Subj : Austerity Failed To : ALL From : TIM RICHARDSON Date : Mon May 20 2013 08:58:00 On 05-20-13, BOB KLAHN said to ALL: Since you saw fit to bring a controversy involving me into this echo, in violation of your own rules AND after whining to Ed Koon about me posting in here...I will reply to this as it contains a huge fallacy that nobody (including *The Great and All Wise Klahn*) seems to catch onto. BK>http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/07/ BK>financial-institutions-admit-austerity-failed/ BK>Financial Institutions Admit Austerity Failed ANY financial institution that claims `Austerity Failed'..isn't smart enough to know that, when it comes to the U.S. Congress...we aren't talking about *Austerity*..we're talking *Spend-Thrift*! BK>Thursday, 09 May 2013 13:32 By Ken Klippenstein BK>2013 has been something of a confessional period for the BK>economic managerial class. The IMF's chief economist perhaps BK>demonstrated this point best when he conceded that "forecasters BK>significantly underestimated the increase in unemployment and BK>the decline in domestic demand associated with fiscal BK>consolidation (a polite term for "austerity)." BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- BK>IOW, business is not hiring and expanding because they got no BK>customers. Funny, I do believe Paul Krugman has been saying that BK>for years. BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- Business `is not hiring' because of a lot of reasons. Take the biggest reason created in just the last four years: Obamacare! Question: When did the responsibility for buying health insurance get shifted from the employEE to the employER? How did that happen? Lets do a quick run-through on this. shall we? A prospective employEE applies to an employER for a job. The employER selects the best qualified person from a group of applicants ande hires that person. The employER pays a salary. The employEE takes that salary and lives on it, paying their basics (rent\mortgage), food, utilities, auto insurance, health insurance, etc etc. Everybody's happy. BK>Meanwhile, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, the Harvard BK>economists responsible for one of the more influential studies BK>used to defend austerity have admitted "austerity is not the BK>only answer to a debt problem." Then they know something I don't. Because the bottom line here is, whether you are a single person, married with children, or an entire nation...one thing remains true over all forms of `X' (for the abstract-thinking impaired: `X'=debt)....you cannot SPEND your way out of debt! The only way to get OUT of debt is to pay the friggin' debt off! And you don't do that by taking NEW debt on! I don't care how educated someone is or what prestigeous university they are connected with....you cannot SPEND your way out of debt. Another thing: IF you are taking in $xx,xxx per year...and spending $xxx,xxsx per year.. any second-grade student can see that $xx,xxx MINUS $xxx,xxx, is a minus number for an answer! If you are taking $xx,xxx per year, and spending $xxx,xxx per year for ten years or more (in the case ofthe U.S. Congress it runs into a couple of generations of spending more than it took in. Doing the math tells you that runs up a huge debt!), you are in serious debt. BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- BK>Since it doesn't work at all, it's probably not the only answer. BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- Yes it DOES work! HOW? you may ask? Simple! JUST STOP SPENDING....and START PAYING OFF the debt you have now! It works! Ask anyone who's been financially stretched out that they needed a second job to pay off a car loan, or help pay off a second mortgage, or pay for a kid's college education. Austerity really DOES work! BK>the failure to recognize that austerity didn't work during the BK>Great Depression and won't work now, during the Great Recession. Thats the propaganda they spread to hide the fact that they are enemies of austerity. IF government did nothing but provide for the nation's infractructure, defense, and a few other essentials (and NO...abortion is NOT an essential, and neither is nationalized health care!), and JUST STOPPED SPENDING for frivolous things....the federal government would have a lot more money, could pay off its debt (although now I think the national debt has gotten to a point where I don't think it CAN be paid off) and have money laid aside to where it could give the taxpayers some of it back! BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- BK>I do believe I mentioned that before. And referenced BK>www.snipurl.com/fdr1937 BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- Another area government doesn't belong is education. The department of education is a useless department that should be abolished. Education is NOT a government responsibility on the national level. It belongs on the state and local level. The EPA is an out-of-control department that has done more to stymie growth and prosperity in the last thirty years than almost any other department in the fed. Another thing that belongs on the state and local level and not the federal level. BK>They simultaneously demand stimulus and deficit reduction. As BK>Treasury Secretary Jack Lew put it, "We shouldn't choose between BK>growth and job creation and getting our fiscal house in order." BK>This is like a child wishing he could stay up all night and get BK>a good night's sleep: Lets take a look at some things here in just the recent past: The person in the White House took this `sequester' thing and deliberately made it as painful in various areas as possible. He cuts off White House tours for school kids (even thouogh he's a member of the party that *claims* to be `for the children'), yet thinks nothing of hosting a bash of so-called `super stars' in that very same White House, at the taxpayers' expense! He did it for *political* reasons. He doesn't give a flyin' fuck about `fly-over, USA', he only cares about playing political games with his enemies. He's a piece of shit! Worse even that Jimmy Carter. BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- BK>IOW, no matter how much they admit they were wrong, they never BK>actually quite admit they were wrong. BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- The cost of Air Force One alone is right around $179,000 per hour! And that isn't the only cost involved. There is also the cost of the fighter escort that protects Air Force One as well, to the tune of $41,000 or more per hour (for the F-15 Eagle). BK>In elite circles, "simplistic" explanations are any which BK>involve elementary truths: that In the *real* world, "austerity" means spending a whole lot less than you take in. By *real* world, I mean you and I living out here in fly-over land, who work for a living, pay the living expenses and the income taxes that keep our government in spending money. In Washington DC..."austerity" means cutting off a White House tour that costs $xxx,xxx dollars....but SPENDING $y,yyy,yyy for one party bash...or using Air Force One to the tune of a million dollars or more for a fund-raising tour of the country, while cutting out day-care or school lunches (and HOW the taxpayers ever picked up the responsibility of paying for school lunches I'll never know!), or the cost of school nurses, or some other so-called necessity. The hypocrisy of that seems to have escaped our `fourth estate', who USED to be the watchdog of our Republic, but slowly became the tool of a single political establishment; the democrats! BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- BK>Like: Unemployment bad... full employment good. BK>---------------------------------------------------------------- Full employment would be possible if the federal government hadn't over the years taxed and regulated full employent out of existance (and don't even get me STARTED on the unions!), suppressed job growth, stolen money in the form of heavier taxes on the very people who do the most to create employment (the wealthy), and just generally presented a stumbling block for every attempt to make this country self-sufficient, gainfully employed, energy-independent, and a world leader in economic success. Austerity works just fine. Free enterprise without government interference works just fine as well. Our Congress ought to try it sometime. But they wouldn't know that because its been a hundred years or more since they've practiced `austerity' in any form whatever! By the way....this so-called `sequester'? Don't believe they are saving a single nickel anywhere in our government costs, whether its a democrat or a republican doing the telling. Both sides are lying their collective ass's off about it. They aren't saving anything. They are putting as much if not more out than they are talking about. The `sequester' is just the `image on the screen' they present to the taxpaying public, to take our attention away from the little man behind the curtain who's pulling levers and pressing the buttons; ie: talking a `saving money game' while spending their collective ass's off! --- *Durango b301 #PE* * Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 Join Us: www.DocsPlace.org (1:123/140) .