy is neither specific, nor an economic policy. It’s a political concept. I’m trying to understand exactly what Marxians propose economically without leaning on political rhetoric. AA+ Bonds has argued that MMT/MMR is the same as the Austrian school (an accusation which in itself is bizarre), so I want to know where such an assertion comes from in economic terms.
TK-421
@General Stuck:
In defense of but also mild correction of what you’re saying: yes, confidence plays a HUGE role in our economic growth. If people and businesses are scared/not confident about the future, they will get dinosaur arms and hoard…which then makes things worse, not better.
But there is a big difference between people’s and businesses’ economic confidence about the future, and economic confidence that results from reducing government debt (i.e. “the confidence fairy”). In the real world, nobody gives a shit about the deficit. In the long run we should, but we don’t. Thus the mythical “fairy” aspect to that type of confidence.
You yourself make that distinction, but you don’t do it very well. Don’t say “yes there is a confidence fairy” when you actually mean “yes economic confidence matters.” The “confidence fairy” is its own term with its own definition, and you shouldn’t try to redefine it on your own. Use better words instead.
Anoniminous
@Mino:
IMO, you can delete the “seems.” The Labour Parties Third Way is little more than window dressing for Neo-Liberal policies.
@Ben Wolf:
?
Did you read the link?
Ben Wolf
@Anoniminous: From the opening line of your link:
Again, political and neither specific nor purely economic.
gaz
@burnspbesq:
This seems to support liberal’s analogy of capital gains, I think. It’s not true on paper, but how is it much different than capital gains on substance?
gaz
@gaz: ETA: Maybe I don’t quite understand capital gains. Is it in fact strictly interest? or is that just a quaint notion in – and in practice it’s actual investments that can then get flagged as capital gains through smart accounting? The latter is what I’ve basically come to understand that a bulk of it is (at least for the wealthy). I don’t know for sure, because I’ve never made enough money to have to worry myself too much about it.
General Stuck
@TK-421:
LOLwut?
burnspbesq
@gaz:
Capital gain is gain from the sale or other disposition of a capital asset. In the Internal Revenue Code, “capital asset” is defined residually: anything that’s not enumerated in Section 1221 is a capital asset. The biggest carve out is for property held for sale to customers in the ordinary course of a trade or business.
ETA: that’s oversimplified, but it will get you started.
AA+ Bonds
@Ben Wolf:
No, I have not
AA+ Bonds
@Mino:
You are confusing Marxian analysis with Marxist Communism
Oh okay I see this was thoroughly covered above, thanks folks
AA+ Bonds
I think I should point out to anyone who doesn’t read me on here that I am no Marxist and would be surprised if any Marxist would appreciate how I perceive the importance of the utility of envy in political economy
Some people in the Marxian tradition might be interested, but I wouldn’t bet money on it
The net result is that liberals think I am a Marxist and Marxists are quite sure I am a liberal; this pleases me because I am a difficult and bratty person, but really, I am closer to Hobbes than either position, with a wary eye to the empirical problems of orthodox Hobbesianism
AA+ Bonds
None of this is terribly important but I don’t claim to speak for Marxian thinkers and I suggest liberals start with the approachable and sexy work of David Harvey and his lectures on Capital, or some of the folks at Jacobin, who have sort of declared their goal to become the equivalent of Ezra Klein only not stupid
All of these folks will expect you to bring your skepticism to the table