zed.

I guess George Will doesn’t understand external costs. Krugan is right on with his coal burning example.

Angel of mercy, take pity on the fool…
Who spent a lifetime wondering what Napoleon would do
If he were in your shoes

~Gov’t Mule

George Will is well-fed, happy, and sure of himself. Until he exhibits doubt or is subject to any of the “ricochet” consequences of his people-unfriendly policies, what I feel for him won’t be sorry. It will be, as it always has been, contempt.

I watched this, Krugman managed to make the round-table discussion worth viewing, no small feat.

He also got in an amusing quip at the end saying something to the effect, “Here’s a shock, I agree with George (Will). Will had stated that it would be better to allow a consensus for gay marriage to continue to build in the states instead of forcing SCOTUS to rule on the issue in the near future.

Will wants markets, as long as markets aren’t required to consider costs that the market doesn’t price (externalities). Notice he hasn’t advocated for a carbon tax (or a national security tax on gasoline to pay for the 6th Fleet). If the govt steps in to say, keep your market, but include these costs in your prices, Will calls that socialism.

Meanwhile, PBS’s co-anchor says that’s the same as “nationalization,” apparently not knowing what the term means, and someone else is trying to push back against krugman during that clip. So the level of ignorance at the top of our national media is overwhelming, and Krugman isn’t/can’t be there every time they say something stupid, which is every day. “Why, oh why can’t we have a better press corps.”

You give Will more credit for willful ignorance than I’m comfortable with.
If he didn’t take these bullshit narratives out for a stroll, he would not be pulling down a check. And we all know what that means – no more dinners @ Rove’s house, no more 7-martini lunches with Peggy Noonan, no more invitations to funerals for prominent Republicans.

Perish the thought.

I’m so sick of the “big car” argument that Americans only want to drive big cars despite the negative impact to the environment and social and political impact on the countries where we “take” the oil. It’s simply rewarding bad behavior. Hell, my kids would have loved to have had Nerds and Pringles for every meal but I didn’t let them have their way because it’s what they wanted.

Sheesh almighty! Enough George STFU!

Gwen Ifill’s “how is that not nationalization?” when Paul Krugman is talking about CAFE standards exhibits her profound ignorance. By her measure, the auto industry has been nationalized since the oil shocks of the seventies.

And she’s one of the “smart” Villagers!

We’ll have balanced the federal budget and paid off the national debt before we have a well-informed Village.

Families are told that “Oh you need the SUV so you can keep the kids occupied on long car trips yadda yadda yadda”. The truth is that station wagons make more sense — and are safer (stats on SUV rollovers are pretty scary) — but since SUVs cost less to build (they’re just glorified trucks with pretty bodies) and can be sold for more than a station wagon, that’s what the car companies keep shoving at us.

I was astounded by her ignorant approach to that.
I am sure she would argue that since the question has been asked somewhere, anywhere, even on Faux, it was worth dropping in the most serious This Week Roundtable.

NPR: Nice Polite Republicans.

“I almost feel sorry for George Will.”

“Almost” would be the operative word. I’m definitely with you on that one…

George Will had the critical thinking part of his brain loped off years ago in a tragic “beating his head against a wall” event.

SUV – Suddenly Upside-down Vehicle.

Geez. Krugman and three running dog reichwing taint lappers.

The government forcing argument…to buy little cars consumers don’t want.
let say rescued banks are worth about $100 billion and we bail out their toxic assest for 10 to 1 or a Trilliion dollars. We are on the hook for the losses.
Why is George Will not outraged that the same car buyer/tazpayers are getting gouged for the next several generations? Help me out please.

Product pollution clean up for Will should be paid for by the taxpayers not the consumenrs……that is socialization.

Why is the sententious, wet blanket George Will, a man way past his sell-by date, the gatekeeper for discussion on this program?

Clement-Greenberg of ABC is much more conservative than I had thought; really just a Republican corporate flack.

At a time when only 1 in 5 Americans will admit to Republicanism, ABC has 3 conservatives and 2 liberals. Just what country is DC the capital of?

If the “big car” agrument was a valid one, then Toyota, Honda and Nissan wouldn’t have done so well while the Big Three went down the tubes. Horrible argument and soooo transparent.

Krugman also shoots down – inflation is inevitable result of stimulus plan in NYTimes op ed. But that might be at odds with the next article above on FDL?

To be fair, Toyota and Nissan have both tried their hand at large vehicles, and failed repeatedly. But they still try.

IMHO the whole big car fiasco was propelled by a kind of mutually assured destruction mindset. The big heavy cars were streaming onto the highways and everyone thought that they had to get a tank to be certain that if they were in an accident they would not be wiped out. If the prevailing model was a lighter national fleet of cars, everyone would feel safer buying and driving smaller, greener vehicles.

Well toyota makes the Lexus sedan- one of the largest and best testing cars in the world. Not bad. Their large SUVs also have pretty good market share and they finally have winner with the large pickup truck

We should all fail so well

Gwen is as stupid as George (Will), I’m afraid. The whole punditocracy is second-rate and has far too much power in determining these narratives. Though with people with logical minds and (gasp) empathy like Paul Krugman being allowed into the discussion, maybe that will change.

I didn’t see it, so I can only hope Krugman brought this up:

Thanks to a generous tax credit, Karl Wizinsky is driving a very large vehicle these days — a 2002 Ford Excursion.

“It doesn’t hurt to have a larger vehicle, but I wouldn’t say it’s a requirement of my business,” he said on a cell phone while driving the Excursion. “But I ended up saving $32,000.”

This year, the perks of buying a large SUV — if you’re a small business owner — got even bigger.

Congress recently passed a tax bill, as proposed in President Bush’s economic stimulus plan, that offers a $100,000 tax credit for business owners who purchase any vehicle weighing 6,000 pounds or more when fully loaded.

It hasn’t exactly been a free market when it comes to cars. Federal policy favored big cars. Now it favors small cars.

George Will’s take on conservative doctrine is that the government should never interfere with someone’s right to profligate behavior even when that behavior may harm those around you. Odd that it doesn’t extend to non-harmful behaviors like smoking pot or gay marriage.

And KenoshaKid@26 – OMFG, that is just so frickin’ wrong. And here I was naively thinking that people hauling their lard-butts around in mobile air-conditioned living rooms complete with surround sound entertainment systems was just plain old conspicuous consumption.

Although slightly different there are also government subsidies (one might call them artificial externalities) for things like oil production. If those government actions didn’t exist then the risks of oil drilling would be greater and there would perhaps be more cost borne by the investors and a higher end cost to the public and more return to the investors. But, the way our system works with the hidden subsidy from government these investors get tax write-offs, oil wells get drilled and the price of oil stays lower (I suppose) and the investors get lower Return On Investment (ROI).

But, those socialists like this government interventionist system more than a free market. They don’t like risks. they prefer to socialize the risks (getting the subsidy) instead of going for bigger ROI. I’m told the industry would disappear without those subsidies. How can that be in a capitalist system like ours where the potential for profits will always bring investors to the table?

Try to take away their government handout, their wealth-fare, and they cry like babies.

The costs to taxpayers is the cost of the government taxation, the cost of government operations and to the tax system while we supposedly get lower oil (and gasoline) costs.

Whether we actually do get lower gasoline prices is entirely debatable. But, what isn’t debatable is that these subsidies make it much harder for other energy-source companies to get going and to compete with oil on a level playing field.