Time's Up

Since the Great Recession began in 2008 (under President Bush), we've been saying, ever more intensely, many of the same things the wisest minds in economics have been saying: that the U.S. government needs to do more, not less, to help the economy recover. That we should bring back a WPA-like program. That American corporations are NOT paying an effective tax rate that's too high; rather, they're paying an effective rate that's too low.

We have warned countless times that if the idiots in the great American masses didn't wise up and quit voting against their own best interests, America would hit another economic wall, sooner rather than later.

On Wednesday, we were sadly proven right once again.

As early jobs-related numbers rolled out on Wednesday and manufacturing orders and other economic data began rolling in, it was clear that the economic numbers were going to take another hit - and they did. Don't expect the news to get better the next few days, as the official numbers for job creation, unemployment, and other economic news are released.

While specific, accurate, long-term economic forecasting is FAR more complicated than most people on Earth can even imagine, the generalities of economics are not all that complicated. Yes, it IS about supply and demand, as many Americans often say. But the problem isn't the supply, or even the potential supply.

There are millions of Americans who would love to have a job - and even more who would love to have just one job. These are mostly educated, experienced, well-trained, skilled workers, who have been ignored and overlooked, as businesses and corporations of all sizes keep searching for something that doesn't exist - the perfect worker, who is willing and happy to become a slave.

We have far more supply than we can use in America right now - and not just of workers.

What we don't have right now is demand.

When millions of Americans are one illness, one car wreck or one natural disaster away from complete economic ruin, spending an extra ten or twenty dollars each month isn't even a possibility. That inability to spend drives demand down - which just reinforces the downward economic spiral.

The fact is, one percent of the world's households hold nearly forty percent of the world's wealth. Historically, that kind of imbalance only leads to one place - war, which tends to level the playing field in the short term, usually starting with the violent deaths of the wealthy and ending with the starvation deaths of the poor.

This shouldn't be news to you. We've told you this before.

In the face of this screaming economic siren, however, our politicians in Washington DC - from both parties - saw fit this week to waste more time, money, and energy holding a fake vote that could pull the final support out from under the entire world economic system.

Since they won't do anything - or even say what needs to be said - we will.

It is time to stop using false equivalences. It is time to stop finding excuses not to act. It is time to stop being afraid we might anger someone if we DO something to get ourselves out of this economic disaster. If corporations threaten to leave because we're going to make them pay a more fair effective tax rate? Let them follow through. If we need to raise taxes on the rich? Do it. Taxes were higher under Ronald Reagan than they are now, and America's upper class and corporations did just fine then.

It is time to do what needs to be done for our country and its people, to help them make progress on their lives, above all else.

If there is any one lesson from the piles of numbers coming out, that should be it.

Time's up. The time to debate is over. It's time to move on - and act. Now.