While the COVID-19 relief bill is still lumbering towards a final vote, some Senate Democrats are already coalescing behind a proposal for the next comprehensive package: President Joe Biden’s jobs plan.
“As you have said,” the senators wrote to Biden, “now is the time for boldness.”
Amen!
The argument against, however, will be that since nobody can truly predict the economy, these stabilizers could turn into long term relief with no way of knowing the actual cost of the program. “This has all the earmarks of an economic disaster with uncertainty as to the amount of money that may be spent. That’s…that’s…why that there is socialism/communism on a grand scale!”
Hey Joe austerity isn’t going to build back better.
We need to go big on spending, and infrastructure is low-hanging fruit for a jobs program. There are trillions of dollars worth of overdue projects— crumpling bridges, roads, water and sewer plants, sea and airports, transit, broadband, etc.
And with interest rates so low, it’s foolish not to spend money.
Are…are you talking about Infrastructure Week?
Especially while people can relate to having no potable water for weeks.
Many economists have discussed the benefits of an universal basic income, and this seems to be a version of that. Especially if the robotization of the workforce continues, leading to higher unemployment rates.
They are not austerity-obsessed. That sounds like there might be economic principles at work. Republicons will simply do anything- cripple the economy, work with our enemies, and shaft our allies- anything that will drain the middle class to make the obscenely wealthy, grotesquely wealthy. Their only motivation is to feed their uber-wealthy donors, economy be damned.
And of course, we all know that the only time the RepuglQanons worry about national indebtedness is when there is a Democrat in the Whit House. We could completely repeal the GOP 2017 tax “cut” farce and pay for Joe’s Relief proposal completely with cash left over. Let’s do it!
The Great Recession was craven GOP jargon for what was really a Great Depression. An entire generation is still trying to dig themselves out of the hole Republicans made. Another generation is retiring without any savings.
Let us never forget, continue to remind citizens and insist that the media reports economic facts instead of repeating conservative lies and promoting GOP publicity stunts.
Get Elizabeth Warren out there talking. She knows how to frame the issue and connects with voters in a way that they begin to believe that they their economic interests are at least as important as the Koch Brothers. Actually much more important if this nation is going to end this century any near as economically strong as we were when it started.
I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.
Every now and then, they let it slip.
You can’t build back better on an austerity basis.
Austerity isn’t about building anything.
Those who advocate austerity either have rocks in their heads or they fear incumbent governments will spend and succeed, and be harder to defeat in the next election. Usually, it’s both.
Look what’s happened in the south because of low temps. We’re almost a 3rd world country, slipping into a dystopian hell. But all the fascists want to do is scream about some freedoms they think they’ve lost to people who don’t even have heat and drinking water. Biden needs to bring it. He needs to get Manchin and a few others in a room and slap em around and say “Look out there, man! It’s over unless we do some big shit!”
Ew!
Fuck the debt. And the deficit.
Put money in the hands of people who will spend it. Demand creates jobs.
Infrastructure year for the next two years.
This is not rocket science. It’s basic economics.
Actually that used to be their only motivation. Now their only motivation is to deny Democrats a win. Any win. Because they see Democrats doing something good for people as an existential threat to Republican electoral fortunes. And they are right. That’s why they hated Obamacare, a Republican Heritage Foundation-inspired healthcare plan that the megadonor class was totally fine with.
Not understanding that basic fact was Obama’s downfall. It was never about radical versus moderate policies. Even if Democrats were to propose a megadonor tax cut of their own, Republicans would oppose it, because their only motivation is to deny Democrats credit for anything, thus keeping the conversation about transgender bathrooms and Mr. Potato Head and antifa and cancel culture and one poor Smith student who it turns out maybe was mistaken when she believed she was being racially profiled. They’ll talk about that crap for weeks on end.
People who never studied the Great Depression and Keynesian economics would not know what you’re talking about.
FDR’s programs weren’t fabulously successful, but they got so many people to work that an entire generation venerated the man.
The Dems probably could not have a more competent treasury secretary at the moment than Janet Yellen. She well understands asset bubbles, which was why, back several years ago in the late Obama administration, with the 2012 bond market crisis behind, that the Fed wanted to pull back on quantitative easing (QE) and move ahead with quantitative tightening (QT) to deleverage its position. QT never really happened, and it’s been QE all day every day since this covid thing hit. Add to that a very poorly timed tax cut in 2017 that meant the government avoided its usual late-cycle preparations for fiscal resilience in a downturn.
Companies in Europe finance most of their borrowing through banks. Non-performing corporate bank loans peaked in 2012, about four years after the onset of the Great Recession, at around 10%. Mario Draghi gave his famous “whatever it takes” QE speech in 2012, and with Italy’s economy struggling, it looks like he’s back for more.
Companies in North America, in contrast, borrow mainly on the bond markets. The defaults were low in 2008, but gathered steam after 2010. Depressed economic activity raises bond default risk.
Right now that borrowing has reached astronomical levels. And the US debt-to-GDP ratio is about 330%. That’s still manageable with a plan, but it’s a global economy. China, for example, would bail out defaulting firms and banks up until a couple years ago. It also has a very opaque informal banking system. Private companies often have to borrow there at higher rates as they do not have the same access to borrowing from the state banks as state-owned enterprises. This has created a problem with “zombie” companies that must feed regularly on government money to keep going. The US also has its share of zombie firms. If things went tits up in China, the mirror image of our trade balance, we could see disruption here as well, and vice versa. Perhaps The Walking Dead is just a macroeconomic metaphor?
Nice article, Kate.
Democrats watched Republicans obstruct their attempts to legislate through the economic crisis, leading to a deflated recovery with years-long ripple effects.
Government is not the problem. Republicans are.