Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

The job market keeps barreling along. But was it the tax cut what done it? Hard to make that case when corporations, the main beneficiaries, haven't boosted investment https://t.co/PwV2NfQ0Uf — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Also, stable kleptocrats can develop social graces and good taste, patronize poetry and painting, etc. They can also develop an effective propaganda machine that declares their rule blessed by God etc. But government for ordinary people is recent, and may not last 5/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

The Dark Ages basically were a collapse into unstable kleptocracy; the barbarians weren't necessarily any more grasping than Roman senators, the problem was that you never knew which barbarian would be seizing this year's harvest 4/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

The Roman Empire was government of, by, and for an exploitative elite; but there were rules, there was stability, and the society appears to have been richer, even for the plebs, than any preindustrial society until maybe the 17th century. 3/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Branko says that for much of the world the choice is between stable and unstable kleptocracy, which is true. I'd just add that for most of history that was the choice everywhere. Until the Industrial Revolution, stable kleptocracy was pretty much what "civilization" meant 2/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

A characteristically stimulating post from @BrankoMilan on Putin and the advantages of stable kleptocracy. But the point is a lot more general 1/ https://t.co/6PYtFAQv4M — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Trump's trade policy is based on the assumption that other countries' leaders are like Republican senators, easily bullied into submission. It doesn't work that way https://t.co/pmW4QgWThh — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

RT @nytopinion: Donald Trump’s declaration that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” will surely go down in the history books as a classi… — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

On the whole, special-occasion food disappoints, bc it doesn’t live up to expectations. But grilled local corn is always even better than I remembered — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

You know, there are a lot of advantages to being a country that welcomes the suffering and oppressed. And some of the biggest advantages accrue to place in the heartland 7/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

One important Utica example: Chobani yogurt (which is really Turkish, not Greek) has its headquarters and one of its main plants near Utica. Yes, it's dairy country, but the refugees probably brought something to the mix 6/ https://t.co/v61JTlAcuk — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

And there turns out to be a special Utica twist: refugees! Specifically, Bosnian Muslims who arrived in the 1990s. These refugees haven't just helped fill local-service jobs: they're important to the region's "export" sectors (to other places within the US as well as abroad) 5/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

This keeps old residents there, but also tends to attract certain kinds of new residents. In particular, immigrants are playing a surprisingly strong role in sustaining small rust-belt cities – Utica included 4/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

But there's more to the story, in Utica and a lot of small cities. You see, cities may rise fast, but they usually decline slowly, because a durable housing stock gives them the advantage of a low cost of living 3/ https://t.co/1DWNEelscO — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Why, you ask? Well, I was born in Albany but lived in Utica until I was 8, before moving to Lawn Guyland. And Utica is kind of a classic case: an old industrial city, once boosted by the Erie Canal, but kind of left stranded by change 2/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

And now for something completely different. I've been doing some homework in the background on the phenomenon of rising regional inequality, with a focus on the problem of small-town and rural decline. And I've been doing some work on the case of Utica, New York. 1/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Interesting and depressing. The American dream has turned into an American delusion, the belief that there's more opportunity than there really is – and the delusion is strongest where opportunity is least https://t.co/xF0WjAMwYt — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Hey, why not? If Trump is nominating people who got everything wrong about monetary policy for the Fed, why not someone who insisted that austerity is expansionary for the IMF? https://t.co/VlBZeCYGRJ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Is the "death of distance" actually leading to widening regional disparities? https://t.co/KDgZD5tczy — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

OK, this wasn't a headline I expected to see https://t.co/yFGWn30cID — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

That – not tanks or boasting about our power – is what the 4th is supposed to be about 6/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

We were still in a post-Vietnam funk, not to mention with memories of Watergate still fresh. But then and there, it was overwhelmingly clear that America was the leader of the good guys; we were genuinely celebrating freedom, ours and others 5/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

So the US embassy threw a 4th of July picnic, but there really weren't many Americans around, so it became a sort of omnibus event for Western democracies in general – Germans, French, Brits, etc. eating hot dogs and listening to a message from Gerald Ford 4/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Things were a bit chaotic in Portugal after the fall of the fascist regime, but stabilizing – and it was clear that the fledgling democracy was going to survive, thanks in part to help from civil society groups like German trade unions 3/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

I spent the summer of 1976, midway through grad school, as part of an MIT team working at the Bank of Portugal. (That's me on the right of this blurry photo) 2/ https://t.co/GFpjxsyCsp — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

As we prepare for Trump's attempt to turn the 4th of July into a spectacle of personal aggrandizement, I found myself remembering my own best 4th – the one that made me really proud of my country and what it stood for 1/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

There may be an upside to tomorrow's nonsense, after all https://t.co/Z2KMNlDYy3 — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

So the evidence suggests that it was always about crippling the Obama economy while giving Trump a boom. If there were any sincere hard-money people, they appear to have abandoned whatever principles they may once have had 5/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

But at this point it looks as if it was almost all cynical politics. Gold prices are surging; hard money advocates should screaming for tighter, not looser, monetary policy. But I can't think of a single prominent hard-money person doing that 4/ — PolitiTweet.org

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

I used to think that it was mainly genuine if wrong-headed conviction, with an admixture of cynical politics/economic sabotage: these people were against easy money in general, but especially if it might help a Democratic president 3/ — PolitiTweet.org