Why Obama’s Economic Plan Will Not Work—And a Better Plan

[IndianaGreen]

Published on Sunday, January 17, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Why Obama’s Economic Plan Will Not Work—And a Better Plan

by Robert Freeman

Obama's economic recovery plan will not work. It does not begin to address the profound structural problems that hobble the U.S. economy and that amount to a slow-motion death sentence for the American middle class. His policies are the equivalent of trying to re-float a sunken boat, nothing more. Once the government buoys are removed, the boat will promptly sink again, with the American people trapped inside.

<snip>

Seven million high-paying manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas in the past decade, one third of all those in the entire economy. Twenty per cent of the nation's labor force - thirty million people - are idle or underutilized. Thirty percent of the nation's factory capacity is idle. Three quarters of the nation's home building capacity is idle. More workers are out of work longer that at any time since such statistics started being collected, in 1948. The results are cataclysmic.

Ten thousand homes enter foreclosure every day. More than 39 million Americans - one out of eight - are on food stamps. Half of all American children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives! Seventy-seven million Baby Boomers stand on the threshold of retirement, expecting, hoping, praying that the nation will honor the promises it has made to them for the last 50 years. It will not, because it cannot.

The national debt that stood at $1 trillion in 1980 now stands at $12 trillion. And this was run up over a period of supposed economic prosperity! Personal debt has risen from 65% of income in 1980 to 125% today. The nation's unfunded liabilities - debts it has committed to pay but for which there is no identifiable source of funding - exceed $65 trillion. The U.S. economy must borrow more than $5 billion every day just to keep its lights on. Most of that comes from foreign creditors-China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and such. Interest payments on this debt will soon reach $1 trillion a year. Not since before the Civil War has the U.S. been so dependent on foreign capital.

When all the assets that are pledged as collateral against this borrowing have been exhausted, the lights will go out, as they must. The creditors will simply pull their capital out of the economy as they did from the Asian countries in the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. The U.S. has become a banana republic, ruled by a small, ultra-rich oligarchy who look after themselves, with everybody else living entirely at the mercy of their wealthy masters.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/17

[boomerbust]

1. Slow motion death sentence

For the middle class? That death sentence was passed down on the middle class the day Bush walked into the White House. I wish McCain/Palin would have won the election. They would have turned this country around.:silly:

[Vidar]

2. K&R.

[Demeter]

3. America Is Run by the Greedy and the Stupid

Crooks, in other words.

I'd like to believe it wasn't always so, that merit and ability used to have some sway in this country, but I am also aware of how much merit and ability was banned from power by prejudice against women, minorities, etc. So who can say?

Perhaps all America used to have going for it was resources, room, and immigrants who worked themselves to death. And no credible competition.