The rest of this essay just reads like griping and cherry picking though. Complaining about the name of the bill "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is just dumb. Senators and Reps name bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy or what have you, it's part of our process.
And, it seems much more likely that whipsawing serves the purpose of someone than that people in the whitehouse are "unserious". I'd rather see Mr. Krugman's estimable mind devoted to figuring out who is benefiting, how long they will benefit, and what that will do to others than to read him complaining about the name of a bill.
Senators and reps and bills all sorts of funny things aiming to be catchy by creating a succinct acronym. [1]. This cultural practice is sometimes called ‘backronym’. Trying to tie ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ as an example of that practice is ‘sane-washing’; ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ is a dumb person’s idea of a backronym [2]. Dissecting the bill name is not just complaining for complaining’s sake; it’s just another in the long list of examples of Trump doesn’t understand what he’s doing and his enablers are not serious people by going along with
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/news/8710-lawmakers-turn-to-cat...
[2] Trump is a poor man's idea of a rich man, a weak man's idea of a strong man, and a stupid man's idea of a smart man etc
Look at Trump's career. Look at his skill set. Look at what he's doing in the white house. He's a lot of things but he's not bad at getting what he values; he is in fact perhaps the most successful American ever in those terms. If you care about America it is incredibly short sighted to think he's dumb. He's extremely effective, just not at the things that a) you might want him to be b) we hope a President will be c) he says he's doing to the media.
>> He's a lot of things but he's not bad at getting what he values; he is in fact perhaps the most successful American ever in those terms.
Nonsense. He’s bankrupted casinos. He lost his first reelection bid. He started on third base and ended up back at first.
>> If you care about America it is incredibly short sighted to think he's dumb.
He IS that dumb. He really doesn’t understand how tariffs/trade balance works. But his enablers have let him run riot. Biden was old. Reagan had mental issues. But their teams had firm hands on the steering wheel. That’s a serious country with some checks and balances. Trump admin is trying to revoke all that