actually, they're both wrong. in the current economy, what's going to happen to that stimulus money is that it's going to go to pay down debt.

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/newsletters13/26-debate2.php

(stiglitz is more right though. and the argument about wage stagnation being an impediment to economic recovery, if not the outright cause of the current recession, is what i was looking for.)

see, i agree with stiglitz here, too. i think what krugman is saying is that percentages don't matter - it's the absolute amount that does. i'll agree with that. but krugman is citing a correlation. the question is whether there's a cause and effect relationship between tax cuts for the rich and spending by the rich, and the idea doesn't strike me as reasonable.

the upper middle class, maybe. the middle class? depends on the indebtedness. see, the hard part is finding where that line is. that requires some empirical analysis, not a deductive approach, and i'm not going to do that.

but it doesn't approach the real issue, which is indebtedness. and contrary to the calvinist media narrative, this isn't caused by some kind of entitlement but simply by historically low real wages.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/inequality-and-recovery/

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/inequality-is-holding-back-the-recovery/