Mr. Ted Cruz vs Mr. Paul Krugman: The Knowing Crowd vs A Voice in the Wilderness

Green Eggs and Ham School of Economics

 Everyone has a theory.  The dynamic duo from the Lone Star state share the same theory of macroeconomics, which is not really a great surprise since that theory was handed out in the welcome boxes at the Republican Party barbecue. It goes like this: Economics is really very simple--it's just like sitting around your own kitchen table at home. You can't spend more than you get in income because then you go into debt and debt is BAD!
This means any time the Democrats suggest spending on anything you can say whatever it is they are hoping to spend money on will cost too much, send us into debt our grandchildren--don't forget to mention grandchildren; everybody worries about the grandchildren--will struggle to pay for years to come.
So there is this big, nasty dragon, "The Deficit" and another cousin drag, "The National Debt," which just get fed irresponsibly by those idiotic Democrat (NB: not Democratic, always Democrat, sounds more like "rat") politicians.

Economic Stimulus Is Not Pornographic 

Ah, but then there is Paul Krugman.  Mr. Krugman has two strikes against him: he was on the faculty of Princeton for many years, and he won a Nobel Prize in economics. These are two reasons, Mad Dog admits it, not to like Mr. Krugman. There is something so smug about Princeton.  And a Nobel Prize, with the queen of Sweden on your arm, all blonde and fairy tale like and white ties and music and it could just make you puke, being so ultimately establishment. If you are a good ol' boy from Arizona to South Carolina, you just know you will hate anything this guy says.

But, okay, we can get past all that. What Mr. Krugman says, frequently and at length, even today in the New York Times, is that sometimes debt is a good thing.

Like when you go into debt to buy the house your family will grow up in and which you'll live in for 30 years, until you sell it and move to Florida, or, Heaven forbid, to Arizona.

Walking around my college campus in the 1960's I noticed most of the buildings had cornerstones with the date they were built and most of those cornerstones said "1932" or "1934" and when I wrote my father and told him about this, I said I thought the 1930's were bad times, the Great Depression, how could they have built so many buildings if times were so bad. And he wrote back, "They built those buildings because times were bad: cheap labor, cheap materials, cheap loans."

Now Mr. Krugman is saying the same thing. Now, when interest rates are low, is the time for the government to borrow to rebuild bridges, roads, electric grids, water lines and all like that.  If the government does that, since nobody in the private sector is much interested right now, the government will not be competing with the private sector, and in fact, it will be throwing some business to the private sector and it will be hiring and those construction workers will be going out to eat, buying stuff and the economy will come back and more people will pay more taxes and the deficit and the debt might go down. 

But Mr. Cruz and all his Republican party clones will not hear it. They have their own faith. They hear God talking to them. And God is saying, "Do not do government. And, oh yes, do not let Obamacare pay for contraception."