Paul Krugman: Conservatives Hate The Idea Of Policy That Helps The Economy

Paul Krugman says that Republican ideology is holding the economy back.

"People of conservative politics hate hate hate the idea of any kind of activist government policy to help the economy," the Nobel Prize-winning economist wrote in a blog post for the New York Times on Wednesday.

Krugman, like many other economists, has long advocated for increases in government spending to boost the economy.

In a 2012 survey, 80 percent of economists on the IGM Economic Experts Panel said that the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate. And in a blog post published in Project Syndicate on Wednesday, Yale economist Robert Shiller wrote that stimulus is necessary to get out of the current economic slump, which has been exacerbated by government spending cuts.

The sequestration -- a series of across-the-board government spending cuts -- took effect earlier this month as a result of partisan gridlock and will eliminate 750,000 jobs this year alone if the cuts stay in place, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

Many economists say that Republican plans to slash spending would hurt the economy. Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) proposed budget would destroy 2 million jobs in 2014 alone if it were implemented, according to the Economic Policy Institute.