Paul Krugman, former New York Times columnist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, has taken to Substack where he frequently points out — using economic data to back his rhetoric — the hypocrisy of various government actors.
This week Krugman considered the rampant politicization of the raging wildfires in California, and how various GOP figures — backed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk — have threatened to withhold aid while blaming DEI policies and opposition politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass for the devastation, rather than blaming nature, drought, climate considerations and the ferocious Santa Ana winds.
Krugman took issue with aid being withheld in California’s time of need, at the same time House Speaker Mike Johnson indicated that the aid would likely be “conditioned” and that emergency provisions might be allotted only after considerations about the levels to which California’s leaders were allegedly “derelict in their duties.”
“our system more or less automatically bails out states when they run into financial trouble. And as it happens, the biggest such bailouts I’m aware of involved red states.” paulkrugman.substack.com/p/remembranc…
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper.com) January 14, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Doing what Deep Throat famously advised Woodward and Bernstein to do, Krugman follows the money, showing how California’s financial contributions to the U.S. government dwarf the contributions of antagonistic red states which, unlike California, receive far more in federal dollars than they contribute.
And yet, Krugman relates, despite California’s consistently subsidizing disaster relief for less wealthy states, it is these red state politicians who are threatening California in its time of need — a position he calls “wrong and shameful.”
(California’s representatives, he points out, don’t do the same and threaten not to assist Florida or North Carolina after hurricanes.)
Considering one wealthy state paying more to help less fortunate states, Krugman writes: “I’m fine with this cross-subsidization; it’s part of what being a nation is all about. It was right and appropriate for California to aid red states in the past; what’s wrong and shameful is the push by politicians from those states to deny California aid in its own hour of need.”