Krugman: It’s Morning in Joe Biden’s America

[pecksniff]

Editorial.

Last Tuesday President Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers published a blog post warning everyone not to make too much of any one month’s employment report. It presumably released this in advance of Friday’s report to fend off possible accusations that it was just trying to make excuses for a weak number. As it happened, however, the report came in strong: The economy added an impressive 850,000 jobs.

The job gain was especially impressive given widespread claims that businesses couldn’t expand because generous unemployment benefits were discouraging workers from taking jobs. (Recent benefit cuts in many states came too late to have affected this report.) Well, somehow employers are managing to hire a lot of people anyway.

Oh, and so much for Donald Trump’s warnings that there would be a “Biden depression” if he weren’t re-elected.

That said, the council’s points were well taken. Covid-19 created huge dislocations in the economy, and as we recover from these dislocations economic data are unusually noisy — largely because the standard adjustments statisticians make to smooth out things like seasonal variation don’t work well in an economy still distorted by the pandemic.

At this point, however, we have enough data in hand to declare that the economy is booming. In fact, it’s booming so strongly that Republicans have pivoted from claiming (falsely) that we’re experiencing the worst job performance in decades to lauding the employment numbers and giving credit to … Trump’s 2017 tax cut.

Back to that in a minute. First, let’s try to put this boom in context, by noting that the economy is running hotter than it did during the “Morning in America” boom that gave Ronald Reagan a landslide victory in the 1984 presidential election.

 

[pecksniff]

And, no, it's not the 2017 tax cut.

 

[Rightguide]

Krugman is the most discredited economist in America.

 

[pecksniff]

Krugman is the most discredited economist in America.

No, that would be Milton Friedman.

 

[Rightguide]

No, that would be Milton Friedman.

That's a lie. Why do you do it? You could have posted information that refutes what I said, if it could be found. Maybe that's the problem.

 

[pecksniff]

That's a lie. Why do you do it? You could have posted information that refutes what I said, if it could be found. Maybe that's the problem.

Krugman has a Nobel for economics. Nothing in his economics has been discredited. He is still a Keynesian -- and Keynesianism has not been discredited even though RWs for some reason often seem to assume so -- although the prevailing school of thought among economists is now post-Keynesianism -- essentially the same system with modifications.

Friedman, OTOH, is tainted by association with the Austrian school, which is very thoroughly discredited by being non-empirical and non-falsifiable. Of course, he also had a Nobel. And his Chicago School is not quite the same thing as the Austrian School.

 

[pecksniff]

But, what matters is, the U.S. economy is recovering. And not because of any tax cut.

 

[KeithD]

But, what matters is, the U.S. economy is recovering. And not because of any tax cut.

And it's certainly not because of Donald Trump, the Republicans in Congress, or the Trumpettes dumping on this discussion board.

 

[YDB95]

That's a lie. Why do you do it? You could have posted information that refutes what I said, if it could be found. Maybe that's the problem.

Maybe it's because every time people do post information that refutes what you said, you just whine and call names. Why bother?