Again lashing out at Bernie Sanders's economic policies in a New York Times op-ed entitled "Varieties of Voodoo," Paul Krugman writes:
"Mr. Sanders is calling for a large expansion of the U.S. social safety net, which is something I would like to see, too. But the problem with such a move is that it would probably create many losers as well as winners — a substantial number of Americans, mainly in the upper middle class, who would end up paying more in additional taxes than they would gain in enhanced benefits.
By endorsing outlandish economic claims, the Sanders campaign is basically signaling that it doesn’t believe its program can be sold on the merits, that it has to invoke a growth miracle to minimize the downsides of its vision. It is, in effect, confirming its critics’ worst suspicions."
. . . .
"So Mr. Sanders really needs to crack down on his campaign’s instinct to lash out. More than that, he needs to disassociate himself from voodoo of the left — not just because of the political risks, but because getting real is or ought to be a core progressive value."
"Getting real" should be a "core progressive value"? Yeah, right. Consider the following suggestion from Krugman in his October 6, 2011 New York Times op-ed entitled "Confronting the Malefactors":
"Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.
. . . .
It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details."
Krugman is a pragmatic progressive, a sober-minded liberal? Spare me. (I don't even want to bother relating to Krugman's absurd contention in his opinion piece of today's date that "Obamacare, which conservatives insisted would be a budget-buster, actually ended up being significantly cheaper than projected.")
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