Proof that anyone can write for the NY Times (or why I love Paul Krugman)

Paul Krugman's latest piece ran yesterday in the Arizona Republic (linked here in it's original form at the NY Times). Since I had the opportunity to spend some time pouring over the paper yesterday, I decided against my better judgment to give it a once-over.

Krugman is an interesting read. Not so much for any insight or brilliance but more as a curiosity; his mental-gymnastics in trying to score political points are brain-benders. Good morning-brain-exercises.

Well, this one was straight to-form: Conservative pundits close to the administration talk, without irony, about a "Bush boom."

Yet two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup say that the economy is "only fair" or "poor." And only 33 percent of those polled believe the economy is improving, while 59 percent think it's getting worse.

What does that stat really mean? The economic-understanding of the American public-at-large is ridiculously poor. I'll wager Mr. Krugman that a similarly low 33% of people out there can correctly explain the actual economic definition of terms such as GDP and recession. So then, what is achieved by parroting such a stat when the public is speaking about things of which it doesn't understand at all well? Garbage in, garbage out as they say.

By the way, I'd win the bet. According to this, fully two-thirds of young people and half of adults flunked their "basic test for economic literacy." But hey, 59-percent of America thinks the economy is getting worse...so it must be, eh Paul?

And so it goes: Is the administration's obliviousness to the public's economic anxiety just partisanship? I don't think so: President Bush and other Republican leaders honestly think that we're living in the best of times. After all, everyone they talk to says so.

Never mind that by actual economic-standards, something that a professor in Economics at Princeton ought to be holding to in every public utterance on the subject, the economy overall is still healthy (Recently released 1st qtr GDP figures not withstanding; Krugman's column was published on the 25th). The overall growth-rate in '04 was around 4.4 percent. That's good by most standards. Even Krugman's: "By any standard, 1997 was a very good year for the U.S. economy. GDP grew by almost 4 percent, well above the 2.4 percent average over the past 20 years."

In fairness, he points out the very, very low unemployment rate of 4.6% that year as another component of his overall assessment. Currently, we have an unemployment rate of 5.2%. While the boom-years of the late 90's look better in comparison, in historic terms 5.2% is a decent figure. Not great, but good. The current number is in fact comparable to the unemployment rate in 1996 when Clinton won re-election, also known as when-all-was-right-with-the-world-if-you're-a-writer-for-the-New-York-Times.

So why is GDP growth around 4% and an unemployment rate hovering around 5% good in the 90's but not now? One can only conclude based on the general tone and tenor of Krugman's writings that George W. Bush is the sole difference and reason.

And this is the real point. Even when Krugman is correct in his economic assessments, his blatant anti-everything-Bush demands that he work to spin any and everything negatively. Something that his role as economist and teacher ought to work against, yet somehow never does.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that Krugman uses an alias and spends at least a few hours a day at ESPN. He writes 1,000 words at a time to continually re-state the same idea over and over again. An idea that could be more concisely stated in one sentence as, "I hate George W. Bush."