While Slate's buffoonish Mickey Kaus, an alleged non-conservative, snickers at Paul Krugman's pessimism because the economy was bumped up in the last quarter, some actual conservatives are saying that Krugman's gloom about the economy may be well founded.

As Nathan Newman points out, Paul Craig Roberts is a supply-sider and Reaganite. In his latest syndicated column, he has little good to say about the recently reported job growth:

Only a few of the 116,000 private sector jobs created in October provide good incomes: 6,000 new positions in legal services and accounting – activities that reflect corporations gearing up to protect their top executives from Sarbanes-Oxley.

The remainder of the 116,000 new jobs consist of temps, retail trade, telephone marketing, and fund raising, administrative and waste services, and private education and health services....

Many of the new jobs do not pay enough to support a family. The temp and retail jobs are 40 percent of the total.

All of the new jobs are in services. None of the new service jobs are capable of producing export earnings to bring balance to our massive trade deficit.

Jobs capable of producing tradable goods and services continue to be lost at a rapid rate. In the last three months, the United States lost 91,000 manufacturing jobs.

Newman also notes a prediction that the U.S. will bleed red ink for the foreseeable future -- the deficit could approach $800 billion by 2013 -- if reasonable assumptions that aren't in official calculations (e.g., that Bush's tax cuts will be made permanent) come true. The prediction comes from an extremely gloomy article in the conservative Economist:

...In their most recent poll, members of the National Association of Business Economists described the federal deficit as the biggest problem facing America's economy. A bipartisan coalition of three economic think-tanks—the Committee for Economic Development, the Concord Coalition and the Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities—recently declared that, without a change in course, the next decade might be the “most fiscally irresponsible” in the country's history....

...Among Washington's independent budget experts, the consensus is that the official figures understate the cumulative deficit by about $5 trillion. Rather than a budget that returns to surplus by 2012, America is more likely to see deficits that average 3% of GDP over the next decade....

...Grim as it is, the medium term appears rosy compared with America's long-term fiscal outlook. The retirement of the baby-boomers, increasing life expectancy and inexorably rising medical costs mean that the cost of funding America's commitment to its old people will soar over the next few decades.

The numbers are mindboggling. According to Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters, in a study for the American Enterprise Institute, the gap between America's future tax revenues and future spending commitments for Social Security and Medicare is $44 trillion, or four times America's GDP....

...this long-term fiscal time-bomb existed long before George Bush became president, though his tax cuts mean that America will have fewer resources to defuse it....

...Mr Reagan was not averse to putting up taxes when too much red ink appeared. Taxes were raised several times during his presidency. Congressional rules on deficit reduction were introduced during Mr Reagan's second term. So far, at least, Team Bush has shown no such flexibility. There is no admission that America faces a fiscal mess, and no shifting from the mantra that all tax increases, at all times, are bad.

...Long after Dubya is back on his ranch, Americans will be trying to recover from the mess he created.

How different is this from what Krugman says?