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Paul Krugman and the New Austerity: Get Used to It
“American voters are being given a choice between a representative of the public sector and a representative of the financial sector, when they want less of what both groups are doing.”
John Dizard
Financial Times
July 22, 2012
London – Traveling in the EU in these days of economic crisis is a surreal experience. The Summer Olympic Games in London are in full swing, with hundreds of private corporate sponsors seeking to achieve branding nirvana before the millions of people expected to watch the summer games between now and September. Belying claims in many quarters that the economic world is about to end, the UK seems ready to achieve yet another triumph when it comes to sales and marketing.
Politicians in the UK fret about austerity, but as in the US, the cost cutting is mostly falling on the public sector. Non-financial corporations in the EU and the US are in relatively good shape, suggesting that growth in 2013 and beyond may be better than is commonly expected. In the public sector in the UK and elsewhere, however, workers are facing a grim future as excessive salaries and headcount are being brought back into line with private industry and true need.
A growing number of cities in the US seeking protection in bankruptcy, for example, and are doing so in order to reduce wages to something like parity with similar levels in the private sector. When you recall that public sector workers in the US and EU alike make 2x the level of compensation paid to comparable workers in private industry, the task ahead to bring the global fiscal situation back into balance becomes clear.
“Six of the 17 countries that use the euro currency are in recession,” CBS News reports ominously. “The U.S. economy is struggling again. And the economic superstars of the developing world — China, India and Brazil — are in no position to come to the rescue. They're slowing, too.” And this is all true, but our friends in the Big Media rarely point out that it is in the public sector in the US and other nations where most of the pain is being felt.
In nations such as China, India and the EU where the state sector is predominant, the perceived economic pain is obviously worse – especially if you are a politician whose future livelihood is tied in some way to an endless increase in public spending and related economic activity. The bailouts in the US and EU alike are not so much for the holders of bad debt as for the politicians whose careers will end as and when the debt defaults.
Of course, nations like China and India still claim to be growing at rates that American politicians can only dream about – that is, if you believe the bogus economic statistics issued by these corrupt regimes. In a world where political fortunes are tied to perceived economic vitality, statistics regarding rates of growth in employment and output should be suspect. Yet for reasons that are all too obvious, institutional investors seem too willing to accept the self-serving economic nonsense as a good pretext for making asset allocation choices into nations that neither respect property rights nor international legal norms.
In the US, luminaries such as Paul Krugman complain about an economic “depression” and suggest massive new public spending programs to address it. Again, our esteemed Nobel laureate is correct, but somehow he fails to explain that most of the economic pain is being felt among the public sector constituencies that underpin the Democratic Party.
Since the Great Depression and subsequent New Deal, the liberal tendency in American politics has embedded itself in the public sector. The poor imitation of Euro-fascism created by FDR with the New Deal is all about creating mandates for bureaucracy and public sector workers and unions. But the “New Austerity” so fearful to Krugman and his liberal comrades is really about ridding America, at least, of the terrible legacy of FDR’s love affair with European models of political economy.
When you hear about a city or county rolling back excessive wages or retirement benefits for public sector workers, remember that this is the bedrock foundation of American liberalism. Or as I told my friend and diehard New Dealer Bill Janeway many years ago, being an American liberal is a coward’s route to socialism. Needless to say, Bill has stopped speaking to me.
As the US public sector is forced to realign its economic load from 25% of GDP down to something closer to the 18% actually covered by tax revenues, the political fortunes of American liberals will shrink accordingly. With the shrinkage of the public sector, so too the political fortunes of the Democratic Party will also evaporate.
Krugman and his fellow Democrats are haunted by the ghost of Al Smith, the hapless Democratic presidential candidate who unsuccessfully sought the White House three times prior to the ascension of FDR and the New Deal. And the saddest part of all is that it was Barack Obama, a supposed liberal Democrat from Illinois, who set in motion the end of the New Deal.
By supporting a “temporary” holiday for employer contributions to the bankrupt Social Security “trusts funds,” Obama has started the unraveling of the financial fraud foisted upon Americans 80 years ago by FDR. Indeed, you have to feel sorry for Krugman and his ilk. Far from achieving a second “New Deal” under Barack Obama, American liberals have instead faced something that looks like the blessed era of Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, when the Money Trusts controlled American politics.
After winning the White House four years ago, the paragons of the “progressive” fascism we know as American liberalism have been forced to watch as the large banks have continued to call the shots. Obama is no “progressive,” Krugman whines, but instead the errand boy of the big bank financial cartel that controls much of the US economy. The truth about American liberals like Krugman is that they are really defenders of big banks and the corrupt corporate state.
