Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman says that improving the economy has an easy economic solution: stimulus. Drawing on data from the Great Depression and the 14 recessions we’ve had since, Krugman argues that Government spending is the key factor to improving the economy. Of course, the Forces of Darkness (aka, the Koch brothers, the Tea Party, the Republican Party, Grover Norquist, etc.) have spent the last 50 years demonizing Government and spreading the erroneous idea that Government can do nothing right. What’s holding back the U.S. economy is politics. John Maynard Keynes was right: in times of depression and recession when private capital is frozen, only Government spending can reinvigorate the economy. Diane and I have done our best in these troubled times to stimulate the economy, but that’s not enough. Krugman insists that until Government pitches in, the U.S. economy will continue to flounder. Read End This Depression Now! and you’ll be convinced Krugman is right! GRADE: A
I try to avoid political debates, but I find myself asking conservative friends (yes, I do have them), “Would you go to a doctor who said in advance he didn’t believe medicine could work? Would you take your car to a mechanic who stated plainly that he didn’t believe in vehicle maintenance? Of course not. So why do you keep voting for people who tell you plainly that they don’t believe government can work?”
There’s no answer; but when you can convince a large segment of the middle- & working-classes to vote against their economic self-interest (as the right has done successfully in its media echo-chamber), then you do bring government to a point where it doesn’t work, which was exactly the goal of the right in the first place. Sigh!
/As usual, I’m dismounting my soapbox now.
Well said, Deb! As Krugman says, solving this Depression is an easy economic problem. But when most of the politicians no nothing about economics (and what they think they know is WRONG) it’s hard to take effective action.
Deb, I believe the republicans in congress have proved conclusively that they can keep Government from working.
Sadly, you’re right, Dan. Gridlock in Washington while millions of Americans suffer. Just re-hiring the teachers and fire fighters and police who’ve been needlessly laid off would go far to solving our economic difficulties.
I’m sold without reading it. Yesterday my dental hygienist, suffering from MS, and living close to the bone told me that she guessed Romney was too weak of a candidate to beat Obama. She said this with regret. As long as people identify with the Republicans and vote their aspirations rather than their reality we will continue to have hedge fund directors running the country.
The Republicans, Tea Party folks, and conservatives have spent billions over the past 50 years to brain-wash the middle-class and the poor, Patti. How else to explain why people would vote for politicians who will reduce or eliminate their benefits?
I hate to say this, but too many people are stupid. They listen to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and believe what they say totally, without reservation and without thought to whether what they are saying makes any sense at all. They vote their fears (gays, immigrants, Muslims, liberals) and the 1% is laughing at them all the way to the bank. It’s worked in the past and it is working now, state by state, so why stop using it?
The “austerity” budgets (cut spending on the poor, cut taxes on the rich) is a total fiasco in Europe but that doesn’t stop the Republican plan to convince Americans it is the only way to go here, cheered on by the Wall Street Journal.
It’s jsut sickening.
I don’t know if all those people are stupid, Jeff, but they certainly are ignorant. Too many voters have no clue about economics. Krugman is a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, yet no politicians are listening to him. I find that disheartening.
George, I said once before in DAPA-EM that the purveyors of neo-con rhetoric assume that the rst of us are too lazy or too stupid to question the “facts” they peddle. You may be right. Just the other day, while slamming the prsident for killing Bin Laden, Rush Limbaugh tosed off the “fact” that the salors on the aircraft carrier asked for George Bush’s MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner!
There are political wackos on the Left and the Right, Dan. I’m a middle of the road guy on most issues. I’m an economic conservative (I like balanced budgets and a well-run Government) but I’m willing to support Keysian stimulus in times of crisis. But I’m also a social liberal: I’m for gay marriage and a woman’s right to choose.
How else to explain why people would vote for politicians who will reduce or eliminate their benefits?
