Book Review by Paul Krugman RE: Fight over How Extensive Free Markets Should Be
Paul Krugman was right on the mark with his book review of Nicholas Wapshott’s Samuelson Friedman: The Battle Over the Free Market (3 Aug. 2021).
As a historian, not an economist, I take a look at this free market idea through the lens of a historian. Paul Krugman, the economist and his ideas from the perspective of an economist agree with what I have been writing for so long.
As expected, Krugman delves into the ideas for free markets which were pushed by Friedman and opposed by Samuelson. He also identifies Reagan and Greenspan as perpetrators. I so agree with that. I would also ad the queen of “virtues of selfishness,” Ayn Rand, as well. The net result of what Reagan and his goons did in the 1980s has been monopolized business by big corporate giants who resemble Goliath in the Bible and work to destroy capitalist competition, on the notion that this is a prime example of “free markets.” In fact, destruction of competition is annoying as it destroys the ideas of regulated capitalism which is designed to help both supply AND demand. Reagan’s notions of “deregulation” have resulted, besides promoting a “trickle-down” philosophy, is “reregulation” done by the corrupt practices of privatized huge corporate conglomerates. We might think we the people have no voice, but with privatization by the supply-side big fat cats. Business in the hands of the big fat cat supply-siders, similar to plantation-style, manorial, and feudal economics of the Medieval period is more atrocious because it can more easily shut down the voice of the people than can be done with government (especially when there is more predominance of the existence of government controlled by the big fat cats, as a result of a dim-witted U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision with a propaganda-style title of “Citizens United” and its hidden agenda).
Case in point. Privatized forms of government called homeowners’ associations which are given more teeth to do injustice to people by the Republican one-party state in Florida. The HOAs of Florida have come to be known as the “condo commandos.” However, the HOAs have spread more widely than just condos, as yours truly had to pay a HOA fee when he owned a single-family home, not a condo. The HOA played the role of the local nearby government where I also owned a home. They would inspect lawns, as the local government did, and cite us if it was not cut correctly. Both village and HOA did the same thing (there was no HOA in the village). Big, big difference. The annual HOA fees were far higher than those of the village and we had no recourse to go to a village board meeting and express disdain over the regulatory practice of inspecting lawns. Compared to a local village in upstate New York, the HOA fees were three times higher than this village and its taxes. The village shed itself of a police unit, so it became more like a HOA, but at much less the cost of a HOA. Yet, people here complain about the tax of this village. Be careful for what you wish for.
My point being that privatized supply-side businesses are vicious, malicious, and bullying. They are the ruination of local business and local control. Case in point also about the privatized hospitals created by a man who sits in the U.S. Senate: Rick Scott. With an overall consideration, even hospitals still run by religious organizations are far better at dealing with the demand-side – the patients (consumers) – than privatized hospitals and nursing homes. I have plenty more personal experience examples I can share. Certainly, there are plenty of facts and statistics to validate my experiences.
The historical examples are about the “norms” established by the aristocratic wealth and royalty when Adam Smith drew up his ideas of capitalism which were meant to challenge the supply-side economics of feudal economies run by aristocrats. I am able to prove that the aristocrats were one step ahead of Adam Smith. They embraced the “new” idea of capitalism in the late 1700s and early 1800s, as if it was their own baby for which they gave birth. When Marx went to England to generate interest in the common folks of the demand side of the market, he blamed capitalism because the supply-side aristocrats were the ones coining the phrase of capitalism for themselves. America had plantations in the South and the North thought it was better with its “industrial revolution” consisting of crap like sweatshops and so forth. Those sweatshops may have paid workers earnings, it was dismally small and not a living wage, while the big fat cats became just as wealthy as the plantation owners of Dixie. They were better in not putting African slaves in chains, but were they really any better, just because they did NOT enslave people, as they used immigrants in the sweatshops?
