These were all built by and for those who will profit from them; our job is to come to accept what we’re told about them: deficit reduction; fiscal cliff; shared sacrifice; entitlements; Grand Bargain; austerity; disemployment (Lambert Strether’s excellent term); privatization; too big to fail. That’s just a partial list, of course. Feel free to add to it.
A few thoughts from others:
Robert Reich, at Nation of Change, Why We Should Stop Obsessing About the Federal Budget Deficit:
I wish President Obama and the Democrats would explain to the nation that the federal budget deficit isn’t the nation’s major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn’t be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both.
Deficit reduction leads us in the opposite direction — away from jobs and growth. The reason the ‘fiscal cliff’ is dangerous (and, yes, I know – it’s not really a ‘cliff’ but more like a hill) is because it’s too much deficit reduction, too quickly. It would suck too much demand out of the economy.
Mark Weisbrot, Real-World Economics Review, Employment – not deficit reduction – should be the first priority for federal government:
As the much-hyped ‘fiscal cliff’ looms at the end of the year, there is talk about “comprehensive tax reform” as part of a deal to achieve deficit reduction. …
But the whole debate misses the boat in so many ways that it is hard to list them all in this space. First, the ‘fiscal cliff’ is a scam. …Second, the idea that reducing the federal budget deficit or public debt should be a priority – especially at this time – is just wrong, as a matter of accounting and economics. Any deficit reduction that takes place while the economy is this weak will simply cause more unemployment and reduced income for Americans. …
The real priority of both the lame duck session and the new Congress should be creating jobs. We have more than 22 million people who are unemployed or underemployed, and the percentage of unemployed that are long-term (out of work 27 weeks or longer) has been at record levels.
Lambert Strether, at Truth Out, Grand Bargain or Great Betrayal? Reading the Tea Leaves of Fiscal Intentions for Entitlements:
Here’s what we should be hearing from Obama: ‘I guarantee that there won’t be one penny of cuts to social insurance programs, and any efficiency gains will be passed through as increased benefits.’ This is a moderate and centrist position … .
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report, Freedom Rider: Grand Bargain is the Satan Sandwich:
Alexa, Corrente, Unions Will Lead Charge To Implement ‘Obama Plan To Win On Fiscal Cliff’ – The Ed Show:
ED SCHULTZ: The President is planning to barnstorm the country. To go directly to the American people, and this time around, labor is prepared to launch an all-out effort on the air and on the ground, to backup the President’s position.
Finally, here’s a report you might want to peruse from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Pulling Apart: A State-by-State Analysis of Income: (emphasis added)
A state-by-state examination finds that income inequality has grown in most parts of the country since the late 1970s. Over the past three business cycles prior to 2007, the incomes of the country’s highest-income households climbed substantially, while middle-and lower-income households saw only modest increases.
During the recession of 2007 through 2009, households at all income levels, including the wealthiest, saw declines in real income due to widespread job losses and the loss of realized capital gains. But the incomes of the richest households have begun to grow again while the incomes of those at the bottom and middle continue to stagnate and wide gaps remain between high-income households and poor and middle-income households. As of the
late 2000s (2008-2010, the most recent data available at the time of this analysis):In the United States as a whole, the poorest fifth of households had an average income of $20,510, while the top fifth had an average income of $164,490 — eight times as much. In 15 states, this top-to-bottom ratio exceeded 8.0. In the late 1970s, in contrast, no state had a top-to-bottom ratio exceeding 8.0.
The average income of the top 5 percent of households was 13.3 times the average income of the bottom fifth. The states with the largest such gaps were Arizona, New Mexico, California, Georgia, and New York, where the ratio exceeded 15.0.
The report and analysis argues that while there are “useful steps” states can take,
… federal as well as state policies will have to play an important role if low- and middle-income households are to stop receiving steadily smaller shares of the income pie.
Federal, state, and local, policies will all continue playing roles. From my perspective, what we need to do is pay very careful attention to who “builds” those policies, and when indicated, refuse to come to accept them as inevitable, the best deal possible, lesser of two evil solutions, etc. Policies built by the Two Party Front for the Oligarchy are always about their best interest. Not ours. Not those of “this great nation of ours.” Theirs.
