Щоб з'їсти своїх дітей є варварським актом

[elfs]

The Ukrainian in the subject translates to "To eat your own children is an act of barbarism." This phrase was printed on leaflets and posters throughout the Ukraine in the 1933, when the Soviet Union, whether through accident or design, so thoroughly destroyed Ukrainian agriculture that an estimated 4 million people died.

(This is why hammer-and-sickle hipster t-shirts annoy the hell out of me; everyone remembers the Shoah, and well they should; but nobody cares to remember the Holodomor, or any of the other atrocities perpetrated.)

And while Republicans whine and bitch and moan about how the deficit and the debt will destroy our children's future. Their solution? Instead of destroying our future, why not consume it all now? That's exactly what the $60 billion in cuts proposed by John Boehner's House Congressional Republicans have proposed. As Brad Delong writes:

WIC is nutritional aid for pregnant women and women with young children; let's cut that, because the damage to the nation from malnourishment is a problem for future politicians. NOAA is weather and climate - hey, what we don't know can't hurt us. Nuclear nonproliferation - well, we probably won't feel the pain of a terrorist nuke assembled from old Soviet fissile material for a couple of years. FEMA - well, how often do hurricanes hit New Orleans? CDC - with luck, by the time plague hits someone else can be blamed. Don't start thinking about tomorrow.

After ten years of thoroughly wrecking the American economy-- take out the illusory financial sector, and the US economy created almost no new jobs in the years between 2000 and 2010-- and with a current president utterly uninterested in fixing the problem, the solution, it seems, is to cave.

It is striking to me that nobody will tell the basic truth: we have the deficits we do now because the Obama administration actually put our two wars on the books, rather than what the Bush administration did, which was hide them in a separate set of books entitled "emergency" accounting.

I think the President ought to say, "Okay, I take the Republicans at their word. Our unemployment problem is structural: the people out of work now are those who can't find any because they don't have the skills. And the Republicans want to reduce the size of government. Therefore, I am cutting the Pentagon's budget in half, closing two-thirds of our military bases overseas, and eliminating most new weapons programs. This will eliminate tens of thousands of government-sponsored jobs and shrink the size of government substantially. Yes, it will put many people out of work, but those people clearly have desirable skills, and if the Republicans are right they'll be able to find new work in short order."

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

The screams, they could be heard on Alpha Centauri...

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

I really want to hear somebody address the fact that average wages have been stagnant for a decade, when inflation is adjusted for. It's hardly something that can be fixed by legislation, but it's kind of abhorrent that the market's been going like gangbusters, corporate profits are frankly ridiculous, yet workers are told their benefits are being cut again and again, and there might not be raises this evaluation period, 'you know, because of the economy. Now shut up and get back to work and be happy you have a job.'

I wonder if outdated union organizations and the practice of collective bargaining might not see some kind of rebirth through social media.

I also wonder if the boomers will suddenly get a cold chill down their collective spine when generations X and Y are in a position to do something drastic to social security, gutting their parents benefits so we might have a chance at getting any, and happily remind our parents that "hey, remember, we get to pick your retirement homes, too, and you didn't leave us with much money. have fun!"

[gromm.livejournal.com]

'cause greed is good. Didn'tchaknow?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Gee, I've been out of work for 1.5 yrs now. Guess I don't have any skills. Yep, those 11 years developing software mean I'm unskilled. And that PhD in Physics I got before that? Totally proves I'm an unskilled slacker.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

All you have to do is reinvent yourself, donchaknow!

[tagryn]

Megan McArdle had a good post a year or so back which skewered both sides for using the deficit for expedient political gain, while showing no actual interest in coming to grasp with it once they were back in power and in a position to take action.

This article in National Journal did a good job IMHO of overviewing the problem of the lack of creation of jobs in the 2000s, as well as why it wasn't detected as such at the time. Depressingly, even the experts appear at a loss as to whether there's anything to be done about it.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

well said, especially that last paragraph