The latest Krugman rant in the New York Review of Books, “Getting Away with It,” is notable because it documents the control of the too-big-to-fail banks over the US political process. In particular, Krugman and his sidekick Robin Wells nicely confirm our view that former Citigroup Chairman, Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO Robert Rubin continues to call the political shots inside the White House.
In a perhaps too revealing review of Noam Scheiber’s new book, “The Escape Artists: How Obama’s Team Fumbled the Recovery,” Krugman and Wells note:
“Scheiber starts with the influence Wall Street exerted over the assembly of that economic team. In its early stages, Scheiber tells us, Obama’s campaign relied for policy advice on “obscure academics, contrarian gadflies, and past-their-prime bureaucrats,” like Austan Goolsbee, a young economics professor from the University of Chicago, and Paul Volcker, the octogenarian though still vigorous former chairman of the Federal Reserve. But by September 2008, another economic group had formed and begun competing for influence, composed of “well-heeled insiders. Most [of them] had worked for former Clinton Treasury secretary Robert Rubin.” Rubin had been a partner at Goldman Sachs before joining the Clinton administration; after leaving, he became a director and counselor, and then chairman, of Citigroup.”
The reason political creatures like Rubin and his colleagues at Goldman Sachs care about exercising control over the White House is that politics has always been the mother’s milk of the Boys of Broad Street. Start to reduce the size and scope of government, both at the state and federal level, and the Goldman banksters will have to find a new game to play. End the ability of all the TBTF banks to obtain bailouts in Washington and second-rate investment banking firms like Goldman Sachs may cease to exist altogether.
Without a steady flow of bailouts and subsidies from Washington, all of the large New York banks are in serious trouble – but the smaller firms will die first. At the end of the day, Goldman Sacks is a customer of JPMorgan Chase just as Bear, Stearns was once upon a time. As the flow of largesse from Washington ebbs, look for JPMorgan to focus more and more attention on taking revenue and market share away from the Goldman bankers and other smaller firms.
The difference between, say, Barclays or UBS, and Goldman and its larger cousin Morgan Stanley, is that these latter investment banks are not really banks. They lack the secure deposit funding base and large balance sheet necessary to compete with the universal banks in the brave new work of Basel III. We should look for Morgan Stanley to eventually spin off Smith Barney and then sell the rest of itself to the Japanese. But like Lehman Brothers, who wants or needs to own Goldman Sachs?
As Jamie Dimon looks to rebuild his reputation and income statement, just watch the bankers at JPMorgan go after what remains of the Goldman franchise. Have you heard the joke about Goldman getting into “private banking?” This seems to be yet another indication that the visibility on revenue and liquidity at Goldman Sachs is growing worse with each passing day. And notice that Citigroup, which has recently been adding to its banking and trading staff, is right behind JPMorgan in terms of attacking the market share of Goldman and other relatively small non-bank financial firms.
So when you hear Paul Krugman and his analogs in Europe complain about the lack of a response to the New Austerity, remember that their pain is mostly political. Krugman worries that his fellow “progressives,” really fascists in sheep’s clothing, are most worried about their loss of political power rather than the economic standing of their fellow citizens. When you hear Krugman and the other New Dealers at the New York Review of Books whining about the lack of federal spending, there is a simple answer: “Get used to it.”
And as the flow of subsidies from Washington slowly ebbs, the TBTF banks will begin to feed upon one another to win the remaining private business on Wall Street. Look for the largest universal banks such as JPMorgan and Citi to eventually win that contest, with Morgan Stanley likely getting sold and Goldman Sachs, like Bear and Lehman before them, being fed to the proverbial wolves.
In the event, we can take some small comfort that most of the folks at Goldman Sachs are really no different that the Krugmanite socialists who populate the world of American economics. They want something for nothing, this something stolen from the pockets of working Americans via the coercive power of the state. The New Austerity, far from being a disaster, is really about restoring American values and ending the liberal political choke hold of Washington over all facets of American life. Despite the very real pain that the coming adjustment entails, individuals who believe in personal and economic freedom should rejoice at the New Austerity.
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Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History
“The line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator.” John T. Flynn
more
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/09/01/obama-hitler-and-exploding-the-biggest-lie-in-history/
You highlight the problem with simplistic representations of political ideologies. If the left wing is international socialism (communism) why is the right wing national socialism? Where does the ideology of small government fit into your definition when you use a one-dimensional scale?
