The Big Lie

[SHRED]

MONDAY, JANUARY 3, 2011

Republicans are telling Americans a big lie, and Obama and the Democrats are letting them. The Big Lie is that our economic problems are due to a government that's too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it.

The truth is our economic problems stem from the biggest concentration of income and wealth at the top since 1928, combined with stagnant incomes for most of the rest of us. The result: Americans no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going at full capacity. Since the debt bubble burst, most Americans have had to reduce their spending; they need to repay their debts, can't borrow as before, and must save for retirement.

The short-term solution is for government to counteract this shortfall by spending more, not less. The long-term solution is to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely (for example, through a more progressive income tax, a larger EITC, an exemption on the first $20K of income from payroll taxes and application of payroll taxes to incomes over $250K, stronger unions, and more and better investments in education and infrastructure.)

But instead of telling the truth, Obama has legitimized the Big Lie by freezing non-defense discretionary spending, freezing federal pay, touting his deficit commission co-chairs' recommended $3 of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase, and agreeing to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

http://robertreich.org/

[handmade34]

1. rec

[dflprincess]

2. The Democrats are letting them get by with it because too many of them are as much to blame for this

as Republicans are. NAFTA, CAFTA, the repeal of Glass-Steagall had plenty of "new" Democrats supporting them.

[Oceansaway]

3. K&R...n/t

[MichiganVote]

4. K&R

[FiveGoodMen]

5. "Obama and the Democrats are [helping] them."