Sunday, February 8, 2009

Senseless (part II)

To continue ...

If Republicans in Congress and even Democrats for that matter, do not see the potential for social unrest not to mention moral cataclysm, then they have severely misinterpreted the mood of the nation.

If we want folks to take risks as an individual, as a small business, or as a corporation; we need to have a social safety net so that essentials are provided in times of need. A really smart guy talked about this at Google a while back.

The part that is so upsetting is that a private business has also determined that these vary programs have the quickest stimulative effect and the largest bang for the buck. Google Marc Zandi's stimulus study at Moody's Economy.com page 3.

Also, if some of these theological conservatives (people who think economic policy is relgious not subject to analysis - a sort of economic faith based initiative) read independent analysis like Peter Orszag's old stuff at the CBO they would find that health care reform is essential to long-term national buget sustainability.

Today, some John Cornyn was on Fox talking about how the stimulus would crowd out private investment (which is idiotdic because there is no private investment to speak of right now), but I have news for the good Seantor from Texas - health care is starting to crowd out private investment.

President Obama said that the tone and the process needed to change in Washington and they do. But the change we seek is from fiction to fact, from immoral to just, from unthinking to thought provoking. And finally to steal a quote from Paul Krugman which applies to all policy matter, "Don’t say that any theory which has good things to say about protectionism must be wrong: that’s theology, not economics."

1 comment:

  1. It's scary to think about how many more people are going to be stuck without health care in the next year or two.

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