I'm not the world's biggest fan of Paul Krugman - an economist so neo-Keynesian that the blame for so much that has gone wrong in the economy is easy to attach to his thinking - but on this I agree with him:
And yes, he really did mean 'locking up'.
For the record, he is not alone in living in fear of that possibility.
When the fascists call out 'lock them up' they really mean it. It inevitably follows that someday, sometime soon, some of them are going to start doing it. It's the way these things always progress.
So why not live in fear of it? And defy it, at the same time?
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Would you care to develop what you mean by “an economist so neo-Keynesian that the blame for so much that has gone wrong in the economy is easy to attach to his thinking”? I suppose I am asking exactly what you consider neo-Keynesian, and what precisely about it is blameworthy? I say this because there are some who argue that Keynes effectively embraced MMT; so it it is useful to be clear about distinctions here.
The dedication to the independent central bank, borrowing constrained, deficit myth is my accusation of what neo-Keynesianuism stands for – the idea that ‘it has to be repaid’ when that is not true
Neo-Keynesians abandoned the idea of full employment and adopted the idea of the non accelerating rate of unemployment. Which is an idea that has brought us to exactly no where.
I find Paul Krugman rather frustrating because he has been writing about unemployment for best part of 3 decades. He puts it all down to policy makers not wanting to make harsh decisions and the public not wanting to confront to reality. His proposal is a reduction in the welfare state and become more like america, while at the same time he blames inequality as the source of unemployment.
Paul Krugman, he’s the kind of guy who’d watch you roof your house, criticize you for the work you did, and then, when you asked why he didn’t offer to help, would then confess he’s never roofed a house… just read about it..a glorified soapbox orator
“Neo-Keynesians abandoned the idea of full employment and adopted the idea of the non accelerating rate of unemployment.”
Well, here is the problem I wish to unpick. I always associated this with NAIRU, and that, to me, signals Friedman. If a distinction is going to be made between the Neo-Keynsian non-accelerating rate of unemployment and NAIRU, I would merely observe that this would suggest that economics had long ago indeed headed into the ground previously occupied by mediaeval scholasticism, in order to protect the sanctity of the economic discipline’s impenetrable metaphysics from the dangers of confronting the real world; as some of us have long suspected.
The “locking up! of intellectuals is already done on an informal basis in the US by the main media channels more or less ignoring Noam Chomsky in their public debates despite the fact that he is recognised globally as a a leading thinker. Also anyone else of more of radical thinking since the Mccathyist blaclk listing in the 1950s.
Nicola Sturgeon is already threatening to turn Scotland into an open prison by making it illegal to cross local authority boundaries. No need to even be an intellectual here!
One wonders how this clueless bunch would be identifying intellectuals… if they mean anyone smarter than them then they’d be locking up most of the country.
In Cambodia during the PolPot era, people who wore glasses were intellectuals and so were executed.
The right wing armed mobs outside the counting stations, shouting contradictory slogans depending which state they were in, was truly reminiscent of 1930s Germany. Almost 50% voted for Trump.
The intellectuals here and now had better up their game, no?
Mmm. The Obama-Biden administration was far from angelic in this regard. It prosecuted nine whistleblowers or leakers in eight years, compared to three by all previous administrations combined.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/opinion/sunday/if-donald-trump-targets-journalists-thank-obama.html
‘When the fascists call out ‘lock them up’ they really mean it.’
Indeed. Isn’t the case of Julian Assange a glaring example of what we fear? The complicity of mainstream journalism is evident in their silence and/or public denigration of him has been all too apparent in the face of the USA’s attempt to extradite him. Will the case be dropped should Biden take the Presidency? I would like to believe so but I really doubt it.
Bear in mind that Trump supporters believe they will be locked up by “The Woke Police”. They’re wrong but the fear Is real on both sides.