Paul Krugman: Economist Or Politician?

As Jimmy Durante sometimes said, " Everybody wants to get into the act". 

Give an economist a Nobel Prize and suddenly he wants to parlay himself into a bleeding-heart liberal politician and maybe run for the senate. Like we need another Jew in the senate. Krugman's piece in todays NYT says that California's budget problems started with the passage of Propostion 13 in 1978. Prop 13 was a property tax limitation initiative and also required a 2/3 majority vote by the legislature to raise income taxes. It passed overwhelmingly. I paid property taxes pre-Prop 13. I kept up with the never-ending increases. But many could not. Many older people lost or had to sell their homes because they couldn't keep up with taxes.

Krugman wants Propostion 13 repealed. He presumably wants unlimited tax and spending in its place. He sounds more like a bleeding-heart liberal politician than a disciplined economist who is guided by prudent, realistic policies.

The Economist Magazine: In Growth It Trusts

The July 28th edition of " The Economist" had a provocative editorial essay. The title " How to deal with a falling population: Worries about a population explosion have been replaced by fears of decline". The editor is probably worried about subscription growth and corporate ads. But I am not. Frankly I would approve a leveling of human population. And I would give a standing ovation for a humane 90% reduction of our 6.6 billion bodies. A population of app. 500 million would be the app. population of man's classical era about 2500 years ago. Then intuition, wisdom and personal effort were the norm rather than todays non-quality but abundant quantity human count, duplicating machines, software and artificial intelligence ad nauseum.

One of the Editor's arguments for further not-to-worry human population growth was his dismissal out of hand of an " Malthusian catastrophe". The Editor noted that " mankind appropriates about a quater of what is known as the net primary production of the Earth ( this is the plant tissue created by photo synthesis) a lot but hardly near the point of exhaustian."

I rest my case! The self-evident fact that we already consume 25 % of " net primary production" has already caused a kind of " Malthusian catastrophe" in the extintions of the greater flora and fauna world that tries to cope with man. Also the the degeneration of the human species as evidenced by obesity, diseases linked to lack of hygiene and constant war point to overcrowding and the redundancy of most humans.

My advice to the editor is " Use a tool and lose your place". You can be replaced.