The monthly Minnesota newspaper Southside Pride had this interesting contribution about Paul Ryan and the economy. I mention this because the writer did not provide links or a short bio, so the reader can only take his word in regards to his numbers.
Already knowing many of the details provided below, my general impression is a good one, so that’s why I’ve included it here. Any other questions...look it up!
Representative Paul Ryan and the New Barbarism-BY RICHARD TAYLOR
the national debt is now nearly 100 percent of GDP—a level that tells us next to nothing. Just after World War II, the U.S. national debt reached 120 percent of GDP, but the ensuing period, the “golden era,” brought not stagnation but the most robust growth in U.S. history. This growth generated a rising standard of living for the vast majority of people and tax revenues copious enough to advance social needs and reduce the debt/GDP ratio to 40 percent by the end of the Carter administration.
Moreover, while Rep. Ryan endlessly bangs the drum of lower taxes, the successful policies of the golden era were precisely opposite those the free market dogmatists assert are imperative today. From the mid-’40s to about 1980, abetted by unions and a de facto social contract, average median wages rose about 70 percent, and infrastructure spending flourished. Although marginal income tax rates on high-income earners reached 90 percent, investment advanced faster than under the tax cutting regimes of Reagan and Bush II. In the wake of Bush’s cuts, investment plummeted to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Perhaps the most dramatic way of showing the impact of Republican budgetary policy—and hypocrisy—is that had post-1980 Republican policies kept constant the ratio inherited from Carter, the national debt would be $9 trillion lower than it is today, about $5 trillion instead of $14 trillion. The debt explosion flows not from social programs but from a fiscal strategy that has moved funds from the public sector to rich individuals and corporations.
Grimly, the GOP’s cynicism and hypocrisy continue unabated today. Rep. Ryan belies his concern for the national debt by proposing further reductions in corporate taxes that will deprive the public sector of $4 trillion over the next ten years. To add insult to injury, ladling more money to corporations would amount to pouring money into a pot that’s already overflowing, given that Corporate America still can’t figure out what to do with the $2 trillion sloshing around its coffers. So we might add “absurdity” to our cavalcade of adjectives about the Republican plan.
Republicans attribute the abrupt rise in the deficit since the recession ($500 billion to $1.3 trillion) to excessive spending by the Obama administration. In fact, three quarters of the rise occurred because the recession-bred fall in incomes lowered tax revenues. While it’s true the stimulus program contributed to the rising of the federal deficit, it counterbalanced a drop in state and local spending of a similar amount.
Moreover, while Rep. Ryan endlessly bangs the drum of lower taxes, the successful policies of the golden era were precisely opposite those the free market dogmatists assert are imperative today. From the mid-’40s to about 1980, abetted by unions and a de facto social contract, average median wages rose about 70 percent, and infrastructure spending flourished. Although marginal income tax rates on high-income earners reached 90 percent, investment advanced faster than under the tax cutting regimes of Reagan and Bush II. In the wake of Bush’s cuts, investment plummeted to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Perhaps the most dramatic way of showing the impact of Republican budgetary policy—and hypocrisy—is that had post-1980 Republican policies kept constant the ratio inherited from Carter, the national debt would be $9 trillion lower than it is today, about $5 trillion instead of $14 trillion. The debt explosion flows not from social programs but from a fiscal strategy that has moved funds from the public sector to rich individuals and corporations.
Grimly, the GOP’s cynicism and hypocrisy continue unabated today. Rep. Ryan belies his concern for the national debt by proposing further reductions in corporate taxes that will deprive the public sector of $4 trillion over the next ten years. To add insult to injury, ladling more money to corporations would amount to pouring money into a pot that’s already overflowing, given that Corporate America still can’t figure out what to do with the $2 trillion sloshing around its coffers. So we might add “absurdity” to our cavalcade of adjectives about the Republican plan.
Republicans attribute the abrupt rise in the deficit since the recession ($500 billion to $1.3 trillion) to excessive spending by the Obama administration. In fact, three quarters of the rise occurred because the recession-bred fall in incomes lowered tax revenues. While it’s true the stimulus program contributed to the rising of the federal deficit, it counterbalanced a drop in state and local spending of a similar amount.
Next, Let’s note that Rep. Ryan seeks to redress the problem he’s concocted by cutting medical spending on Medicare and Medicaid. He views this year’s nearly $370 billion Medicare budget and its trend upward in future years as a dire threat to the nation’s finances.
Here, Rep. Ryan is willfully not seeing the forest for the trees. Medicare costs are rising because medical costs are rising. Medical costs are rising because the privately run U.S. medical system dominated by the private health insurers and pharmaceutical companies is the most expensive in the world. If the U.S. spent the same percentage of its GDP on health care as France does on a system rated best in the world by the World Health Organization, the U.S. would save $1 trillion not over ten years but in one year!
Here, Rep. Ryan is willfully not seeing the forest for the trees. Medicare costs are rising because medical costs are rising. Medical costs are rising because the privately run U.S. medical system dominated by the private health insurers and pharmaceutical companies is the most expensive in the world. If the U.S. spent the same percentage of its GDP on health care as France does on a system rated best in the world by the World Health Organization, the U.S. would save $1 trillion not over ten years but in one year!
…among all industrial countries, the U.S. government is the only one legally barred from negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study, if Rep. Ryan should succeed with his plan to replace Medicare with a premium subsidy plan, most middle-income retirees would have to pay almost half of their income to buy a Medicare equivalent insurance package by 2030—and more than half in future years. As Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois stated so succinctly, the government of the U.S. has new owners: “The bankers own the place,” the place being the Congress of the United States.
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