Posts
It's my birthday this coming week (and it's going to be on the day I was born), so this would be a terrific present.
For both me and my country.
If only.
Robert Reich
Friday, November 18, 2011
The biggest question right now on Planet Washington is whether the congressional supercommittee will reach an agreement.
That’s the wrong question. Agreement or not, Washington is on the road to making budget cuts that will slow the economy, increase unemployment, and impose additional hardship on millions of Americans.
The real question is how to stop this austerity train wreck, and substitute the following:
FIRST: no cuts before jobs are back – until unemployment is down to 5 percent. Until then, the economy needs a boost, not a cut. Consumers – whose spending is 70 percent of the economy – don’t have the money to boost the economy on their own. Their pay is dropping and they’re losing jobs.
SECOND: Make the boost big enough. 14 million Americans are out of work, and 10 million are working part time who need full-time jobs. The President’s proposed jobs program is a start but it’s tiny relative to what needs to be done. It would create fewer than 2 million jobs. We need a big jobs program – rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, and including a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps.
THIRD: To pay for this, raise taxes on the super-rich. It’s only fair. Never before has so much income and wealth been concentrated at the very top, and taxes on the top so low. Go back to the 70 percent marginal tax we had before 1980. And include more tax brackets at the top. It doesn’t make sense that any income over $375,000 is taxed at the same 35 percent, even if it’s a billion dollars. And tax all sources of income at the same rate, including capital gains.
FOURTH: Cut the budget where the real bloat is. Military spending and corporate welfare. End weapons systems that don’t work and stop wars we shouldn’t be fighting to begin with, and we save over $300 billion a year. Cut corporate welfare – subsidies and special tax breaks going to big agribusiness, big oil, big pharma, and big insurance – and we save another $100 billion.
Do you hear me, Washington? Do these four things and restore jobs and prosperity. Fail to do these, and you’ll make things much, much worse.
2 comments:
Fat chance, especially given this morning's hopeless headlines about the Sueprcommittee, that anything will be done to solve this country's economic mess this year.
But Reich (and Paul Krugman and others) have the right idea:To put it in the terms of small business owners, whom the Republicans claim they want to protect, if you're hungry for business you don't eliminate your advertising budget, announce shorter store hours, and give yourself a pay raise. You invest what it takes to bring business back.
And if your economy is going down the toilet, you don't cut back on the economy and government services and give guzillionaires a tax break – the equivalent of a pay raise.
Anyway, Suze, Happy Birthday and take care of yourself. If the Republicans have their way, nobody else will.
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
Thank you, sweetheart!
You're the first.
And I appreciate it although I wouldn't mind forgetting the year.
Another crank,
S
Post a Comment