The Kroog Versus Cruelty And Wishful Thinking

Paul Krugman does not like Paul Ryan's budget, the way cops don't like naked arsonists running around elementary schools.

So Ryan is claiming that unemployment will plunge right away; that by 2015 it will be down to the levels at the peak of the 1990s boom (and far below anything achieved under the sainted Ronald Reagan); and that by 2021 it will be below 3 percent, a level we haven’t seen in more than half a century. Right.

Then there’s the Medicare business. According to the CBO analysis, a typical senior would end up spending more than twice as much of his or her own income on health care as under current law. As Dean Baker points out, this means that seniors would end up paying most of their income for health care. Again, right.

But in a way, the worst part isn’t the Medicare plan: it’s the fact — which so far has not penetrated the debate — that the biggest source of supposed savings in the plan isn’t actually health care, it’s an assumption that federal spending on everything except health and Social Security can somehow be squeezed, as a percent of GDP, to a small fraction of current levels.

And by "fraction" Ryan apparently means basically cutting discretionary spending in half, from 12% GDP to 6% of GDP, in 10 years...and continuing to shrink it.  (Or, keeping spending where it is and doubling the GDP in 10 years, but Ryan assumes only mildly fantastical GDP growth, so he just wants to slash everything.)

Either way, Ryan is full of crap.  Kroog calls him out.

That’s bigger than the assumed cut in health care spending relative to baseline; it accounts for all of the projected deficit reduction, since the alleged health savings are all used to finance tax cuts. And how is this supposed to be accomplished? Not explained.


This isn’t a serious proposal; it’s a strange combination of cruelty and insanely wishful thinking.

And that's the best summation of Republican economics I've heard in a very long time.  Cruelty and insanely wishful thinking, indeed.