Paul Krugman in La-La Land: ‘Economic Data Have Been Surreally Good’

Tom Olohan
September 14th, 2023 3:42 PM

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When it was revealed Sept. 12 that the U.S. poverty rate spiked in 2022 for the first time in 13 years, President Joe Biden’s mouthpiece at The New York Times had some egg on his face. 

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman made an absurd, tone-deaf claim during a Sept. 12 appearance on CNN International and PBS’s Amanpour: “The economic data have been surreally good. I mean even optimists are just stunned by how quickly and how painlessly inflation has come down. No hint of a recession at least so far,” said Krugman, ahead of a bad inflation report that dropped on Sept. 13.

He found a willing ear in CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour, who did not push back against his idea that the “economic data” is “surreally good” nor his argument that the economic data is better than Americans feel that it is. But this is to be expected, given that her network has a documented obsession with relentlessly pushing “Bidenomics” on the airwaves.

 

 

It’s unclear what planet Krugman is living on. The Tipp Insights Editorial Board noted Sept. 14 that prices have spiked 16.7 percent since Biden first took office. In addition, “More than six out of every ten (61%) Americans live paycheck to paycheck. American credit card debt has surged by 38%, increasing from $743.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021 to a recent total of $1.031 trillion.” A new Investor's Business Daily/TIPP Poll also found that 54 percent of Americans say their “wages have not kept up with inflation.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, the U.S. Census Bureau released a report the same day of Krugman’s propaganda showing that the U.S. poverty rate — based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) — increased 4.6 percentage points to 12.4 percent in 2022, “its first increase since 2010,” as The Hill summarized. The Bureau also noted that “[t]he SPM child poverty rate more than doubled, from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022.” The SPM rates for people between 18 and 64 years old  and 65 years and older also spiked, the Bureau said. 

But the “economic data have been surreally good,” eh Krugman?

Krugman, who continues to prove why his Nobel prize was a textbook case of parody,, was not finished. He claimed that inflation was “not too far from the target of 2% and under 3% by most measures. And all of that just achieved painlessly, so this is great, this is a goldilocks economy.”  His timing couldn’t have been worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) would release a damning report the next day showing that inflation spiked a hotter-than-expected 3.7 percent year-over-year in August, a jump from the 3.2 percent increase in July. 

Then, on September 14, the BLS published another report on Sept. 14 showing that producer prices surged a more-than-expected 1.6 percent year-over in August. Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni tweeted that the producer prices report alone confirms “that in Aug inflation pulled the stake out of its chest, loosed a blood-curdling roar, and renewed its assault on your wallet.” 

But Krugman proceeded to lecture that Americans just don’t know good they have it, saying that “people say its a terrible economy, but what’s really odd is that people don’t behave as if its a terrible economy.” 

Krugman has been a relentless cheerleader of Bidenomics, as the Biden administration hamstrings American energy and heaps costs and regulations upon appliances Americans depend on. Either Krugman is just that detached from reality or he is just a pathological spreader of falsehoods.

Conservatives are under attack! Contact The New York Times at 800-698-4637 and demand it distance itself from Krugman’s shilling for Bidenomics.

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