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Mr. Schiff, the real question is not whether we should let the economy restructure. (Of course it will no matter what.)
Rather, the question is "Who should pay the cost for the restructuring?"
Should the bankers at Goldman Sachs whose careless lending caused the crash in the first place and who are now skimming huge bonuses from taxpayer money pay for it? Or should we just let the children of some guy who lost his job waiting tables in Las Vegas starve for it?
The people who bought houses they could not afford have already paid.
Peter Schiff makes a number of false assumptions.
For example, he assumes that jobs that pay $300 per week (or even per month) are available. A few are. But, there simply are not enough jobs for the unemployed. Not for people who live in areas of high unemployment and can't move because they have families and no money to go where jobs might be located. Why? Ordinary jobs have been outsourced and we import too much.
He also assumes that his experiences as a younger man on unemployment are relevant. They are not. He was unemployed before we had so much outsourcing. We were a creditor nation back then. We are now a debtor nation. Our debt represents lost jobs -- lost because of too many imports and too much outsourcing. There are too few jobs, Mr. Schiff.
In addition, Schiff suggests that a person should take a job for $300 per week. As he admits, $300 per week is barely a subsistence level of income for one person, much less a family. And, by the way, lots of younger people living with their parents are taking part-time jobs that only pay a few hundred dollars. And they are doing just what Schiff suggests -- continuing to look for work. There are just too few jobs.
I dare Peter Schiff to try to live on $300 per month. In fact, I dare him to take the resume of someone who is unemployed and look for a job. See how many offers he gets if he pounds the payment. See whether he can survive on $300 if he leaves his current assets behind for a while.
I do want to add -- with regard to people deferring their student loans. Schiff is wrong on that. There is no incentive to defer payment on student loans because the interest continues to accrue while you are in school or unemployed. People only defer payment when they either have no choice or figure that the value of the deferment (to finish a degree that leads to higher earnings, for example) makes it worthwhile.
Finally, rich Republicans like Schiff deride what they call redistribution of (their) wealth. Right now what is needed, Mr. Schiff, is not a redistribution of the wealth, but a redistribution of the poverty that the rich Republicans caused with their spend, spend, spend, spend, spend policies. Right now the wealthy are simply spending their money to buy outsourced services and imported goods. They are not employing enough Americans.
It's not the people on unemployment who caused the economic meltdown. It's the wealthy and the bankers. They should pay, not some unemployed waiter in Las Vegas.
I had heard that Schiff was an astute thinker. Clearly, he is not. If he is typical of the people making the economic decisions in the country, I am not surprised that we are in trouble.
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