A View from the Editorial Board: We are now entering Pottersville

[tnlurker]

From the editorial board of the Memphis Paper...The Commercial Appeal. Pretty unusual for them to write like this.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/nov/28/a-view-from-the-editorial-board-we-are-now/

In a 1986 "Saturday Night Live" spoof known as the "lost ending" to the Frank Capra holiday classic "It's a Wonderful Life," common-man hero George Bailey and the townspeople of Bedford Falls discover that Mr. Potter, the wealthy, callous Building and Loan majority shareholder, has stolen their money. Very unlike the original movie ending, they proceed to administer a cathartic thrashing to the feigning-wheelchair-bound curmudgeon.

But for many real-world Americans today, it feels like Mr. Potter has turned the tables. High unemployment, mass foreclosures and low wages have put decent, hard-working George and Mary Baileys on the brink.

When I asked Republican and tea party congressional candidate Charlotte Bergmann at an editorial board meeting in October if she was aware of the Bureau of Economic Analysis report that Americans are currently paying the lowest taxes -- local, state, federal -- since the 1950s, the boilerplate response was: The solution to our economic woes is to reduce government spending, cut taxes (me: even further!) and create jobs.

Americans overwhelmingly bought this flimflam logic at the polls this month, despite 30 years of supply-side Reaganomics whereby historically low taxes for the wealthiest, flat wages and deregulation led them to turn to debt to keep up, creating the greatest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression and dealing a severe blow to democratic capitalism.

More at the link.

[tnlurker]

1. Here is the part I found interesting

Why this acceptance of self-defeating economic policy? Part of the answer lies in the intentional erosion of the civic-social contract, by those who stand most to gain financially, in which the words, indeed the very ideas, of public, poor, social, taxes and government have become four-letter words, and have been corrupted by the self-aggrandizing conservative ethos of Me the Person, We the Party, We the Corporation/Shareholders, instead of We the People -- a balkanized civics.

In a world where wealth flows to the top, where many Americans have to work two or three jobs -- if they can find work -- just to make ends meet, it's easy to see how things have fallen into this sad state. Predatory businesses, pundits and politicians play off fear and distraction to their economic advantage.

[Swamp Rat]

2. k&r

[pscot]

3. +1