–Because they don’t feel they have any choice, and too often they’re right, since they don’t think they’re “allowed” to vote for anyone who isn’t an Obama/Clinton/Carter centrist Democrat, who’s going to do the above, or a Republican who will do so with even greater relish. Rights along with benefits, of course. What leftist “whackos” do we have in the Congress, btw? Certainly we have more than our share of rightist and not a few centrist flakes.
Todd, according to Peter Roff of THE US NEWS & WORLD REPORT: “The five most liberal House members are: New Jersey Democrat Rush Holt, Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore, Massachusetts Democrat John Olver, California Democrat Linda Sanchez and Illinois Democrat Jan Schakowsky.” Paul Krugman has a explanation for this dysfunctional behavior. I’ll send you his article.
US SNOOZE AND WORLD DISTORT might have a point on those five being the furthest left in the House, but even Holt isn’t all that far to the left. Contrast the borderline monarchists and Carlists of the GOP’s furthest right.
You’ll get no argument from me on the wacky Right, Todd. Ron Paul and his followers want to return to the Gold Standard. Talk about turning back the clock a hundred years!
I rather like Holt, as far as I’ve followed his work. What makes him a whacko, as opposed to the likes of Darrell Issa, much less such ex-members as Tom Tancredo?
Whackos tend to ignore logic and reason, Todd. The whackos on the Right want to return to some nostalgic Past. The whackos on the Left seem to want Government to run everything.
Again, that isn’t anything like Rush Holt or the other actual members of the House cited in that list you have. While the GOP leadership is indeed too close to US Taliban.
The defeat of Senator Lugar of Indiana because he “cooperated” with the Democrats points out how polarized and dysfunctional our political system is, Todd.
Well, no. I points out how polarized the GOP is. The Democrats continue not to learn that not standing up for themselves gains them nothing, though not standing up for their constituents does gain them corporate slush funds.
I’m reading Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, Todd. Politics worked differently back then. Today, it’s just gridlock.
Well, Johnson was using power the same way that the likes of Dick Armey have been doing in more recent years…only the Armeys have been dispensing his money only to those who would follow them slavishly.
The big difference in politics between the Johnson era and today are the billions of dollars warping our political system, Todd. Thank you, Supreme Court!
Sadly, that decision simply made above board the kind of slush funds already in play (certainly on behalf of the Kennedys, for example), and reinforced the already standing Common Law foolishness, formally introduced in Supreme Court documents in the Gilded Age, that corporations were legal persons, rather than contracts.
Yet another way the Democratic Party has failed us over the years, in letting such a Court happen when they could’ve stopped it (very briefly, they couldn’t, at least not through filibuster, which they also didn’t choose to employ).
You’re right, Todd. But I don’t think anyone realized the affect billionaires would have on the U.S. political process. They completely ruin the 2-party system and allow their surrogates like Newt and Rick to stay in the primary process when they would have run out of money under the old system.
Not without filibuster, I should’ve written.
The two-party system has been a ruin for some centuries, George. And pet candidates such as Newt are no more dangerous than the self-financed likes of Mitt and Ross.
Yes, but all those billionaires are skewing the political system, Todd. Congress used to be able to get things done. Now it’s all gridlock as our problems keep growing!
Well, as Robert Caro (no unbiased witness, to be sure) loves to note, LBJ is one of the few (if not, as Caro loves to insist, the only) Majority Leader to consistently herd the cats. Gridlock is not a new development in Congress. Of course, the Gilded Age and the Jazz Age were dominated by multimillionaires rather than billionaires, but inflation counts for something. And you see the depressions they spun us into. Memories are too short, for some odd reason.
Memories are short and greed blinds even the wealthy, Todd. The latest fiasco at J.P. Morgan proves that point.
The difference between poor boys Johnson and (!)Nixon(!) and poor boy Clinton…at least the former were never completely trusting of the rich, the way the latter was completely a toady to them.
Truman never trusted the Rich, Todd. As for Clinton, money changes everything.