If one is to believe Krugman, the government needs to restore highly "progressive" income tax rates and spend like a drunken sailor. If only the government did that, all would be well.
Yet the government did do that and there were still recessions and some of them were bad. Anyone who lived through the 70's can remember that was no cakewalk either. By the end of the decade, double digit inflation was occurring in a recession. This was not supposed to have happened but it did. This was how Reagan got elected. Reagan's deep tax cuts and deregulation appears to have brought the economy back. Or did it? What is Krugman's explanation for that?
No, we are to believe that Bush's tax cuts and Clinton's tax increases were the real test cases that should be shown as examples of failed policy v successful policy. But it is not quite so simple as Krugman is trying to make it. You have to look deeper. If a superficial examination is all that is required, then Krugman could appear to be persuasive. It's a nice try, but I am not drinking the Kool Aid that Krugman has been drinking.
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