Economist Paul Krugman suggests workers use only their left hand to boost employment
UNITED STATES—In today’s edition of the former newspaper New York Times Nobel Prize winning-economist Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed in which he suggested that American workers should start using only their left hand to perform any type of work or job, in order to boost the economy’s lagging job numbers.
The editorial’s headline was, “The case for a left-handed only economy.” Krugman summed up his rather lengthy article in a series of tweets, stating in part, “The economy has been lagging for a long time as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which started almost a year ago. Job numbers have been declining and unemployment is at a record high. The most efficient way at this point, in my opinion, to increase employment is if the government mandates that all workers use only their left hand on the job. This means that every type of job out there will now require twice the number of workers than before to perform the same task, boosting employment by 50%. It’s an excellent solution that will help reignite the economy.”
Reactions to Krugman’s proposal were mixed. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez (Socialist-NY) thought that Krugman’s proposal didn’t go far enough. On her Facebook book page, she suggested that within the framework of a right-handed economy workers should only use half their fingers instead of all ten, because according to Krugman’s logic that’ll increase jobs by another 50%, as half the number of fingers means double the number of jobs.
Others, like economist Dr. Thomas Sowell, disapproved of Krugman’s proposal. In a recent article, he explained that, “the aim of economics is wealth production, not jobs. It’s nonsensical to create any scheme that creates tons of jobs if those jobs fail to produce real wealth to society.”
After reading Krugman’s op-ed, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) sent Krugman a copy of Critical Thinking Skills for Dummies.
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