by Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers:
The New York Times columnist explains why our top priority should be getting America back to work – if only Washington would stop throwing distractions in the way.
Our current obsession with slashing the deficit is getting in the way of real work that needs to be done to preserve both our economy and our democracy. In this episode of Moyers & Company, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argues that we should put aside our excessive focus on saving money, try to overcome political recalcitrance, and spend money to put America back to work. Krugman offers specific solutions to not only end what he calls a “vast, unnecessary catastrophe,” but to do it more quickly than some imagine possible. His latest book, End This Depression Now!, is both a warning of the fiscal perils ahead and a prescription to safely avoid them.
Later on the show, Bill explains how last week’s fiscal cliff deal gave tens of billions in tax breaks to Wall Street and corporations — what even the Wall Street Journal calls a “crony capitalist blowout.”
I just threw up in my mouth a little.
What obsession with slashing the debt? Where is there any evidence whatsoever of spending being cut? So far, you’re getting *exactly* what you seem to want, Moyers. Spending unrestricted by any conception of ever paying money back.
Fight against crony corporate tax breaks. I’m right there with you on that one. But if you don’t there that 25% of the federal “work” force could disappear with little disruption in services, then you’re kidding yourself. And if you don’t want to do that, then offer the legions of do nothing paper pushers with 6 prefixes to their job titles the choice of getting paid $65,000 per year instead of $130,000 or see if they can do better than that somewhere in the private sector where they desperately need an assistant deputy vice under secretary for compliance.
How did an economist win a nobel prize for basically advocating hyperinflation? What an idiot. I have noticed a lot of that in the various “elite” these days. They live in some crazy bubble that used to be reserved for those in the ivory tower of academia where they spun crazy theories that nobody would ever try in the real world. But now they get jobs like crazy Bernanke and his helecopter. Weird.