Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

CA's biggest policy problem is housing unaffordability, which can be traced to NIMBYism and hence restrictive zoning. But those are exactly the policies Trump insists we keep, to preserve the Suburban Lifestyle Dream! 4/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

CA has also been an enthusiastic and effective adopter of Obamacare, sharply cutting its number of uninsured 3/ https://t.co/Dp7r4L6qQQ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

CA policy turned left when Jerry Brown became governor in 2011. Conservatives predicted economic disaster, calling tax hikes "economic suicide." Not so much 2/ https://t.co/pb8zZTNEVI — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Not that rationality has anything to do with this, but the GOP attack on CA really involves denial of plain facts. The state has problems — but not the ones conservatives claim 1/ https://t.co/qMaYTFvJDM — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

As Sam Bell points out, Ron Wyden is most directly responsible for the $600 a week. Party leaders backed him, but credit where due 10/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Fair point. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Or to put it differently, in an administration that includes Barr and Pompeo, where Kushner is treated as a universal expert, Mnuchin doesn't look so bad. But in a normal administration he would look terrible 9/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

And for what it's worth, whatever moderating influence he may have exerted is hard to see now, with benefits cut off and the admin's main policy idea — payroll tax deferment — looking like a sick joke 8/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

And for whatever reason, Trump hasn't replaced him with a personality-cult loyalist, which has turned Mnuchin into the relative voice of reason — not because he's smart, or even reasonable, but because look at who we're comparing him to 7/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

They're all gone now, either fired or having left because they finally saw what was in front of their noses. Mnuchin is still there. I don't know whether he is just oblivious to who he's serving, or totally amoral — not mutually exclusive categories 6/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

So, where does Mnuchin fit? The Trump administration initially included a fair number of right-wingers with some independent status, who somehow didn't fully take on the nature of what they were joining. Gary Cohn; Rex Tillerson; in a different way, James Mattis 5/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

And the $600 was, of course, a Democratic idea, which most Republicans hated. Mnuchin gets some credit for helping sell Trump on letting it get enacted anyway. But it's really Pelosi/Schumer policy 4/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

The other was the CARES Act, which contained a bunch of stuff. All indications, however, are that the really crucial element was that $600 a week supplement to unemployment benefits. Those $1200 checks appear to mostly have been saved; it was UI that provided the stimulus 3/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

So, about that rescue: two crucial things kept the U.S. economy from going into total meltdown this spring. One was the Fed's extremely aggressive intervention to stabilize financial markets, which was basically Jerome Powell, not anyone in the Trump team 2/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

This is an interesting piece. But I'd say it implicitly gives Mnuchin far too much credit for the economic rescue of March, and also doesn't give the right take on who he is — the last oblivious but probably not fascist right-winger on the Trump team 1/ https://t.co/3nQYJAqMEC — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

It's almost as if there's a pattern here 3/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

His payroll tax cut/not a tax cut looks so bad that it's hard to imagine many employers implementing it 2/ https://t.co/PhQ1u8k5wM — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Trump's "quickly concocted" plan to help with Covid-19 bills has been a flop 1/ https://t.co/uqnBl2K7rg — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

RT @TBPInvictus: I suppose the good news is that we're making progress on getting back to April's levels. https://t.co/X51V1h7kYA — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

RT @nytopinion: .@PaulKrugman responded to readers who commented on his column, "April Was Trump’s Cruelest Month." You can read their exch… — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Getting some research assistance https://t.co/vji0b9rlbe — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

RT @MichaelSLinden: It's not headline news right now, but the degree to which the $600 boost to UI successfully blunted human and economic… — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

And then it will be Infrastructure Week. — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

I don't think it will work, but I guess we'll find out 6/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

In any case, what Trump hopes is that suburban housewives will look at the diversity of, say, Jackson Heights and see a terrifying dystopia 5/ https://t.co/kWC7o69Aze — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

But notice in any case that Trump wants us to discount the terrible economy and only remember the economy of 2019, while obsessing over recent crime and forgetting the low crime of 2019. Funny how that works 4/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

It's true that there has been a spike in murders over the past few months, although crime is still far below 90s levels. We don't know why, but lots of things are strange in this year of Covid-19 3/ https://t.co/TNd8dvcP5A — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

In 1993 there were 1,927 murders in NYC. Last year there were only 319. In Trump's mind big cities are dystopian landscapes of murder and mayhem; in reality they're as safe as they've ever been 2/ https://t.co/YvbtMKLBwE — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

So Trump will try to make this election about big-city crime; basically he wants to run the Giuliani campaign of the early 1990s. And maybe he will succeed — but not based on objective reality. For big-city crime plunged over the past generation 1/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

RT @nytopinion: Eager for good economic numbers, Trump pushed to resume business as usual, @PaulKrugman writes. Many Republican governors r… — PolitiTweet.org