In the 20th Century, Gov. Teddy Roosevelt of New York State began to intercede for workers. From child labor laws to many other laws, Gov. T. Roosevelt, worked with people. Gov. T. Roosevelt also became known as the “trust buster” as he busted the organized syndicates with Boss Tweed and other sources which, with their corrupt practices, controlled the supply-side economics as well as government. America became great due to the trust buster, unions, pooled finances in retirement systems which were really designed to be capitalist returns on investments. Same thing with the “health savings account” we call Medicare, where there was an intent to have a return on investment. The original intent for these resources was not to have lousy corrupt representatives propagandize false ideas that such resources were “taxes” and then steal such money for other purposes. They stole from such funds for projects “back home,” in order to keep their constituents happy and then get re-elected in the process. Using propaganda, such corrupt politicians and lawyers destroyed the ideas of long-term capitalist investments into short-term, “I want it now” instant gratification ideas. With the older ones dying off and the younger ones not worried about long-term investments, those corrupt people in a representative democracy convinced people to do the things most beneficial to the wealthy fat cats at the top. Shall I go into actual examples of what I am talking about?
Krugman expressed his ideas in terms of economics and academia. His explanation is very good. But someone needs to address this to those who do not follow the details of economics. Meanwhile stupid people like Mark Levin and others from Fox, rely on not presenting facts, but only emotions. The best seller lists contain books by such people which are false. And yes, I challenge Mr. Levin as a dumb jerk with his emotionalism being the sole means of capturing the hearts and minds of people. I don’t challenge Mr. Krugman, but wish someone could put what he says in the words more conducive to the “lay person.” It would really help cut down on the chaos and contention of pitting American against American. Let us shed the damn emotionalism and traditionalism which pervades the land and get back to rationality and common sense.
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Professor Douglas Willet Cornwell (Retired)
Newark Valley, NY
———————————“Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “The problems of the world are not that some people love in a different way. The problems are that so many people don’t know how to love at all (CGA, 1970).” A Puritan is someone in fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. “Liberty and justice for all [not priorities on individual and selfish rights].” “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union [and overall wealth of American society]…”
Benjamin Franklin: “Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are affected.” Stacey Abrams: “Compromise about actions, but not about values.” Oscar Wilde: “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.” Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Benjamin Franklin: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Whoopi Goldberg: “To handle this COVID-19 pandemic effectively, we all need to get on the same page.” Note: To be clear, I do not like being patronized. I do not express my disdain over what happens to my fellow humans just for my own sake and to pursue favors and handouts. I do it in order to gain R – E – S – P – E – C – T for me and for millions of other Americans of any race, ethnicity, religious belief, or sex and sexual identity who try to walk in integrity as they attempt to achieve, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. PERIOD. One nation under God [our Creator] with liberty and justice for all.
Tioga Herald 
It’s Not Marxism, Paranoid Stupid
Dear Editors [New York Times]:
On the New York Times best seller list is a book by Fox Comedy News, Mark Levin, titled, American Marxism. From the various reviews I have read, I have no desire to purchase this book. I might wish to borrow it from a local library, read it, and then return it.
I will use a better word to describe Mark Levin than paranoid stupid. How about paranoid ignorant? This at least means I have hope ignorance will lead Levin to open mind, become humble, and LEARN and GAIN WISDOM. Will it? My doubts are high.
