Welcome to the plutocracy.

[poltr1]

Life sure is boring down here on earth
It's all full of work and no thanks
The rich folks get richer and the poor still are poor
And the middle class work for the banks

-Terry McGovern, "Beam Me Up Scotty"


OK. So President Obama made a deal with the devil Congressional Republicans. Caving in to those political bullies and their demands for continued tax cuts for the wealthy -- the 1% who make 23% of the GDP, according to independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.


I really hope Obama knows what he's doing.

I trusted him on the stimulus package. Sure, it provided more jobs for those in the road construction industry. But for folks like me -- bupkis. Where are the jobs for a degreed computer professional with 20 years of experience? All I've been able to get since 2008 are short-term jobs; nothing permanent. Jobs from employers that don't provide health care insurance. When I had my heart attack back in May, I had no coverage. Now I'm looking at a mountain of medical bills that I don't know if I'll ever be able to repay.

Two days ago, I saw a bar graph allegedly from the US Office of Management and Budget showing the annual budget deficits over the past several years, along with projected deficits. (I can't find it on the OMB website, so I'm linking to that graph from the website of the conservative Heritage Foundation, who apparently are picking up that statistic and running with it.) The bar graph appears to show that the deficit for Obama's first year in office dwarfed GWB's lat year. But then, I'm reminded of Bejamin Disraeli's famous quote: "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." And I don't know what to believe about this. I do know that fiscal year 2009 ran from October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009. That was still Bush's budget.

Meanwhile, I'm seeing myself slowly marginalized from the middle class to the working class into the lower class. And I have a bad feeling about this.

Comments

[billroper]

It turns out that the FY 2009 budget was not passed by Congress until after President Obama took office. That was because the Democratic controlled Congress deliberately held it up until after the election, correctly expecting to be dealing with a President of their own party.

It was signed by President Obama on March 11, 2009.

So, yes, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. And trying to pin the 2009 Federal budget on Bush would be one of them. :)

(Which is not to say that the original TARP legislation wasn't enacted and signed late on Bush's watch.)

[patoadam]

I think that the government needs to run a deficit under two circumstances: recession and necessary war. (I think the last necessary war was WW II; YMMV.) In a recession, the government runs a deficit because tax payments are lower and expenses such as unemployment benefits are higher. Also, additional government spending can help stimulate the economy when demand from the private sector is faltering.

What bothers me is so-called structural deficits: deficits in good times. According to Berkeley economist Brad DeLong, throughout U.S. history, we ran up deficits during recessions and wars and paid them down (at least as a percentage of GDP) in good times. Up until Ronald Reagan, that is. From Reagan to the present, with Clinton the sole exception, we had deficits even during periods of peace and prosperity.

So the Obama deficit doesn't bother me. He inherited the Bush recession and two wars. (If you say that we should get the bleep out of Afghanistan and Iraq right away, I won't argue with you.) In fact, Nobel-prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says that the economic stimulus plan (ARRA, not TARP; I don't understand TARP well enough to have an informed opinion) was too small.

Before I get off my soapbox, I'll mention another thing that bothers me: politicians who say they want to reduce the deficit and also want to reduce taxes. You can't do both. This is usually a cynical ploy to reduce government services to the middle class and the poor and cut taxes for the rich.

Some excellent comments by osewalrus on the tax cut deal here.