How Dare You Support Historically-Successful Policies!

Fisking a Naomi Klein column is like shooting fish in a barrel, so I won't get into all the idiotic statements in her latest logically-challenged article. But it's truly baffling how Klein, and critics like her, willfully blind themselves to the data:

Now is the time to worry about Obama's Chicago Boys and their commitment to fending off serious attempts at regulation. It was in the two and a half months between winning the 1992 election and being sworn into office that Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the economy. He had campaigned promising to revise NAFTA, adding labor and environmental provisions and to invest in social programs. But two weeks before his inauguration, he met with then-Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin, who convinced him of the urgency of embracing austerity and more liberalization. Rubin told PBS, "President Clinton actually made the decision before he stepped into the Oval Office, during the transition, on what was a dramatic change in economic policy."

And boy was Clinton's economic policy an unmitigated disaster for the working poor! Oh wait. The Clinton era was the veritable golden era for the working poor:




Wouldn't it be awful—just awful!—if Obama followed in Clinton's footsteps? Apparently to Naomi Klein, it would be awful. She wants Obama to fire Jason Furman for the grave sin of wanting to implement economic policies that have a proven record of raising the living standards of the working poor. Makes sense.

Naomi Klein is not smart. There's just no way around that.