He's branching out from economics, it seems, into ever broader social spokesperson efforts.
What choice does one really have?
Social Security is a tip, though a sore, and a melting, and a throbbing tip, of an iceberg.
A nation's 'social security', in the larger sense, is based inevitably, for modern societies, mainly on a steady stream of wages, and on natural and man made resources securely at a nation's disposal; not on profits as such, wherever they are reaped.
That is why developmental states have used trade as a lever to raise their wages, wealth, and social security.
In the language of sports, to try to dumb it down sufficiently for unsuspecting readers who stumble across this site, and also to give them a metaphor from their favorite field, sports, developmental states have been winning a game the US did not even realize it was going to be forced to play.
This is another thing Krugman has rightly, but about 30 or 40 years too late, been railing against in editorials, jobs. His problems, and ours, is that just dumbly talking about, say, WPA type make work jobs, or some other make work scheme, thrown together, rather than a a ramified industrial policy which others have long had,is not going to do that much, except put a little gruel temporarily on the table.
Military, or imperial, plunder, or enslavement, are not the most secure sources for social security, but have sometimes been resorted to, in history, not always with wholesome results.
David Kaiser pointed out, for example, in Politics and War, that the 30 Years War enriched some, mostly German, captains, at the bitter end;
but, would you want to try to get social security that way; say, not stop fighting unless and until you are paid off?
See other posts on this blog.
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