Paul Krugman: The Obama Boom

"The conservative economic orthodoxy dominating the Republican Party is very, very wrong":

The Obama Boom, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Do you remember the “Bush boom”? Probably not. Anyway, the administration of George W. Bush began its tenure with a recession, followed by an extended “jobless recovery.” By the summer of 2003, however, the economy began adding jobs again. The pace of job creation wasn’t anything special..., but conservatives insisted that the job gains ... represented a huge triumph, a vindication of the Bush tax cuts.

So what should we say about the Obama job record? Private-sector employment ... hit its low point in February 2010. Since then we’ve gained 14 million jobs,... roughly double the number of jobs added during the supposed Bush boom...

The point ... is that ... Mr. Obama ... has been attacked at every stage of his presidency for policies that his critics allege are “job-killing”...

What did Mr. Obama do that was supposed to kill jobs? ... He signed the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform... He raised taxes on high incomes... And he enacted a health reform...

Yet none of the dire predicted consequences of these policies have materialized. ...

So what do we learn from this impressive failure to fail? That the conservative economic orthodoxy dominating the Republican Party is very, very wrong. In a way, that should have been obvious. ...

On one side, this elite is presumed to be a bunch of economic superheroes, able to deliver universal prosperity by summoning the magic of the marketplace. On the other side, they’re depicted as incredibly sensitive flowers who wilt in the face of adversity — raise their taxes a bit, subject them to a few regulations, or for that matter hurt their feelings in a speech or two, and they’ll stop creating jobs and go sulk in their tents, or more likely their mansions.

It’s a doctrine that doesn’t make much sense, but it ... turns out to be very convenient for the elite: namely, that injustice is a law of nature, that we’d better not do anything to make our society less unequal or protect ordinary families from financial risks. Because if we do ... we’ll be severely punished by the invisible hand, which will collapse the economy. ...

The ... Obama economy offers a powerful lesson... From a conservative point of view, Mr. Obama did everything wrong, afflicting the comfortable (slightly) and comforting the afflicted (a lot), and nothing bad happened. We can, it turns out, make our society better after all.