Krugman: "Maybe I'm actually right . . "

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, is a favorite target for conservatives who preach austerity.   Despite mounting evidence that austerity is the wrong policy for today's problems -- stimulus and job creation is the answer -- critics continue to deny the obvious and to look for more ways to discredit Krugman.

I like his simple, succinct response:   "Maybe I'm actually right."

But Krugman, being a bit combative himself, didn't let it rest there.    He said something else that's true:

“There remains essentially no room for independent thinking within the conservative movement. . . . Being a good liberal doesn’t require that you believe, or pretend to believe, lots of things that almost certainly aren’t true; being a good conservative does.”

He has written before about issues in which the evidence is overwhelming for one side of an argument, and yet conservatives continue to argue the opposite.   Austerity in time of recession is one of those.

They just will not deviate from their dogma that "cutting taxes" is the solution to every economic problem.  And yet both conservatiove icons Ronald Reagen and Margaret Thatcher raised taxes.   Ask most conservatives about this, and they simply refuse to believe it.

Paul Krugman is right.

Ralph