PAUL KRUGMAN: Conservatives Want 'To Push Us Back To 1894'
New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman believes the conservative movement's "real goal" is to shift the entire country's social policies back 120 years.
"Their real goal is to push us back to 1894 - not even to 1924. So these are the stakes. This is really serious stuff," he declared Thursday night. "Never forget just how big this thing is."
The Nobel Prize winning economist sat down for a discussion with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) at CUNY's Graduate Center in Manhattan. The two were pressed for their take on the U.S. Supreme Court's "Hobby Lobby" decision in June that ruled some, "closely-held" corporations had the right to deny insurance coverage for birth control.
Krugman, needless to say, was no fan of the decision. He argued the "outrageous" and "insane" ruling was based on the flawed premise that business owners could be shielded from certain government regulations based on their individual religious beliefs.
"We're telling you you have to provide health insurance. So if we can do that, we can say, 'Yeah, it has to be the standardized thing,'" he said. "This is an insane thing. And of course, where exactly doe the line end? ... How closely held does a corporation have to be when it ceases to be a person? I would say no corporation is a person - no matter what, no employer. Your role as an employer and your role as a person is not the same thing."
Krugman pivoted to a larger point and said the ruling must be viewed in the context of a "scary" conservative push on these sorts of issues.
"[We] should not be astonished to see this happening in 2014. The deep roots of what's going on in our political system is much bigger and much scarier. Of course, you have to the political fight as you do on individual issues. But we are fighting something that is quite scary," he said.
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