In Europe, there is a rising view that the US economic recovery, from the most recent recession that was exacerbated by the disastrous housing bubble, income redistributing Clinton and Bush free trade treaties and the Bush tax cuts, is a mirage. That may well be true. And it may not be true. From my point of view, however, the US economy is in a slow motion collapse.
The only thing slowing the arrival of a new Great Depression is FDR’s New Deal programs, like Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and the Minimum Wage, and LBJ’s Great Society Programs, like the food stamp program. Those legislative feats are keeping the demand for goods and services higher than would be normal without the programs. They’ve also lifted GNP.
The US economy is already dangerously teetering on the cliff of another Great Depression. It’s not like Democratic and Republican Party politicians care, because they don’t. Their job is to use legislation to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent. That’s what the 1 percent pay their good lap dogs for, plutocrats like Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Earl Blumenauer, for example.
Unfortunately, that legislative redistribution of income and wealth continues. President Obama, for example, is pushing for the Trans Pacific Free Trade Treaty, which the Nation magazine calls “Nafta on steroids.”
For more on how some Europeans view the US economy as a “mirage,” click the link below.
