Wednesday Toon Roundup 4- Economic issues

[n2doc]

NAFTA

[randr]

1. The last cartoon is a bit revisionist

We need to start remembering how good the economy was by the end of Clinton's terms and hammer it home at every opportunity.

[Ruby the Liberal]

5. Yes. Things like NAFTA and eliminating Glass Steagall had NOTHING to do with

what we are experiencing now.

Talk about revisionist...

[n2doc]

6. Many people predicted what NAFTA would do to our manufacturing base

They were right. No 'revisionism' needed.

[JackRiddler]

10. Clinton's terms were part of the neoliberal continuity from 1978 until today.

Supported the (further) banking deregulation (such as the Glass-Steagal repeal and the failure to regulate derivatives) that set up the frauds and disasters of the subsequent decade.

Wage stagnation since 1970s continued throughout the 1990s. Lots of talk about "new economy" prosperity (bubbles, froth, easy credit, financial arbitrage, scams) even as the median US household went nowhere and the jobs were shipped overseas.

Entered NAFTA and advanced WTO.

Didn't create a peace dividend. By end, supported new rises in military budget. Always supported the emergent "homeland security" surveillance state. Expanded prison-industrial complex to new highs = more wage suppression.

Nothing to challenge the fatally flawed, ecologically disastrous paradigms of modern capitalist economics -- including the myth of growth.

Continued war on poor with bogus "welfare reform" (forced labor at sub-minimum wage, suppressing wages across the board).

Even then, "growth" largely achieved by introducing new numbers ("hedonic deflator" and exclusion of food and fuel from CPI to suppress inflation numbers = higher GDP).

Didn't have the courage and integrity to stand up to an obsessively sex-crazed puritanical right-wing coup d'etat attempt. (Wrong: "I did not have sex with that woman." Right: "Consensual relations between adults are no one else's business. Let's talk about things that matter to the American people.")

On the other hand: Best Republican president ever!

[HopeHoops]

2. Um, did Roundup 3 get forgotten or lost in an alternate dimension or something?

[n2doc]

3. Brain fart on my part. No part 3 (or maybe just think of the rest as part 3)

[HopeHoops]

4. Just checking. The net's been a bit dodgy the last few days.

[JHB]

7. Isn't this #3?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2269958

[JHB]

8. If you have time to read'em, you have time to kick'em

:kick:

[SheilaT]

9. I am another one who recalls quite

clearly how good the economy was all the way into the first few months of W's administration.

It's convenient to blame NAFTA and forget that the Bush tax cuts and the unfunded wars are far more the true culprits in our economic downturn.

At some point in the late 1990's I read something in the Kansas City Star that there were more jobs than people there, and that unemployment was basically at a negative rate.