Heh. When he’s on, he’s on. ;^)
The whole article is well worth a read.
Hi. Can We Talk Greenspanism? | The Agonist
It was Greenspan who advised taking Social Security off of its then break even system, and start accumulating a “trust fund.” This was really a trojan horse for a regressive tax. Cut taxes on upper income, raise taxes on lower income. The trust fund was then spent like all the other money in the treasury. This is a lesson I am going to return to with Uncle Alan: the last 30 years has been the story of Reactionary Zealot Assholes fucking up liberal institutions as Greedy GI and Boomer Consumers stood on and watched, and then blamed Liberals for Not Stopping Them.
This broke the link between capital expenditure and liabilities. The implicit cash basis accounting, which had sort of worked despite the defect, suddenly stopped working. Instead of spending money on real infrastructure, real education, real technology, we started spending on billionaires and the pork barrel projects that keep corrupt cronies happy. There had always been some of that, but now, with the foxes guarding the hen house, it was all waste, all the time.
You know the money to convert American to a non-Carbon economy? You gave it to Bill Gates and Steve Chase and a bunch of Saudi Princes. They are very appreciative. Thank you.
Over in the corner of this page there is an ad for “The Big Con” by Jonathan Chait. It is a pretty good book. It’s also not exactly correct. Sure, the crackpots were allowed into the room for the part of the meeting with sandwiches. But the real damage was done by people who were nominally sane, like Greenspan, but who breathed the air of crackpottery and thought they really could overthrow the evil Lincoln-Wilson-FDR empire by, well, subverting it. On the other side, they are shocked that it didn’t work out that way. Memo to Randroids, Ayn Rand said that everything would be fine if the assholes ran the world. The gag is, they already do. And always have. And always will.
2 Responses
This comment has nothing to do with today’s post.
Have I ever told you what a blog vampire I am when it comes to your blogroll (links list)? I think you have the most wonderful collection, and I spend much to much time going to these blogs and seeing what they have to say. Is there an award for the best blogroll? If there is, you are my nominee.
Thanks, gerry! I read tons of stuff on the Internet, and the blogs are really my favorite part. I suppose my blog roll is my eclectic collection of the really interesting bits of what I read, so that may be why you like it.
Sometimes I read so much I forget to write anything, but that’s ok, too…