November 29, 2010
This is the general policy being pushed by the Washington Post, various Peter Peterson funded deficit commissions, and of course Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission. What is great about Robert Samuelson is that he is comes right and tells readers that he wants ordinary people to suffer for the greed and incompetence of the bankers and the people who design economic policy.
Samuelson says that bailouts in Ireland, Greece, Spain and elsewhere are about:
“persuading ordinary citizens to tolerate austerity (higher unemployment, lower social benefits, heavier taxes) without resorting to paralyzing street protests or ineffectual parliamentary coalitions.”
Of course there is no economic reason whatsoever that ordinary people should be accepting lower pay, higher taxes, and reduced Social Security and pensions. The economies of Europe and the United States are no less productive than they were before the collapse of the housing bubble that the economic policymakers (almost none of whom have been fired) failed to see. In fact, in the United States productivity has risen substantially in the last 3 years.
The reduced output and unemployment stems from lack of demand. This in turn stems from the failure of the same group of economic policymakers to find ways to increase demand sufficiently to make up for the demand lost by the collapse of the bubble. Rather than trying to generate demand, policymakers are doing exactly what Mr. Samuelson said they are doing. They are trying to force ordinary people to endure high unemployment and accept cuts in pay, benefits, and public welfare programs.
And, as Mr. Samuelson says, he hopes that austerity can be accomplished “without [the public] resorting to paralyzing street protests or ineffectual parliamentary coalitions.”
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