Since the NYT severely rations access to non-subscribers, I think people would rather not find themselves going there unexpectedly. A hyperlink from the text (ie the 'here' in this case) doesn't help this; but using a URL shortening service, as you did, makes it much worse - 'Krugman' was the only warning (OK, it was enough for me to go and look up the words, and that told me this is in the NYT, so I could avoid it (I save NYT access for when I might really need it), but at other times it might not).

If you use hypertext behind a link there's no real need for a URL shortening service anyway. It just means no-one knows where they're going to be taken to when they use the link.

away social programs. The Rich People's Party doesn't care about the economic woes of the middle class or the unemployed. They just want to use whatever is happening as an excuse to forward their own agenda.

"So what happens if everyone simultaneously slashes spending in an attempt to pay down debt? The answer is that everyone’s income falls — my income falls because you’re spending less, and your income falls because I’m spending less. And, as our incomes plunge, our debt problem gets worse, not better.

This isn’t a new insight. The great American economist Irving Fisher explained it all the way back in 1933, summarizing what he called “debt deflation” with the pithy slogan “the more the debtors pay, the more they owe.” Recent events, above all the austerity death spiral in Europe, have dramatically illustrated the truth of Fisher’s insight.

And there’s a clear moral to this story: When the private sector is frantically trying to pay down debt, the public sector should do the opposite, spending when the private sector can’t or won’t. By all means, let’s balance our budget once the economy has recovered — but not now. The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.

So the austerity drive in Britain isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to dismantle social programs. And this is, of course, exactly the same thing that has been happening in America."

They, unlike the United States, have very generous unemployment insurance, and they have a very strong safety net in the area of food security, public housing, and housing assistance. As an aside, they have a robust universal health care system. Something like 85% of the population is covered by something akin to "the Public Option," while the rest opt for various private health insurance policies offered in a tightly regulated market with stringent controls against monopolies. This makes German industry competitive in the world as far as keeping the health care costs of its workforce in check.

They also have an industrial policy of co-determination that has allowed Germany to maintain a fairly large portion of its industrial capacity, and this provides many Germans with high-paying manufacturing jobs and technical jobs; whereas, the United States has abandoned high-paying, union manufacturing jobs to the point where it is essentially dependent upon China for most of its consumer goods and electronics at this point, and the workers in the US are finding it hard to replace the lost jobs with ones that pay just as well or higher.

effete, queerosexual cheese-eating surrender-monkey Yurrupeen. Real 'murkans don't need any o' that kinda sheet. Where's any o' that anti-murkan crap in Ayn Rand or the buybull?

They don't need common sense either.

. . . all those "socialist" countries don't have huge wealth gaps and 23% child poverty.

"For economic recovery was never the point; the drive for austerity was about using the crisis, not solving it. And it still is."