I have met too many people in upstate New York and elsewhere who are paranoid regarding the Bolsheviks of 1917 or the Castro communists of 1959-60. One would think the ones who recall their grandfathers and the Bolsheviks would have, by now, recognized that they are being paranoid. I am sick and tired of hearing such paranoid jerks attack Americans, many of us descended from the American Revolutionaries and earlier. Like me. They insult me. They insult many of us who are good people. A Sunday school teacher who taught us about geography of the Middle East during the time of Christ and other Christian ideas is falsely called a communist because he is a Democrat. I observed this crap as a kid growing up in m hometown. That teacher never taught us about the communes developed by early Christians. I learned that later in life. Plus I also learned about the comparison to American hippies during Vietnam who created communes. In both cases, according to the documentary of FACTS that I viewed, neighther the communes of the early Christians or those of the hippie communities, opposed to the Vietnam conflict, had a common thread which meant they did not survive. That common thread is also present with Trump, Hitler, Mussolini, Nazis, fascists, and the Bolsheviks. It is described as “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The paranoid ignorant ones force us all into a corner with ideas for dictatorial powers with “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Perhaps Levin needs to consider this and stop the BS of paranoia which helps him sell a book.
My book would be about true regulated capitalism and balance in capitalism. But does it get published in order to get on the NY Times best seller lists? Not on your life.
I, too, get falsely accused of being socialist or communist. Such paranoid people who do this refuse to listen to what I say about improving capitalism. They believe free markets are the ONLY answer – the END ALL, while ignoring the evidence from the 18th-century theologian and author of writings like Wealth of Nations and Theories of Moral Sentiment. In those writings, Adam Smith proved for us, based on economic events in the late 18th Century similar to the George W. Bush recession of 2008. Idiots tarnish good people’s character, as well as the solutions which just might work, in the name of emotions, paranoia, individualism (anti-vaxer idiots), and instant gratification so prevalent they become as violent as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, QAnon and push for “liberty with guns.” It is actually, liberty for one group to attain power and control. White folks. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
That is what these paranoid stupid idiots want for America. In the process, they remove “liberty and justice for all.” After repetition of the Pledge of Allegiance all those times, these paranoid stupid idiots become hypocrites, endorsing their form of religion in a nation which was built with ideas for separation of church and state.
It’s stupidity, stupid, and there is no ambiguity to it. It’s pretty plain and simple. I don’t force my religion on others, but those who wish to do so attempt to find validation with words like “interpretation” of separation of church and state. There is no interpretation. It’s pretty damn clear. You wisth to have me force my religious beliefs through law and SCOTUS, I can attempt to do it. But I don’t. Why? Because actions to promote one religion over others within our democracy removes “liberty and justice for all.” I refuse to dot that. Goddamn those who want to force ME to be a heterosexual by way of laws and SCOTUS because I am NOT heterosexual. Just to borrow one example. A person in a Rick Scott run hospital in Florida told me that I am a sinner. He denied my liberty and justice for all, as I was lying on an ER bed with congestive heart failure. Goddamn Rick Scott and anyone in that hospital chain which wishes to push for legislation and judges at the Federal level which will endorse THEIR religious ideas in this regard. No one forces GODDAMN Rick Scott to be a homosexual. My apologies for using such words, but imagine being in an ER and being told by an asshole that one is a sinner. Pretty damn clear and no “interpretation” of the ideas of separation of church and state. So I say, GODDAMN such people and with fervor. If I am saying GODDAMN to those who don’t know what it means to be a true believer of God and the fact that we are all children of God, then I don’t want that person sitting in the U.S. Senate and using the GODDAMN filibuster there to stampede our government. I am even critical of President Biden for refusing to stop that GODDAMN filibuster. He can do better than that because it’s not his “father’s’ U.S. Senate anymore.
Adam Smith endorsed the ideas that imperfect humans with their imperfect human institutions need to have regulation because free markets are overtaken by greed, selfishness, and individualism which then destroys capitalist competition and creates huge corporate monopolies. Such big corporations are like a centralized socialism and Bolshevik style communism, as well as a Hitler/Mussolini/Tojo type of government and economics. I may have once voted for Bernie Sanders, but I adamantly oppose centralized minimum wages because cost of living differences around this nation are very different. Again. This answer, minimum wage, is more useful to centralized unregulated corporations and destroys local small businesses like those in upstate NY. There might be other things for which I like Bernie Sanders, but not this one. But I don’t tarnish his image, as the Bolshevik-induced paranoid stupidity or that of a Marco Rubio from Cuba.
