Slouching Toward a Double-Dip, For No Good Reason
by Robert Reich
“Imagine your house is burning. You call the fire department but your call isn’t answered because every fire fighter in town is debating whether there will be enough water to fight fires over the next ten years, even though water is plentiful right now. (Yes, there’s a long-term problem.) One faction won’t even allow the fire trucks out of the garage unless everyone agrees to cut water use. An agency that rates fire departments has just issued a downgrade, causing everyone to hoard water.
“While all this squabbling continues, your house burns to the ground and the fire has now spread to your neighbors’ homes. But because everyone is preoccupied with the wrong question (the long-term water supply) and the wrong solution (saving water now), there’s no response. In the end, the town comes up with a plan for the water supply over the next decade, but it’s irrelevant because the whole town has been turned to ashes.”
Read full article here.
One thought on “Slouching Toward a Double-Dip, For No Good Reason”
There’s a jobs crisis, but no debt crisis (only a long-term debt problem).
Ironically, by inventing a “solution” to the non-existent debt crisis, we make the jobs crisis worse, but if we had a true solution to the jobs crisis (talk to FDR), we’d solve the long-term debt problem as a side-effect.