South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Mark Thoma lets loose a cri de coeur regarding the unceasing misrepresentations of the budget problems facing the United States.

… According to this narrative, our budget problems have nothing to do with the Bush tax cuts, higher spending on the war, and the the loss of revenue and higher spending on social programs from the recession, it is Social Security and Medicare that are the problem. As for the recession itself, it wasn’t financial executives in the private sector who made the bad decisions that caused our problems (as they made a mountain of money along the way), it was bad government housing policy that was somehow to blame. And, of course, to solve the problem we shouldn’t use higher taxes to claw back any of those large, large gains those at the top made during the bubble years — gains that in the end hurt our economic productivity instead of helping it — instead we should reduce the social insurance for typical, working class households that had nothing to do with causing the crisis. After all, if we were to take back the “rewards” those at the top got for crashing the economy, we’ll take away their incentive to do it again. Can’t have that….