Alternet: Paul Krugman Exposes Conservative Lies About Why the Economy Is Finally Recovering
Paul Krugman is guardedly optimistic that the economy is finally recovering after seven long years, although a great deal of damage has been done, some of it avoidable. In Monday's New York Times column, the economist celebrates last week's positive employment report which said the U.S. economy added well over 300,000 jobs, and that wages have increased a bit. Yay. Granted, we still have a long ways to go, and the devastation to American workers and their families cannot easily be undone. "Millions of families lost their homes, their savings, or both," Krugman writes. "Many young Americans graduated into a labor market that didn’t want their skills, and will never get back onto the career tracks they should have had."
But here's the rub. Some of the pain of the last seven years could have been avoided. "We could have had a much faster recovery if the U.S. government had ramped up public investment and put more money in the hands of families likely to spend it," Krugman reminds. "But the Obama stimulus was much too small and short-lived — as many of us warned, in advance, it would be — and since 2010 what we have actually seen, thanks to scorched-earth Republican opposition on all fronts, are unprecedented cutbacks in government spending, especially investment, and in government employment."
The Republicans and conservative economists insist on the fiction that Obama's so-called anti-business attitude was the problem. He called rich people "fat cats," and that hurt their feelings. Wrong wrong wrong. Krugman points out that the Obama recovery has been stronger and faster than that of George W Bush, and W never insulted, ummm, "fat cats."
You know what else has helped the recovery? Obamacare. That's not a story you'll be hearing on Fox News. Government paralysis caused by the Party of No is the true culprit in this sluggish recovery, Krugman writes, "paralysis that has, alas, richly rewarded the very politicians who caused it.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-exposes-conservative-lies-about-why-economy-finally-recovering
republicans love to blame Obama for US economic problems. Of course, republicans are infamous of disdaining facts and preferring to go with fear and emotion.
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