Katrina Vanden Heuvel: A Trillion Dollar Recovery

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/31-1

A Trillion Dollar Recovery

by Katrina Vanden Heuvel


Poverty is on the rise, record numbers of people are relying on food stamps and we've seen no relief for the foreclosure crisis. There are increasing rates of child abuse and domestic violence linked to this recession. State governments don't have financial resources to cope at the exact moment when those resources are most needed. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have lowered Medicaid payments or eliminated people from eligibility. The senior economist of the International Monetary Fund recently warned of another Great Depression

We don't need a stimulus, we need a recovery. And that means investing $1 trillion over the next two years.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has proposed a plan to do just that--a detailed $1 trillion recovery plan to kick start the economy, invest in sustainable, long term growth and target individuals and communities that are most desperate for resources.

snip//

"The American people's urgent needs in health care, employment, education and infrastructure have been neglected for so very long that the basic structure of our economic system has been undermined. Now that the American people have the attention of Wall Street and Washington, we intend to lift their voice and demand the profound change the people voted for."

There is a groundswell of support for massive action along these lines. More than twenty progressive groups and unions are spearheading the Jobs and Economic Recovery Now campaign, building grassroots support for a bold recovery program of $850 billion or more. At events across the nation, supporters urged quick passage of the legislation so that it is waiting on President Obama's desk the day he takes office.

The campaign is also targeting moderate Republicans in the Senate in order to avoid a filibuster. It was just three months ago, after all, that Republicans successfully filibustered a stimulus that targeted unemployment insurance, food stamps and "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects--and that was only $56 billion.

At this moment, a massive recovery along the lines of what the country needs is far from a done deal. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has done a great service with its plan, showing us what a comprehensive approach to economic recovery looks like--addressing the needs of ordinary Americans who have been left behind by the Wall Street Bailout Bonanza and eight years of greed and deregulation. Contact your elected officials--make sure they read the plan and support a $1 trillion recovery. We can't afford anything less.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. KvH is thinking too small

And it's the rare event that causes me to say that about KvH.

We need a world-wide effort to re-engineer the entire economic system, and to guarantee transparency and accountability -- the details of which can and should be squabbled over and tweaked.

The world is too small a place, with too many systems in "overshoot", to be able to sustain a high-tech, high-energy system of financial warlords and feudal dukedoms. Rather than penny-ante (and side-effect laden) crap like NAFTA, regional economic covenants and trade zones, and poorly-funded relief agencies commissioned to pick up the pieces, we need a comprehensive, sustainable world system that permits robust markets under the control of people -- not the other way around.

This may all sound like abstraction and fluff when I write it, but these ideas have been kicking around since the 1920s, from economists who can make much better arguments. It's time to start thinking in terms of a world economy where "wealth" is not equal to "cancer".

--p!