If you're cutting back, and I'm cutting back, and they're...

(10:34:30 PM)
Everybody's got an opinion on the federal budget. I've enjoyed Kevin Drum's analysis at Mother Jones, and the NYTimes has a sweet little roll-yer-own budget fix toy at their site. And the Republican's have the Tax Hike they wrote ten years ago and scheduled as a surprise for this New Year's Eve. Obama and the rest of the G-20 are talking spending cuts to solve the economic disaster brought to us courtesy of Phil and Cindy Gramm, Mozillo's Countrywide, and the folks that rolled and sold the mortgage securities we all got high on, before we crashed.

Here's what I know about the economy:
I'm in a high tech position in a low tech field, in the 6th year of a three-month contract at a privately-held company. I can be let go any day. My wife, on the other hand, has a secure position as a researcher (read "profit-center") at UCLA. As secure as a state employee's job can be in California these days, anyway.
Those things in mind, we are paying off the three credit cards and the second mortgage as fast as we can. We are not buying new cars any time soon. Mine's ten years old, her's is fifteen, but they'll last another five years, until we can buy used in the electric-car or hybrid markets.
We used to go out at least once a week. That ended a year ago, partly due to schedules, partly because of the economy.
We're putting everything we can into not being vulnerable to the banks or the unemployment line.

We ain't helping the economy.

Neither are the corporations that are sitting on, what's the latest sum, one trillion, two trillion in cash? They're flush, but they're afraid to invest in America, because they don't see where it's going. Obama keeps driving along the edge of the ditch, never quite pulling us back onto the road to the future, but never letting the Republicans steer us further off the road into the ditch. The Republicans, now with one-and-a-half houses of Congress, want to extend tax cuts and cut spending on oversight and regulation. Insanity isn't the only thing that is "doing the same thing, expecting different results." The death of America is caused that way, too.

And the wealthy sure as hell aren't spending. Not here. They're getting their exit plans in order. Mister Prince, former owner of Blackwater, now resides in Dubai, which has no taxes and no extradition treaty with us. Offshore accounts, in the Bahamas and on the Isle of Man for example, are doing more business than ever. Wealthy Americans now just consider themselves wealthy. They have enough to live anywhere, and to buy off anyone, to avoid taxes or "penalties."

You and I aren't spending anything we don't have to. Neither are corporations. Neither are the top half of 1%, who have taken their 25% or America's wealth, and taken it off the table. States are almost all in the red, and are bound by their own constitutions and laws to balance their budgets.

So demand is collapsing across the board, as every person, every company, every agency pulls back, holds onto what they have, only reluctantly spends anything, and only when it's absolutely necessary.

That leaves only one possible current source of demand, for goods and services, and research and investment. Only one source of income for the 15 million unwemployed, the 60 million uninsured, the tens of millions of aged and infirm on Social Security.

So the best way, the only way, to grow the American economy, to put Americans back to work, to get American corporations back in the game, not just at home, but in the world's markets, is for the Federal government to...cut back on spending, fire federal workers, reduce other workers income, and eliminate suppprts to the unemployed, the uninsured and the aged.

Because that's Investing in America's Future.

Assuming she has one.
(11:02:10 PM)