Paul Krugman Appears on "The Week" and Thinks We Are Doomed
Paul Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/were-doomed-2/: Update: So you see what I mean. We have a terrible failure of demand — and Carly Fiorina thinks the key problem is excessive taxes on corporations (our effective rate is actually fairly low). Hey, if only we had low rates like Ireland, we could have 14.7 percent unemployment… oh well, never mind.
Meanwhile, Eric Schmidt thinks the problem is a shortage of workers in some high-skill fields. As Dean Baker points out, businesses were saying the same thing in 1935; so were the era’s Very Serious People.
Everything makes David Walker think of the need for entitlement reform. Everything makes George Will think of Ronald Reagan.
Sigh.
I am actually not depressed by Paul's experience.
I am, however, irritated at George Stephanipoulos: he seems to have no clue as to how to do what I takes to be his job.
If you want to inform your watchers, you don't put four stopped clocks on your panel. You do not pick four people each of whom has a single ideological-institutional affiliation, and a single set of talking points from which they will not deviate no matter what. No matter what question is asked, David Walker is going to say that the solution is to cut Social Security and Medicare, Eric Schmidt is going to say the solution is to have the federal government fund the training of more high-tech workers, Carly Fiorina is going to say that the solution is to cut corporate taxes, and George Will is going to say the solution is to bring out and worship the mud-and-saliva image of Ronald Reagan he has constructed in his basement.
They are not going to engage each other.
They are none of them going pushed off their particular message.
It is not a panel you select if you're interested in forming your viewers via any kind of interactive discussion.
It is only a panel that you would construct if you placed your viewers far far beneath some long-running gift exchange relationship you are building with Fiorina, Schmidt, Walker, Will, and company. (Schmidt and Walker could, I think, the valuable parts of other panels--but not of this one.)
So, Paul, the fact that David Walker is going to say that the solution is to cut Social Security and Medicare, Eric Schmidt is going to say the solution is to have the federal government fund the training of more high-tech workers, Carly Fiorina is going to say that the solution is to cut corporate taxes, and George Will is going to say the solution is to bring out and worship the mud-and-saliva image of Ronald Reagan he has constructed in his basement should not make you depressed. It's not a discussion. It's not a panel. It's an overlapping presentation of talking points.
Or should not make you more depressed than you already were: this is all stuff that you already knew.
Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?
