Unfortunately, Krugman doesn't go quite far enough here. His answers to the question of regional inequality seem to boil down to: Nothing can be done, the divide is here to stay, urbanites will just have to turn out in huge numbers at elections to swamp out the votes of the benighted MAGA hillbillies.
As far as I'm concerned, that's not good enough.
I think economists need to devote a lot more energy to the problem of regional inequality than they have, and policy makers may need to accept that we may need to put in place policies that are "economically dumb" -- ones that reduce productivity to some degree and make the country collectively poorer than it could potentially be, in order that wealth be distributed in a fairer way, geographically (and class-wise as well).
A big part of the issue is that politicians have for decades seen themselves as having one main job: grow the economy. The only meaningful measure of success is how fast GDP is increasing, and there is no attention paid to how fairly that GDP growth is distributed, either in terms of geography or class. This is leading to most of the wealth allocated to smaller and smaller areas of the country and, really, to a smaller and smaller upper echelon of people in those wealthy regions. This is a recipe for massive resentment and social division.
The amount of "social engineering" required to reverse this may be substantial, but the alternative of the country ripping itself apart is worse.
Also, Democrats have largely made the assumption that bigotry is a fixed and absolute attribute of voters. People are either bigots, or they are not. But that's not how humans work in reality. All of us are subject to prejudice, just not to the same degree; some of us make an effort to judge individuals based on the evidence of their behavior despite our preconceptions, while others think it's completely fine to default to stereotypes of demographic groups outside their own.
And those prejudices are not static, but subject to outside influence. The rural regions of America are being subjected to a steady campaign of disinformation and hatemongering designed to increase bigotry to deliver votes to the GOP and advance the agendas of wealthy elites. The Left needs to be doing something to combat this rampant disinformation that is fueling more and more hate.
Basically, I think the Dems need to think about both how they are can fight the impoverishment of rural regions AND also how they can prevent those who are impoverished from being brainwashed into incorrectly believing the cause of their economic grievance is "parasitic" American ethnic minorities and "evil" foreign nations.
JUST IN: Judge has denied George Papadopoulos' request to continue his bail and delay when he starts his two-week prison sentence -- he's due to report tomorrow"
Poor little G Papa doesn't want to serve the fourteen days he was sentenced to for lying to the feds. Dude, at least it wasn't a bullet or fourteen months which is far more common in cases like yours.
"Anon @ 2:45 PM: At least Obama tried, although you'd never know he did based on the coverage it got"
He tried, but the tools he employed were, let's just say, way more business-friendly than required. This is a job that will need a sledgehammer, not tweezers. What I mean is that there are no "small government" solutions to this problem. We may have to break out Chinese-government-type top-down socialistic central planning.
It usually won't work to offer a tax incentive to try to persuade a business to locate in some blighted area, because no tax incentive will ever be enough to make up for the massive negatives of moving to that area. Government will have to force that business to locate its new division in a blighted area, even when it makes no damn business sense to do so.
We have, for years, been told that the free market always works out best, and it's "what makes America great." Now that that's turning out to be false, in many cases, the adherents to that ideology have no policy levers to pull to fix dire social problems. They're stumped.
I can imagine the horror this suggestion will provoke in certain quarters, but the horrified people have no plan for success; they just want to keep on with the unacceptable status quo as the nation goes to hell in a handbasket.
> the alternative of the country ripping itself apart is worse.
Too late. You've already declared half the country (the PRODUCTIVE half of the country, not the coastal parasite classses) "deplorables" who deserve to be nuked if they won't give up their guns. (Guess where the nukes are located, why doncha?)
> The rural regions of America are being subjected to a steady campaign of disinformation and hatemongering designed to increase bigotry to deliver votes to the GOP and advance the agendas of wealthy elites.
The RURAL regions are bombarded by disinformation? First remove the log in your own eye. You've descended into insanity like declaring that someone with a fully functional dick and balls can be a girl if he says he is, and anyone who says different is guilty of a hate crime.
