Krugman: Obamanomics “an Astonishing, Horrifying Failure”

Better late than never, I suppose: Paul Krugman now says that the five years of the Obama administration have been “years of tragic waste,” and that the nation’s economic policies during that time have been “an astonishing, horrifying failure.” One wonders: what took Krugman so long to figure that out?

Of course, Krugman thinks the problem with Obama’s policies is that the stimulus was too small, the United States isn’t far enough in debt, and we don’t have a big enough public sector. More cowbell! The salient point, I think, is that we can say it is now unanimous: Left and Right agree that Obamanomics has been an utter failure. The only question at this point is whether to go even farther left–to, what, the policies of Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-un?–or return to the principles of limited government and a free market that produced our prosperity in the first place. Seems like an easy choice.

Maybe Krugman’s pessimism was the result of getting a look at today’s jobs numbers. Not only was August’s job creation number an anemic 169,000, but the numbers for June and July were revised sharply downward, with July’s total a pathetic 104,000. And these new jobs are just about all part-time in any event. Grim news, indeed.

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