We have looked at several interconnected zombie ideas in economics: Starve the Beast, Social Democracy=Stalinism, Trickle-Down Lafferism, Market Fundamentalism, Global Warming Denial, Deficit Hawkism. Ideas that should have died and stayed dead, but won’t because of the demands of the ultra-rich for tax cuts and deregulation, and of entitled haters to be More Equal than all the rest of us.
This book tells a story of the fight for truth, justice, and the anti-zombie way.
World War Z - Philadelphia - Soundtrack OST HD
He’s still at it, as one of our most important public economists, along with Rober Reich.
Jobs and Skills and Zombies
Influential people move in circles that keep repeating the skills gap story is a badge of seriousness. And the zombie shambles on.
The belief that America suffers from a “skills gap” is a prime example of a zombie idea. We need to kill this zombie, and stop making excuses for an economy that punishes workers.
Cue Bidenomics. And then screaming zombies. But I always say
Whatever they scream about loudest, do more of.
My teacher in Zen Buddhism, Rev. Abbess Jiyu Kennett, often said
Embalm, cremate, and bury, and take no risks.
Krugman first heard of “zombie ideas” in an article about an often-debunked lie about the Canadian health care system, that Canadians were coming to the US because Canadian health care was so terrible.
Belief in the magic of tax cuts for the rich is the ultimate zombie.
But here’s the thing. The public has never bought into the tax-cut message. Polls consistently show that voters want the rich to pay more, not less, in taxes.
This zombie idea can no longer win elections for the mythologizers. It can at best keep the shrinking minority of MAGA faithful in line.
There has been a lot of serious scholarship on the causes and consequences of inequality. But there has also, predictably, been an invasion of zombies. After all, acknowledging that there has been a huge rise in inequality might lead to demands that we do something about it.
As we saw in Thomas Piketty: A Brief History of Equality.
Well, cue Bidenomics. And cue screaming zombies. And cue us to do more of what they scream about.
Then there was Ronald Reagan, with Operation Coffee Cup, selling the zombie lie, going back to Hayek, that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom. This was highlighted in Michael Moore’s movie Sicko.
Sicko plays part of a recording Ronald Reagan once made for the American Medical Association, warning that a proposed program of health insurance for the elderly—the program now known as Medicare—would lead to totalitarianism.
SiCKO: Ronald Reagan On the Evils of Socialized Medicine
Books by Krugman
The Cranberries - Zombie (Official Music Video)
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