A short primer about Krugman's lies

As someone who loathes Paul Krugman for the dishonesty he regularly splays across the pages of the NY Times, I was delighted to find a Donald Luskin article ripping apart Krugman's racist stand regarding Social Security. The article is long, so I won't quote it all here, but these are a few of the highlights:

Look up the word “vile” in the dictionary and you will find an appropriate description of Paul Krugman’s New York Times column from last Friday. In the column, America’s most dangerous liberal pundit throws a gutter accusation of “bigotry” at President Bush — yes, the man who just appointed his female African American national security advisor as the successor to his African American secretary of State. Why, in Krugman’s mind, is Bush a bigot? Because the president is seeking to reform Social Security with personal accounts — which, by the way, is the same reform being argued for by Harold Ford, the African American Democratic congressman from Tennessee. In Ford’s words, the existing system “provides a measure of security for retirees, but it cannot be passed on to provide financial security for their children and grandchildren. The key to retirement security and upward social mobility is wealth creation.” *** Krugman’s position is extremely confused. He is taking the position that Social Security reforms that make the system fairer for African Americans must be opposed because President Bush hasn’t waved his magic wand and bestowed upon African Americans the same statistical life expectancy as whites. Even if such a thing were in Bush’s power and Bush refused to do it — and even if his refusal to do so was based on bigotry — it is still indefensible to oppose reforming the unfairness in the current Social Security system. It is Krugman — not Bush — who diminishes the importance of the shorter life expectancy of African Americans. Krugman waves it away, almost casually, saying that 14.6 years of life expectancy at 65 for African American males is “not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.” Those 2 fewer years of life may not mean much to Krugman, but I’ll bet they sure do to African American men and their families. As Krugman Truth Squad member Sylvain Galineau quipped on my blog, perhaps the diminutive pundit would “get it if we put the debate in terms he understands; so let’s assume that Social Security benefits are based on height.” *** Krugman attempts to support his insupportable positions with his patented abuse of statistics. Krugman writes, “Blacks’ low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood” — the point being that during their working lives and retirements their life expectancies are much like those of whites. But Krugman Truth Squad member Jim Glass points out on his Scrivener.net blog that this is a flat-out lie.

The dialogue in this country regarding economic issues will always be tainted as long as Krugman has such a prominent soapbox for his bile.