NPR reports that it cannot locate a single small business owner whose income exceeds $1,000,000 and who will say that a tax rise will reduce the likelihood that they’ll hire a new employee. This, despite the GOP’s insistence that taxes on millionaires will absolutely pummel “job creators.” Buehler? Buehler?
I have not read the paper, but have read its summary, and I believe The Way Forward provides a very compelling argument for what we should be doing to get the economy back on track. One quote:
Only the policymakers of the 1930s, then, faced a challenge as complex and daunting as that we now face. Notwithstanding the magnitude of the challenge, however, this paper argues that there is a way forward. We can get past the present impasse, provided that we start with a better diagnosis of the crisis itself, then craft cures that are informed by that diagnosis.5 That is what we aim here to do.
via The Way Forward | NewAmerica.net.
Unfortunately, while The Way Forward has received acclaim from a wide range of economists, those in the know believe that our current political environment makes it a non-starter. Our children, and their children, will rightfully blame our generation for the damage we are about to do.
While Congress is perfectly capable of rushing through Bills to solve non-existent problems — a prohibition on regulating farm dust, as one example, and stopping millionaires from collecting food stamps, as another — it seems that they’ve decided that ending their right to trade on insider information requires further study. Here’s an idea: let’s begin solving OUR unemployment problem by laying THEM off.
John Stewart: “So we’re going to destroy our way of life before [the terrorists] can get their hands on it. They can take away our lives, but only we can take away our freedom!” This, said in response to the Senate’s approval of a bill that will permit the indefinite detention of any American citizen “suspected” of supporting terrorism.
Well worth reading, even if you’re a denier:
“Climate science has basically been at the receiving end of the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known—that’s the bottom line,” Mann told me when I visited him at his Penn State office last November. Near his desk, Mann keeps an actual hockey stick, signed by Middlebury College’s championship hockey team to show the school’s support for his work.
via Climategate: What Really Happened? | Mother Jones.
