Europe's economy OK, thanks

Paul Krugman has a nice column today about how the European economy, which the right loves to use as a cautionary tale to argue against security for the masses, is actually doing OK.

It turns out that you don't have to have a society where middle class families are on the verge of catastrophe in order to get them to work and pay taxes.

Imagine going to bed at night knowing that if your child becomes ill she'll be cared for — not because you have Romney's millions, but because you live in America, a place where people work hard and take care of one another.

Go on. Imagine.

Krugman and excuses

Paul Krugman looks at healthcare excuses by the reigning kings of unaccountability, defenders of the U.S. healthcare system.

In it, he points out that in fact one in three Americans under the age of 65 was uninsured at some time in 2006 or 2007.

Krugman redux

Can we really turn away from Paul Krugman? Really?

Here's an outtake from his new book, Conscience of a Liberal:

The transformation of the party of Lincoln to the party of Willie Horton is one of the abiding tragedies of American political history. Harry Truman's efforts to complete the New Deal by putting into place a national healthcare plan were sabotaged by Southern Democratic senators who were afraid that guaranteed healthcare would mean desegregated hospitals.

That from a review in Salon. Evidently Krugman makes the case that we're the only industrialized nation without guaranteed, universal healthcare because of racism. And he suggests this is a glass half full, because we're becoming a less racist society.

Maybe so. A less racist society, with a renewed commitment to xenophobia. Try this statistic:

According to a January 2007 survey of Californians by the Public Policy Institute of California, over 70% favored government led universal health coverage, with a drop to 56% when the question implied coverage for children of illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, a lot of the white children of those folks who hated the idea of integrated hospitals now can't afford to go to the integrated hospitals.

Krugman speaks

Well put. We could give every American healthcare for less than than the 16 percent of GNP that we currently spend to just cover some people. But even if that weren't the case, we should provide care for all. It's a moral issue.
What kind of people are we?