The argument that austerity is the only responsible course of action if we wish to get out of this financial nightmare is flawed. It doesn't take into account the cost of human lives much less the impact these measures will have 20 years down the road, not just on people but to the world, the economy, the United States.
It is the government's job to protect the people and legislate on the behalf of the general welfare of the country, not just special interests. If that means heating oil to protect people from the cold, food to feed the hunger, or beds and blankets for the homeless, or providing the security that when you get old, you won't have to rely solely on yourself--these are all a part of Congress' duty to the people to protect their welfare.
It is Congress' job to decide what is in the country's best interests and to legislate it. If they pass a law that is unconstitutional, it gets challenged and if it makes it to the Supreme Court--then they can decide if it doesn't fall within the powers of the legislative branch. Instead, we seem to be ignoring all of our problems and societal issues so that we can call each other names.
It is irresponsible to not take care of these problems.
It is irresponsible to block beneficial attempts to help the situation.
When we cut education, we are cutting back on our future discoveries and innovations--what if we miss out on the next iPhone because some kid's teacher got fired and replaced with someone less qualified to teach something like math or science. We are making it so we have less skilled workers who can't get a good job with benefits. Which in turn means these people have less spending power, so less demand for products, and less jobs available. It is a vicious cycle that is never going to end unless we DO something.
When we cut back on infrastructure spending, we are cutting back on the ability of our people and businesses to move goods to market and to just get about. We are making is harder for consumers to get somewhere to buy something. It's hard to have a business meeting, visit family, or go on a shopping trip with decaying roads and broken bridges.
I mean I could make this long but I'm sure you can see where I am going with this. I think it is irresponsible for us to cut back on the most important and vital resources our country has--our people.
I graduated in 2009, with a "useless" degree because I figured if I was going to be dropping that much money on an education, I wanted a real one that would help me learn how to think more critically. My useless degree got me into plenty of interviews but after the initial curiosity of what on earth my degree all entailed, they would quickly lose interest and either string me along for a month or so or drop me. But I have to say, instead of ending up with a useless degree where I learned nothing, I ended up with a useless degree where I learned a great deal about a wide variety of topics. It gives me a broader base to understand the world with and gave me the experiences to grow more as a person. It also taught me the importance of government and the role it has played historically.
Now I'm going back to school to drop more money on an education that I have no idea if it will be worthwhile in 4 years in the hopes that if I become more skilled, someone might actually want said skills. Basically, it looks like right now I should have never gone to college, and just saved my money and stayed a waitress. Financially, I would be in a better position but the list of my prospects and possible future opportunities would be very short. Not to mention, many vital things I learned while in college, and the subsequent years of struggling to get by taught me more than anything else in the classroom, not just because I lived it but because I had the skills to examine my experience based on what I had learned in school.
If austerity measures are truly the answer, then why isn't Europe doing better? The government did not cause the financial crisis (I mean other than deregulating). Programs that help people did not cause us to go into a deficient (that was the tax cuts and two unpaid wars). People's entitlements did not cause this either. We placed too much trust in an institution like wall street built on making money any way it can.
Why should the least amongst us pay the highest price? Especially when it was the wealthiest among us that caused this. Why should a child's education suffer or people starve on behalf of the wealthy and their need to gamble in a high stakes game that potentially kills currencies and thrusts the world into a recession. Why should millions of people be jobless, who lost their jobs through no fault of their own, not be allowed to collect unemployment insurance to pay their bills?
There is no reason why we should dig ourselves into a hole just so the corporations can get more subsidies and tax breaks so that they can pay their lobbyists and CEOs that much more.
The distribution of wealth is the government's job. I don't mean it in a "it is their job to take your money" way (although it is their right to do so for allowing you to do business in this country), but more it is their job to come up with regulations, laws, and taxes that equalize capitalism. That is how it has worked since the 30s since they started protecting workers and doing things to build the middle class.
Capitalism isn't a perfect system. No system is a perfect system and we need regulation to reign people in or else they start going crazy trying to make profits. The current system however, disproportionately helps the rich versus the poor with the way taxes and regulations are currently set up.
I just don't see why, at a time of crisis, the uber wealthy cannot pay 3% more in taxes to make sure the rest of us don't starve, freeze, or die. Taxes are your dues to society and to be a member of it you should pay according to how much you have benefited. A poor person, even when they get all those "free" things, is just barely making it if they are at all. Their lives have few joys or choices, they are stuck. They are not benefiting as much as a wealthy person from society because they have fallen on hard times either because of health, finances, or ill luck. These programs are meant to help you get up off you feet, not just let you get by. No one deserves to live hand to mouth, constantly worrying about the next disaster that will send them into the streets.
The wealthy use up resources, be it our roads, the people who work for them, the land they operate on, being able to use our grid of electricity, our clean water, our clean air and more. It makes sense for them to pay their share, if only because it will create more opportunities in the future.
Right now, we are borrowing from our futures, but we aren't borrowing the money we would have had. We are stamping out the tender shoots of new growth and new beginnings--we are destroying unknown futures and possibilities by crippling the ability of the middle class, working class, or poor to be able to create a sustainable livelihood. There are so many contributing factors why we are where we are be it the frauds the banks committed and are still committing, the gambling of wall street, or the rampant corruption within our government, the domination of our media politics by profiteers.
We have the solutions to these problems. We just have to implement the necessary regulations, laws, and tax reforms to make our country back into what it should be. Which I hope means number #1 on lists that benefit people and last on things like annual health care cost or infant mortality. We should try to have the best of everything, not just the best military.
It makes me think of Roy Zimmerman's song, End of the Ship (I recommend looking up his youtube channel).
"On the end of the ship that's rising, while the other end goes down...
...There is a joke we tell among us/where we call our economics "trickle drown"/ We're upwardly mobile, until we go below..."