The country is either dividing or going into civil war, and the only way to stop it is for you to surrender unconditionally and go into treatment. You won't, so the fission is inevitable.
> We may have to break out Chinese-government-type top-down socialistic central planning.
You always think that the problem is that you are not in charge of everything. You/re wrong, and no number of horrendous examples ever enlightens you.
> Government will have to force that business to locate its new division in a blighted area, even when it makes no damn business sense to do so.
The blight is the criminal population that lives there. You can destroy companies by forcing them to locate there, but that is all you will do. You could improve matters by ruthlessly punishing criminal behavior and forcing the blight-creating population to shape up, but you worship them as idols and declare they can do no wrong. That is why YOU are ultimately THE problem.
Getting rid of the problem requires getting rid of YOU.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
ReplyDeletePOTUS comforts the most important source of historic labor assistance in the White building of America. Oxen (not pictured) rank third.
ReplyDeleteButt Trumpet considering his potential fourth wife.
ReplyDelete"Speaking of Michelle Obama, has any one read that disbarred lawyer's book ?"
ReplyDeleteHello Stormy...
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the outfit you wore when Vlad introduced us.
Horse: Get your tiny hand off of my ass this minute you fucking pervert.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland
I'll be back to ride you into the sunset as soon as I can ditch this horse's ass I'm married to
ReplyDeleteThere are three mammals in this picture. One is Melania Trump, one is a horse's ass, and the third is a horse.
ReplyDeleteThat's Melania talking
ReplyDeleteWhite people are the only race known for partaking in bestiality. Sick fucks.
ReplyDeleteButt Trumpet arriving for his brain transplant
ReplyDeleteHi Hillary!
ReplyDelete"White people are the only race known for partaking in bestiality. Sick fucks."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/alabama-man-caught-sex-wife-dog-revenge-article-1.2259405
Today, Donald Trump announced that not only does he not believe in global warming, but that he’s certain the world is actually getting colder.
ReplyDeleteFrom now on, he will be traveling by his new horse-drawn presidential sleigh, Snowforce One.
I am the cum bucket of a dead cock.
ReplyDeleteA horse's ass pats another.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteOMG! He even molests horses!
Like you molest your house-full of cats.
ReplyDeleteSnowflakes are an immature and violent lot......
ReplyDeleteThis Paul Krugman column from a few days ago shows some flickers of recognition of the origins of America's political divide.
ReplyDeleteThe New Economy and the Trump Rump
Unfortunately, Krugman doesn't go quite far enough here. His answers to the question of regional inequality seem to boil down to: Nothing can be done, the divide is here to stay, urbanites will just have to turn out in huge numbers at elections to swamp out the votes of the benighted MAGA hillbillies.
As far as I'm concerned, that's not good enough.
I think economists need to devote a lot more energy to the problem of regional inequality than they have, and policy makers may need to accept that we may need to put in place policies that are "economically dumb" -- ones that reduce productivity to some degree and make the country collectively poorer than it could potentially be, in order that wealth be distributed in a fairer way, geographically (and class-wise as well).
A big part of the issue is that politicians have for decades seen themselves as having one main job: grow the economy. The only meaningful measure of success is how fast GDP is increasing, and there is no attention paid to how fairly that GDP growth is distributed, either in terms of geography or class. This is leading to most of the wealth allocated to smaller and smaller areas of the country and, really, to a smaller and smaller upper echelon of people in those wealthy regions. This is a recipe for massive resentment and social division.
The amount of "social engineering" required to reverse this may be substantial, but the alternative of the country ripping itself apart is worse.
Also, Democrats have largely made the assumption that bigotry is a fixed and absolute attribute of voters. People are either bigots, or they are not. But that's not how humans work in reality. All of us are subject to prejudice, just not to the same degree; some of us make an effort to judge individuals based on the evidence of their behavior despite our preconceptions, while others think it's completely fine to default to stereotypes of demographic groups outside their own.
