Unemployment Insurance

I don't know if there is a better example of the difference between Liberals and Conservatives than the debate over extending unemployment benefits in the midst of this current recession.



Conservatives in this current debate have insisted that any extension of unemployment benefits be paid for in some way. Given that Conservatives seem to reflexively oppose any proposal that raises any taxes in any way for anybody, that means that they insist the some other program get cut enough to pay for the extension of unemployment benefits.



Liberals in this debate argue that in the current economic recession, the stimulative benefit of extending unemployment benefits more than justifies the small impact such an extension has on the current deficit or the accumulated debt.

Conservatives are, as usual, wrong on the issue. Allowing 1.2 million Americans fall off the edge of Unemployment Insurance because extending that insurance might add a whole 0.3% to the national debt is both cruel and insane.

Senator Jon Kyl, the Minority Whip in the Senate, stated his firm belief that we as a nation could not justify increasing the national debt by $10 billion dollars to extend unemployment insurance but he is equally firm in his belief that retaining the Bush Tax Cuts for the wealthiest of Americans, at a cost of almost $700 Billion, is obviously justified despite its direct impact on the national debt. Almost 70 times the impact on the national debt of the unemployment insurance extension he opposes.

In doing so he talks about the stimulative impact of the tax cuts and ignores the stimulative impacts of unemployment insurance despite studies that show that every 1 dollar or tax cuts results in $1.03 in economic activity while every 1 dollar in unemployment insurance payments results in $1.63 in economic activity. Unemployment insurance payments have a far far greater stimulative impact than tax cuts and add far less to the deficit than the tax cuts yet Republicans/Conservatives like Senator Kyl are always in favor or tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich and almost always opposed to unemployment insurance that benefits those in need.

Any wonder that I am a Liberal??

A Boomer Apologizes

I recently turned 56 years old. My generation dominates the political stage and the management of business large and small. We run the biggest companies and the non-profits and we fill up the upper reaches of bureaucracies across this land. We dominate the Congress of the United States and most state Legislatures. Our President is a Boomer.

And we, as a generation have screwed our children and theirs. We weren't even subtle about it. Our children are inheriting a world where global warming will probably kill millions and displace even more. Much of the Gulf of Mexico becomes a dead zone every year because of the crap we put into our water. Same for much of Puget Sound and the Chesapeake Bay. Most of our rivers have excessive levels of mercury in them from burning coal. We are in the middle of a mass extinction that will rival the worst of the mass extinctions in our planet's history. Most of the major industrialized nations have large accumulated national debts that our children and theirs will have to pay for. We are bequeathing to generation X (or what every you want to call those who are destined to follow us) such horrible eating habits that our children will likely not live as long as we did because we seem to insist on feeding them crap that only barely resembles food while at the same time starving our school systems of the resources they need to have active physical education programs and healthy meals. We were more willing to spend money building prisons than finding ways to prevent crime. Coming out of this recession, those who follow will be faced with years at least of sluggish economic growth and little or no growth in real wages for the vast majority of our people. And the debt that we are leaving them will prevent them from taking some of the bold actions that might dramatically alter the world they will have to deal with.

I can point to people and policies that my generation put in place as the cause of many of these problems. I can talk about this policy or that policy that could have prevented some of these problems. As a Liberal I would make a good case that Liberal policies would have prevented or reduced these problems.

But we as a generation didn't effective address them.

We still have time. We are not yet leaving the stage. We can still make things better. But based on what we have done so far, I am not hopeful.

So I apologize to the generations that follow the Baby Boomers. We appear to be leaving you a massive mess. A mess that some of us predicted but we, collectively, could not muster the will or consensus to fix. I hope you do a better job than we did. I have to believe that, right now, our parents generation, sometimes called the Greatest Generation, are pretty disgusted with us.

I hope you, the generations that follow, can forgive us.

Reagan, The Lies Conservatives Tell Us and a Generation of Greed

In his Presidental campaign against President Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan was very critical of President Carter because the United States Government was running deficits of $60 Billion a year. He promised to cut taxes by $60 Billion/year and to raise defense spending by another $60 Billion/year.

Think about that. He knew he was going to inherit a $60B deficit. And then he was going to cut taxes by about $60B. And on top of that, he was going to increase spending by $60B dollars.

That adds up to a deficit of about $180Billion.

He also promised to balance the budget.

I guess 2 out of 3 isn't bad.

Reagan got elected by telling America a lie. George HW Bush refered to it as Voodo Economics. He was telling the truth then.

America chose to believe the lie. And Republicans have been repeating the lie ever since.

George HW Bush saw the light and told the same lie and got himself elected.

And the idiot in Chief who currently occupies the White House got himself elected by telling the lie over and over and over again.

Here's the truth.

Tax Cuts, that are NOT by matching Spending Cuts, stimulate the economy in the short term. they don't seem to stimulate the economy anywhere close to as much as Republican's claim, but they do stimulate the economy. Its a what liberal economists have been proposing since the New Deal. Create Budget Deficits and those deficits will spur economic growth.

As the economy grows, partially as a response to the added impact of the budget deficits, tax revenues eventually return to where they were before the tax cuts. Unfortunately government spending has continued to grow with the economy and we are left with continuing deficits that are a direct result of the tax cuts.

The accumulated Budget Deficits, called the National Debt, place a lot of pressure on credit markets, driving up interest rates and slowing economic growth.

In recent years, much of the new National Debt (which has literally doubled under the idiot in chief) has been sold to foriegn banks and governments, particularly China and Japan. Selling that much debt to competitors/advesaries creates a significant strategic risk.

In the long term, the tax cuts and their resulting deficits, have little or no stimulative effect because of the resulting increased interest rates. Some studies indicate that tax cuts and their resulting deficits actually retard economic growth in the long term.

Despite all this. Despite all the studies that show that they are not telling the truth, Republican's keep telling the same lie

And as a nation we believed them.

Despite the absolutely nonsensical aspect of the lie, we believed it. Despite the balloning deficits, we believed it.

Because we wanted to.

I blame my generation. We heard the lie. We saw all the evidence that it was a lie. We watched the deficits grow to almost 100% of the Gross Domestic Product. But we were getting the benefits of the deficits and knew that we woulnd't have to pay the debt. Unconsionably, Immorally we have chosen to believe something that we have to know is a lie so that we dont' have to take responsibility for our own debts.

Principally for this reason, I view the Reagan Presidency as a disaster. He taught his party the lie and our kids and their kids will be paying and paying and paying.

And my generation chose to believe the lie.