By my reckoning, anyone suggesting, as you just did, that fascism is a right wing ideology is clearly unwilling to entertain the truth. Get out of your one-dimensional mind.
Yes, fascism is about having a small public sector. Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were famous for disbanding their governments once they took power.
The oversized public sector helped get these overt sociopaths into power. Once the useful idiots were no longer useful, they were either liquidated or fired.
Obviously,
you regard the police, military and the millions of slave laborers as not "government employees",
and that the forced labor in the government -funded warfare & armaments industries should at most be only counted as "privatized".
As with all things liberal (er, now maybe "progressive"?) he who controls the meaning of the words controls the outcome of the debate.
So, just what is the meaning of the word "austerity" in a Keynesian, fiat money, infinite debt context?
To review: government cronies and private sector cronies like public employee unions or social welfare NGOs, or green companies like Solyindra collude to have government fund a program. This morning's example came from a fund that BHO proposes to set up where thousands of teachers would be given a federal bonus to "encourage achievement". The proposal of course expands in a few years to hundreds of thousands of teachers for few billion dollars.
Of course we are running a budget deficit so we either print it or borrow the money from some other country that prints it. So thousands of teachers and a proportionate number of administrators become dependent at least in part for their salary from this program. What is unsaid is that they are all members of the same few unions and will be reliable contriubtors to the campaigns of candidates who promise to keep this program going, but enough of the totally unfounded conspiracy theories.
Anyway, all these billions are borrowed or printed up in full accord with Keynesian Economics. Now the proverbial can reaches the end of the road and starts to fall off the proverbial cliff. Politicians rush to propose "austerity", meaning program cutbacks. Their answer: cut this program from one billion a year to a half billion. We are still running a budget deficit and borrowing and printing, only under "austerity" we are borrowing and printing less. More important, the number of people who are dependent upon government continues to grow, only at a slower pace. The debt continues to accumulate and the currency continues to be diluted and inflated, only under the liberal concept of "austerity", we just do it a bit less. Pay down the debt to a "sustainable" level? Not if we can get away with it.
If these folks flop around on the floor in agony for just reducing the rate of deficit spending, they are going to be in intensive care should we ever have to really live within our means.
I suggest you review what is happening in Spain right now to see a glimpse of the limits of government deficit spending to pay for entitlements and public sector employees. The U.S. is a little behind the time history compared to Spain but the same market forces will eventually be brought to bear on the U.S.
i think the ECB should hire bands of roving soccer hooligans to go around europe breaking windows to stimulate GDP
What austerity would that be? - Ned
A good read.
Gut the govt. they just waste taxpayers money.
bravo for being an Oligarchy shill. Liberal fascism is just the cover for corpocracy fascism. You are mixing your metaphors and you can't tell who runs the show from the errand boys.
THE issue in the first world is PRIVATE DEBT; four times bigger than public debt and all hidden in addition in the derivative off balance sheet nebulous; as well the 25 T of past wealth stashed in tax havens by those who built this model over thirty years. Its wind down is what is at stake today. Public sector is the side show.
Get your FACTS rights and understand who runs Pax Americana; then we'll talk about finger pointing and what fascism means in the power equation.
The whole premise of this article is wrong. Its US Big Business that has created the corpo-fascist model and the government sector are their handmaidens. Since 1913, since the FED, a private bank took over the most powerful monetary system ever created, this has been written in the wind. And now its gone global. It is the disease of the times.
The government institutions are now caught in the cross fire of serving either the people or the Oligarchs. As private debt is monstrous they have no choice. The reset if the system collapses is beyond their comprehension as they do not control the power; the Oligarchs do in their tax havens.
So it means the night of the long knives if the austerity comes big time. Nobody knows how that will end; whence the can kicking. The Titanic of corrupt capitalism has hit the iceberg and there are no solutions; except the inevitable.
As the Shaddocks used to say in the 70s: if there is no solution then there is no problem!
Thats where we are today; in denial and print till hell freezes over!
If you ask them to install austerity they and their Big Business bosses go to the wall!
Not on! Never since Rome did the Oligarchs commit suicide to please "general interest".
It has to be taken from them by due process or by force!
...Its US Big Business that has created the corpo-fascist model and the government sector are their handmaidens...
Great Hades Ghost Squire, have yu taken leave of yur senses? Has there been an outbreak of suspect truffles there in the Midi?
