Krugman on Ryan's report on the poor

Recall this topic was covered in this post. Now Krugman weighs in on Ryan's hammock fallacy. First there is the assumption that helping people is a disincentive to work because the benefits are so lush and to create an air of opulence and indolence as one lounges in a hammock while eating bon bons and watching HBO. And Ryan uses actual social research to support this thesis. Thing is, many of those researchers quoted complain that Ryan misstates and misrepresents that research to support his fallacy.


If fact, much of the research refutes his claims and supports that our welfare programs are indeed helping. But due to the limitations from regressive cuts we're not helping enough, in fact less than any other developed nation. Consequently we also have less social mobility that said other nations. The regressive ideology leads the policy which hobbles programs for the poor, and when said programs don't help enough it's the fault of the poor instead of the inadequate programs created by a self-fulfilling regressive ideology. Kind of like the regressive approach to government in general. They say government doesn't work and then when they govern they do little to nothing so as to prove the government doesn't work.