A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The cover of the August 15-22,2011 New Yorker says it all.

Three Fat Cats in a lifeboat drinking champagne and smoking Cigars while the Titanic sinks in the background, with the smoke from the cigar morphing into a graph of massive economic decline.

All those people who think the problem with America is that we pay our workers too much and thereby make them uncompetitive must be sitting in that lifeboat.

For they advocate cutting worker's rights and removing pension and health care subsidies as a means of stimulating growth. What it will actually do is make it cheaper today for the owners of business who are also the (non)payers of taxes.

Their vision is one subsistence living in the land of plenty for the many so that the few may prosper?

The Republican politics as directed by the tea party resulted in a budget compromise which didn't address the cost of health care of medicare and medicaid and provided for no increase in tax revenues.

This is why Standard and Poors downgraded the USA. The main drivers of the deficit remain and the ability of the government to increase revenue i.e. tax income remains muted which will perpetuate deficit spending with no rational solution in the offing.

There are two ways out of deficit spending. Growth, or War- and their policies certainly aren't designed to stimulate Growth. They scream for austerity with nothing to increase employment which would increase GDP growth which increase tax income.

So are they preparing for the next war? I know they think they have god on their side?