Okay, so we keep doing the same thing with the economy and it keeps not working, right? Am I the only one who sees this? If cutting back on spending and slashing public programs while not paying taxes and concentrating wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people is the solution, things should be great, right? I mean we’ve done that.
I am no expert. The only two technical terms I have retained from my disastrous stint in college econ 101 are guns and butter. And I think the only reason I remember those two terms is because I’ve had cause to use them in other non-economics contexts since.
Still, it seems to me that in the midst of very bad economic times the biggest employer in the country keeps downsizing. Federal, state and local government laid off nearly 40,000 people last month alone. That can’t be good, can it? Certainly not for those 40,000 people or their landlords or mortgage holders or yogurt shops or grocery stores or Starbucks or favorite restaurants. That’s 40,000 less people spending money buying stuff and services that gives the rest of us jobs. And that’s just last month.
But then last week, the people who I thought might actually see what I see, agreed with the people who want to keep doing the thing that’s not been working for 30 years now. The people who wanted to keep doing the things that seems to have gotten us here want to keep doing it so bad that they were willing to blackmail the entire country on behalf of their rich, generous friends. So now, apparently, despite the empirical data that “the economy totally sucks” both sides are agreed we need to slash zillions of dollars out of the budget.
So what happened? Well, faced with the massive loss of jobs and revenue those cuts represent the stock market crashed.
It wasn’t the radical right’s insistence on keeping the money in the hands of old-rich-white-guys, that’s what they always want to do. It wasn’t the brinksmanship over raising the debt ceiling, apparently that’s been going on since the days of super debtor Ronald Regan. It wasn’t even the Standard and Poors downgrade of the US debt rating – if that had been the cause people would not have taken their money out of the stock market and put it into the newly “downgraded” US treasury bonds, as they did.
What crashed the economy, it appears to me, is the agreement that we need to cut trillions of dollars out of the US economy. That’s what cutting the budget actually means.
As far as I can tell, not only are the “job creators” not creating jobs, they are getting richer and richer and taking more and more money out of the economy. And in response to our continued self imposed loss of revenue we keep shutting down the engine that has fueled our economic growth, the United States – all of them. Maybe I’m wrong, but it would appear to me that the biggest drag on the economy is our continuing refusal to fully fund federal, state and local government.
We’ve been all about “cutting wasteful spending” like education, health care and infrastructure for as long as I can remember and here we are in this mess with stupid children, broken roads and sick poor people costing us a fortune. It just seems to me that if these slash-and-burn-economics were going to work they already would be. The deficit would be down, everyone would have a job, revenue would be up and the stock market would be heading for the stratosphere. Since that is clearly not what’s happening, instead of agreeing with the ideas that got us here, why don’t we do something else?
Or is it just me?
Eric Shaw Quinn 
Yeah… it’s just you. The wealthy don’t have enough money to fill the enormous gap created by both parties. It is a classist populous claim that is downright evil. It kind of feels like the republicans and their claims against homos.
The reality is… we need to raise taxes on everyone. We need to close many of the sarced cow loopholes. We need to raise the age of Medicare and SS. We need to stop making the public believe that it is the government’s job to find them a job. They public needs to get up off of its collective ass, and do what we do best…. create something out of nothing and then sell it for shit loads of money.
I’ve had it “up to here” with these career politicians, doing the bidding of their multibillionaire keepers. Election reform is the ultimate solution to repairing the damage that flows therefrom.
“I’ve had it “up to here” with these career politicians, doing the bidding of their multibillionaire keepers. Election reform is the ultimate solution to repairing the damage that flows therefrom.” BINGO BINGO
BINGO BINGO BINGO.. THEY ALL ARE THE SAME TO ME. DEMS REPS…NO DIFFERENCE…I am still tingling over what John Edwards did…. I believed in him and Kerry.. what would have been if only his zipper had malfunctioned?????
Eric, I have hope your writings will touch more lives. Your kind spirit comes through more then you know. We need more of it. Your blog is yours but you are kind and leave room for the mind to ponder and perhaps not agree.
no, eric, it is not just you. they know we have to spend our way out of a recession. that is exactly why they are doing this. this whole thing is set up to tank our economy and destroy obama’s chance at four more years. but most people just don’t understand the cause and effect of this and start screaming “balance the budget, i do!” which they don’t by all indicators. if the rich are not spending that money and the government is not spending that money, who is? we have got to tax these people and spend money on putting people back to work. that’s just how it works. good article, and finally some sanity. i know they are not that stupid. this whole thing is set up to destroy our economy. that’s just how much they hate obama.
OK. You know all the wrongs things to do; what are the right things to do?
Nick Hart