MORE STUPIDITY – ignoring reality

On Sunday, 12 September 2010, a George F. Will article declared “Americans have good reason not to believe in Obamanomics“.

Interesting!  After the Bush deficit rocketed up, Will declares Obamanomics has achieved this: The American people “owed slightly more when the recession began, when household consumer debt was $2.6 trillion. The painful but necessary process of deleveraging is proceeding slowly: Such debt has been reduced only to $2.4 trillion.”  So the deficit has ceased its increase and been reduced by a very real $200 Billon.  Think about the percentage rate of deficit increase needed to get it to double in eight years – when the starting point was a projected surplus (thanks to Clinton) which would go for decades and eventually make the nation debt free and an unstoppable global economic powerhouse with the credit available to buy any nation.

As Will said, “Never have so many of us owed so much” – of course he fails to credit Bush and Reagan for this.  Instead he bemoans the fact that Obama’s view of economics has actually begun to reduce the national debt.  Obviously, Will just doesn’t get it!

Obamanomics seems to be working.  There is a bad housing market; much unemployment – and a total disregard for the fact that anyone with an ounce of brains knew this was going to happen at this time – and knew it forty years ago when we recognized the Baby-Boom was turning to a Baby-Bust. 

FIRST:  The Baby-Bust generation has no need to expand the number of housing units created for the Baby-Boomers … They are inheriting the homes of their parents, occupying the city residences while their parents retire to their country vacation) place.

Then there is the many houses that are simply empty – empty because they should have been filled by immigrants (like those who entered the USA after WW2) who the GOP wants to and has successfully kept out.  In addition, because the GOP has downplayed the need for conservation and underwritten the drilling for domestic oil – artificially depressing energy costs, and setting us up for disaster in fifteen years or so – there is no need to demolish the older housing stock and build new energy efficient housing.  We will – there will be a housing boom – but it will over a decade before it begins, and longer before the idiots notice.

SECOND:  The Baby-Boomers are retiring or dying.  the economy and economic models are bound to change – this is a period of adjustment which will continue for five years before it stabilizes.  Then we will see a period of fifteen to twenty years  before the first Baby-Buster creates a need for a new model to accompany their retirement.

If we don’t get our economic house in order –- if we don’t reduce the deficit as a percentage of GDP to the levels it was at prior to Reagan – we can happily look forward the the failure of the Great experiment.

The right-wing evangelicals will get their war, and their KING, and their slavery … but they will be dead and it will be our great-grandchildren who will have to endure and correct.

There is one eternal truth: Those who wish the Most Harm to the Most People will not cease in their efforts – because they are helped by intellectuals like George F Will.   Intellectuals who refuse to use their mental capacity to recognize what is being done, and needs to be done.