Economics 101 in 60 Seconds


One of my dearest and best friends, Diane, sent me the link to this NY Times Op-Ed essay. I've mostly known what the author writes, but he really puts it all together very well. This is a quick read, and I urge you to read it if you want to understand why we are where we are today. Here is just a morsel:
The right-wingers were crafty: You smother the dream by crippling the programs that support it, by starving the government of money to pay for them, by funneling the government’s revenues to the rich through tax cuts and other benefits, by looting the government the way gangsters loot legitimate businesses and then pleading poverty when it comes time to fund the services required by the people.

The anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist summed the matter up nicely when he famously said, “Our goal is to shrink the government to the size where you can drown it in a bathtub.” Only they didn’t shrink the government, they enlarged it and turned its bounty over to the rich.
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