Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who also happens to be a New York Times columnist and shrill Democratic Party shill (but then ‘Puter repeats himself), parrots the White House and Occupy Wall Street talking point cum dogma:

Income inequality is the largest problem facing America at this point in time. This manifest rising inequality means (1) American families aren’t getting their fair share of economic gains and (2) a cabal of hyper-wealthy plutocrats control our government, destroying democracy altogether. That’s ‘Puter’s take on Mr. Krugman’s position. Here he is in his own words:

But why does this growing concentration of income and wealth in a few hands matter? Part of the answer is that rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth. Another part of the answer is that once you realize just how much richer the rich have become, the argument that higher taxes on high incomes should be part of any long-run budget deal becomes a lot more compelling.

The larger answer, however, is that extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of big money, and that the warping is getting worse as the wealth of a few grows ever larger?

Oh. So permitting the rich to retain wealth created through hard work and/or risking assets, without giving a cut to the unnamed folks Mr. Krugman considers worthy, is unfair? Your argument, Mr. Krugman, is that you know best how to allocate wealth, so everyone should simply give you their money, and you will in your Solomonic wisdom disburse wealth to individuals according to your perception of their needs.

That’s awesome! Why hasn’t anyone thought of confiscating wealth and distributing it to the chosen, and applied it on a large scale basis before? This has never been tried in the history of man! Never! Not in the former Soviet Union. Not in North Korea. Not in Red China. Not in Bulgaria or Albania or Belarus. And most certainly not in Vietnam. There’d be absolutely zero likelihood that scapegoating the rich and powerful would lead to a system of dehumanizing governmental control of all areas of one’s life. And ‘Puter’s certain that there’d be no shortage of permitted free expression criticizing the controlling thugocracy, and most certainly no lao gai or gulags. Clearly, Mr. Krugman has shown us the way to a true workers’ paradise. O fraptious day!

But maybe we should start smaller. Sometimes, grand schemes that believe they’ve accounted for every eventuality don’t work to well in the end. Those greedy capitalists proved that to us with the Great Meltdown of 2008, the housing bubble and the LTCM Cratering, to mention but a few. But we few, we happy few, we band of self-righteous pompous economists, we certainly are wise enough to achieve the unachievable: perfection.

Full scale wealth confiscation may be a bit aggressive. In lieu thereof, perhaps we should create a cradle-to-grave welfare and taxation state that handicaps the wealthy and rewards the idle poor. That certainly hasn’t been tried anywhere. Why, there’d be no adverse incentives inherent in that system. No siree! Maybe our intellectual betters could set something like that up in smaller country like Greece, just to test drive it. Then, our academic overlords could start rolling it out in in Portugal and Ireland and Spain. It would be just a short jump to France, and then on to Germany! O, won’t that be splendid? Letting the intelligentsia design a political system where they decide winners and losers could never fail. It must surely stand the test of time.

Wow. With such novel thoughts as Mr. Krugman’s, ‘Puter’s having a most difficult time staying on topic. The sheer genius has simply overwhelmed ‘Puter’s feeble mind. ‘Puter’s going to have to turn to a simpler portion of Mr. Krugman’s panegyric. Perhaps ‘Puter should bask in the warmth of Mr. Krugman’s unquestionable brilliance as pertains to the money gap, since we can find no fault in the perfection of his political process punditry.

Concerning statistics showing a growing income inequality between the rich and poor, Mr. Krugman writes as follows:

In response, the usual suspects have rolled out some familiar arguments: the data are flawed (they aren’t); the rich are an ever-changing group (not so); and so on. The most popular argument right now seems, however, to be the claim that we may not be a middle-class society, but we’re still an upper-middle-class society, in which a broad class of highly educated workers, who have the skills to compete in the modern world, is doing very well.

It’s a nice story, and a lot less disturbing than the picture of a nation in which a much smaller group of rich people is becoming increasingly dominant. But it’s not true.

Well, ‘Puter’s not an advocate of any of the arguments Mr. Krugman claims conservative opponents make regarding liberals’ misguided “income inequality” battle cry. ‘Puter suspects that Mr. Krugman may be resorting to a straw man argument here, but surely no one as brave and noble as a well-paid Nobel laureate columnist with a Princeton professorship would ever resort to cheap tricks to further a questionable point.

‘Puter’s position is simpler, for such thoughts are all ‘Puter’s feeble mind produces. Were ‘Puter to respond to Mr. Krugman (which ‘Puter would not, for ‘Puter well knows his place vis a vis self-proclaimed geniuses), ‘Puter would abjectly grovel and state to his intellectual better that income inequality is meaningless. The meaningful question is how well off are America’s nominally poor? If American poor are adequately attended, then it ought not matter how much anyone else has. Unless, of course, Mr. Krugman is not at all concerned about the poor’s welfare, but rather political power for his cronies. That cannot be the case, for our Ivy League professoriate have only society’s welfare as their highest goal.

If our idle poor have a decent standard of living, it matters not how many miniature giraffes Ted Turner raises on his Montana ranch. Nor does it matter whether Bill Gates buys $1,000,000,000 worth of $1.00 chips at The Bellagio, fills a penthouse suite with them, and swims among them with well-proportioned hookers like a geeky Scrooge McDuck. If the poor are suffering, we ought to help them, but we oughtn’t simply assume the poor suffer in order to achieve a desired policy outcome, namely, political control for one’s fellow travelers. So let’s take a look at the facts.

Resorting to the Google, ‘Puter found the American poor aren’t particularly poor at all. Sure, they may not cash flow well, but here’s a few of the things that most American poor reported having in 2009: microwaves, air conditioning, cell phones, ceiling fans, multiple televisions, clothes washers/dryers and cable television. Around a third of the so-called poor have a computer, internet service and/or a video gaming system. Stunningly, 0.6% ‘fessed up to having a jacuzzi. There’s a very good argument to be made that the Americans we call poor and in no meaningful way impoverished. And that’s without considering access to necessities like housing, indoor plumbing, transportation and food, which are all provided at taxpayer expense.

Mr. Krugman’s professed concern about the poor and democracy is nothing more than a thinly-veiled appeal for imposition of the redistributive economy he prefers, run by his favored like-minded political cronies. It’s in his column, in black and white, for all to read. You just have to know how to read it.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.