Deficits of Mass Destruction: A shell game for gutting the welfare state and redistributing wealth

[marmar]

from The Nation:



Deficits of Mass Destruction
Christopher Hayes

July 15, 2010 |


If you've been paying attention this past decade, it won't surprise you to learn that the country's policy elites are in the midst of a destructive, well-nigh unhinged discussion about the future of the nation. But even by the degraded standards of the Washington establishment, the growing panic over government debt is shocking.

First, the facts. Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth. Our long-term structural deficits will require us to control healthcare inflation the way countries with single-payer systems do.

But right now we face a joblessness crisis that threatens to pitch us into a long, ugly period of low growth, the kind of lost decade that will cause tremendous misery, degrade the nation's human capital, undermine an entire cohort of young workers for years and blow a hole in the government's bank sheet. The best chance we have to stave off this scenario is more government spending to nurse the economy back to health. The economy may be alive, but that doesn't mean it's healthy. There's a reason you keep taking antibiotics even after you start to feel better.

And yet: the drumbeat of deficit hysterics thumping in self-righteous panic grows louder by the day. Judging by its schedule and online video, this year's Aspen Ideas Festival was an open-air orgy of anti-deficit moaning. The festival is a good window into elite preoccupations, and that its opening forum featured ominous warnings of future bankruptcy from Niall Ferguson, Mort Zuckerman and David Gergen does not bode well. Nor does the fact that there was a panel called "America's Looming Fiscal Emergency: How to Balance the Books." This attitude isn't confined to pundits. The heads of Obama's fiscal commission have called projected deficits a "cancer." ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/article/37534/deficits-mass-destruction

[xchrom]

1. The People are screwed for now -

Just another of those things they'll 'fix later'.

[Nite Owl]

2. All of a sudden the WH cares

about public opinion:

David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, have decided that the public has no appetite for increased spending. "It's my job to report what the public mood is,"
http://www.thenation.com/article/37534/deficits-mass-destruction

They sure haven't been listening to the public mood on other policies like healthcare. Very telling of their goals.

[msongs]

3. bush 3 marches on nt

[Froward69]

4. For one thing the "Bush Tax cuts" should be renamed...

to the "Bush tax giveaway"... as then it robs the republicans of their favorite term... "Tax cuts" tell it like it is the Bush Tax giveaway is a large portion of or a major cause of our recession/Depression.