Whilst Merikans may have many sins to account for, creating the model yu speak of is not one of them...in fact, Merikans have been rather slow learners on the time scale that yu have chosen to emphasize...the German Kartels that were effortlessly profiting even in the midst of world wide Depression had to export their own managers into the American subsidiaries that they ruthlessly bought up through their straw men like the Dulles Bros etc., because the American bizness class was not sufficiently schooled in the hard-core anti-competitive ethos that had been so well refined on the continent and in the City of London!
Indeed, in banking, as well as industry, it was the Europeans who always led the way to nefarious practices and corrupting of the political class...the Americans were somewhat rubes at the game. Certainly, they caught on and caught up, post WW2, but again, only with the help of Operation Sunrise, the Gehlen Organization, and the thousands of nazi apparatchiks imported to infect the organs of government at all levels with the kind of cross-pollination of korruption\kronyism\kleptocracy that we witness the final flowering of today...
in which "Private Debt" has indeed become "Public Debt"...erasing the false distinction yu raise, and giving the day to Whalen as winner in the wider-angle writing contest that yu have thrown yurself into on unequal terms Mr. Falek. "Government institutions" are caught in nothing other than the inevitable consequence of what he has correctly described as the fascist business model...seize control of public tax revenue and use it to enforce yur will over those entrusted with it's disbursement.
The whores in Washington are not "handmaidens" anymore that a hooker is a hausfrau....they are the paid agents of the dual-citiizened moneypower and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
I don't buy that time line. Sorry. Since 1945 the US Oligarchs and US government run the world.
They controlled the three vital axes to build their current matrix : MIC, Oil monopoly feeding the Car/consumer product/plastics model, the BW money line and its subsequent bastardised off-shoot post 1971 the USD-Petrodollar hegemony.
So your rant about the Euro Khazar conspiracy is overstretched like an Edgar Allen Poe or Arthur Conan Doyle novel.
You see a Khazarian Professor Moriarty behind every tree and your valiant Sherlock Holmes spends his time chasing this incarnation of evil around the world.
Wake up, theoretical extrapolation meets facts and since 1945 they ONLY spell ONE thing : Pax Americana hegemony.
How the Pax Americana power structure has morphed and the power shift has oscillated back from public sector under FDR in post WW2 reality, to the FIRE Oligarchy under RR and successors is the historical thread of the post 1945 age.
The three historical axes have now evolved into the post industrial conundrum of outsouced industrial output to third world surrogates and first world concentration in the Internet economy and service sectors. The current Achilles heal of this structural imbalance lies in the fact that hyperconsumerism has hit a resource and energy/ecology constrained asymptote. Back to the drawing board, and the world bleeds as long as a new power structure and paradigm does not emerge; all swamped in mega fiat reserve currency debt, used and abused by the US Oligarchs to socialise debts and privatise profits world wide, pauperising the middle classes of first world in the process. Thus destroying the bedrock of western democracy. The eye of this construct is in DC/WS nowhere else.
We have amply commented on that evolution here. It is the mother of this current crisis of capitalism. As for the Oligarchy construct of world order without boundaries and nation states, I do agree on that. Although I will insist that construct was planned and executed by the US Oligarchs and their key players sitting in US government since Bush Senior days when the Wolfowitz doctrine of NWO was first formulated, and the Oligarchy took over the government in front of our very eyes.
I'd eat a little humble pie if I were you, and revert to a less one track minded obsessive analysis.
We are collectively heading to places where we've never been; just like in the 1930s.
This needs to be said -- over and over -- to the pom-pom wavers on each side of the Atlantic!! In fact, I'm going to say it over and over for you:
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
... and that klique is entirely free of the boundaries of the nation state!
thank yu.
I believe that, with the possible exception of the anonymous Han Citizen who populates the more outre seats of this establishment, yu have hammered home the message to the entire assemblage.
"According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a federal statistics-gathering agency, federal worker compensation in 2009 averaged $123,049, which was double the private-sector average of $61,051."
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/nov/11/rand-paul...
I don't have the average CEO/executive compensation to avergae private worker but it must show a large gap also.
you don't seem to understand what the word Oligarch means. Look at the list of millionaires in the Senate/Congress for starters, then in WS. 25 T of hot money stashed away. Are we talking the same economic language?
All those bureaucrats have their pensions in funds that are being burned every day since 2008. The financial world uses those 50 T pension funds as back up for their crazy casino games and its all going to melt!
So even the state pension schemes are toast in this inevitable meltdown! Who do you think is running this crazy show???
Not those statist serfs, admitedly well paid relative to the small private sector entrepreneur. (I should know that!)
