CREATING MISGUIDED FINANCIAL PANIC

This post is a comment made in response to a post on a Google discussion group I am involved in, Education Revolution. The group discusses issues dealing with curriculum, teaching techniques, teachers’ aids, etc. More and more, there seems to be right wing creep or political and industrial infiltration into the site. Although I have not entirely ignored this, especially when it comes to education of schools, which has the potential to destroy public education, I have remained silent. For some reason, I found this particular post especially egregious; therefore, I felt compelled to respond. To depersonalize the response, I avoided naming the original contributor.  

My Response:

I find it curious that your post is on the site of a educational revolution web page.

Creative accounting is an interesting exercise. If you list tax revenue, federal budget, new debt, national debt, and recent budget cuts taken from the public record, which no one can really understand, then transform these figures into something all of us can understand, which is in the form of the family budget then attack the results you have used a standard debating technique. Take what someone says, distort and restate, then attack your restatement.  It is a debate winning strategy but is essential dishonest. The household budget derived from the national budget is:

Annual family income                                              $21,700

Money the family spent                                 $38,200

New debt on credit cards                                $16,500

Outstanding balance on the credit card        $142,710

Total budget cuts so far                                          $38.50

Your point; as a country we are spending too much money and are doing nothing about it. We are tittering on the edge of a fiscal cliff! The message is to panic. It is a created crisis. It is a verbal rendition of Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. Things are so bad you can do what you want to correct the situation. For example, cut welfare, stop school lunches, eliminate food stamps, raise taxes on the poor, cut taxes on the job creators, raise utility rates, take over cities and sell the public assets such as museums, let the infrastructure go to hell.  You can even destroy Obamacare, Medicare, and Social Security but because of the fiscal hysteria, you can do all of these things with the blessing of the people who will suffer from all these changes. As an aside I checked the “Fortune 500” and your name did not appear; from that, I assume you are not among the upper 1%; therefore you are working against your own interest  

The family budget is unreal. Like any family, the country has an income; it is called taxes so your solution is to cut taxes, raise college tuition, raise interest rates, do not raise minimum wage, privatize schools, cut health care, cut pension income, expand the military, etc. You do everything you can possible do to make things worse for the people but better of the 1%. Does that make sense to you?  Look at the family budget: the $250,000 home mortgage and the $20,000 car payment is there but where are the assets; the family’s value. Where is the high standard of living Americans enjoy?  

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