UPDATE APPENDED.
After his remarks a few days ago endorsing government waste to drive economic growth, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when he takes the last step and endorses destruction to drive economic growth as well:
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.
A clearer embrace of the broken windows fallacy could hardly be made. The only question is whether that is really Paul Krugman talking.
UPDATE: No, it was not really Krugman. So we can put a cap on Krugman’s foolishness: government waste he’s for, but natural disasters he’s not.
UPDATE POSTSCRIPT: Unfortunately, Krugman couldn’t just say it wasn’t him and leave it at that. No, rather than leave this at the feet of the hoaxer that perpetrated it (a person of no importance), he had to try to turn it back against National Review:
Well, this is interesting. I hear that the not-so-good people at National Review are attacking me over something I said on my Google+ page. Except, I don’t have a Google+ page.
There was, as far as I can tell, one post at National Review about this, the one by Kevin Williamson I linked. It was titled “Somebody Please Tell Me This Is a Joke” and concluded:
I honestly cannot tell if I am being had here. I hope I am.
So Williamson did express the proper doubt over whether this was really Krugman. And he also promptly posted an update when he learned it wasn’t. All of which people could learn by clicking through to Williamson’s post, if Krugman had linked to it. But he didn’t.
Internet Scofflaw 