Readers write for Saturday, May 22

Paul Krugman's column ("Know this: We're not Greece," May 16) is completely off the mark. He needs to take off his ideological blinders and should take Economics 101.

No one is saying that we are Greece today, but we're headed in that direction if we don't do something about President Obama's planned trillion-dollar deficits over the next decade. You don't spend your way out of debt; you grow out of it aided by fiscal responsibility.

Krugman's leftist mantra conveniently ignores what every government economic study repeatedly confirms: that tax cuts create jobs and wealth and increase government revenues. Whatever recent job growth that has occurred is the result of the normal upturn of the economic cycle after the recession of the last two years. The only jobs the stimulus has created are in the public sector.

Our government disproportionately taxes its most productive citizens and companies, while half of the people don't pay any taxes at all. An inverted triangle where a small percentage of people pay the vast majority of the taxes is not a sustainable model.

Moreover, a government can tax all it wants, but to remain viable it still has to live within its budget and exercise fiscal restraint and sound monetary policy.

I do agree with one point Krugman made: I am trying to destroy the welfare state. I want a country where we're self-reliant and not dependent on the government; where we have the freedom to pursue our dreams, not sit back and wait for entitlements; where my government doesn't tell me how much money I can make and doesn't regulate every aspect of my life.

GARY FRANKLIN, LAKEVILLE

Paul Krugman's column was an interesting read until he revealed his true partisan colors. Sounding more the role of a Democratic shill, Krugman attests that one of the reasons for poor federal tax revenue is apparently in part due to some vast right wing strategy to "starve the beast."

To utter such a damning statement, surely Krugman would offer up empirical data or a study he wished to share with his bewildered and bemused audience, yet he did not. He offered up nothing. Rather, he simply made blindly wild assertions.

Perhaps a more-measured, less-partisan view would understand and appreciate the dynamics of the latest economic and market capitulation, wherein people -- regardless of political persuasion -- simply had less money to spend or were unwilling to spend due to stunning market declines with only a heavily fogged view into the future. It was also a time period spent reducing our suffocating levels of individual consumer debt.

Surely these are far more plausible explanations of American spending habits during a time of great economic decline and uncertainty. There was certainly no insidious scheme or strategy by an element of society to "starve the beast" as Krugman so falsely alleges.

TOM SCHWEBACH, EDEN PRAIRIE

You write an entire editorial about how we will need to make difficult fiscal decisions in order to avoid financial calamity ("No, we're not Greece. Yet," May 20). Very true. Then, at the end of the editorial, you decide to lecture Rand Paul and the Tea Party movement on this particular message.

You have that backwards. Paul is actually one of the rare candidates who does have the courage to propose tough changes to our government's trajectory. It seems that you just don't happen to agree with the medicine that Dr. Paul prescribes.

BRIAN REXING, INVER GROVE HEIGHTS

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Minnesota, land of 10,000 stadiums. No, we're not Greece yet, but we're beginning to look like Rome.

In a May 20 letter about the Vikings quest for a new stadium, the writer suggests that the team might pursue relocation to another state.

I have a better idea: Why don't all the rest of the naysayers for quality of life in Minnesota move and take their negative attitudes with them? These cheapskates gripe about paying less than a penny on $10 for a suitable stadium and think it is a gift to the owner, not realizing all of the other uses for a new stadium and the benefits in continuing to be a first-class city, region and state.

AL KOLBERG, BURNSVILLE

I had to laugh every time Gov. Tim Pawlenty mentioned that he wanted budget negotiations to be bipartisan. The laughter quickly turned to sadness, however, as our governor, who was never elected by a majority of Minnesotans, continued to get his way. His extreme partisanship was highlighted by his veto of a balanced budget bill, which included modest tax increases to the most wealthy of us, as well as his refusal to allow more than 100,000 of our poorest citizens to transition into Medicaid, for which Minnesota would get $1.4 billion in federal funding on an investment of only 14 percent of that amount.

Now that the ultraconservative Pawlenty thankfully is on his way out, Minnesota's gubernatorial politics are already becoming more bipartisan, at least among the DFL and Independence parties, whose candidates have said they would exercise the Medicaid option.

GARY THOMPSON, ST. PAUL

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One party of no + one party of nothing = the 2010 legislative session.