How much worse?

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Thursday July 21, 2011 · 1:04 PM PDT

2011/07/21 · 13:04

The economy is going to get worse before there is change. How fast and how much worse are questions yet to be answered. Right now there appear to be two options. Option one is default. Default is a potential disaster that will make the end of the Bush years look good. The stock market will crumble, unemployment will go up at warp speed and the world economy will collapse.

Next are the deals. Any deal that cuts social security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits either now or some time in the future will lose more jobs. The only question is how many and that depends on how big the cuts are and when.

But to put some perspective, even if the debt ceiling is raised without spending cuts, jobs will be lost. The bottom line is that government spending must be increased. Not arbitrarily increased; spending must be increased in ways that increase productivity and enable those increases to be distributed to the people.

The good news is that we know how to do that. Invest in education, infrastructure, research, development, "green" energy (i.e. energy that does not increase global warming), renegotiate trade deals, improve the US standard of living, improve all the world's population standard of living, enable free birth control for all people (something I think of as birth management).

We need to recognize that while capitalism has some benefits, so does socialism. We need to recognize that regulation does not necessarily interfere with freedom, but can be used to enhance freedom. We need to recognize that part of our basic values as stated so eloquently in the US constitution is to promote the general welfare. Capitalism as currently practiced in the US today does not do this. Capitalists who hoard money for no reason harm society and cause inflation.

This has to change. We need to learn to value people over money. We need to recognize that benefiting all harms no one and that benefiting only a few harms all. We must return to basic human values and reject the dollar all mighty.

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