And those prejudices are not static, but subject to outside influence. The rural regions of America are being subjected to a steady campaign of disinformation and hatemongering designed to increase bigotry to deliver votes to the GOP and advance the agendas of wealthy elites. The Left needs to be doing something to combat this rampant disinformation that is fueling more and more hate.
Basically, I think the Dems need to think about both how they are can fight the impoverishment of rural regions AND also how they can prevent those who are impoverished from being brainwashed into incorrectly believing the cause of their economic grievance is "parasitic" American ethnic minorities and "evil" foreign nations.
ReplyDelete"Zoe Tillman
✔
@ZoeTillman
JUST IN: Judge has denied George Papadopoulos' request to continue his bail and delay when he starts his two-week prison sentence -- he's due to report tomorrow"
Poor little G Papa doesn't want to serve the fourteen days he was sentenced to for lying to the feds. Dude, at least it wasn't a bullet or fourteen months which is far more common in cases like yours.
-Doug in Oakland
Anon @ 2:45 PM:
ReplyDeleteAt least Obama tried, although you'd never know he did based on the coverage it got:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2016/12/on-subject-of-listening-to-people-of.html
-Doug in Oakland
"Anon @ 2:45 PM:
ReplyDeleteAt least Obama tried, although you'd never know he did based on the coverage it got"
He tried, but the tools he employed were, let's just say, way more business-friendly than required. This is a job that will need a sledgehammer, not tweezers. What I mean is that there are no "small government" solutions to this problem. We may have to break out Chinese-government-type top-down socialistic central planning.
It usually won't work to offer a tax incentive to try to persuade a business to locate in some blighted area, because no tax incentive will ever be enough to make up for the massive negatives of moving to that area. Government will have to force that business to locate its new division in a blighted area, even when it makes no damn business sense to do so.
We have, for years, been told that the free market always works out best, and it's "what makes America great." Now that that's turning out to be false, in many cases, the adherents to that ideology have no policy levers to pull to fix dire social problems. They're stumped.
I can imagine the horror this suggestion will provoke in certain quarters, but the horrified people have no plan for success; they just want to keep on with the unacceptable status quo as the nation goes to hell in a handbasket.
Like seeks Like.
ReplyDeleteBirds of a feather flock together.
Trump asks Melania to have a threesome with a horse's ass.
> the alternative of the country ripping itself apart is worse.
ReplyDeleteToo late. You've already declared half the country (the PRODUCTIVE half of the country, not the coastal parasite classses) "deplorables" who deserve to be nuked if they won't give up their guns. (Guess where the nukes are located, why doncha?)
> The rural regions of America are being subjected to a steady campaign of disinformation and hatemongering designed to increase bigotry to deliver votes to the GOP and advance the agendas of wealthy elites.
The RURAL regions are bombarded by disinformation? First remove the log in your own eye. You've descended into insanity like declaring that someone with a fully functional dick and balls can be a girl if he says he is, and anyone who says different is guilty of a hate crime.
The country is either dividing or going into civil war, and the only way to stop it is for you to surrender unconditionally and go into treatment. You won't, so the fission is inevitable.
> We may have to break out Chinese-government-type top-down socialistic central planning.
You always think that the problem is that you are not in charge of everything. You/re wrong, and no number of horrendous examples ever enlightens you.
> Government will have to force that business to locate its new division in a blighted area, even when it makes no damn business sense to do so.
The blight is the criminal population that lives there. You can destroy companies by forcing them to locate there, but that is all you will do. You could improve matters by ruthlessly punishing criminal behavior and forcing the blight-creating population to shape up, but you worship them as idols and declare they can do no wrong. That is why YOU are ultimately THE problem.
Getting rid of the problem requires getting rid of YOU.
Melania confused as to which one is the big horse's ass.
ReplyDeleteYou just know that Melanin Trump gets wet when she sees the Donald fondle animals.
ReplyDeleteWhoa Bossie!!!!!
ReplyDelete