Now that the GOP has flushed the clowns down the drain and seemingly settled on its,” presumptive,” I think that’s the word they’re using, candidate, I see that they are really getting serous about their latest great lie campaign.
Look, I know they want to get elected but after 8 years of the Bush disaster and three years of doing everything they can to thwart Obama’s attempts to pull the country out of the Bush morass, isn’t it time they gave the country a break and at least spoke the truth once in a while.
This country is in trouble and it needs a lot of help but lying about what’s wrong and diverting the country’s almost exhausted energies from the real problems when they have no solutions to any of them, is cowardly, dishonest, greedy and just plain disgusting.
What am I talking about? Well, this time, it’s the GOP’s attack on the state of the economy with a plan that will only make it worse. I’m referring to Wisconsin (What happened to that state? I remember when it was so cool.) Representative Paul Ryan’s, newest federal budget. Ryan, the little Catholic who couldn’t, has come up with a budget that he claims is based on Catholic social teaching. Of course the only Catholics who believe that are Marie Antoinette and Adolph Hitler.
I was surprised at the outpouring of dissent at Georgetown when not only students, but bishops and Jesuits rose up to denounce Ryan’s more for the rich, less for the poor, plan.
What the plan is, is more trickle down economics, less taxes for the rich and more austerity. So let’s look at that in a worldwide view. Right now we think we are in trouble and to some extent we are, but when taken in the worldview, we may not be as bad off as we think. There are four major economic spheres in the world today that have been making noise. The First is the United States, the second is Europe, the third is the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a group of huge nations with, until very recently, aggressively advancing economies and the last is the G7, a group of mostly third world countries that possess an amazing inventory of underutilized natural and mineral wealth that could, if handled correctly bring them up to world standard in a very brief time.
This latter group, while understanding its own problems and beginning to find solutions is still a way off from being a serious power in economic/geopolitics. The BRICS who have been thundering forward with astounding GDPs are just starting to hit a wall. Economies can only continue to grow so long, before cheap labor, the basis of all these economies, becomes expensive labor or at least median labor and said economy slows. That is what is about to happen in the two most aggressive parts of the BRIC, India and China.
That leaves Europe, that segment of the world economy most like ours and most interdependent. So how are they doing in Europe compared to us here at home, how are they dealing with their situation and how does it contrast with us?
The best predictor is growth. The US is scheduled to grow its economy between 2 & 3% in the coming year. That’s not great but compared to Europe it’s better than high fair. Is Europe keeping up? Hell no. Europe as a whole will end up with a -.5% growth rating and that puts it far behind the US. Take a look at what kind of growth European countries are currently getting out of their regressive policies.
Netherlands -.5 Belgium +.007
Greece -4.75 Finland +.58
Italy -1.9 Germany +.62
Spain -1.7 Ireland +.52
Portugal -3.75 France +.48
These all look pretty pathetic next to 2-3%, which is what we are currently experiencing.
As you can see, Europe wishes they had our problems. Right now when we are suffering 8+% unemployment Spain is suffering 20% across the board and 50% youth unemployment. Britain will only do about .08% growth this year. Why? Mostly because the European Union, in following the example of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s austerity policies, has drained the sink, leaving nothing on which to build an economy. You inject capital, you create jobs, make product, earn wages and those wage earners buy stuff and pay taxes. That’s how an economy grows. You strangle investment, there is no job growth, everyone is on unemployment, no taxes are paid and the combination of added social programs, and no taxes, just like war and no taxes, results in no growth and soaring national debt.
It looked for a while that European Central Banker Mario Draggi would be able to implement his policy of injecting capital into various European economies and get them jump started but just when he was getting underway the Bundestag Bank stepped in and slammed the door on him.
No one ever seems to learn. We watched as the Japanese did this, in the 90’s, choking their own economy because they were too cowardly to get off their butts and take a chance; everyone scared to death that something they tried might fail. Paul Krugman in the NY Times accuses Ben Bernanke of doing this now.
With the examples of Japan in the 90’s and Europe today, Ryan, Romney and the GOP still claim that the road out of this recession is austerity. They’re deluded. The only thing that has really worked, the only move that has actually created work and stopped the slide was Obama’s save of the auto industry. 1.2 million jobs that were gone, now exist. More could have been saved but the cowardly congress refused to give the administration more money.
Now with the history of austerity, a proven disaster, not just in our own economy but also in those of Europe and Japan we have to finally put aside the stuff of fools and thoroughly reject Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and their GOP backers. It’s time we got this country going again and if we don’t understand that, if we don’t act to implement it, then we deserve the consequences that that failure will bring down on our heads.