Slight change of plan

I was going to start writing some fiction but I’m too dang tired. So blogging, then some research, and fiction later in the week.
•A week ago I mentioned Paul Krugman’s analysis of the “austerians” insisting we cut spending to the bone to save America. Krugman’s conclusion was that in addition to getting the facts wrong, what steers austerians is the moral aspect: Austerity is usually phrased as forcing America to shape up, sober up and tighten its belt! Spending is always the problem, never revenue (which is bullshit)!
In attempting to refute Krugman, Michael Kinsley confirms him, asserting that “the problem is the great, deluded middle class—subsidized by government and coddled by politicians. In other words, they are you and me. If you make less than $250,000 a year, Obama has assured us, you are officially entitled to feel put-upon and resentful. And to be immune from further imposition.”
What exactly is Mr. Kinsley thinking about? We’re coddled because we get a modest Social Security pension (does he believe like Pete Peterson that Social Security turns our retirement years into “a publicly subsidized vacation.”? Is it the fact we have a public education or public roads that coddles us? Would Kinsley advocate privatizing the water systems so for-profit companies can charge us higher rates? He doesn’t say. Nor does he explain what sort of suffering he’s willing to face, only that there must be sacrifices (Steven Pearlstein, at the link, is quite open about the fact he shouldn’t be treated to the kind of wage cuts he advocates for factory workers).
As LGM points out, Kinsley’s position is that inflation is still the ultimate threat, no matter how low it is (like Michael Myers, it’s out there somewhere, waiting …) and that we’re in the same fiscal position as we were in the 1970s (we’re not). Krugman says Kinsley gets the 1970s wrong. He also suggests one reason people object to government spending to get the economy flowing is that if the economy’s okay, we won’t embark on structural reforms (he links to Pearlstein making that argument)—which I tend to assume are a euphemism for “kill any government spending that doesn’t benefit me or the lobbyists I know)
Of course, Kinsley doesn’t seem to feel that Wall Street firms and banks who benefited from the bailout are being coddled, or that morality is needed among those who crashed the economy or that hedge fund managers (who get great tax breaks on their income) need to be told “the party’s over.” Somehow it’s the middle clss. Did he think this sounded less mean than blaming the poor as David Brooks likes to do?
I think Krugman had it right, as do those who compare the push to slash the deficit to the run-up to the Iraq war: saying we shouldn’t invade or we shouldn’t slash spending is seen as frivolous, as doing nothing (in Kinsley’s words, choosing dessert over spinach). People like Kinsley and Brooks, they’re tackling the problem, they’re making the hard choices, they’re telling people the ugly truth, that everyone who’s not rich needs to suffer.
When it’s a choice between nothing and a bad policy, I’m reminded of the wisdom in that old doctor’s rule: first do no harm.