The United States faces a crisis not seen since the Depression

[marmar]

The United States faces a crisis not seen since the Depression
The poisonous atmosphere surrounding the role of the state and taxation allows no realistic budget bargaining

Will Hutton in America
The Observer (UK), Sunday 24 April 2011


.....(snip).....

The Republicans rehearsed their battle cry that Obama was mortgaging the future and that the only plan in town to respond to the agency's "wake-up call" was their own – to take federal spending back to pre-modern levels, while offering further tax relief to the rich. To all this Democrats are ferociously opposed.

You can see why. The Republican position, set out in detail by Paul Ryan, the Republican chair of the congressional budget committee, is not really a budget plan at all. It is a map for dismantling the US state so that it would do little more than provide threadbare pensions and healthcare for the very poorest and almost nothing else, with even defence in the line of fire. Democrats believe in a different role for the state and that the boom story with no role for public spending on science and infrastructure is a nonsense. It is a battle for the very soul of the United States.

.....(snip).....

It is powerful, but it is deluded and self-delusion runs deep in the US. Even the smart people at MIT, where so much US innovative technology originates, buy the cultural assertion that their success is all about individual entrepreneurship and brilliance; the cumulative trillions of US government grants are a side-show. Too few see growing federal debt as the necessary flipside of the banking crisis. The state is cast as the public enemy, not its friend.

The rows may feel as if they do not concern ordinary Americans and, as before, the politicians will find a compromise as the constitution compels them to. This time, though, there is more sulphur in the air. The US's problems are real; there is a fork in the road. It took searing depression to break the self-delusion in the 1930s. It may take disaster again to disabuse the American majority of the idea that the motley crew – Palin, Trump, Murdoch and Fox News, Paul Ryan, US bankers and shock jocks – are not on the side of reason. Until then, beware. A superpower that has lost its grip on reality is very dangerous indeed. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/24/will-hutton-america-debt-crisis

[xchrom]

1. Recommend

[creon]

2. Good article.

The USA has been fortunate; not, exceptional. The period from 1945 to ca 1972 was a good time for America; the rest of the world has caught up, and the USA has to compete. It is a different world.

Many people in the USA and are afraid and angry. Thus, the tea party and the present state of the GOP.

WEare in the worst downturn since the depression, and there is no way out that anyone can see. There are ways out of it; but people who have good ideas are heterodox and are discounted. So we are facing years of stagnation, at best.

The GOP is doing what it has to do: when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

[Little Star]

3. Globalism is/has killed the US and it will kill the rest of....

the world too. Globalism only helps the greedy. I hope the rest of the world is watching what happened to the US because they will follow the same path if TPTB have their way. imho

[FourScore]

4. I wish I could rec this a thousand times!!! n/t