Absolutely. To hell with triangulating Dems like Obama and Clinton who try to appease the conservatives by proposing and passing much of their agenda A lot of good it has done it has done the vast majority of Americans. It makes me so glad I contributed to Warren and not Obama, though under the present system I do believe in voting for the lesser of two evils--Obama.
Progressives need to get behind Warren ASAP before the media pushes Hillary Clinton over the finish line.
Good try. You got the Obama spin down. Most Americans do not support reducing social security cost of living increases. I suppose if you call the sort of "liberal" economists" Obama and the Wall Streeters like you have a case. "It just affects SS most" haha I guess they regret that.
what are you going to do? you have to balance the budget somehow. How can you do it in the current environment?
In nominal terms debt is huge. However debt to gdp ratio isn't as alarming. People don't understand that balancing the budget in a recessionary situation will just lengthen the recession. Deficit spending when the economy is recessed, paying off debt and reducing spending when the economy is too hot.
This wouldn't even be an issue if we had common sense taxation, a smaller leaner military, less "nation building", and held corporations accountable for the crimes they commit and they money they "lose". Not to mention the trillions being illegally stashed away in off shore accounts. The biggest myth is that America is broke. We're not broke. The money's been stolen, and our bought and paid for politicians are making no effort to reclaim it.
recession is over. economy is growing slowly. It's not about balancing the budget as much as it is about reducing spending. And political policy never aligns well with economic theory. We increase spending in good times, not cut it. Some cut has to be made, it's been nearly 5 years. Taxes need to go up. And they aren't going to go up without cuts somewhere.
Well some can from making the wealthy who pay a tiny fraction of their income in FICA taxes pay the tax on all their various types of income. Some can come from general tax revenues, though we might have to skip an elective war to two or skip some massive corporate subsidies. Perhaps even a bit can from the working folks who pay into it. There is nothing in the Consitution or logic or basic fairness that says general tax revenues can't be given to individual Amerians to boost up their old age incomes a bit when we do things like bail out the bankers and big investors. Such policies would be more stimulative than giving it to folks who invest overseas or send their excess money to the Caymans etc.
Eventually you may have the balance the budget a bit more. There is no emergency to do so and the US economy has had many unbalanced budgets in its history and it has not been a disaster. Stimulate the economy in the current slow growth/recession and then when expenditures are down for food stamps etc and folks have returned to work you can raise taxes some more, especially on the uber wealthy. Basic econ, though the 1% and their friendly big biz economists and media types have objected to this particularly since 1980 and Reagan.
Speak for yourself. I'll be busy trying to push Hillary into running, then winning, which I seriously doubt that Ms. Warren could do.
That's one the benefits of Chained CPI. It cuts spending over the long haul and gets the budget on a better trajectory but doesn't have any short-term spending impact at all. The simple fact is that if SS has started with Chained CPI, no one would think it was problematic in any way. From a policy perspective, there's nothing wrong with the idea. It's just that SS has increased faster than COLA in the past, so people look at it as a big cut.
Agreed - I was opposed to Hillary in 2008, but I think she'd be great for 2016. And Elizabeth Warren has zero chance of ever winning the Presidency. Ever. There's too much charisma and connecting to people that's involved, and it's something she can't do, no matter how smart she might be.
Yeah, if you just leave in the hands of lawmakers they are just going to do the opposite of what economic policy dictates and damage the economy. Increase spending during inflationary periods and you get rampant inflation. Decrease spending during recessionary situations and you get high unemployment and possible stagnation. Why the hell can't we just force politicians in congress that manage our fiscal policy to be well-versed in MACROeconomics? The Fed, the ones controlling monetary policy, are packed with respected economists.
Pelosi and Krugman semi-support this as a tactical move partly because of the appeal it has to even some educated members of the 99% like you have bought the whole big biz canard that there exists some budget/social security extreme emergency. They know it will hurt the tens of millions of Americans who depend largely on social security.
