Krugman was on “On Point” on NPR this evening. (I think On Point is the absolute worst show on NPR, but I was in the car and curious about what Krugman would say). There were many absurdities, but I’ll just touch on the Universal Healthcare pushing.

A caller complained about low wages. Krugman said the best way to address this is through adoption of Universal Healthcare. You see, if workers had free healthcare, this would help with the household budget burden. This is a true statement as long as those same workers are not hit with an equal or greater tax burden to pay for Universal Healthcare.

Krugman continued to argue that corporations will also benefit from Universal Healthcare because the won’t have to provide healthcare as part of the benefits package and can instead pay a higher wage. This will raise people up from the lower to middle class and save the companies money (he used the Big Three as an example). Since Krugman was specifically talking about raising people up to the middle class, we can assume that no one in the lower or middle classes would foot the bill for this. So that leaves the wealthy and corporations. But corporations can only pay a higher wage to the workers if they also don’t pay an equal or greater tax burden than their current benefits coverage.
So that leaves the wealthy. It seems unlikely that a very minor portion of the population could possibly be able to pay for Universal Healthcare. If they could, in the long run, there would be more incentives for the wealthy to either decrease their wealth to avoid this burden, or to emigrate.

So that leaves the printing press. I’ve come to realize that average Americans know the Fed creates money and don’t like it. If Krugman were to come out and state clearly that this is what his schemes require, people would stop listening to him. So he, the politicians, and the talking heads, always avoid the crucial question: Where does the money come from?

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