...and probably some good points in there somewhere. Economies are certainly too complex to be controlled at a central level, something I realized years ago, and I fail to understand how someone with your views isn't libertarian.

As an example, how the hell would a botanist "control" the Brazilian rain forest? All you can do is wreck it by doing the wrong things.

An ecologist would call you nuts if you said you could change the makeup of a rain forest in a positive manner by killing off a few selected species and planting a few new ones. He would tell you, correctly, that it is impossible to gauge the millions of interactions among and between species to make such an alteration. You would be more likely to do damage than improve the forest.

Sure, you could plow it under and plant corn, or teak, but that's not really the point, is it? Besides, farmers found out the hard way in Brazil that this didn't work either. There is nothing more unstable than a monocrop.

Every attempt to micromanage a free economy has feedback, often unforeseen. Minimum wages insure higher pay, but price the lower end of the employment market out of existence. Welfare is a safety net, but encourages people to remain unemployed. Worker's compensation and other laws make workplaces better for workers, but make hiring much more difficult. And do you really think that tax rates that exceed what a medieval serf paid his lord don't have some effect on productivity?

Every time the government interferes with an economic decision freely made by one or more people, it is substituting its own ideas for the free choice of that person. To be precise, it is substituting the ideas of some person in government. This also needs to be kept in mind. Do you have any idea how many aspects of a business are controlled at the Federal level? I've run a couple. I know.

Maybe I don't have the complex math, but I do know from long experience and history that people who are free to make their own choices do better in the long run than people who aren't. And all else being equal, it generally is a good idea to give people more freedom in a situation, not less. You may say this country is a "benevolent" mix of socialism and capitalism, but right now it's all moving in one direction, and it is long past time to put on the brakes, if not move back the other way.

Our system is strong enough to survive a great deal of economic meddling. Just like a rain forest can survive having a bunch of trees chopped down, or a disease that hits some species, or a fire. But if you set a fire every year, what happens then? How many trees can you cut down before they don't come back any more? How much elasticity do we have left in this country?

And despite Krugman's best carping, the economy is still improving. And I know why.