Paul Krugman on Voodoo Economics of Republican Budget Proposal: Ludicrous and Cruel

Good commentary today (as always) by Paul Krugman in the New York Times--on the Republican budget proposal, to be specific.  As Krugman rightly notes, it's both ludicrous and cruel.

Ludicrous, in that it continues the long-discredited shell game of neocon voodoo economics, which asks us to trust the very rich and give them even more concessions through tax cuts, because--trust us!--eventually the wealth that flows in ever-increasing floods into the treasuries of the wealthy will trickle down to all the rest of us.  And cruel, in that it asks all the rest of us to foot the bill for our entire infrastructure, while the rich amass that increasing wealth and decide whether or not to use it to sustain the societies from which it has come.

Hint: they somehow, mysteriously, never get around to the sharing step.  To the trickling down.

I'm frankly ashamed at (but hardly surprised by) the shilling Andrew Sullivan has been doing lately for Ryan's smoke-and-mirrors game.  The shilling, and the pretense that the Ryan budget proposal is a respectable document addressing our acute budget crisis, begin to bring into disrepute Sullivan's moral stance on just about anything else he addresses.  For me, at least.

The graphic is artist Stephen Hansen's "Trickle Down."