How We Got Here With the Economy and How to Get Out

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/01

It’s easy to get fixated with small-bore issues on the economy, even if they don’t seem so small-bore at the time. Stimulus packages. Bailouts. Debt ceilings. Deficit commissions. Payroll tax-cut extensions. They seem like life and death issues while they’re being fought out.



But, in fact, they are distractions from the one real question that dominates all others, which is this: for whom should the economy be run? Should it be operated “to promote the general welfare” of 297 million people, the 99 percent? Or should it be run to benefit 3 million, the one percent?

Right now, the answer is that the economy is a machine, with the government as its operator, for transferring two hundred years of accumulated national wealth to those who are already the most wealthy, the one percent. And we should be clear about two things: this is a choice; and it’s working. The rich are getting much richer while everyone else is being stripped of their incomes, their assets, their retirement security, and all the elements of the social safety net enacted since the Great Depression.

Until we confront the fact that the collective impoverishment of the many for the selective enrichment of the few is a choice — the consequence of an explicit policy regime going back 30 years — nothing will change. But if we can muster the maturity to confront this fact, that we are here by choice, and find the courage to act on it, we might yet be able to save the country. If we do not, then we are surely lost.

More at the link --

[FreakinDJ]

1. Miltoin's Economics Policies - The Gift that keeps on giving - to the Wealthy Elite

I wish we all could at least agree Trickle Down Economics are the Failed Policies that brought us the "Great Recession"

[Motown_Johnny]

2. that is the one message we should be pushing

It has the advantage of being true, plus it destroys Reagan who is the Republican God.

[FreakinDJ]

4. Used to be quite a few "Free Traitors" here on DU and in the Dem leadership

pretty hard to deny how destructive to the American Working Class those policies have been, but yet, little or no action from our Dem Leadership

[Tomay]

5. It's because too many Dem politicians are on the take

just like the Republicans. The Republicans are just more honest about being corporate shills. There are a few Dems politicians that actually care about the general welfare, but not enough to make much difference. They're mostly just speed bumps in the path of the Corporate political machine.

[fasttense]

3. But as any good psychopathic CEO would say, it's my money, I earned it.

But of course they didn't earn it. They stole it through scams and corruption of our government.

This economy is seriously broken. Any economy that in order to survive has to get the Fed to secretly loan out and guarantee $7.7 Trillion to banks and investment firms, has a huge problem.

Yet, we are suppose to believe we are on the path to recovery.