Ezra Klein writes about how the press and Congress are absolutely fixated on the deficit while continuing to ignore unemployment, and yet it's unemployment that is causing much of this large deficit!
The jobs crisis is vastly more pressing than our debt problems, but it’s also, in two mostly unnoticed ways, interconnected. For one thing, a weak labor market means a high deficit. It means tax revenues come in low and social spending needs to be high. It’s very hard to begin deficit reduction in any serious way before unemployment comes down.Which means that the sooner we get unemployment under control, the sooner sustained deficit reduction can really begin.
Really, Ezra? And this is news?
I tried to post a snarky comment but so far the WaPost comment server is down (the server probably read some of the comments left by the nutty right-wingers that flock to the comments section and crashed itself in disgust). So I'll post the comment here.
Glerg! This is exactly what liberals have been saying all along, but when liberals advocate something it becomes the kiss of death.
Here's the problem:
1) Republicans (aka "wealthy corporatists") have one goal and one goal ONLY: shrink the government to as small as possible. If that means people starve, go jobless, go without shelter or health care, die, so be it. TS!
2) To do this they have successfully convinced a majority of the voters that liberals want to turn the U.S. into a communist/socialist/nazi-like nanny-state that coddles minorities by taxing the hard working, God-fearing, white patriots whose forefathers "built" this country (using slave labor, and the labor of any other ethnic group they could take advantage of at the moment, while exterminating the native Americans. And somehow these patriots are proud of this tradition).
The Republicans as a group (Limbaugh, Beck, Trump, Palin, Bachmann anyone?) are an embarrassment to all sentient beings everywhere, and yet, somehow they always get what they want. Why is that, Ezra?
Yes, I'm in a pissy mood today. Rain, rain, more rain...
--Trakker
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