The Urgency of Growth - E.J. Dionne - WaPo [View all]

[Bill USA]

a very good article by a very good writer. He's getting a good deal of flack from jack-ass conservative schmucks, in case anybody would like to add some rational comments to his article.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-its-about-growth-not-the-deficit/2013/01/27/d71fa160-68ba-11e2-af53-7b2b2a7510a8_story.html

If you care about deficits, you should want our economy to grow faster. If you care about lifting up the poor and reducing unemployment, you should want our economy to grow faster. And if you are a committed capitalist and hope to make more money, you should want our economy to grow faster.

The moment’s highest priority should be speeding economic growth and ending the waste, human and economic, left by the Great Recession. But you would never know this because the conversation in our nation’s capital is being held hostage by a ludicrous cycle of phony fiscal deadlines driven by a misplaced belief that the only thing we have to fear is the budget deficit.

Let’s call a halt to this madness. If we don’t move the economy to a better place, none of the fiscal projections will matter. The economic downturn ballooned the deficit. Growth will move the numbers in the right direction.

Moreover, the whole point of an economy is to provide everyone with real opportunities for gainful employment and economic advance — the generational “relay” that San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro affectingly described at last year’s Democratic convention. When we talk only about deficits, we take our eyes off the prize.

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