The Republicans think they must stop the Obama/Rubin 'shared' austerity plan at all costs because they fear that it would make the confidence fairies rain good fortune on the US economy and ensure a Democratic sweep in the next election.
But Rubin has no such delusion. Reading the weak signals of rising commodity prices and property bubbles worldwide, Rubin only thinks that his shared austerity plan is needed now to prevent an even more catastrophic fall in the economy. i.e. another Great Depression; he does not think that his shared austerity plan which he proposed as a substitute for a second stimulus will lift us out of the Lesser Depression. What is the fundamental mistake in Rubin's analysis? He cannot easily be accused of crass bourgeois bias; he is calling for bigger estate taxes and higher marginal rates. But of course he is bourgeois in another way: it does not occur to him that a system that presents only the alternatives of a Lesser and Greater Depression has itself become intolerable. LR
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