Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman took to Twitter today with an epic seven-part post reacting to the fiasco of a tax bill that the Senate passed last night.
Krugman was amongst the nearly unanimous group of economists who warned of the dangerous consequences that the Republican giveaway to the wealthy would engender, and he laid out his frustrations and his fears in a lengthy thread on the social media service.
Not one Republican senator stood up against this monstrosity — Corker doesn't count, because he voted yes when it mattered, and was allowed to posture when it didn't. So McCain's pose of virtue is phony and presumably always was; same for Collins, Murkowski, etc. 2/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 2, 2017
Hear that shriek? That’s the sound of a Nobel laureate ripping the Republican party to shreds. You may ask yourself, how did we get here?
It now seems virtually certain that the president of the United States is de facto a foreign agent — but this corrupt Congress won't hold him accountable. It seems highly likely that next year will be a huge Democratic wave — but … 4/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 2, 2017
So in January 2019 we may well be ruled by a fundamentally illegitimate regime: a corrupt Congress retaining power despite public rejection, a president who owes his position to a foreign dictator who retains a hold on him 6/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 2, 2017
Krugman is not painting a particularly optimistic portrait of the future here, but when you think about it, the future he envisions is unfortunately identical to our present situation. It’s just that who knows if we can endure another year of this.
Krugman concludes his observations with a tiny hint of hope, but not enough to be entirely convincing.
This doesn't have to happen. Maybe the evidence will be so overwhelming that even under this Congress Trump is forced from office. Maybe the wave next year will be so huge that it overtops the structural barriers. But America as we knew it is very much on the edge 7/
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) December 2, 2017
America is on the edge. While you don’t need to be a Nobel laureate to realize that, the fact that someone can be as smart as Krugman and still not have the solution to the political problems that this country is now facing is somehow a little comforting despite being simultaneously terrifying. While none of us may yet have a solution, at least we’re not alone in our assessment of the situation.
