Paul Krugman: The American Dream Is Dying (A UPS Driver can't really afford to live in Queens, NY)

Newsbusters ^ | 9/27/2009 | Noel Sheppard

[SeekAndFind]

The American dream is not totally dead, but it’s being pretty, it’s dying pretty fast...Horatio Alger would move to Europe these days."

So said New York Times columnist Paul Krugman Friday.

Appearing with disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Krugman demonstrated perfectly why his perpertually pessimistic view of America is so revered by perpetually pessimistic liberals (partial transcript below the fold):

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country. I mean, and there's some of that there. But on good mornings I think, well this is America, we have always in the past managed to, you know, to turn ourselves around, and there is an FDR just around the corner if we could only find him. I was kind of hoping Obama might be FDR, but maybe not. [...]

BILL MAHER, HOST: People with normal jobs, you know, a shop girl, they can't live on, in the America that this country has become. Like look at sitcoms, like the apartments that people have. You know, when, the people on "Friends." People would always look at that show and go, "They could never really afford that apartment."

KRUGMAN: I don't watch many sitcoms, but I actually watched "The King of Queens" on some airplane...and I immediately being who I am, I immediately said, "Can a guy who works at obviously UPS actually afford that, and I could find, so I checked where the neighborhood, no way. No way. Couldn't afford a third of that house. [...]

The American dream is not totally dead, but it's being pretty, it's dying pretty fast. You look at the numbers on social mobility, on the ability of people to move from modest or poor background up, the United States is way down the list. I mean, Horatio Alger would move to Europe these days. Much better chance of getting up in the scale in, in, in Finland or Sweden or France than the United States.

The stupidity on display here was staggering, even for Krugman.

Let's start with his assessment of what kind of a house the fictional couple on the sitcom "The King of Queens" might have been able to afford.

Showing how little he knows about what workers make in America, Krugman first misjudged how much UPS drivers earn. According to a February 2006 Reuters article, "The average UPS driver's annual salary of $55,000 can rise to $70,000 with overtime."

Because this fictional character resided in a high cost of living part of the country, maybe he made more than UPS's national average.

Beyond this, the fictional character's wife was a legal secretary for a Manhattan law firm. According to Indeed.com, that salary today would be $58,000.

And, according to Sterling's BestPlaces, the median home value in Queens is currently $431,000.

With this in mind, as "The King of Queens" first aired in 1998 well before real estate prices in America exploded, it doesn't seem at all incomprehensible that this fictional couple could have afforded that house more than eleven years ago.

But this wasn't the only inanity by Krugman, for his social mobility statement offered to support his view that the American dream is dying also lacked merit.

For those not familiar, social mobility in its simplest form is one generation's ability to move up the income ladder from that of the previous generation's. America doesn't rank very high in this regard as the offspring of the well-off typically do better financially than children of lower income brackets.

Sociologists and economists have numerous explanations for this, most notably the differing caliber of primary and secondary educations afforded different wage earners.

However, the question is what this mobility in different countries gets the residents.

For instance, regardless of the lack of such mobility, per capita income in America is far greater than in Finland, Sweden, and France.

In fact, using the purchasing power parity model -- meaning income adjusted for a nation's cost of living -- America ranks eleventh in the world at $46,970/year.

By contrast, Sweden is 22nd at $38,180, Finland is 31st at $35,660, and France is 34th at $34,400.

As such, these three nations might have more social mobility, but their average citizen earns far less cost of living-adjusted money than the average American does.

With this in mind, where would you rather live and dream?

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

[SeekAndFind]

THE LINKS PROVIDED ON THE ARTICLE CAN BE FOUND BELOW :

WATCH THE PAUL KRUGMAN INTERVIEW VIDEO HERE :

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/26/krugman-the-american-drea_n_300702.html

Reuter’s article on the average UPS truck driver’s salary is here :

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/02/22/ups_drivers_avoid_blue_collar_union_blues/

Sterling’s Best Places tells us the average price of a home in Queens, NY here :

http://www.bestplaces.net/county/Queens-New_York.aspx

Per capita income comparison for various countries can be found here :

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GNIPC.pdf

[y6162]

Maybe if liberals didn’t drive up the cost of living and destroy wealth generation?

[goodnesswins]

THANK YOU DEMOCRATS!!! /s

[Oldexpat]

If you give an immigrant the right to choose where they live and they always seem to rank the US first.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

...and intentionally destroy the US dollar so that the world drops it as the reserve currency (thus, without manufacturing to produce our way out of recession/depression and no more credit to borrow our way out, force us to accept a global currency administered by a global central bank).