But the statists have taken the bread crumbs from the oligarchy fest and will lose it all as its all debt scammed and thus planned since thirty years. THEY know what they've done and its just too bad for all the losers; as long as its not THEM!
Right on.
Coming up: Slaughter as Stimulus.
"Inevitably, having surrendered to militarism as an economic doctrine, we will do what other countries have done. We will keep alive the fears of our people of the aggressive ambitions of other countries and we will ourselves embark upon imperialistic enterprises of our own."
--- John T. Flynn´s chilling prediction in 1944
As We Go Marching
mises.org/books/aswegomarching.pdf
rcwhalen is channeling ayn rand
Hardly.
Rand was a dyed in the wool Trotskyite bolshi, who didn't leave Soviet Russia until her mind was inflamed with the kind of "new realism" artistic heresy that catered to its masters by portraying rippling sinews grasping hammers or sickles, mile high concrete monuments to the 'new man' and tortured portrayals of landscapes turned into dead industrial wastelands.
All of which aesthetic bankruptcy came out in her books, along with labored rhetoric and paeans to non-existent peoples and principles....delivered in a style as subtle and nuanced as a ton of bricks/
Whalen has nailed the present scene in dying Merika...with some of the best writing I've seen here for some time....
and
All pretense. All the time. Good job RC.
Since when has "good writing" been important at ZH. The best exposes here are usually accompanied by the worst writing. Shows what you know. Hah.
...The best exposes here are usually accompanied by the worst writing. Shows what you know. Hah...
I see. Well, then, I stand corrected.
Obviously yu are one of the 'bread n circus' crew here. I look forward to yur next bon mot with the appropriate mixture of awe and trepidation !
+1 Agreed, most excellent.
It has to be taken from them by due process or by force!
I am thinking force would be more fun. Rope, lanturn and pitchforks.
What due process?
Just read where and Indian mother (feather not dot) got 12 yrs. for selling $31 of hooch to an UC.
Where's Corzine?
"They have a club, and you're not in it."
G. Carlin
Right on.
Oligatchy has always been corp-oligarchy !
Bravo
More bilge from Whalen who stopped analysing a long time ago to become a water carrier for the Ayn Rand crowd.
USA's-modernity's problem has nothing to do with credit markets which (believe it or not) are functioning perfectly. Right now the gauge on credit market control panel is set on 'bankrupt'.
USA's-modernity's problems cannot be solved by cutting the public sector or expanding it either. Public sector deficits are private sector surpluses, needed service for private sector debts! When the public sector ceases to run deficits the private sector crashes: see 'Eurozone'! (You can cut the public sector but where are the business' customers going to come from? Credit? Remember the credit market is set on 'bankrupt'.)
USA's-modernity's problems are self-solving. The current leadership impasse does not effect outcomes which are -- as seen on the credit market indicator -- set on 'bankrupt'.
USA's-modernity's problems are physically structured. Our industries do not pay for themselves but are credit-dependencies. Once credit has bankrupted itself completely (because of the absence of real industrial productivity) the means to industry will vanish and we will be left with what we can do by ourselves. (Not much so it seems ...)
Whalen is a fool, every word out his mouth/keyboard is a distraction, part of the blame game. Send him to his room without lunch.
Wake me up when someone, somewhere, says to a 'public "servant"', "Your pay and benefits are reduced by 85%." And the other 85% of you are fired.
We hear all this crap about austerity. To my knowledge, no government employee, anywhere (Greece included), has been *fired*, and most certainly none have had pay and/or benefits reduced in the slightest. In fact, raises continue apace as if nothing has happened.
FIRE THE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
you are an idiot, over 640,000 public sector workers have been fired in the US alone in the last few years IDIOT
you are an idiot, over 640,000 public sector workers have been fired in the US alone in the last few years IDIOT
And we are still hemorrhaging our children's future...
Reminiscent of my proposed solution to education costs, well, in addition de-certifying the teachers unions. On the admin side, line'em up, have 'em count off. Fire the odds on the spot, put the evens on 90-day probation.
Ooh, like the Roman practice of decimation. I would have them take a proficiency test in the subjects they are supposed to teach. The bottom 10% of scores on that test get fired, like with the old GE business model. Replace the 10% with fresh-hire teachers who can pass the test.
HI RUSH !!!!!
How ya doing? Nice to see you starting fire from nothing, you big ol' devilish guy. Hope all is 'right with you. Say, hate to ask but how is that cocaine habit doing in these austier times? Still have that mega yacht? Bet your glad gas is down, or whoever you get to pay the bill. Well take care.
