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Title: The GOP’s Budget Challenge
Source: FrumForum
URL Source: http://www.frumforum.com/the-gops-budget-challenge
Published: Feb 16, 2011
Author: David Frum
Post Date: 2011-02-16 15:09:15 by go65
Keywords: None
Views: 225
Comments: 1

Money troubles can ruin even the happiest relationships. No wonder that the conservative coalition is experiencing so much strain.

Conservatism could once be described as a three-cornered stool: social, economic and national security conservatives.

Today though it’s more relevant to think of conservatism as an attempt to draw a line connecting four points:

1) No tax increase
2) No defense cuts
3) No Medicare cuts
4) Rapid move to a balanced budget.

Obviously it’s impossible to meet all four of those commitments. It would be difficult enough to combine #4 with even two of the first three.

Much of the struggle within the conservative world can be understood as a quiet debate over which of those commitments to jettison.

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#1. To: go65 (#0)

Incomes policies per se don’t really work. They’ve been tried extensively in Europe in the sixties and seventies and always failed. What you’re really getting at I think and it’s an entirely valid point is the decline in real purchasing power of 80-90% of the country which has been going on apart from a brief interruption in the 90’s for thirty years. At bottom this is why all these market based solutions the Republicans keep advancing won’t work. Guess what. Most people can’t afford them and/or don’t have the expertise to manage them. The median income in this country is $55,000 when if it had continued its trajectory and received its pre 80’s share of productivity increases it would probably be in the 80’s. This income stagnation is not all the fault of Republicans, much of it is simply shifts in the labor market, but they haven’t exactly tried to ameliorate it. And that’s what were basically having to do…ameliorate it. That’s the flaw at the center of the whole supply side worldview. We’ve created an increasingly service based, high tech economy which depends for 70% of its GDP on consumer spending. How the heck are you going to continue growing such an economy while progressively impoverishing 80-90% of the people? Henry Ford had this figured out when he gave his workers high pay so they could buy his cars. The cracks were papered over with debt for about 8 years and the result was disastrous. The bottom line is we have to have some…duh…duh…dud…income redistribution…arghhh. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean higher wages but it could be cash transfers in kind like cheaper healthcare and transportation etc etc. I’m not sure whether its politicians being unable to explain it or the American people being too obtuse to take it in. - David Frum answering a commentator on this article.

What you’re really getting at I think and it’s an entirely valid point is the decline in real purchasing power of 80-90% of the country which has been going on apart from a brief interruption in the 90’s for thirty years. At bottom this is why all these market based solutions the Republicans keep advancing won’t work.

Frum admits the Republican years saw a decline in purchasing power for most Americans and the Clinton years were an Oasis in that period.

Reagan destroyed America.

"Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" - Various Tea Party signs.

Godwinson  posted on  2011-02-16   16:12:57 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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