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Shame on you, Joe Nocera

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There is a lot to learn from this Joe Nocera column [2] so I thought I’d go through it in detail. It is full of dishonest polemics.

Here is the opening:


That’s a bit strong, wouldn’t you say? In a democracy, people disagree. It’s kind of against the rules to call your intellectual opponents terrorists unless they are killing innocent bystanders. But I guess Nocera is competing with Mr. Krugman.


Huh? See previous comment.


Like ideologues everywhere, they scorned compromise.

A softening of tone. They’re only ideologues. That beats terrorists or Jihadists.



Here is where it gets a little more interesting. He’s right. What matters is how it affects the economy and the human beings who comprise it. Let’s start with the terrible toll of $2.4 trillion in cuts on the poor and the middle class.

According to the CBO baseline spending (go here [3], page 18), which I understand is the baseline for the cuts of $2.4 trillion, the Federal government will spend $46.1 trillion over the next ten years. So we’re going to go from 46.1 trillion over the next ten years to a mere $43.7 trillion? I know Mr. Krugman claimed the debt deal “slashed government spending [4].” This year we’re going to spend about $3.8 trillion. For further perspective, in the ten years between 2002 and 2011, the Federal government spent $28.1 trillion dollars. (This includes estimated outlays for 2011 but it will be close. Source for the numbers is here [5]. It does not include inflation which would bump these numbers up a bit if we wanted to compare them to today’s dollars. But inflation hasn’t been big enough. We’re spending a lot more than we did ten years ago.) Do you think that if the “cuts” actually happen that it’s going to take a big toll on the poor and the middle class? Throw in the other $1.5 trillion that might happen later and that gets you all the way down to $42.5 trillion over the next ten years, an average of a mere $4.25 trillion per year. Yes, those are draconian slashes in government spending. George Orwell, please call your office.


This is sort of true. If we don’t get our debt under control, the current unemployment level is going to look like a picnic.


That’s one theory. As I have said before, there isn’t a lot of evidence [4] that spending cuts reduce growth.

Inflicting more pain on their countrymen doesn’t much bother the Tea Party Republicans, as they’ve repeatedly proved.

Because they want smaller government? Which they didn’t achieve. They just slowed the growth from the baseline. But let’s look at the analysis: those of us who think the government spends too much money–we’re sadists? We want to inflict pain our countrymen?


There was a recession in 1938. Some blame it on tax increases. Some on cuts in spending. Some on monetary policy. And some on animal spirits. What is clear is that the economy did get worse. And as Robert Higgs has argued, the economy struggled through the way until the war ended.


This is grotesque. The government has made sure the blows are more severe? Unemployment insurance has been extended many times. What is he talking about?

This is how the piece ends:


Suicide vests? Shame on you, Joe Nocera. Shame on you for demonizing people who disagree with you. Shame on you for comparing people who want smaller government to people who blow up innocent bystanders eating a pizza or riding on a bus.