Washington’s Blog
Feb 20, 2011
Don’t let Wisconsin divide us.
Conservatives and liberals actually agree about the most important things.
In fact, most Americans – conservatives and liberals – are fed up with both of the mainstream republican and democratic parties, because it has become obvious that both parties serve Wall Street and the military-industrial complex at the expense of most Americans.
In reality, all Americans – conservatives and liberals:
* Want to break up the unholy alliance between big government and big banks
* Want to break up the giant banks
* Agree that the Wall Street criminals who committed fraud should be thrown in jail
* Agree that the Federal Reserve should be audited
* Are against corporate socialism
* Are against rampant inequality
* Want to stand up to the ruling class
* And are against unnecessary imperial wars
The powers-that-be try to divide us and demonize the “other side” so that we won’t realize how much we all agree on.
Debunking Myths
Before we can honestly look at what’s going on in Wisconsin, we need to dispel some commonly-accepted myths.
People who think that debts and deficits don’t matter are wrong. As two top American economists – Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff – demonstrated in December 2009 :
The relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90 percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is similar in advanced and emerging economies…
As I wrote in January 2010:
Al Martin – former contributor to the Presidential Council of Economic Advisors and retired naval intelligence officer – observed in an April 2005 newsletter that the ratio of total U.S. debt to gross domestic product (GDP) rose from 78 percent in 2000 to 308 percent in April 2005. The International Monetary Fund considers a nation-state with a total debt-to-GDP ratio of 200 percent or more to be a “de-constructed Third World nation-state.”
Martin explained:
What “de-constructed” actually means is that a political regime in that country, or series of political regimes, have, through a long period of fraud, abuse, graft, corruption and mismanagement, effectively collapsed the economy of that country.
Forbes noted in December:
Add the unfunded portion of entitlement programs and we’re at 840% of GDP.
Boston University economics professor and former Senior Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Laurence Kotlikoff says that the real federal debt is $202 trillion dollars, and that the U.S. is bankrupt.
So we have to reduce our debt.
And yet the government has been spending like a drunken sailor … while slashing taxes.
Read more:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dont-let-wisconsin-divide-us-conservatives-and-liberals-agree-about-the-important-things.html
No comments:
Post a Comment