Note from the editor: Our crack team of journalists have invented a time machine, but it only works right now for accessing as of yet unpublished New York Times op-eds. We’re making the best of it and are proud to present this piece from Paul Krugman published on June 3rd, 2024, where apparently medical technology has advanced at a downright disturbing pace ever since Biden mandated that all bank accounts with over $600 transfer the excess directly to Pfizer and the infrastructure bill is still being debated in Congress.
(Pictured: the author and his booster augmentation)
They only don’t like it because they’re racist
Republicans are once again threatening their namesake. It’s a tale as old as time, or at least feels like it, and it even has a beauty and a beast, but beauty is a proud Democrat woman of color and the beast is a hideous old racist Republican that we are all still waiting on to learn his lesson.
This time the beastly Republicans have put progress itself in the crosshairs and pulled the trigger, likely fantasizing about their act not being metaphorical. Biden’s Build Back Better bill makes sense, is free, and gives us the tools we need to pull out of the disappointing economic recovery since Trump unleashed COVID-19 on the nation.
But Republicans refuse to lend their support. Why? “We can’t afford it” they say, along with “what about inflation?” and “I don’t like the part about mandatory estrogen injections to fight the toxic masculinity pandemic”. But there’s a solution to most of these objections that is quite novel, and quite brilliant.
In case you haven’t heard, Rashida Talib has adopted an idea promoted by Jerry Nadler in 2013: the trillion dollar coin. The idea is simple: if Republican racists in Congress refuse to raise the debt ceiling or allocate sufficient funding for progress, simply instruct the Department of Treasury to mint a platinum coin with a value of one trillion dollars. Not enough? Mint another. And another. And keep going until you’ve paid for everything you need so that progress can truly happen.
Republicans will no doubt raise the specter of inflation, asking indignantly if we should really be emulating Zimbabwe. And the answer to them needs to be a resounding, confident: “Yes”. Because they don’t think the economics of Zimbabwe are undesirable for any reason other than that most of the people in Zimbabwe are black.
They only don’t like it because they’re racist
Keynesian economics was useful in its time. It enabled people like me to be wrong at all the most critical junctures of our careers and shrug our shoulders afterward and say “What did you expect, this stuff is really complicated.” I’ll always look fondly on Keynesian economics, but it is not the path forward. We need to embrace Zimbabwean economics.
To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.
Me on August 02, 2002 – economics is hard
This isn’t just progress, it’s evolution. Zimbabwean economics is the perfect new, non-colonialized, non-western science based successor to Keynesian economics, and a righteous rebuttal to the white supremacy of Austrian economics.
All economists agree that eager application of Zimbabwean economics would result in the sharpest increase in dollar amount household income on record, likely increasing more in one month than in all of American history before it combined. The benefits don’t stop there either. Zimbabwean economics also holds the key to the ultimate goal of any society that is concerned, first and foremost, with equity. Should we move from dabbling in Zimbabwean economics by minting coins from precious metals into a full bodied embrace of it by printing paper bills of these new denominations and providing one to every man, woman and child regardless of income, look what happens. On the left, the earnings of someone in the top 50% of income earners vs the top 1%, under our current Keynesian system. On the right you see the effect of a full embrace of Zimbabwean economics.
It seems like a fantasy, but it’s not. This is the reality of Zimbabwean economics. So I join Rashida Talib in calling for Biden to #mintthecoin! But don’t stop there. Print the bills. Let us move on from our curmudgeonly colonial past and into a future of increase and of equity. And remember:
