Living in the slough of despond

Twin Peaks Planet

Read this and think again of the adoption by both our major parties of policies that were foretold to have exactly the global effects described, as far back as the Clinton years when Pat Buchanan and many others first began to run against mass, low-wage immigration, free-trade, and the crushing of American unions.

Krugman, of course, sympathizes in some measure with the abandoned American working class.

But certainly not to the point of opposing continuation of the kinds of trade and immigration policies that got us here.

Instead, he continues to urge, as he has done since 2008, demand-side policies that would boost the fortunes of American workers from the bottom - or would at any rate slow their fall.

But all the while, owing to inflationary effects, they would further impoverish those workers of the Baby Boomer generation who, despite being hammered by both parties, saved small nest-eggs during their working years and now must rely for their survival on Social Security, Medicare, and those meager savings.

They have nothing else, and the demand-side policies Krugman and others urge would not give them anything to replace the losses caused to the value of their savings.

Much less improve their prospects in their shipwreck years in net.

(De Gaulle, "Old age is a shipwreck.")

Even Krugman is just another elite figure who is perfectly OK with improving the lot of others by taking it out of the hide of working class Americans.

Even he is of the cosmopolitan left.

Remember that when he writes about global warming and the need to adopt radically unequal, job-crushing treaties whose alleged purpose is to stop climate change but that can do nothing of the sort, serving only to further advantage others at a price paid by American workers by hobbling the American economy.

Something that strikes the cosmopolitan left as an actual good thing.