Don't Believe The Myth About Americans Living Beyond Their Means Robert Reich

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-we-can-avoid-raising-taxes-on-the-middle-class-or-cutting-programs-they-and-the-poor-depend-on-2013-1



Brace yourself. In coming weeks you’ll hear there’s no serious alternative to cutting Social Security and Medicare, raising taxes on middle class, and decimating what’s left of the federal government’s discretionary spending on everything from education and job training to highways and basic research.

“We” must make these sacrifices, it will be said, in order to deal with our mushrooming budget deficit and cumulative debt.

But most of the people who are making this argument are very wealthy or are sponsored by the very wealthy: Wall Street moguls like Pete Peterson and his “Fix the Debt” brigade, the Business Roundtable, well-appointed think tanks and policy centers along the Potomac, members of the Simpson-Bowles commission.

These regressive sentiments are packaged in a mythology that Americans have been living beyond our means: We’ve been unwilling to pay for what we want government to do for us, and we are now reaching the day of reckoning.


Read more: http://robertreich.org/post/41395861898#ixzz2IzqPIaXA

[tama]

1. Money delusion

Article is all about money, nothing about real economy.

[woo me with science]

2. K&R We are bought and sold.

[Odin2005]

3. Don't get me started about those Feed The Pig commercials.

They really push the "Americans are wasteful spenders" meme.