KRUGMAN: It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared.

[kpete]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Fears and Failure
By PAUL KRUGMAN
"...we’re paying a heavy price for Washington’s obsession with phantom menaces.
Published: May 5, 2011

And it wasn’t much of a recovery to start with. Employment has risen from its low point, but it has grown no faster than the adult population. And the plight of the unemployed continues to worsen: more than six million Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, and more than four million have been jobless for more than a year.

It would be nice if someone in Washington actually cared.

It’s not as if our political class is feeling complacent. On the contrary, D.C. economic discourse is saturated with fear: fear of a debt crisis, of runaway inflation, of a disastrous plunge in the dollar. Scare stories are very much on politicians’ minds.

Yet none of these scare stories reflect anything that is actually happening, or is likely to happen. And while the threats are imaginary, fear of these imaginary threats has real consequences: an absence of any action to deal with the real crisis, the suffering now being experienced by millions of jobless Americans and their families.

THE REST:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/opinion/06krugman.html?_r=1

[Octafish]

1. The political class cares only for their future employers.

The richest of the rich. For an example, the criminal Senator Phil Gramm.

[woo me with science]

2. Kicked and strongly recommended. nt

[kpete]

3. woo me with science

woo me with art?
peace, kpete

[woo me with science]

5. ...

[bobbolink]

4. Thank you, Paul Krugman. That brings tears to my eyes.

I can't even begin to express how much difference it would make if poor and homeless people had any sense that we/they were cared about. And valued.

That is stunning to even allow myself to imagine it.

Thank you.

[AtomicKitten]

6. A so-called jobs bill must originate in the House. Clearly the GOP isn't interested.

Krugman is entitled to be pissed off but he's not entitled to make a presumptuous hyperbolic accusation that nobody in Washington cares.

And FTR I was laid off last month.

Good grief. :nopity:

[hfojvt]

8. but Democrats are not pounding on the table asking for one either

instead they/we are going the other way - talking about spending cuts. The simplest jobs bill would be to bail out the states, but it is probably too late for that since states have already done their own slashing.

Bailouts are not popular. The feeling is sort of that spending has been tried and it has not worked. That's not just a feeling though it is the Republican message, and there is also some truth in it. The stimulus was not big enough to restart the economy.

I would make the analogy to a forest fire. Imagine a huge forest fire which has been blazing for weeks as Democrats dump water and baking soda on it. Yet it is still burning. Now Republicans come along claiming that "we tried dousing it with water, and that has failed". In such a case everybody would know that the answer is - more water. In this case though, the media, aided by the very rich, (who happen to employ the media and pay some of the talking heads so much that they belong in the rich club.) are quite happy to spread the Republican message and to promote the Republican alternative. The Republican alternative is the moral equivalent of napalm, which sorta got the whole fire thing blazing in the first place. (Tax cuts for the rich gave them more money to 'invest' which they put into speculative derivatives, which grew like a bubble and then popped. Yet the Republican proposal leads with - more and bigger tax cuts for the rich, and this is taken to be a 'serious' proposal to reduce the deficit.)

[AtomicKitten]

13. Point taken.

The GOP think the deficit is a winner for them, however, it is a reality that cannot be readily dismissed and the unfortunately Democrats have no choice but to answer. Most economists agree we should be stimulating the fragile economy, not starving it. Even if we win the argument, the GOP will simply do it at the state level as they are doing now in several states. That presents a conundrum for the Democrats in their response to the GOP's one-taxcut-fits-all policy.

I was furious to find seven House Democrats voting with the GOP to block the Democrats' effort to stop subsidies for oil/gas companies. The only flaw in Howard Dean's 50-state strategy is that it brought us more BlueDogs/ConservaDems. I have never bought into the notion that only that particular flavor of Democrat can win purple states, and that is something we must remedy.

[Zorra]

7. Yup. Time to end all the wars and start spending our tax money on

our families and neighbors that need our help.

Instead of being the all expenses paid by the American public world police for multi-national corporations and other wealthy private interests.

[treestar]

9. I'm sure some do

It's the House of Representatives majority that does not.

These people are called "Republicans."

[leftstreet]

10. K&R

[Jakes Progress]

11. This thread is proof that Krugman is right.

Unemployment is the biggest threat to our national security. Unemployment is the biggest social issue. But here on DU, this thread barely receives remarks. It has high recs, but little rhetoric. I guess it could be because there is nothing to say. Krugman is right.

[Jakes Progress]

12. Democrats and republicans find perfect bipartisanship. Neither cares about the people.

Hundreds of thousands of families living desperate lives of hopelessness. Millions of children denied America's dream.

And the republicans don't care. And the Democrats don't care. Kumbaya. We have come together at last.