July 8, 2011

More on the debt crisis

Meant to post this very good NPR story on what the default would do to our economy. Still amazes me that supposedly fiscally "responsible" people would threaten to not pay our obligations. Shame on them.

And here is a great look at how different the two sides see the poor and rich. Orrin Hatch thinks that the poor aren't doing enough on the debt crisis because many of them are too poor to pay federal income taxes. Never mind that income inequality continues to grow, and those poor are losing ground, not gaining, and never fucking mind that they pay a lot of other kinds of taxes at a regressive level. Never mind. Just protect the rich.

Steve asked about Social Security cuts. Here is what I found. My problem with any of this is that while many people will be able to manage this without a significant hardship, there are those who will be barely scraping by who will hurt. That is the option v. asking the people who's income has increased nearly exponentially over the last 30 years. Nothing fair or just or moral about that.

1 comment:

Bob said...

On the SS cuts. It turns out that the so-called sources that provided the NYTimes and other papers information indicating that Obama was caving to SS cuts, were wrong...or lied. I am shocked.

I also agree with Stve that we should raise the retirement age for the benefit of the SS system, not for the benefit of balancing the budget.