In his Monday New York Times column, Paul Krugman bemoaned the Republican “superpower delusion,” that “belief that America could dictate events throughout the world” willy-nilly.
The delusion’s most “spectacular” demonstration was, of course, “the debacle in Iraq,” but it manifests itself in all aspects of GOP policy-making, even matters as seemingly innocuous as protecting American workers from international competition. Or, as Krugman put it,
Serious economic analysis has never supported the Panglossian view of trade as win-win for everyone that is popular in elite circles: growing trade can indeed hurt many people, and for the past few decades globalization has probably been, on net, a depressing force for the majority of U.S. workers.
But protectionism isn’t the only way to fight that downward pressure…
Read the rest at the New York Times…