In the process, small business is destroyed and then socialists address issues related ONLY to management and enslaved workers. Along comes a pandemic and suddenly the way to handle it is to only consider things which are pertinent to big corporate monopolies and the job creation. Nothing is considered for how we can create opportunities for entrepreneurs and American ingenuity. To the paranoid jerks who fear Bolsheviks and Castro, all they do is look for how to enslave people with big corporations and their own false interpretations about what God is about. That is as bad as Marxism which taught that religion is the “opiate of the masses.”
In the process of all of this, the paranoid jerks descended from the Bolsheviks and the Cuban ones (who beat in the skull of a teacher in Florida for not agreeing with their system of dictatorship which came from a man named Battista who was just as bad as Castro; czars who were just as bad as the Bolsheviks). I am sick and tired of these people with their paranoid stupidity and such loud mouths and money (i.e., Levin of Fox and the stupidity of his book) that I sometimes wish to scream, “it takes a village” or “let us coexist and work collectively to solve our problems by ridding this nation of the GODDAMN political spectrum which people cling to and then we have extremists on the right and the left (more right extremists than left, but listen to the stupidity of Fox and Trump and one would think there is just as much on the left – BS because I have not yet met one person who proclaims they are part of Antifa (Anti-fascists). But I have met plenty who hide their actions under a sheet or are violent like Proud Boys. Perhaps I am stupid, would you say? I don’t think so. THINK.
This is my nation. Interesting how Bolsheviks and the Castro communists were homophobic. The Cuban author, L’Arenas, worked for Castro in that revolution, but that gay man was then spit out by the very people for whom he worked. Imprisoned by Castro, he contracted the HIV virus and then moved to the USA where he died. On the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Goddamn the hypocrites who wish to remove that idea from America. For it is immigrants who helped build America, from the days of Italian servitude building the Erie Canal, one of the biggest influences on building commerce in New York state and for this nation, making this nation GREAT. No. someone wants to put a Goddamn wall up, ignoring this statement about liberty and not finding SOLUTIONS in order to better handle the situations at the border. Why don’t we be like the Bolsheviks and build a wall, you damn stupid jackasses? Then procure a book by Mark Levin, American Marxism which wrongly portrays good people as being Marxists. How about a book titled, American Regulated Capitalism and Democracy in Order to Make America Great Again? I have read writings of a Republicans whom Donald Trump has tweeted his displeasure and this guy has written about regulated capitalism. I suppose these jackass stupid paranoid ones think Joe Scarborough is a Marxist or communist, too? Then, those on the left, the extremists of bleeding heart liberals, will also not line up behind what Scarborough says? Probably not, due to American individualism which has resulted in DUI offenses, Prohibition, war on drugs, importation of Afghan poppies (for drugs), anti-marijuana dolts who force DUI on us within communities, based on THEIR religious beliefs imposed upon all of us (Baptists particularly) and not ocming to agreement as to how abortions can be handled with reasonable integrity, considering protection of both mother and child and screw the religious aspect of it (I had a great-grandmother, wife of a Methodist pastor, die in the days before abortions because both mother and child died and she never got to live and give this world more children – or those who use coat hangers and die).
So rather than being able to publish a book contrary and contentious with the stupidity of what Mark Levin says, I write diatribes like this one with great length. Need I apologize? I think not. The issue is individualism and instant gratification which has destroyed savings and loans and replaced them with credit cards and debt, stupid. Thus, it makes it far more difficult to do savings for the future. Automobiles have destroyed passenger trains and buses for the public. It’s the individualism and instant gratification becoming predominant in America today, not Marxism, stupid. But then, these stupid ones with their paranoia are just like the stupidity of Karl Marx himself who had no brain at all. People who resemble one way like to point the fingers at others who they believe have the very qualities they represent. Unbelievable.
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