Krugman: 85% of consumer spending in America is on American-produced goods and services

[Igel]

16. It's an interesting claim about aggregate consumer spending.

But Krugman's point is that since 85% of consumer spending is for domestically produced goods/services, therefore 85% of any stimulus spending that gives money to people will be spent on domestically produced goods/services.

He misses the point that if you make $15k/year versus $150k/year you're likely to spend the money on different kinds of things. There's no reason to really suspect that spending by both the poor and the wealthy, as well as by the intermediate categories, is the same. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Since most people that would receive stimulus money in the form of a tax rebate or reduction already have income and transportation, most of the increase would go for goods or services. So drop housing and transportation largely from the mix. What's left? That's what he has to focus on.

His claim, he gets to prove it instead of pointing out a claim that's probably fairly factual and allowing us to draw the non-fact-based, conclusion deemed appropriate by him.