Working Life

One of the enduring feats that always amazes me is the way in which liars, fools and manipulators, who are proven to be such, still manage to occupy some space in the public debate and rise from the dead. You remember Arthur Laffer, the man who peddled the phony and discredited “Laffer curve” arguing for lower taxes? Well, he’s baaccck…with another pile of manure to sell.

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Right after the now-infamous debate (or, exchange of sounds bites), I wrote a bit about the fallacy of the exchange on taxes. Just a quick clean up here to underscore an important point — both candidates support, in one form or another, extending some or all of the Bush tax cuts. And that is sheer lunacy.

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You’ve heard repeated as if it’s gospel: tax cuts boost economic growth. Except there has never been any evidence to back up what has to be seen as middle-ages alchemy divorced from reality. And here are some facts to prove it.

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  Let’s see. You’re an editorial board member of the vaunted New York Times. You get paid a lot. Is there at least an expectation that you get your facts right? I know–rhetorical question. It happens every day but sometimes there are just whoppers that need correcting–because they do make a difference. In today’s editorial [...]

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   It’s one thing for progressive economists and activists to see the emptiness and complete foolishness of Tim Pawlenty’s "economic plan". It’s another thing for perhaps the globe’s leading financial newspaper to dismiss it as something that is "difficult to describe without seeming to parody it." But, The Financial Times Clive Crook makes a valiant [...]

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    It is easy if you are a billionaire to get attention. You spend a ton of money on some idea–even it’s sheer lunacy–and you can buy attention. Donald Trump did it–but his  "pursuit" of the presidency was just another comical vanity play in his comical life. Pete Peterson is another story–and the outcome of [...]

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   A few days ago, I took part in a meeting organized by the AFL-CIO to launch a new publication called "Exiting From The Crisis"–a roadmap for a new global economy. The main speaker at the small meeting was Joseph Stiglitz. He outlined some great points and realities about the economic crisis with the bottom [...]

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   We keep repeating the same mistake–no matter how many times good progressive leaders, writers, thinkers and activists use the word "framing". And we are at it again–offering "better proposals" to address the debt-deficit "crisis". But, we should be saying something much different: there simply is NO debt or deficit "crisis".     As I write [...]

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I feel almost like this will be a full-time job for many of us: trying to undo the stupidity racing throughout the political leadership when it comes to the foolish belief that we have some deficit or debt crisis. WE DON’T. It’s phony. And the belief in the phony "crisis" is literally going to kill [...]

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   You all know, just by looking over here to the right, what I think about the phone deficit-debt scam. And, trust me, you ain’t see nothing yet when it comes to hyperbole and nonsense. A whiff comes in today’s Wall Street Journal: Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Mark Warner said Monday they would introduce legislation [...]

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What a waste of time. They can now drift into obscurity. But, after listening to the self-congratulations of many of the members of the Catfood Commission, all I can say is: we have a long task ahead to turn around the country to get back to reality.   Here was the opening nonsense that I [...]

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Over the past three days, we’ve looked at the phony deficit crisis withe excerpts from my new book, "It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis", here (from the introduction), here (a taste of the the very Stupid Statements made about the deficit and debt) and here (who is behind [...]

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   In the last two days, I’ve written about the phony deficit/debt "crisis" here and here, using excerpts from my new e-book, "It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis". Today, as the Catfood Commission unveiled its final report, I’ll continue by looking at some of the people behind pushing [...]

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Yesterday, I kicked off a series of posts about the phony deficit/debt "crisis" with an excerpt from the introduction to my new book, "It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis". Today, I’ll continue with a part from the first chapter called, "Stupid Statements".   In honor of the mind-boggling [...]

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The government’s deficit and debt are not a big crisis. It’s not even a little crisis. It’s not a crisis at all. What is most disturbing is how many liberals/progressives have thrown in the towel and are basically taking the line "there is a crisis but we have a better way of dealing with it". [...]

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This coming week, the drumbeat will get louder with the rhetoric about the phony government debt/deficit "crisis". I’ll be writing more about this in conjunction with my new book, "It’s Not Raining, We’re Getting Peed On: The Scam of the Deficit Crisis". Today, I thought I’d focus on this specific point: debt is not a [...]

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