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The clear and present danger is mass unemployment, and we should deal with it, now.
Sympathy for the Luddites - NYTimes.com
So what is the answer? If the picture I’ve drawn is at all right, the only way we could have anything resembling a middle-class society — a society in which ordinary citizens have a reasonable assurance of maintaining a decent life as long as they work hard and play by the rules — would be by having a strong social safety net, one that guarantees not just health care but a minimum income, too. And with an ever-rising share of income going to capital rather than labor, that safety net would have to be paid for to an important extent via taxes on profits and/or investment income.
I can already hear conservatives shouting about the evils of “redistribution.” But what, exactly, would they propose instead?
![(via Portuguese Memories (Trivial and Personal) - NYTimes.com) Krugman is on the far right [haha]; as commenter CrabbyTom in NC says, “PK’s Dylan period.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/41e02053606cca72baf7159366741236/tumblr_mnwnlqNZ4m1qzhw6ho1_500.jpg)
(via Portuguese Memories (Trivial and Personal) - NYTimes.com) Krugman is on the far right [haha]; as commenter CrabbyTom in NC says, “PK’s Dylan period.”
From the Mouths of Babes - NYTimes.com
Every once in a while, however, politicians do something so wrong, substantively and morally, that cynicism just won’t cut it; it’s time to get really angry instead. So it is with the ugly, destructive war against food stamps.
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To me, it sounds like a fiscal version of the classic definition of chutzpah — namely, killing your parents, then demanding sympathy because you’re an orphan. Here we have conservatives telling us that we must tighten our belts despite mass unemployment, because otherwise future conservatives will keep running deficits once times improve.
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If the press decide that scandals are going to be the topic, the absence of actual scandals may not matter.
I believe that’s eurospeak for “the beatings will continue until morale improves.” (via The Beatings Must Continue - NYTimes.com)
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But I think there was something even bigger, in some ways, than his policy failures: Bush brought an unprecedented level of systematic dishonesty to American political life, and we may never recover.
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The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.
