Cato’s Dan Mitchell KOs Paul Krugman

For my money, the writings of one Paul Krugman have always led to, well, revulsion. Krugman and his ilk find favor with socialist and income redistribution types as found, by example, in France. And in the recent European Parliament elections, hard right wing third-party leader Marine Le Pen of Front National kicked the stuffing out of socialist French President Francois Hollande.

Here, The Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell writes on Krugman’s fuzzy logic on California: “Krugman wants readers to think that California is a success rather than a failure because the state has a budget surplus and there has been an uptick in job creation.”

On Gov. Jerry Brown’s higher taxes, Dan notes, “Voting for a tax hike isn’t akin to jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead, further penalizing success and expanding the burden of Government, California is engaging in the economic equivalent of smoking four packs of cigarettes every day instead of three and one-half packs.”

Throwing PK one small bone, Dan writes, “Kudos to Krugman for having read Atlas Shrugged, or for at least knowing that Rand sometimes referred to ‘looters and Moochers’. Though I have to subtract points because he thinks I’m a conservative rather than a libertarian.”

I’ll take the Dan Mitchell side any day.