10 Aug 2015

Krugman Bask

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[UPDATE: To clarify, the one I have in mind isn’t a chart with just a single line, which you see in Bush vs. Obama years. Rather, the chart has two different series on it, one representing spending in the Bush recovery and the other in the Obama recovery. So you can see, quarter by quarter, that the relevant metric of government spending grew faster under Bush than under Obama.]

I must be losing my touch. I just spent 20 minutes looking for an old Krugman blog post but can’t find it.

I can distinctly remember Krugman writing at least one (and possibly several) posts, circa 2010 – 2013, showing some measure of government spending and how it had grown much more by that point in the George W. Bush years than it had in the Obama recovery. (It might have been something like total government consumption and investment expenditures as a share of potential GDP or some such tomfoolery.)

Krugman’s rhetorical purpose was to slam everybody talking about the “big spending” Obama, to show that actually by this point after the recession bottomed out, George W. Bush’s Administration was spending a lot more because of all the austerity under Obama.

Can anybody find such a post? I have found a few that make similar points verbally, but I know I saw one where Krugman had a chart, and I can’t find it now…

12 Responses to “Krugman Bask”

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Nope. Thanks for the attempt. I will clarify the post.

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Boom! That’s it. Thanks so much.

          If you kids want to know how I work, scroll through Krugman’s latest posts and see if you can guess where this is going…

          • Dan says:

            Krugman was claiming Bush and Reagan spent more and were more Keynesian, thus the better recovery in 2012. Now he is claiming Obama has the better record without acknowledging that would mean the least Keynesian of those three had the best record according to him.

            • Bob Murphy says:

              You’re burning up! (We are playing hide and seek and you’re more than warm.)

        • Bob Murphy says:

          Hey, how did you find that? I really spent a good 20 minutes and couldn’t get it, even though I knew exactly what I was looking for.

          • Waldek says:

            Google
            site:krugman.blogs.nytimes.com bush obama spending recovery
            It’s in the top 10

            • Bob Murphy says:

              Wow, I *did* try that, I thought. Anyway, thanks again, this makes my post even more super awesome.

            • Tel says:

              Gosh, Tom Woods is off encouraging people to learn to write code, and now you go and reveal to power of the site tag search. This is getting ridiculous.

              I’m thinking about joining a union, so I can go on strike or something.

  1. guest says:

    This might be it. Didn’t read it.

    Hey, Small Spender
    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/hey-small-spender/

    Found it here, heh:

    Krugman: Government Spending Surged If It Helps My Case, Otherwise It’s a Dirty Right-Wing Myth
    [www]http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2013/01/krugman-government-spending-surged-if-it-helps-my-case-otherwise-its-a-dirty-right-wing-myth.html

    My assumption was that you probably talked about it, before.

  2. guest says:

    “I must be losing my touch. I just spent 20 minutes looking for an old Krugman blog post but can’t find it.”

    Given that Keshav also has mega memory, there’s bound to be some cross-mojonation.

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