[y6162]

Maybe if liberals didn’t drive up the cost of living and destroy wealth generation?

[cripplecreek]

With this in mind, where would you rather live and dream?

Certainly not in Queens. My view of heaven is somewhat less densely populated.

[jwparkerjr]

Well, it would help if government, at all levels, takes right at 50% of what the average worker earns now.

[kingu]

Housing prices are based upon buyers. Sellers can demand higher prices, but if no buyers pay those high prices, the price will drop. The banks don’t say no, they offer idiotic interest only loans, near zero down, etc. Congress has made it worse, demanding banks issue loans.

If these loans end, sure, UPS drivers can afford to live just about anywhere. Until then, mortgages and rents will continue to eat up to three quarters of a family’s income.

Then again, the elephant in the room is all the illegal aliens who are filling up a lot of affordable housing, and increasingly, putting two to four families in a home, and paying far above market to do it. When you’ve got six working adults providing income, you can afford a heck of a lot, especially if you pay cash.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

This guy thinks an FDR would help America/save the economy?
And his opinion is respected by whom?

FDR prolonged and deepened what should have been a 2-3 depression for 5-7 years (depending on what economic analyst you study). In Europe, they called it “The Depression.” Only in America (and thanks to FDR) did it become “The GREAT Depression.”

And guess what, PK, the country does have an FDR in the WH. That’s the problem. He thinks he can print, spend, borrow, and monetize-the-debt his way out of this economy. Well, that’s what he claims. I’m sure he and his puppet masters know that they are utterly destroying the US dollar and our economic future.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

That road looks like it has better farming potential than any soil in Queens I’d trust to grow food.

[okie01]

FDR prolonged and deepened what should have been a 2-3 depression for 5-7 years (depending on what economic analyst you study).

In the absence of government intervention -- by Hoover and by FDR -- The Great Depression would've been known as The Panic of 1929.

[Deagle]

California and New York are both unsustainable for growth with today’s economy (or in the next ten-twenty years). That is simply a fact... Both of these locations think that taxing those that have will solve the problems...but those that are taxed just simply move. Receipts fall as most of us would expect but of course it is “unexpected” to those in government. This will continue until both locations either come to grips with government spending or they will collapse totally...

All government, both State and Federal need to cut back by at least 30% to allow for continued growth.

[GeronL]

He is dreaming of FDR???

I would have stopped watching right there.

Moron

[Zhang Fei]

As such, these three nations might have more social mobility, but their average citizen earns far less cost of living-adjusted money than the average American does.

In what European country could the bastard son of a black African foreigner be elected to the country's highest political office?

[popdonnelly]

When the Federal government continues to raise the cost of everything through regulation and taxation, and does nothing to encourage economic growth, why would anyone expect the standard of living to improve?

[Da Coyote]

Lessee, we could:

1) Produce our own energy. Nope, libs don’t like that
2) Expand our power production capacity. Nope, libs don’t like that.
3) Allow more small businesses. Nope, libs don’t like profits.
4) Lower taxes. You kidding? How can we pay for Obama’s corruption?

Gasp, out of ideas. Guess we’ll have to wait the sure-to-come revolution.

As is my usual, I beg, cajole, and get on my knees volunteering to operate the guillotine after the trials of the Obamaloon and his loon-O-tic cabinet.

[nj26]

Paul Krugman obviously didn’t watch the show very carefully. It’s a two-income household.

Kevin James plays a UPS driver. Per media reports, the average UPS driver makes $55,000/year with overtime. That comes with full benefits including healthcare. Leah Remini plays his wife, a legal secretary. I am seeing another website list the average salary at $47,000/year for a legal secretary (and keep in mind the character works at a big law firm in Manhattan).

So the family is earning $100,000/year+. With a decent downpayment, they could afford a house of $300,000-400,000. Those do exist in Queens (I am even seeing some in Floral Park, which is over the Nassau County border).

Sorry for the extended post.. but just more Krugman nonsense which needed to be called out.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Yes, mainly. The market was way overpriced and needed to correct, which would have resulted in an uncomfortable (but not severe) recession for about 2 years. G. Edward Griffin in “The Creature from Jekyll Island” does a good job documenting how the crash was actually (if not directly) strongly encourage to occur so that American banks could transfer gold to England, was teetering on national insolvency because of its gross Socialist programs.

But, you’re right, it was the big-government policies that pushed it over the edge. And, yes, Hoover gets a large part of the blame. The parallels between Hoover/FDR and Bush/Obammie the Commie are startlingly similar.