fairness and the debt crisis

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Fairness & The

Debt CrisisIf Fairness is Forgotten, Crisis is the Result

Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved


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An Introduction

There is no dispute from any portion of the political

spectrum that the federal budget deficit is rising and thatthe debt has reached its highest levels since WW2.

What is under dispute is why the deficit and debt are this

high and what can be done about it. The bigger disputeperhaps is whether we are viewing the symptom as theproblem instead of the real problem in other words,would we be in a debt crisis if there hadnt been a Great

Recession or decades of bad economic policy?The Debt Crisis is the direct result of a larger crisis whichwas borne as a result of the implementation of unfairpolicies. Adding more unfair policy now makes no sense.


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What is Fair Debt Policy ?

Fair Debt Policy begins with the recognition that averageAmericans did not create the current debt, the currentdeficit or the current economic crisis. It is not the lifestyle

of ordinary Americans that led us here it is instead thegreed gone wild of a few that caused all of this.

Fair Debt Policy can only occur if the true causes of thedebt crisis are addressed those causes include:

A decade of unjustified wars. Outsourcing of millions of American jobs.

Trillions of dollars of tax cuts to the wealthy. Deregulation of the financial industry which had the

effect of turning Wall Street into a Casino. The stagnation of income & job opportunities for the

Middle Class (over decades).


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The Debt Crisis did not begin with the ObamaAdministration. It began during the 1980s.


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Fair is Smart

One of the main principles of Fair Economics is that theFair policy is also the Smart policy. This applies to FairDebt Policy as well.

Common Sense Rule Number 1 if economic policypenalizes those who represent the majority of economic

activity the economy will of course destabilize.

Rule Number 2 if you invest trillions of dollars outsideof your own economy / nation, youre taking away trillions

of dollars that could have gone into the nation.

Rule Number 3 if you remove all the safeguards fromthe financial market, it will no longer be safe.


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What Do We Do?

How can we resolve the Debt Crisis? Here are somesuggestions:

Solve the Economic Crisis first no amount ofbudget cutting will ever match the rate of revenuedecline if we plunge into a Depression.

Make the folks who have been riding the gravy trainfor the past 30 years finally pay their fair share.

Shut down the Wall Street Casino safeguard ourfinancial markets and keep them safe.

End the wars, all of them, now. End outsourcing now stop all mergers, now. Ensure that any stimulus goes into the actual

creation of jobs no more giveaways.


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Deficits and Debt are not random outcomes they aretied to policyalways


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What Not to Do

The worst thing we could possibly do is what our leadersare advocating now to penalize the American peoplebecause of the greed, irresponsibility and stupidity of the

handful of people who brought the world to brink offinancial collapse.

Not one of the people who caused the current crisis havebeen indicted or tossed in jail in fact many of them hadtheir debts bailed out by us, the taxpayers at 100 cents onthe dollar. This is hard to believe, but this is what happens

when corruption drowns out the needs of the people.

Current policy is being dictated by exactly the samepeople who created the crisis that caused the debt.These people blame us for everything


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What Not to Do - 2

The people who caused the crisis want to make us suffer

to pay for their misdeedsheres how: They want to eliminate our retirement income by

changing or eliminating Social Security. They want to get rid our retirement health coverage

by eliminating Medicare. They want to further increase the cost of going to

college for our children. They want to eliminate unemployment benefits and

disaster relief, housing assistance, veterans benefits in short anything that helps to make our societystrong and livable. They refer to all of this asDiscretionary Spending.


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Why The Current Plan is Unfair

1. Its unfairbecause it is penalizing the wrong people forthe wrong reasons.

2. Its unfairbecause it wont work it will further depress analready shrinking economy thereby further growing thesize of the deficit and the debt anyway.

3. Its unfairbecause long-term it will wreck any chance of

returning to a strong economy we will have permanentlylost the middle class as we know it today.

4. Its unfairbecause it assumes that much of the recentdebt or stimulus went to ordinary Americans when in fact

almost none of it did out of the trillions that went tobail out Wall Street and out of the many billions in thestimulus only a tiny fraction went to create jobs. The vastmajority of stimulus was a giveaway to the folks who

caused the crisisthey didnt deserve it.



The main causes of the current deficits are; revenue shortfalls(from tax cuts and the Recession), the cost of war and bailoutsthat didnt go to ordinary Americans anyway. The added

expenditures have not been directed to policies that would solveour actual economic crisis. Thats the real problem.



Summary

1. Fair Economics is Smart Economics. Fair Debt Policybegins with the admission that ordinary Americansdid not cause the Debt Crisis. Since ordinary

Americans didnt create the crisis they shouldnt beasked to make all of the sacrifices.

2. What caused the debt crisis was bad economic policyand that bad policy led to the Great Recession. Thefolks who made those policieswere rewarded.

3. The way to solve this crisis is to resolve the trueproblem first the economy. The only way to do that isstop listening to those who created the crisis and focuson solutions that will help ordinary Americansnotpenalize them - That will only deepen the crisis.

fairness and the debt crisis

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