Comment on
Economists: Emphasis on deficit impeding recovery
Even Krugman isn't admitting how big the problem really is, with huge numbers of unemployed young adults and mid to late career workers, cutbacks in help for the unemployed and an economy that's barely growing fast enough to keep up with population growth. But he gets it that it makes no sense to us as a nation to allow this to continue.
Unemployment and jobs are a national emergency, and for five years even Obama for all his talk has failed to treat it as such. His original stimulus, at best, was 10% of what we needed, and now it's gone. (Perhaps it's hard to go after trillions for jobs when you've already given away trillions to the criminal bankers who paid for your campaigns?)
As for the banks, after we'd paid many times their market value to rescue them, Obama should have seized them and run them as a public utility to stop the plunder. (Whoops! He did take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now they're the worst of the worst!)
Whatever, the answer clearly won't come from the top. It will have to come from millions of angry people getting organized and pushing back, demanding that our government do what it takes to prioritize our needs above those of the super rich and the great corporations.
We need serious spending on jobs. Major spending. There is plenty to be done in a country whose infrastructure is crumbling. There are plenty of resourses, plenty of people who need the work, even plenty of money (only we don't have it.) It makes no logical sense to say we can't, except from inside the twisted logic of the "dog in the manger". (That however is the logic that is served up to us daily in our media and talk shows, made to look like common sense by highly-paid flacks who make those who disagree with them look like freaks.)
We can borrow the money to put people back to work, in which case the bankers create it by entering some numbers in a computer and charge us interest on it. (On the bright side, interest rates have never been lower.) Or the Treasury can print the money and spend it into circulation, interest free. Or we can cut the hugely wasteful spending on wars and foreign bases and spend it here; or we can tax the speculators, the super-rich and the mega-banks and big corporations, and spend the money to put people to work on the jobs that need doing. Or some combination of the above.
Unemployment and jobs are a national emergency, and for five years even Obama for all his talk has failed to treat it as such. His original stimulus, at best, was 10% of what we needed, and now it's gone. (Perhaps it's hard to go after trillions for jobs when you've already given away trillions to the criminal bankers who paid for your campaigns?)
As for the banks, after we'd paid many times their market value to rescue them, Obama should have seized them and run them as a public utility to stop the plunder. (Whoops! He did take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now they're the worst of the worst!)
Whatever, the answer clearly won't come from the top. It will have to come from millions of angry people getting organized and pushing back, demanding that our government do what it takes to prioritize our needs above those of the super rich and the great corporations.
We need serious spending on jobs. Major spending. There is plenty to be done in a country whose infrastructure is crumbling. There are plenty of resourses, plenty of people who need the work, even plenty of money (only we don't have it.) It makes no logical sense to say we can't, except from inside the twisted logic of the "dog in the manger". (That however is the logic that is served up to us daily in our media and talk shows, made to look like common sense by highly-paid flacks who make those who disagree with them look like freaks.)
We can borrow the money to put people back to work, in which case the bankers create it by entering some numbers in a computer and charge us interest on it. (On the bright side, interest rates have never been lower.) Or the Treasury can print the money and spend it into circulation, interest free. Or we can cut the hugely wasteful spending on wars and foreign bases and spend it here; or we can tax the speculators, the super-rich and the mega-banks and big corporations, and spend the money to put people to work on the jobs that need doing. Or some combination of the above.
Your choice.
But please don't choose "none of the above", because we've already tried that, and it's not working!
