• damianmann

• The Pain Caucus

  “The Pain Caucus - http://nyti.ms/cWVhMW How bout NOT helping the poor and unemployed? Fuck that.” Silly troll.
  

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  The Pain Caucus

  Less than a year into a weak recovery from the worst slump since World War II, there is a dangerous urge to stop helping the jobless and start inflicting pain.

• These people are already helpless. Pain will not get them to do other than suffer and thrash.
  
  
  

  The Pain Caucus

  Anyone who has done any reading about the Great Depression is aware that Franklin Roosevelt, after making a good start on attacking the crisis, succumbed to pressure to reduce the deficits and, thereby, erased most of the progress made at the beginning of his administration. Knowing that historical lesson is one thing, but not until one has witnessed the daily political pressure to cut spending is it possible to understand how easy it is to make the same mistake F.D.R. made. It is vital that we support a continued effort to create jobs, even though that effort will entail running a federal deficit for the next two years.Two? Try ten. The deficit spending must continue until domestic industry is rebuilt. We can tax uninvested funds. Inflation or the threat of it is the tool of choice.
  

• Investment in productive industry is what we need. The government will not be allowed to do that. Socialism is still feared.
  

• The Pain Caucus

  • We need vast repairs to the nation's bridges and roadways, yet we are paying unemployed workers to stay at home, 99 weeks and counting. People with productive jobs are hit up for 30% or more in taxes, yet a hedge fund manager pays 15% tax on a multi-billion dollar income. We have banks foreclosing on homeowners and kicking them out of their homes rather than reduce the monthly payments, perversely preferring to receive ZERO payments.They do get the house. it is still not worth the debt. The banks then abandon the houses to vandalism and the elements, leaving us with homeless people AND empty homes (Carrying charges - taxes do not stop)-- and elected officials that can't figure out what to do about either problem. Billions of dollars in bailout money flows unimpeded into the pockets of the very people who blew up the economy(Can you say moral hazard? The game is life). Confronted with what can only be described as systemic idiocy, it it any wonder that people are angry and confused, willing to elect demagogues and ideologues like Rand Paul in a desperate effort to "throw the bums out" of Washington? None to me. The business pages just do not comprehend that their model is wrong where it is not incomplete. The pain will be theirs as well as ours.