The best way to turn around the economy is not austerity

For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps. The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago. Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008. In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one. 61% of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007.

Given these facts, showing wealth continues to get concentrated at the top, while the majority continues to slide down the economic scale, why would anyone want to vote for the party that consistently does the most to help the rich, while ignoring the needs of the majority?

Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts.
-- New York Times, January 8, 2007

Republicans have been promising more of the same, should Americans give control of Congress back to them next election.

Of course, it's more than tax cuts that have created this super-rich class. It's all kinds of policies that affect all aspects of the economy. Laws that help corporations avoid responsibility, for example, save them money.

Starting unnecessary wars enrich the military industrial complex. So much money has been thrown at privatizing the national security state that "no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work," as the Washington Post reported recently in their Top Secret America exposé.

The list of ways our government helps the rich and hurts the rest of us goes on and on.

What we really need to do is encourage a fundamental change in direction. Many have called for an FDR-style work program on energy conservation, such as retrofitting buildings, and on building a vibrant alternative energy industry, such as solar, wind, geothermal and so on. Transportation, too, is an area we desperately need to put people to work on, building more light rail and speed rail lines. There is plenty that needs to be done in the area of rebuilding our infrastructure as well.

It would take another, very targeted, stimulus to accomplish these things. But by getting our economy moving again, really moving, by employing people rather than throwing money at banks, etc, we would increase the tax base and be able to pay down our national debt.

The austerity measures being touted now by conservatives and even some Democrats will not accomplish this. It will only increase the pain. And, of course, help the rich.