Recommended: Paul Krugman Gets It Half Right

Worth reading is Walter Russel Mead's March 7 American Interest post: Paul Krugman Gets It Half Right. Paul Krugman is a smart guy, a Nobel Prize winning economist and a Princeton professor, but like many "progressive" intellectuals, he hasn't yet quite come to terms with the hard economic fact that America simply can't afford the progressive programs "progressive" intellectuals think we ought to have.

The Wisconsin battle over union power is just the opening shot in what will no doubt be a decades-long struggle within the intellectual elite to come to terms with hard reality -- we simply can't afford to keep borrowing 40% of each year's Federal budget, and that means painful cuts will have to be made even to cherished programs, even to programs that work and are useful.

One hopes we will soon move out of the current phase of reflexively and hysterically defending every program and begin to think in terms of priorities -- what really is most important for our nation's long-term future.  If we have to eliminate half the programs and half the Federal workforce (about what we realistically need to do), which half is the more important half?  Which initiatives should we defend to the last, and which (nice as they are) need to go? That is the debate we need to get to very soon.

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