Family Values
by digby
Ezra Klein takes on the silly trope used by both parties that the government is like a household and has to "tighten its belt" when times are tough. You all know that's the opposite of the truth, but to most people it seems intuitive. There's no excuse for Democrats being so lazy and unimaginative that they just succumb to it however. If they were real liberals, they'd care, but since most of them aren't, they're fine with perpetuating a myth that will only result in starving the economy at times it needs it the most (unless they can just shovel money directly to their wealthy donors, in which case the sky is falling and thehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gify have to act regardless of the consequences.)
Liberalism has taken a huge hit the last couple of years with the Democrats failing miserably to make the public understand what happened, who was responsible and how to fix it. As a result, we are obsessing about deficits when millions of people are still unemployed. It's sad.
Ezra mentions one obvious point that I can't believe nobody ever brings up when the Republicans are parroting their tired trope "we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem" (and I want to hurl my shoes like an Egyptian.) It's quite simply, the opposite:
[W]hat’s happened over the past few years is that the deficit has increased primarily because revenues — for reasons related to both tax cuts and the financial crisis — have plummeted. People, however, have looked at the increase in the deficit and assumed it was the product primarily of new spending, as most people’s incomes don’t fluctuate very much and so big debts tend to imply big expenses.
If you want to compare that situation to a household, you'd say that Dad quit his job and moved to Tahiti to go "find himself", mom got laid off and needed re-training and so the family had to borrow money to cover expenses and pay for mom's schooling. Now they have debt, but as soon as mom gets a new job, she'll be paying back the loans. And if Dad will stop being a deadbeat asshole and go back to work, they will have them paid off in no time.
And yes, there are some big expenses coming up down the road, what with college and grandma needing some extra care. But if everyone is working and they stop spending money on their excessive gun collection and interfering in every neighbor's business, there's no reason they can't save enough to ensure that everyone in the family has a future and a decent retirement. (Somebody's got to talk to the family doctor about his excessive bills, though.)
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