George Santayana's quote was just barely selected as the title for today. The other candidate was,"Did we learn NOTHING from Hebert Hoover?" Average Americans are out-of-work, losing their homes, unable to afford health care and falling deeper into that hole on a daily basis. America's corporate overlords, on the other hand, are posting massive profits and setting records for earnings. Apple, America's second most valuable corporate overlord, recently had more cash on hand than the U.S. Government!
Against this backdrop, our government once again broke out its' fiddle and chose to use the economy as kindling for a partisan pyre. Seventy-eight times since 1960, Congress raised the debt limit without trying to run America into a bridge abutment. This time, thanks to the Republican's stated goal of making Obama a one-term President, the rules changed. This wouldn't have been a problem if the Democrats had grown a set of balls and not caved in, as usual.
The problem is simple, even if the solutions aren't. The Republicans are unwilling to consider any legislation that causes the rich to pay even a single dollar more in taxes, even though they pay less in taxes now that at any time in recent history. At the same time, they want to cut government spending at a time when the economy for real Americans needs stimulation the most. The Democrats want to make the economic landscape more friendly to the middle and lower classes, but lack the spine to stand up to their Republican opposition. President Obama tries to "be the adult in the room", but doesn't show the strength or inclination to call the GOP bluff. That leaves us with a government that makes Charlie Sheen look like the epitome of wisdom and coherent thought.
The future bodes no better. The recent Republican debate gave us the number of candidates that would support a measure that coupled spending cuts with tax increases at a 10-to-1 ratio. None. Michelle Bachmann comes off as ill-informed at best and bat-shit crazy at worst. Mitt Romney can't shake his past liberalism in Massachusetts and Rick Perry is trying to run for the presidency of a nation he wants to secede from. In normal times, Democrats should be looking forward to another term in the White House, but our President is looking more and more like a spineless weakling on a daily basis.
That brings us back to my alternate title. I hear lots of talk about "double-dip recession", but I think we may be on the brink of a depression. The last time we were here, the capital-D Depression that all economic crises are measured against, Herbert Hoover decided to keep taxes on the rich low and drastically cut government spending. This resulted in the biggest economic collapse in history, marked by so-called "Hoovervilles" where the poor huddled for survival, which lasted until the election of Franklin Roosevelt. FDR opened the federal purse strings and put people back to work. While most people believe that WWII ended the Great Depression, most of the groundwork had already been done.
Does the government spend a lot of money on stupid shit? Yes. Hell, we just spent (and continue to spend) trillions of dollars and too many American lives on wars that were never necessary. The economy will not improve until the majority of struggling Americans have money to spend. America's corporate overlords have had ample opportunity to step up to the plate and have not. If the private sector can not or will not end this soon-to-be second Great Depression then the public sector must.
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