Paul Krugman Shows Where Greed is Leading To In The US And It Could Lead Down That Very Same Road In Canada

And it ain’t pretty.  In fact, it’s quite frightening. Here is an exerpt from Krugman’s latest article: The Unlit, Unpaved Road To Nowhere is where greed is leading to; that’s where and if you read the article, you will see that he means that…literally!

The lights are going out all over America – literally.Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, fromPhiladelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: In a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain and returning them to gravel.

Wow! Talk about going backward to ol’ pioneer times!  Imagine,  no more streetlights;  gravel roads; fewer highways to drive on. This is sure to cut back on productivity as well as road safety.

If that weren’t bad enough. Check out how the Americans are gutting public education. And that is even uglier.

And a nation that once prized education – that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children – is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

Already, many kids coming out of the American (and Canadian, for that matter) public school systems are coming out inadequately prepared for the job market and post secondary education; they can’t read, write or calculate properly among other things. Just imagine how much worse things can get with all those cuts.

Krugman says it doesn’t even have to be this way, if only governments on all levels were simply willing to raise taxes. That and:

the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

But, Washington DC is only providing minute aid, says Krugman. It would appear to both the Rethuglicans and the Blue Dog Democrats, reducing the deficit and maintaining tax breaks to America’s most affluent  is priority above all, including the education of young minds. Very short sighted to say the least as those uneducated kids are the future tax payers.  How will they take care of the country if they’re not educated enough to do so?

Furthermore, the greed in the US is just astounding. When asked their preference:

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: Given the choice between asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble, they’re choosing the latter.

Frightening, innit? Go read the rest of Krugman’s article. Indeed, it is frightening, but one Canadians can’t afford not to read given Stevie Spiteful and the Harpercon’s love for corporate tax breaks and only the top 1% of Canada’s most affluent should have the good life.  Perhaps one of the main reasons Stevie spiteful is glowing about how great our economy is is because of the healthy wealth of the millionaires and billionaires in Canada, who, according to Bruce Campbell of the Center for Policy Alternatives, are the ones who not only keep their wealth in tact during recessionary times, but actually see their wealth go up.

the latest Merrill Lynch world wealth report found that ranks of millionaires climbed 17 per cent in 2009 while their collective wealth surged 19 per cent to $39 trillion.

Naturally, these same people live in a bubble; they send their kids to the most exclusive of private schools; why should they care if  the majority of kids don’t get a good education? However, they should care about driving on unlit, unpaved streets, wouldn’t that ruin the lustre on their European sports cars or whatever luxury vehicles they drive or have driven for them?

Campbell also makes the case that our economy isn’t soaring as fast as the Harpercons and their cheerleaders would lead us to believe that it is; not with the unemployment figures we have; not with the future unemployment figures we’ll soon see if he gets his way and starts savagely cutting the civil service. At the time Campbell wrote his article on July 14 of this year; our unemployment rate is at 11.4%  (including the underemployed); not that much lower than that of Ireland’s unemployment rate which stands at 13% (could be more now; the Irish government was planning more cuts).

Read Bruce Campbell’s article here. It supports Paul Krugman’s previous article about the austerity myth.   In fact, austerity measures will only lead to another great depression.   The Irish can tell us what life is like under the regime of austerity; they’ve lived it for two years. They can tell you first hand that it’s not working for them.  The article is long, but worth the read for anyone even flirting with the new fad of austerity. Many Irish are now abandoning their homes and leaving Ireland for places like Britain, Australia and New Zealand as they see no future for finding work in their home country.  I digress, but I simply wanted to provide an example as to how austerity not only doesn’t work, but it makes things worse.

The unlit, unpaved road to nowhere that Krugman describes sounds a lot worse than even what is happening to Ireland. How far is King Steve willing to go?  Given that he wants to undo everything Trudeau did, perhaps unlit gravel roads with only a little schoolhouse from grade 1 to 8 in each town is the what he would like.  After all, he only thrives on ignorance.

What would be next? Will we be drinking bad water due to lack of inspection? Bad food? Will we continue to see increased cases of food poisoning because there will be no more food inspections, or that will be privatized, thus, unregulated?

What I really don’t get is many of the Harpercon cheerleaders themselves. Most of them are not part of that upper 1% wealth echelon. In fact, I just read from one who just lost his job and seems to be afraid to end up homeless within a few weeks, yet I have read from this very same blogger that he idolizes Mike Harris and things like cuts to the civil service and other conservative measures. I hope he lands on his feet, but at the same time, I hope this personal crisis will teach him that the Harpercon government and their cheerleaders don’t have his interests at heart and have no desire to help him. I hope he learns the importance maintaining of the social safety net during this time.

Shame on the Rethuglicans and the Blue dogs for choosing tax cuts and deficit reduction over safe roads and the future of their own country via children’s education. President Obama once again must grow some balls and fast  and not extend the deadline of Georgie and Dickie’s tax breaks to the wealthy if their country is to have a chance of surviving.

I suggest you read Krugman’s latest as well as the Bruce Campbell articles. Well worth the read. In this case, knowledge is power.