(Income Inequality Map via Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Do I have to repeat that? And please, no hamburger flipping jobs. No Walmart jobs. What Americans need are good paying jobs that will support families and pay the bills. The economy needs people who have money to spend (you know, become consumers so other people can have jobs). Look to Europe and see what’s happening with their austerity programs. That could be us. What I fear is that the GOP is going to throw the monkey wrench into any proposal for creating good jobs.
It’s amazing to me, Jane, how unemployment, underemployment, and Strether’s accurate disemployment, are so often ignored.
All this nattering about “fiscal responsibility” seems to assume that an economy is entirely made up of fungible assets – stuff that can be moved around or transformed as need be in an instant. Yet people who have been out of work for a while now can tell you that isn’t true. Their skills erode, as does an employer’s willingness to take a chance on them, the longer they’ve been out of work. Machinery and buildings that have been unused, and often thus unmaintained, also deteriorate over time.
These things all matter far more than considerations about money, particularly for a national government that issues its own fiat currency, as ours does. People who obsess about deficits and fiscal responsibility fall into one of two broad categories, as far as I’m concerned:
1. People who haven’t bothered to educate themselves on the issue, and on economics generally, or
2. People who stand to gain from all that “fiscal responsibility”.
Talking with people about this issue is like talking with bigots about people they don’t “like” – they just know what they know, and what really is true about the subject must be a mirage or something, because it’s not what they know to be “true”. They insist that households and businesses can’t spend beyond what money they have on hand at the moment, when clearly they do. Any business has its ups and downs, and financing is one of the ways they deal with it. What do people think stock is, for crying out loud? Our debt’s almost equal to the GDP? So what? It used to be that you could get a mortgage that was at least three times your household income. Now, that figure is more like five or six.They insist that we’ll end up like Greece, when our situation isn’t remotely like Greece’s.
Money and labor are both plentiful and inexpensive right now. For a government that actually wants to accomplish things, there’s never been a better time to buy than right now. Yet what our government is discussing is nonsense. I think that’s at least partly because many of us out here beyond the Beltway are talking nonsense, too.
As an added thought in that first paragraph, let me note the irony that, for a national government with its own fiat currency, the most fungible economic asset of all is money. It really shouldn’t be a consideration right now. In fact, in Modern Monetary Theory thinking, government budget surpluses take money out of the economy. That might be good monetary policy in some situations, but it’s certainly not now. Right now, we need work, and there’s plenty of work to do.
Hence my frustration.
Thanks for some very thoughtful points, Cujo. Among those points is that about “talking nonsense,” within and outside the Beltway. Not that it’s new, but at least of part of the nonsense seems to grow directly out of the apparently automatic reactions to certain ideas, even certain words. Like, for example, “deficit.”
Definition of FASCISM
1. often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
Definition of DEMOCRACY
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2: a political unit that has a democratic government
On January 21, 2013, liberals and progressives should begin a project entitled 55/5. The 55/5 project would have a simple goal: to run the 55 most liberal politicians we can find across the country with a serious chance of 1. taking down a blue dog Democrat and 2. winning a House seat in the general election, and to find and the five most liberal candidates for the senate and win. Obama touts the organizational prowess of his OFA; tell him the fucking bill is due on his reelection. The Democratic Party is going to field 55/5 with or without him. And he doesn’t want to become a politician without a party,
Any questions?
Go 55/5!
And good for you using, and defining, the “f” word.
Please don’t be offended by my skepticism, but I feel like we’ve been down this road before. The first couple of years I was blogging, it seemed like half the time I was writing about progressive candidates like these. What generally happened was one of two things:
- the DLC/Blue Dog contingent made sure they failed
- or, rarely, they managed to win the election, then did nothing of value thereafter.
Since the party “leadership” will fight these folks tooth and nail (see Halter, Bill, and Lamont, Ned), where is the $100 million or so required for this effort going to come from? What’s more, if these folks do manage to be elected, is there a penalty for failure to do anything progressive while they’re in office? How will we get the backs of all these candidates? Nothing kills one’s political viability like recruiting a candidate, then leaving him to deal with the mud and the madness on his own.
Efforts like this one take a lot of support and money. What’s the plan?
The current High Priest of the left, Nate Silver, has stated the the Ds chances of retaking the House is very low. This means the Party can’t hold risking taking back the house with left of center candidates over liberals heads in 2014. If we can shake up the house and the senate in 2014, 55/5 would surely do it, then, in 2016 our nominee must move back to the left.