Daniele Bolelli Vs. Joe Rogan: Round 2
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy
Top Five Regrets Of The Dying
DISCUSS (1)

America’s Public Debt: The Least of Our Worries

Posted by Raymond on February 28, 2010

From Truthout:

Various political demagogues and Wall Street interests have mounted a campaign to convince Americans that despite persistent massive unemployment for the foreseeable future, more than 15 million people underwater on their home mortgages, and two unnecessary wars, what we really should be worried about is America’s national debt.

It doesn’t help that most of the media pretends not to understand the basic economics, accounting, or arithmetic of the issue. Let’s start with the economics: the Obama administration forecasts unemployment of 10.0, 9.2, and 8.2 percent, respectively, for 2010-2012. The rate does not fall to the 5.2 percent rate it considers full employment until 2018.

The difference between 10 percent unemployment and 5.2 percent is more than 7 million people without jobs. And that doesn’t count the increase in millions of people involuntarily working part time, or millions who leave the labor force because they can’t find work.

[Read more at Truthout]

Related Posts with Thumbnails
  • Posted in: , , , ,  
  • 5by5

    Yes. Debt really ISN'T our biggest problem. Indeed, if Obama reigns in spending at precisely the time he should be pumping MORE money into the economy with public works projects that create jobs (and pick up the slack when the private sector isn't hiring), then we're going to see things get even WORSE.

    As the really great article in Harper's Magazine last year pointed out, the problem wasn't that the 2009 stimulus was too big, it's that it wasn't big enough, or radical enough, to address the emergency situation at hand.

    Obama (and his corporatist advisors aren't helping in this regard – Geithner and Summers are truly dangerous to the health of the country) is still thinking like an incrementalist. That Senatorial pace is really a hindrance here. When the house is already burning, you don't sit around debating (much less asking the moron conservatives who set the fire) about how to build a fire prevention system. It's too late for that. You grab every bucket and water hose you can find, and throw it at the problem as aggressively as possible.

    But Obama is thinking like Hoover (which is what the Harper's article covers). Most people erroneously blame Hoover for the Depression, but he didn't cause it. His Republican predecessor, Calvin Coolidge did (much as Bush did in this case). Hoover just didn't act aggressively enough to stop it from getting worse. Even F.D.R. in his first term didn't act aggressively enough. It wasn't until his second term when he realized radical action was actually necessary to repair the system, and out of that was born the New Deal which yielded the greatest expansion of Middle Class prosperity in history.

    But that's not how Obama or the Washington elites are thinking, because it's not their feet in the fire. And the Republicans are still in denial that there's even a problem. Indeed some of them are arrogant enough to enjoy watching the poor suffer while they become richer, so arrogant that if they are members of that “Family” cult, they actually think God wants them to be selfish bastards and will reward them accordingly. (To them I'd say I don't think yours is the God of Abraham. Mammon maybe, but not the other dude who says, “blessed are the poor”.)

    Anyhow, the article in question is written by Kevin Baker and is entitled “Barack Hoover Obama” and I highly recommend the read:

    http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/07/0082562

    (My only issue is with the subtitle – “the best and the brightest blow it again”. Anyone characterizing Larry Summers as “the best and the brightest” is smoking something. The last economy that idiot managed was Lithuania's and he did it so poorly, that the people there actually voted back in the Communists they'd spent the previous 90 years trying to get away from, because the Reds were preferable to Summers' economic prescriptions which tripled the unemployment rate and doubled the suicide rate.)