Quite frankly I'm sick and tired of hearing austerity for any J6P while CEOs, bankers, mayors, congressmen, senators and president don't have their pay and benefits cut. Austerity begins at the top and as far as I'm concerned, Americans should fight it with every breath in their body until their leaders fucking LEAD by example and cut their own compensation by at least 50%. Why is it most of you chumps parrot that pay should be cut for ANYONE without first DEMANDING that the insolvent banks be busted up and all executives banned from the industry for life as a minimum, CEOs pay cut commensurate to the amount of cutting that needs to be done to their average worker and all executive/legal positions in a municipality either cut by some percentage or eliminated altogether? I don't even want to fucking hear the words austerity and middle class mentioned ever again until these things are done first. Nor should you. Don't even get me started on military and entitlement expenditures and all the contracts associated with both of them. The military is just another branch of the free shit army at this point.
Couldn't agree more. Cut defense in half, close the overseas bases, and tell the hundreds of thousands of "heroes" on the government teat to GET A JOB IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR, like all patriotic Americans apparently should. Defense is the NUMBER ONE government expenditure pig--SLASH IT.
No dispute about slashing War Inc.,
but the trillion$ ladled to the financial sector exceed even the military largesse, and also must be slashed.
I don't disagree, but you could eliminate the entire mililtary budget and the country would still be running a deficit.
The spenders (CONgress) needs to slash the entitlements including; medicare/medicaid, Social Security, Welfare, et al; and take an axe to all the other departments like usda, epa, fhwa, education, etc... The overhead is way too high, and far too unproductive.
madcows
you are another who has fallen for the elitist propaganda that the problem is overpaid librarians and garbage collectors, and "unproductive" sick and elderly.
Instead of noticing that the transfer and concentration of wealth has been UPWARD, not downward,
Instead of noting the government handouts to War Inc and the financial syndicate, to the detriment of useful infrastructure spending,
Instead of noting who actually make policies such as the trade agreements favoring global corporations and outsourced sweat shops,
Instead of noting the useless Prohibition II, Homeland Policing, and world's biggest prison system,
Instead of noting the unemployment, illnesses, and disabilities caused by the above as well as industrial foods and the health care racket,
you and others fall for the not-so-subtle appeals to vanity, arrogance, envy, and contempt
- and fall for the ridiculous clap-trap that everything would be OK if only workers were paid less (or not at all),
if the sick and elderly weren't treated so "generously"(lol),
and if the rich and the big corporations they head
could do business without restrictions,
and keep all the money they can get.
Wikipedia - 2011 fed budget numbers:
The federal budget for FY 2011 was $3.6 triillion.
The DoD budget was $700 billion
SS was $725 billion.
Medicade/care was $825 billion.
The deficit was $1.56 trillion.
You can eliminate the entire military and still be $856 billion in the red.
ALL programs need to be slashed, not just the military. what' don't you understand about that?
Public school teachers consume about $500 billion/year in salaries and bennefits. I bet Bill Gates could figure out a better way to spend that.
Spastica
so, just fire all the teachers and give the taxes collected to a multi-billionaire.
Not all of us are so disposed toward plutocracy and autocracy.
By your logic, should we just have an autocratic billionaire or cabal run the entire nation? ...
ooh wait, isn't that the way it is already?
so, just fire all the teachers and give the taxes collected to a multi-billionaire.
Well, yes; I think that's pretty much the plan. Of course these teachers will be hired back at a fraction of their current compensation, so they'll be OK. Somebody has to be austere.
McSchools are nearly here and they'll be as focused on "education" as much as McDonald's is focused on nutrition. Not that current state schools are particularly focused on education, either. As a consolation, McSchools will likely be immensely popular and profitable, and we can hardly say that about state schools, huh?
An educated populace is a liability to the state.
mea culpa
apparently I missed the sarcasm in your first comment.
I'm always sarcastic.
Except there; I wasn't being sarcastic there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjMYQyhjiYA
Firing gov't employees will make very little difference in the budgets. The real waste is in entitlement spending. As much as I agree most gov't employees are paid too much, they're more deserving than those living off welfare and unemployment benefits. At least the gov't employees have to be at work 40 hrs and many do some beneficial work.
Firing gov't employees will make very little difference in the budgets. The real waste is in entitlement spending.
Tell me that with a straight face while 60% of the workforce is employed by the government.
False paradigm. Fire them.