Image of the Day

travails and prescribed the necessary and sufficient solutions if only Mr.
Obama and the DC democrats would listen. In the first, this leaves the
great mystery of why they haven’t listened and have actively articulated
the policies of the radical right instead? In the second, Keynesian solutions
imply that ‘we are all in this together,’ economically speaking, decades
after official Washington and America’s plutocracy made it abundantly
clear they believe they are responsible for their lot and we for ours, except
when they need a few trillion dollars for a bailout. Finally, the ‘we’re all in
this together’ monetary policies of the neo-Keynesians have benefited
America’s richest 10% who own financial assets alone. (For explanations
see Minsky’s essays on inflation and Marx’s Capital, Volume II).
With no respect whatsoever, this leads to the observation that Mr.
Obama and his co-conspirators in the Democratic Party haven’t ‘caved,’
‘capitulated,’ ‘relented,’ ‘given in,’ ‘submitted’ or ‘yielded’ by agreeing to
cut social insurance programs. Mr. Obama’s far-right-of-center policies of
his first term were just affirmed by the coalition that re-elected him. He
will propose cutting Social Security again in just a few weeks. And
democrats, labor, liberals and progressives will again be sincerely debating
the merits of chained CPI versus other measures of inflation by which to
cut Social Security. But while the effects of cuts will be real, the ‘debate’
won’t be. Put another way, the goal is to cut Social Security, not to
‘strengthen’ it.
In his speech at the Hamilton Project launch (link above) in 2006 Mr.
Obama articulated the ‘slippery slope’ argument he believed was the ‘left’
position against ‘modernizing’ America’s social insurance programs. He
argued supporters of these programs feared minor ‘adjustments’ were a
pretext for the wholesale cuts desired by the radical right. But what this
explanation leaves out is context. Were the ‘discussion’ taking place as the
economic prospects of the poor and working classes were dramatically
rising– rapid income gains, increasing income security, rising food
security and income and wealth distribution resembling economic
democracy, interpreted intent might be benign. But with Mr. Obama and
congressional democrats several decades into giving voice to the desires