It’s the fifth Tuesday of the month. That means it’s Sean Hackbarth’s turn to call Paul Krugman an idiot.

And he begins by asking the eternal, unanswered question: They gave this guy a nobel prize?

“Time Warp” must be an earworm in Paul Krugman’s head, because he’s pushing for tax policies that died decades ago. His latest column on raising taxes wasn’t “fake an alien invasion” bad, but it’s a case of Krugman ignoring smart economics and history.

His argument for raising taxes on high-income earners amounts to “[T]hey have a lot of money, by gosh.” It’s not enough to let the income tax rates set during President George W. Bush’s term expire. After jumping into his Tardis, Krugman wants to “raise taxes in earnest” back to where they were before 1980.

By his rough estimate returning tax rates to pre-1980s levels “could shave more than $1 trillion off the deficit” over the next 10 years.

Assuming that it could, that wouldn’t even cover the new debt created this year.

That’s $1.3 trillion, by the way. The “new debt created this year.” Krugman’s “plan” to roughly double tax rates – at least at the upper levels – wouldn’t be enough.

In 1979, we had 16 (or 17 for single filers) brackets ranging from 14% to 70%. That’s in addition to the 0% for the very lowest earners. Today, we have six, total: 10% to 35%.

So Krugman wants to dramatically increase income taxes which, on paper, will reduce the debt, but not eliminate it.

It certainly won’t settle Medicare or Social Security, or the…what is it, a trillion dollars in higher education debt? That’ll take a big bite. Whatever other new and expanded programs Krugman and the Democrats and the Occupiers demand, too. And, oh yeah, they’ll demand. And keep demanding. Do we think they’ll stop demanding, just because we double the top tax brackets?

Not likely. And then what?

Occupy! Demonstrate! Make them pay their fair share!

Here’s another eternal, unanswered question: when people like Krugman and former Congressman Steve Kagan say they want the rich to “pay their fair share,” what, exactly, do they mean?

How much is their “fair share?” And is there any actual way for “the rich” to satisfy us that they’re paying their “fair share?”