August 28, 2012
Annie Lowry has a nice blogpost in the Economix section of the NYT listing some of the areas where Republicans and Democrats seem to largely agree (meaning the leadership, not the base). I’d agree with her list and add a few more items.
Both parties seem to agree on an uncompetitive dollar, having the Fed and Treasury maintain the dollar at a level that prices U.S. goods out of many markets. The result is a large trade deficit (currently around 4 percent of GDP or $600 billion a year) and the loss of around 5 million jobs in manufacturing. This is a major source of downward pressure on the wages of the bulk of the workforce.
Both parties seem to agree on extending patent and copyright protections both in the U.S. and around the world. These are incredibly costly forms of protectionism and have the effect of redistributing income upward since very few people in the bottom 90 percent draw their income from patent rents.
And both parties seem intent on preserving too big to fail banks which get a subsidy of tens of billions of dollars a year from their implicit government insurance.
I could list others, but these items amount to substantial transfers from the rest of us to those on top. It is worth noting the agreement on these issues by both parties’ leaders.
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