RYAN'S DOPE: Austerity will save the poor. Oh, really?
http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/ryans-dope-austerity-will-save-poor-oh-really
London's Daily Mail [URL below] is out with a story detailing increasing American poverty, caused by declining wages, aggravated by the Great Recession and budget cuts that already have curtailed social safety net programs. After explaining why 20 percent of all American children are now officially poor, a level not seen since the 1960s, The Mail's reporter went to the chief architect of further budget cutting, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), chair of the House Budget Committee.
The GOP's newest, again mostly rhetorical, budget proposal -- authored by Ryan -- makes drastic cuts in social safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid and whacks other support programs. Ryan told The Mail that austerity is necessary to shrink the national debt. Never mind that austerity in Europe has resulted in galloping unemployment and weakening economies. Europe's experience presages what would happen here if we go to what amounts to super-sequestration -- even while Ryan's crazily unfair scheme cuts taxes some more on America's rich.
Under The Mail's photos of American inner-city kids playing hoops against the backdrop of totally boarded up apartment buildings (American homelessness is on the rise while funds to deal with are on the decline), Ryan turned reality on its ear, arguing that without austerity "we have a debt crisis like Europe has."
Uh, no. We don't have a debt crisis at all. The US borrowed more heavily to finance World War II, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it borrows today, and yet experienced a golden age afterward. Federal revenues continue to lag because incomes are down while corporations the rich pay relatively little, thanks to loopholes. Get incomes back up and what deficits we do have will diminish back to historically ordinary levels.
= new reply since forum marked as read
