The different contributions to the budget deficit.
In language that even Jared Bernstein should be able to understand.

I have a diary up at the Seminal and titled, “Full Employment vs Deficit Hawks”. And which speaks to my angst and anger for having an approximate 20% of our nation being unemployed.

Jaango

The day will come when these rich scoundrels will atone for their greed and indifference. Whether Republican or Democrat the ruling class is pitted against the working and middle class.

Whether Republican or Democrat the ruling class is pitted against the working and middle class.

Unfortunately they are pitted with greater frequency against the long term unemployed. I’m sunk. When I go dark at FDL, you’ll know what happened.

Go dark?

The panels around the deficit here have really been depressing. It is characterized as a steamroller that cannot be stopped, and there either aren’t enough people with the will or the sheer numbers to get in front of it.

We can get the people we need polling asking what do you want more war paid for with a cut in Social Security, More war paid for entirely by a tax on the richest 10% or No more wars?

Stop commenting

How did all the reasonable voices become the fringe left? I am so confused.

Was there some sort of temporal rift that sent me into a parallel universe? That seems the only reasonable explanation.

Jean-Luc Picard … save me! Spock? Anyone?

The panels around the deficit here have really been depressing. It is characterized as a steamroller that cannot be stopped, and there either aren’t enough people with the will or the sheer numbers to get in front of it.

Who cares how much the fix is in washington the GOP’s strongest demographic is older white males no GOPer can vote for this without risking a Tea Bag challenge.
We need to make it clear that we will do the same.

I really hope things improve for you.

How did all the reasonable voices become the fringe left?

The Blue Dogs went Right of Nixon and the GOP went right of them and not to be outdone the Tea Baggers went right of that.

But don’t three rights make a left?

Margaret, you’re scaring me.

If you get a chance, can you ask Trumka if he’s planning to bluster about this until he gets a carve out for unionized workers, and then throw the rest of us overboard just like he did on HCR?

You have mail me darlin’ ….

Stop being able to have a home or pay my internet bill. “Go dark”.

(((Margaret)))

If you are unsurprised at the predictable conclusions, “This Time is Different” provides solid empirical support for the intuitions. The book misses an essential point “This Time is Different” depends on identifying the correct base precedent that is being used for the economic state being studied.

The interesting part of the book is the evidence of what happens after a financial crisis. The authors show that severe financial crises share the following characteristics:

1. Declines in real housing prices averaging 35% over six years.
2. Equity prices fall an average 56% over 3.5 years.
3. Unemployment rises an average of 7% during the down phase with average length of four years.
4. Output falls more than 9% over a two-year period.
5. Government debt increases an average 86% in real terms, as a result of the collapse in tax revenues, counter-cyclical fiscal policy efforts and spiking interest rates.

So much for a ‘V’ shaped recovery! But “this time is different“.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/

Given these facts either the country goes more Left or more Right either way I predict the winner promises more jobs and is believed by the voters.
We got FDR on our side we need to wrap ourselves with a New New Deal and that means no cuts in Social Security unless Obama wants to admit the Iraq/Afghan wars are worse than WW2 and that the depression he faces is worse than the Great Depression.
After all thats when FDR created Social Security!

back atcha flat. :)

Ah but the Universe is curved

Eli is upstairs!
Primary Night Liveblog – Part Two

I hope this is going to be a smaller hit to the non-rich and corporate than is suggested – but I expect that their will be a hit – because Obama wants it and Obama is not into “shared sacrifice” or “progressive” or “liberal” approaches.

I hope that that all that comes out is a fix to Social Security – which does not need a fix – of an increase in the “normal retirement age” (normal retirement age being code for the age at which you retire with the benefit calculated by the standard formula calculation and then NOT ADJUSTED downward for “early retirement”). A wage cap removal is out of the question with Obama protecting the rich (the excuse of large benefits for the rich will be used to kill it as he ignores the value of “we are all in this together and the rich get something extra for their extra taxes” – indeed a “means” test would be a major victory for the GOP – and the beginning of the end of SS as SS would be reclassified as “welfare” which is so easy to cut in future Congresses). If we can get away with the increased retirement age -ONLY – we sort of “win”.

The rest of the report will be window dressing – studies of defense cuts, etc. Obama indeed appears to want a GOP takeover of Congress – Fred Barnes may be correct – so that he can protest the protection of the rich and corporate as he agrees to do so.

