Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and executive vice president of Bard, points out in
The Los Angeles Times that our government can't cut its way back to real growth. Sequestration only serves to suffocate that growth, while "[a] strong stimulus was clearly the most effective option, since it had a powerful, positive influence on employment growth and, in the long term, on deficit reduction". In other words, you need to spend now to save money, lives and the American dream in the future:
Despite prevailing notions in the capital and throughout the nation, those of us at the Levy Economics Institute — along with many other analysts and economists — have concluded that the deficit should be increased.
Why add to the deficit right now? Jobs. Our economic models clearly show that without increased government outlays we'll be unable to generate enough GDP growth to seriously attack unemployment. If we tried to balance the budget through tax hikes, our still-recovering economy would be hurt. That leaves a temporarily bigger deficit as an important option.[...] Increasing the deficit while our economy is fragile is not "pro deficit," any more than a family with a 30-year home mortgage is "pro debt." To reclaim a phrase that deficit hawks have tried to make their own, it is "sensible and serious." The federal government can run a deficit, as it almost always has, to help the nation return to prosperity.
With our new understanding of the fraying tie between GDP growth and jobs, we know that millions of Americans are on course for an agonizingly slow march out of joblessness unless we make a move. The nature of slumps and recoveries has changed, and the policies to manage them need to change too.
For more analysis on the day's top stories, head below the fold.
Speaking of investing money now for long-term benefit, The Denver Post editorial board praises President Obama's BRAIN initiative:
We hope Congress can find a way to fit the expense of such an effort into a reworked budget plan intended to put the country on a sustainable fiscal path.
However, fiscal prudence cannot be the sole goal of a retrenched budget. Such a plan also must make considered expenses that result in a societal improvements.
Fortunately, an initiative to map the brain, announced this week by President Obama, could do both. Not only does it have the potential to make life better for the many whose lives have been adversely affected by various brain conditions, it also could save significant amounts of money in future health care costs.
A study by the RAND Corp. estimates it costs $157 billion to $215 billion annually (in 2010 dollars) just to treat dementia. By way of comparison, the study found the annual cost of treating heart disease was $102 billion, and for cancer, $77 billion. A breakthrough that would allow Alzheimer's patients to live more independently, for even a few years, could result in significant reductions in publicly funded health care costs.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times looks at "the urge to purge":
It turns out that the urge to purge — the urge to see depression as a necessary and somehow even desirable punishment for past sins, while inveighing against any attempt to mitigate suffering — is as strong as ever. Indeed, Mellonism is everywhere these days. Turn on CNBC or read an op-ed page, and the odds are that you won’t see someone arguing that the federal government and the Federal Reserve are doing too little to fight mass unemployment. Instead, you’re much more likely to encounter an alleged expert ranting about the evils of budget deficits and money creation, and denouncing Keynesian economics as the root of all evil.
Now, the fact is that these ranters have been wrong about everything, at every stage of the crisis, while the Keynesians have been mostly right. Remember how federal deficits were supposed to cause soaring interest rates? Never mind: After four years of such warnings, rates remain near historic lows — just as Keynesians predicted. Remember how running the printing presses was going to cause runaway inflation? Since the recession began, the Fed has more than tripled the size of its balance sheet, but inflation has averaged less than 2 percent.
But the Mellonites just keep coming.
House Minority Whip Rep. Steny H. Hoyer and Maryland governor Martin O'Malley slam austerity in an op-ed in
The Baltimore Sun:
[T]here is still time to replace sequestration with a balanced alternative before its worst consequences strike families and businesses in Maryland. We continue to urge both parties in Congress to work together to reverse sequestration so that we can avoid the harmful impact of these arbitrary cuts. Doing so will also help end the uncertainty that has held back private sector job creation and the growth of opportunities for the middle class.
Switching topics to gun control,
The New York Times surveys the damage wrought by the gun lobby:
President Obama is being shouted down by the gun lobby. He and Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. have spent weeks crisscrossing the country, making a forceful case for a package of laws that would reduce gun violence. At every stop, including one on Wednesday in Denver, he has demanded that Congress require universal background checks, ban assault weapons and large ammunition magazines, and prohibit gun trafficking. He has invoked the bloodshed in Newtown, Conn., and the daily toll that adds up to 30,000 gun deaths a year. “If there is just one step we can take to prevent more Americans from knowing the pain that some of the families who are here have known, don’t we have an obligation to try?” he asked in Denver. “Don’t we have an obligation to try?”
But the president has been unable to break through the blockade set up by one of the most powerful and relentless lobbies in Washington. The assault weapons battle has already been lost, and it is increasingly doubtful that there will be enough votes in the Senate to support the expansion of background checks, the centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s agenda. (Sixty votes will be required to break the filibuster promised by the most extreme Republican senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah.) Even the gun trafficking provision, which seemed the easiest to pass, is being torn apart by the National Rifle Association, which put forward a substitute version that would eviscerate the prohibition on straw purchases of guns.
Making a similar argument,
The San Jose Mercury News editors write a scathing editorial tearing the NRA and its allies in Congress apart:
Gridlock, moneyed interests and knee-jerk opposition to Obama have kept lawmakers from doing what's best for the nation on so many issues. It would be tragic if even the murder of 20 innocent children fails to move lawmakers beyond the overwhelming influence of money in politics. [...] It is utterly baffling that Congress might fail to close the loophole that allows as many as 40 percent of gun purchases to be completed without determining whether the buyer legally can own one. According to recent polls, more than 90 percent of Americans support background checks. It polls higher than apple pie and just behind motherhood.
The gun lobby has convinced Republican lawmakers and even some Democrats that keeping those records is tantamount to a gun registry that would lead to confiscation. It's another paranoid argument from the black-helicopter crowd, pushed by the gun industry to gin up the anger and fear that motivate its supporters. [...]
Voters need to find a way to overcome the extraordinary wealth and power of the gun lobby. Until they do, increasing numbers of men, women and children will die of gunfire.
On a final note, there are many tributes to
Roger Ebert out there, but
this piece by Ebert himself on death, republished by
Salon, is worth your time and worth a share:
“Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.