Deficit Talking Points For America Speaks - FDL

[WillyT]

Deficit Talking Points For America Speaks
By: masaccio Friday June 25, 2010 2:52 am
(Promoted by somethingthedogsaid - If you are going to argue, you need to have the facts. This is a good round up of them.)

<snip>

America Speaks is holding public meetings to teach people about the deficit. I hope progressives and FDL people will attend. Here is a link to the locations.

Yesterday I put up talking points on Social Security here. In comments, letsgetitdone points out correctly that we aren’t driving the agenda, and the leaders will no doubt whip up the deficit hysteria with bogus figures and theories. Here are some basic talking points.

0. This stuff is complicated. Your goal is simply to put these ideas into play, to make people think. You are fighting uphill, because very few people understand these points, and because the leaders have been lying to people about these issues for years. Try to pound these in this order.

1 Government economics aren’t like household economics. Governments print money. Households don’t and can’t. The analogy is false. Reasoning with false analogies is fraudulent. If they argue back, point out that the Fed created trillions of dollars to rescue Citigroup, and Goldman Sachs. Make a note of any response you get on this and let me know.

2. There is no deficit crisis. If there were a crisis, we would know because the cost of borrowing money would be going up. Interest rates are very low and will not go up in the near future according to the Fed. If anyone talks about credit default swaps, point out that they are unregulated, there is no real market for them, and they are easily and legally manipulated.

3. Cutting safety net programs and raising taxes on the middle class in the middle of a terrible recession is cruel and vicious, and only a thug would do it. Same goes for cutting school teachers and police.

4. Cutting spending on socially useful programs in the middle of a great recession is just stupid economics, and everyone who took Economics 101 knows that.

5. If the deficit crisis is so bad, we should increase taxes on the wealthy. They got big tax cuts while we were running huge unnecessary and useless deficits. Those tax cuts are a loan, as competent economists like Krugman and DeLong and others have said. If the deficit is so horrible, it is time to call in those loans.

6. If the deficit crisis is so bad, we should increase taxes on the rich, they are the ones who caused the deficits and caused the Great Crash. They can afford to pay the taxes. We can’t.

7. Deficits which fund useful programs like infrastructure, research and education have long-run positive effects. Deficits to give huge tax cuts to the wealthy, or pay for wars or military spending in foreign countries or corn subsidies are bad. They leave nothing for the future. Cut those programs.

8. Be on the alert for trickle-down economics. For example, if you hear leaders of the meeting say that raising taxes on the rich means they won’t invest in productive enterprises, or anything similar, insist that this is the trickle-down theory, which is nonsense.

a) Say it hasn’t trickled down on me. Getting people to laugh at stupid is a good way to shut stupid down.

b) Here is a post that discusses the issue. Here is a Wall Street Journal piece titled Trickle-down Economics Fails to Deliver as Promised, reporting on a study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

c) The New York Times reports that private equity hedge funds are sitting on $500 billion because they can’t find good investments. That means that finding capital to create productive enterprises isn’t a real problem, the problem is misallocation of resources by the rich. Here’s a link.

Hold your ground. We are right about this, and they are wrong. They are trying to hurt the country, you are trying to stop them.

Put up a diary here and everywhere else you participate, and let us know what happened.

<snip>

Link: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/56579

:kick:

[WillyT]

1. Kick !!!

:kick:

[jtuck004]

2. K&R. This effort to cut the deficit could hurt a lot of our most vulnerable people.

If you are really interested in this, know that putting the 31 million people that are unemployed back to work so they can pay taxes like the rest of us is the very best way to reduce the deficit and keep our country secure.


Watch this video:

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5250

A guy named Peter Peterson, the 149th richest man in America:

http://unsilentgeneration.com/2010/04/27/petersons-anti-entitlement-juggernaut/

, could have created thousands of jobs. Instead he created a foundation whose mission is to "sell" all of us "small people" on the idea that we need to reduce the social security and medicare that our seniors have already paid for so he won't have to pay back the money his hedge fund, among others, got in the bailout. Essentially he wants to keep the money that was paid in by payroll taxes from the working men and women in the room around you, your neighbors, and others.

There was a meeting on April 28th in Washington, D.C. attended by people from the current administration, Bill Clinton, other prominent Democrats and Republicans to promote this idea.
President Obama signed the Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform on February 18th. It's members include several of the people from that meeting.

The commission is also known as the Catfood Commission, because if they are able to gut Social Security, the lifeline that supports millions of Senior Citizens, it may well determine whether these people will be eating cat food to survive:

http://www.correntewire.com/right_message

(Looks like there is some really good content in the comments on this page, I haven't read it all yet)


You may also hear that a "survey" supported the idea. But when you look into it, that claim is dubious:

http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/stan-collender/1687/hard-take-new-peterson-foundation-deficit-reduction-survey-seriously

Reading this article by Paul Krugman will help you understand how critics are repeating an incorrect assertion about the fund which ignores the surpluses that should be there:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/21/zombies-have-already-killed-the-deficit-commission/


And if you find that my conclusions are wrong or mis-stated, please say something. 'Cause this is one to fight.

[jtuck004]

3. This article is right on point

http://www.fiscalsustainability.org/node/98