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In part 2, Bob Pollin, economist and Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), lays out policies to increase workers’ wages and bargaining power and bring down the price of food items such as eggs. He tackles the issue of U.S. government debt, as well as fiscal conservative and MAGA Republican claims that China owns most of this debt. These falsehoods deflect from Trump’s massive tax cuts for the rich and his high military expenditure, which ran up U.S. debt far more than under the Biden administration. Pollin asserts the best way to reduce high-interest payments on U.S. debt and support social services is to increase government revenue via capital gains and income taxes.
I suggest Mr Ferguson reread Mike Moore’s Stupid White Men on Bill Clinton being the best or worst republican POTUS America never voted for, before trying to alibi the duplicitous , absolutely corrupt , and perhaps senile Joe Biden as Americas white knight.
Voting is of little importance and has been since our defeat in Vietnam , when CIA and the the various deep state entities controlled by unelected elites decided that guys like Carter , Nixon , and Kennedy were unreliable and began openly fixing the results. These days the SCOTUS, and Electoral College are the primary tools , supplemented by electronic ballot rigging , voter suppression , and gerrymandering of districts . Whether Trump or Biden sit on the now mainly ceremonial POTUS throne is truly immaterial to the global elites that now rule most of the planet.
The characterization of today’s (since 2009) QEs as “Keynesian” stimulus is incorrect. If JM Keynes were alive today, he would be vociferously denouncing the Fed and the Treasury as irresponsible. Keynes, in his 1936 treatise, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money”, urge federal borrowing when there is growth stagnation and high unemployment. Its object was the stimulation of aggregate demand by putting people back to work. Keynes saw this as the singular responsibility of the federal government, because private investment in times of GDP stagnation is discouraged by the wide perception of unacceptable risk. Only the federal government can provide the needed employment stimulus . This is very different from increasing the reserves of the major banks so that they and their privileged borrowing corporations can help themselves in the stock market rather than invest and increase employment. That is not Keynesian stimulus.
I can think of no person who was and is still detested as much as FDR by his own capitalist class as was JM Keynes. If Keynes had been in charge at the Bretton Woods conference in place of Harry Dexter White, an agreement could have been made that might have avoided the domination of the postwar economy by the US and the ultimate breakdown of the gold standard (1971). If Keynes had been heard after WWI, the Versailles Treaty would not have set the stage for WWII. He was a profoundly far sighted political economist and one of the key intellectuals of the 20th century, as recognized and celebrated by Bertrand Russell in his “History of Western Philosophy”.
Great post I heartily agree.