........Thomasky's comments on the Stiglizt article you posted.
Sad, just sad
Reading this excellent piece by Joseph Stiglitz will not cheer you up, but I do nevertheless commend it in its entirety (it's not long). One of many highlights:
Stiglitz might have added the very important point that the majority of the country's most prominent pundits who go on television and interpret all this for the American people, who soothe their audiences with assurances that all this is completely reasonable, are in the top 1%, which means households above around $380,000 per year. Many of course are far above that (Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, etc.). High-end print journalists who aren't quite at that level are still likely in the top 2%.
Anyway, the piece makes many important points, all of which boil down to the idea that while income inequality has several initial causes, there is only one thing that sustains it: a political process that is owned lock, stock and barrel by the top 1%.
Stepping back and looking at this context, and staying aware of it, makes watching these budget cuts particularly noxious. That's not to say there isn't waste, fine. But it is to say that the US political system of today is pretty inevitably designed to help the rich and punish the poor. So it's no surprise when GOP Congressman Paul Ryan proposes, as he just has, cutting $1 trillion from Medicaid, which provides health care for poor people and the disabled (an to some extent, a greater extent than many people are aware, middle-class families, too, in the form of nursing-home cost support).
Yes, Medicaid costs are high, killing the states. The feds could actually pick them up. Ronald Reagan proposed doing this. But that would be radical today. If Americans, especially wealthy ones, were paying taxes (income and capital gains) even at the rate we were in the Reagan era, we'd have no budget problems.
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