Krugman spoof; why it worked.

Cartoon: By Eric Allie.

After the global warming induced alien invasion prediction I made the comment that satirists must be having a hard time keeping ahead of the idiotic stuff serious scientists were coming up with. It is, after all not that long ago that a post from The Onion on how they were closing down as current political decisions were too over the top to lampoon was taken seriously.

I was immediately proven wrong by a post from an old mate, which had me in stitches. Disclaimer: Humorous content, do not read after recent abdominal surgery.

A short time ago someone opened up a Google + account in the name of Paul Krugman and posted: “People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.” This caused an immediate wave of ridicule until it was exposed as a fraud.

Satire only works if it is believable and in Krugman’s case there are plenty of examples of similar thinking from him. In the clip below there are three examples, he accepts the ‘ditch cycle’ fallacy, the WW2 was a good thing lunacy, and claims a threat of alien invasion would cause beneficial activity.

H/t Hot Air.


We are all familiar with the broken window fallacy, but it appears that Krugman is either not aware of, or cannot see the argument.

On the brighter side, when Al Gore’s GW theory is exposed as the greatest scientific fraud since Piltdown man, and his Nobel has the same status as the Obama Peace Prize, he will be able to display the Krugman Medal for all of the jobs that will be created to reverse the damage done to economies around the world.

It is no wonder people were taken in.