Rich Trumka is another brick in the very wall he complains about, an opportunist motherfucker who sold out non-unionized working Americans on health care and doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously, purely on the strength of that self-serving decision.

Any questions?

Maybe the Lake can set up a jobs and place to stay place for local pups. I’d offer you a place to stay but I’m already staying with my sister. That and she’s planning to move to California in a year.
But maybe the other pups have a room free or can help you find a job.

Dunno what I’m going to do. My brother just refused to help me point blank.

I’m sure it’s the same for many posters here and other blogs. These are shit times the Republicans and Democrats have given the people and I hold out hope that the day will come when they will atone.

Some of that data is not useful for extrapolation as the circumstances for each data point are too unique to generalize. But the overall point that “either the country goes more Left or more Right either way I predict the winner promises more jobs and is believed by the voters” is spot on. As is the lack of a “V” shape recovery given Obama’s determination to protect the rich and corporate and be seen as as a centrist.

Harsh. Ugh.

The labor movement has never been the same since it purged the socialists and communists back in the 40-50′s. They had a class perspective and those that remained had a world view corrupted by the trinkets dangled in front of them by the capitalists.

I hold out hope that the day will come when they will atone.
reply

Pffft! Wish I could hold out hope.

M’eh. I didn’t expect him too. He’s a self centered dick like most Libertarians.

If you get a chance, can you ask Trumka if he’s planning to bluster about this until he gets a carve out for unionized workers, and then throw the rest of us overboard just like he did on HCR?

That was what I was thinking but you expressed it so well. As for Jared Berstein I would dearly like participants to tear him a new one. You really have to wonder how anyone “progressive” could work in this Administration, and I think the answer is that no one can or has.

Color me confused as well.

Does anyone think that Richard Trumka is anything other than just ,,,,,,another opportunist cynically exploiting the waining hopes of the downtrodden for his own advantage?

Show of hands.

Ask the late night pups somebody might know about a job or have a place.

It is funny how desperate the economic elite keep saying V shaped recovery when only the banks on paper funny gambling paper seem to have recovered.

*sitting on hands*

You noticed that too?
Some time in the last decade, we seem to have shifted into the mirror universe – and I don’t know how we get out of it.

Sadly, you are right. I put my last hopes in Labor, but their leaders are telling their rank and file to cut deals. The Teamsters want Fed Ex.

I am so very sad and discouraged. i was hoping for a real labor revolt. But now I see that it won’t come from the old guard. But it may come from Latina and Latino rank and file. Like the union members that took over the factory in Chicago.

Never mind. We are f*cked.

Nah, we’re not fucked. We just can’t count on labor for anything.

I’ve been blogging the hell out of the deficit issue non-issue for months now. See here.

I think it’s time that the progressives here took the MMT approach to economics seriously. That is, if you want to both save SS and also begin to get some traction on solving the rest of the mess of problems we face. The deficit terrorists and their outlook are both something we have to defeat, and we;ll never defeat them if we insist on sharing the same paradigm, a paradigm that insists that the national debt is a bad thing. That increasing debt is intrinsically a bad thing and that eventually we’ll have to pay off all that debt without incurring any new debt.

You can disagree with the deficit terrorists about short-term vs. long-term all you want. But if you accept their belief that in the long-term, at least, we have to have surpluses to pay down that debt you’re going to lose the political battles over the desirability of Government spending to meet many of our essential problems. Also, what many of you may not be aware of is that if surpluses are ever pursued and achieved in an arbitrary way, as say the Clinton Administration did, then unless the effort coincides with a period of economic overheating threatening inflation, the result will be a recession, if we keep the safety net intact, and that to the extent we dismantle that safety net, as we have been doing, it will result in a depression. It is a fact that American history has seen 7 successful attempts at balancing the budget and achieving a surplus, and there has been either a recession or a depression every single time.

For those who know something about the social sciences, you know that we don’t often see conjunctions of antecedents and consequents like that. That may not be enough to establish causality, but it is the result that one would expect to get if MMT Theory is right, and no other popular economic theory is consistent with such a result. In short, in the coming battle with the deficit terrorists any “compromise” that commits the Government to achieving a balanced budget by a date certain is a compromise that must be avoided on pain of causing a recession or a depression depending on economic conditions during the time preceding that date.