Why Paul Krugman is P Sainath's idol

The man whose fundamental argument for many years has been, 'I am a Professor at Princeton and you are not', writes,

Let’s start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani’s claim is wrong on multiple levels — bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.

Mr. Giuliani got his numbers from a recent article in City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute. The author gave no source for his numbers on five-year survival rates — the probability that someone diagnosed with prostate cancer would still be alive five years after the diagnosis. And they’re just wrong.

You see, the actual survival rate in Britain is 74.4 percent. That still looks a bit lower than the U.S. rate, but the difference turns out to be mainly a statistical illusion. The details are technical, but the bottom line is that a man’s chance of dying from prostate cancer is about the same in Britain as it is in America.

So Mr. Giuliani’s supposed killer statistic about the defects of “socialized medicine” is entirely false. In fact, there’s very little evidence that Americans get better health care than the British, which is amazing given the fact that Britain spends only 41 percent as much on health care per person as we do.

So, yes, the point is, you can't cite statistics without source. Unless, you are Paul Krugman. If you are, you may even go on to argue,

But here’s what I don’t understand: Why isn’t Mr. Giuliani’s behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?

Why Free Market Fundamentalists are Dumb

The movement's mouthpiece, The Economist, says,

How frightening (or inspiring) is this prospect? As our special report explains, the idea that religion has re-emerged in public life is to some extent an illusion. It never really went away—certainly not to the extent that French politicians and American college professors imagined. Its new power is mostly the consequence of two changes. The first is the failure of secular creeds: religion's political comeback started during the 1970s, when faith in government everywhere was crumbling. Second, although some theocracies survive in the Islamic world, religion has returned to the stage as a much more democratic, individualistic affair: a bottom-up marketing success, surprisingly in tune with globalisation. Secularism was not as modern as many intellectuals imagined, but pluralism is. Free up religion and ardent believers and ardent atheists both do well.

Unless there is deep thought and an unwavering belief in Him, we are doomed.

An Irrationally Exuberant Tribute

Bumper stickers, Robert Schiller, idiot TV anchors and many many people have tried to use the phrase that the evil capitalist Alan Greenspan came up with. Now, the gold standard has been set[1],

I think that a good liberal is one who criticizes irrational exuberance even if it comes from other fellow liberals.

Mysterious may be His ways; the outcome, is always the same. Yet, stunning.




[1] -- I don't know why He refuses to accept our links. We shall overcome this by sheer devotion.