Where am I projecting? Krugman could have used any number of other examples - but he chose Cuba to make a point that 'there are limits'?

Is it hard to notice that this is a shockingly unfair point? Comparing one's maximum to the other's minimum?

This isn't the issue. The issue is that Cuba is in no way a conventional economy. Never mind that it's nominally socialist - it's been aggressively ostracised by its nearest and largest physical trading partner. So saying that Cuba somehow proves the limits of redistribution is a non-point.

But it's a revealing non-point. The fact that Krugman can write this, and - presumably - actually believe it, says a lot about his assumptions and the shallowness of his political insight.

This may be true, but is rather too flippant a statement to be accepted without a convincing demonstration. Otherwise it's just a slogan.

You mean apart from the British Empire, the age of colonialism in the rest of Europe, the East India Company, the oil and resource wars of the 20th century, and the US-sponsored coups throughout Asia and South America in the late 20th century?

Do I need to explain how all of these were contrived, or at least packaged as, the inevitable rational actions of nominally free markets?

You seem entirely too awed by Krugman to accept that in his environment anything to the left of a centrist solution like Sweden's is considered suicidally self-destructive by definition.

It's good that he's not a psycho-Randian like most of the Chicago altar boys, but that doesn't mean he's pushing the Overton window as hard as it needs to be pushed in the US.