I can do math

On the day after Labor Day, I feel the need to write a short piece about what strikes me as the most important social issue for us in the US right now - jobs. There simply aren't enough of them. Far too many people have been out of work for far too long. Safety net programs are both inadequate and losing their efficacy and more and more folk are falling through the cracks. All of the politicians are marching out their plans to create jobs and frankly all of them fail to consider the long term. That is fine and indeed, that is appropriate at this time when we are in such a crisis. The question then is, do the programs work.

 Here's where the math comes in. Laying off government workers makes more people unemployed. Immediately. Unemployed people don't spend money which causes businesses to lay off people which causes spending to go down which causes businesses to lay of more people and the spiral goes down. Take away jobs... and the number of jobs goes down... in a spiral. Cutting government contracts makes people unemployed. Similar but more complicated arguments could be made regarding infrastructure and education although both are more long term issues and so probably don't fit in this discussion. 

Some folk will come out with plans that advocate lowering taxes on businesses or lessening environmental regulations and safety regulations. Again, I think in the short term, that might be fine as a stop gap to get things moving.  Here's the problem. Neither works. Businesses already have money, what they don't have is customers. Cutting taxes on businesses doesn't create customers. Lowering safety standards and environmental protections doesn't create customers. Even cutting taxes on individuals doesn't help that much because it only impacts the folk who have jobs. What we need are jobs... and they will follow customers... but without jobs, we get no customers.

So what can the government do? Spend more money. Yes, I know that would raise the deficit and it certainly isn't a good strategy for the long term, but in our immediate crisis, it is what we need. Jobs are the presenting problem. If your house is on fire you don't stop the firefighters from hosing down the house because you're worried about water damage. You deal with that after the fire is out. The deficit is like water damage while the job situation is clearly a fire. Government should be hiring more people, not laying them off. Government should be passing money out to the states for every program that can be kick started with an infusion of cash not cutting back. Government should be hiring folk to go in and clean up after Irene. Government should be investing in research, supporting new technologies and strategies to make us more competitive. Government should be spending more, not less. If it means borrowing money. Borrow it. Interest rates are lower than they have ever been. Take advantage of that. Spend. Spend. Spend. And do it in a way that the money ends up in the pockets of real people and puts real people back to work so that businesses can begin to see customers and so need to hire more workers... and the spiral begins to go back up again. Then, when the population are more stable financially, the government can begin to wrestle with dealing with the long term problems.

Tax Day

I mailed off all of my tax forms today and like most folk, have mixed feelings at best. We do have a refund... but I also have to make quarterly payments so one hand receives a check while the other writes one. All of it has been more immediate this year with all of the talk going on regarding the federal deficit and the impact it will have on future taxes.

I've been hearing commentators over the last few days say that with the huge deficit and the new health care bill, we will need to raise taxes or cut entitlement programs or both. As a general rule, I believe we should pay as we go. Yes there are some things for which borrowing is a logical plan, but generally, we should pay for the benefits we receive. And if you can't afford a Mercedes, drive a Kia. But here's the problem... we're being told to drive a Kia while nobody is questioning whether or not we really need a 14,000 square foot house with a pool and a tennis court. Huh? Let move away from the metaphor. The largest area of expense in the Federal budget is military spending. Now, the government figures say military spending is 20%, but that does not include costs for past military, interest on the debt incurred by military expenditures, or military costs that fall under other budget categories. The War Resisters League places the percentage of military spending at 54% with 36% going to the current military. In either case or somewhere in between, military spending is a huge piece of the pie. It needs to be a part of the discussion.

A budget is a reflection of values. Where your heart is... there is your money. The US spends more on the military than the next 15 nations combined, accounting for 47 percent of the world’s total military spending. Of the next 15 countries, at least 12 are considered allies of the U.S. So what does this massive spending say about us? Do we need to maintain military bases all around the world? Does that even make us safer? Or are the better ways to spend our money?

I don't mind paying more taxes. I benefit from living in the country in ways I cannot begin to express. It is my responsibility to contribute both to current needs and to the future. Even though I am a pacifist, I won't even complain about a reasonable amount going to the military. I do mind 1/2 of my taxes going to empirism. So let's talk seriously about the budget, about deficits, about the need to both cut spending and to raise taxes, but lets keep military spending on the table and realize that without cutting those expenditures, other changes will be inadequate to solve the problem without causing incredible hardship to our population. Imagine how many seniors would live in poverty if we drastically cut social security. Imagine what would happen to health care for seniors if we did away with medicare. We already have school districts talking about cutting a day from the school week to cut costs... imagine.

One of the primary pieces contributing to the disintegration of the Soviet Union was unsustainable military spending. Infrastructure suffered. Social programs suffered. Education and health care suffered while they continued to spend on the military until everything collapsed.