Matt Yglesias: Creating Jobs by Cutting Wages

[TwinSwords]

Originally Posted by miceelf

HOnestly, for me, let tax cuts expire. First for the top, then for everyone else in a year. Close the capital gains loophole. Then if there's still structural deficit problems, we figure out what to cut.

Yeah, I agree. Plus some drastic cuts to the military, and we could be running surpluses.

I think we all know we do have a long term problem with Medicare; something has to be done to fix that problem. But, as sugarkang pointed out, simply letting the Bush tax cuts carries us at least through 2035. Maybe over the course of the next 4, 8, or 12 years we'll be able to advance the national conversation about the best remedy for skyrocketing health care costs, helping us to agree on a better solution. I'm not an expert on health care policy, but my impression is that the best way to control costs would be with single payer. If we could ever neutralize influence of the tea party and corporate dominance of our political system, we might be able to elect enough reality-based representatives to fix the problem in a way that doesn't, like the Ryan Plan, sacrifice millions of lives on the altar of libertarianism.

We're the richest and most technologically advanced nation on earth. We can figure out a way to take care of our people in their old age. It's just a question of willingness. The problem isn't that we can't; it's that we have a radical faction of far right extremists who don't want us to: they're the people Ron Paul whipped into a frenzy by championing the death of the uninsured. As long as people of that (lacking) moral character dominate our politics, we won't be able to solve these problems.