America’s progressive touchstone gave a big thumbs up to President Barack Obama’s speech Wednesday on the economy.
Writing Friday in the New York Times, columnist Paul Krugman praised Obama’s speech and predicted that it will “change the discourse — and, eventually, I believe, actual policy.”
Krugman was especially impressed with Obama’s focus on income inequality and his prescriptions — like raising the federal minimum wage – to resolve the problem.
The Nobel Prize-winning economist applauded Obama’s assertion that a “relentlessly growing deficit of opportunity is a bigger threat to our future than our rapidly shrinking fiscal deficit.”
“Finally! Our political class has spent years obsessed with a fake problem — worrying about debt and deficits that never posed any threat to the nation’s future — while showing no interest in unemployment and stagnating wages,” Krugman wrote. “Mr. Obama, I’m sorry to say, bought into that diversion. Now, however, he’s moving on.”
To Krugman, this sounded like the Obama who galvanized liberals in his first presidential campaign.
“Now, however, we have the president of the United States breaking ranks, finally sounding like the progressive many of his supporters thought they were backing in 2008,” Krugman wrote.
