Ideological liberals are motivated by their own egos.

Folks need to stop using the term ‘liberal’ like that and assuming people will get what they mean. It only always means ‘left wing statist’ in the USA. In other places it has other very different (i.e. closer to the original) meanings.

Political ideology and political parties are merely the manifestation of individual psychology on a macro level. Ideological liberals are motivated by their own egos. They cannot bear anyone disagreeing with them because they cannot even conceive of the possibility that they and their belief system may be wrong. When you challenge a liberal’s belief, the liberal sees it as a challenge to their superiority.

I happened upon this comment when looking for some information about malignant narcissism and it is quite prescient. A major trait of malignant narcissists is projection. Here the author of this comment projects his own feelings of superiority onto an entire group of people, namely Liberals. Projecting his superiority onto Liberals allows him to debase a whole group of people without making a single rational argument against the ideas of the group or individuals belonging to the group. He just claims the entire group is defected and discards them entirely. It’s the first step in rationalizing a lack of empathy.

Projection is only one of many necessary traits required to be classified as a malignant narcissist so I will not make the extraordinary claim that the author of the comment is such a disturbed person but I will call out his argument as being particularly ironic. The author of this post should probably take a step back and contemplate if the traits he attributes to all Liberals are really traits of the entire group or his own character projected on a group. After all it is quite a stunning claim to make that all Liberals are ego driven with the implication that they are all malignant narcissists.

As for the latest government spending binge (including the “tax cuts” for people who do not pay taxes), it will COST jobs.

“What is seen” will be outweighted (over time) by “that which is not seen” – a classic Frederick Bastiat situation.

It is a shame about Krugman. He has written some good stuff on trade but in recent years he is little better than a hack writer for the Dems. One thing I admired about the late M. Friedman was that he never toed the party line and preferred to take positions that might upset the conventional Right – he opposed the Iraq war, campaigned for the end of the draft, the War on Drugs, etc. I miss his wisdom.

However, Laird said: “We need to take our medicine now, not another receive dose of “hair of the dog”, which of course is the patent medicine being peddled by the Democrats.”

Laird, and the Republicans are different… how, again? They voted for the first package, and now their big gripe is the second one does not do enough for the homeowners. Those would be the same homeowners who bought $500,000 houses while working custodial jobs, and now claim the evil banks deceived them – so let’s have the prudent folk pay through the nose and all other orifices for their stupidity/greed.

If they want to compete with the Democrats over who is the more skilled populist (and they will lose), to quote “Heathers”, “Now there’s a school that self-destructed, not because society didn’t care, but because the school was society.”

Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong—who are both very talented economists—are forever accusing their opponents of bad faith and wicked intentions.

Krugman and DeLong never think that their opponents are mistaken or incorrect. They think that their opponents are always corrupt, stupid, bought off by monied interests. Their opponents must be evil, not just wrong.

Makes it rather unproductive to argue with them.

I worked for a government contractor in the 70s, and at the time the average cost of a job was supposed to be $100K per annum to the government (that was the basis of my company’s annual fee, anyway). Of that, I never saw more than $17K, and I have no idea where the rest went. I’ve been a self-employed consultant for the last 30 years, and I’m pretty sure that the cost to my customers has never exceeded my fee (maybe a small percentage above that for overhead).

If indeed it will cost the government $275K for each job created, and if these are the sort of average jobs that pay $40K-$50K per year, then the government must be paying at least five years worth of a worker’s salary in order to create the job in the first place. When do we start seeing the benefits of that?

Where is this money coming from, if not the same people that it is supposed to benefit in the first place?

Krugman vs. Olbermann: When frauds collide

It should therefore be no wonder that it makes such poor predictions; it was not meant for that. It is meant to obscure the past, not to enlighten the way forward.

So it goes well past Krugman; the questioning of good faith needs to be extended to the economic profession as a whole…. for mistakes of this size are not made innocently.