Death By a Thousand Cuts

If you read Krugman regularly, as you should, you'd see that he's spent the last few days shredding the republican budget proposals.

It's the same argument we've seen for years now. Some Loons make up some weird claims, and then some guy actually does the math and proves them wrong - yet the media always.. always.. always.. sides with the Loon.

Krugman usually doesn't get to the "why" of things, but merely debunks the myths. I'm quite sure he knows what's going on, but people who spell it out probably seem like nutters. It's basic class warfare, and if you look at the income disparity in the US, the trends are obvious. You could say that those trends are a byproduct of policy, or.. you could say policy is a byproduct of the desire to realize those trends. I think the latter is the truth.

I like a good conspiracy theory, so I side with the "the super wealthy are trying to create a two class system in the US". Krugman either doesn't believe that, or he won't admit to it out of fear of losing credibility.

As Krugman says in one recent post;

In each case, any educated citizen with internet access could quickly see overwhelming evidence that these things weren’t true. And you would think that people would learn something from the repeated failure of these kinds of consensus.

The "people" he's talking about is the media. The problem is - the media is on the side of the wealthy.. they ARE the wealthy. Guys like Anderson Cooper might come off as reasonable and committed to being as honest in their reporting as they can, but you have to remember that Cooper's mother is Gloria Vanderbilt.. yep.. the Vanderbilt family, extraordinarily wealthy. He stands to benefit from the efforts of the Republicans, just as most every single person that works in the media.

The truth is, there are very few people that are wealthy who will actually be honest about what is going on. Krugman is very wealthy, yet he advocates policy that benefits the poor and middle class at his own expense. Why? That's just a matter of conscience.

Ultimately, I honestly don't think Social Security or Medicare will go down in flames soon. These programs are actually very popular with most Americans, and I can see it going the same path as George Bush's attempt to "privatize" Social Security. I don't see Obama signing a bill that destroys the programs.. don't even see a bill getting through the Senate that does.

But what it does do is drag the center further to the right. That's been the definition of Obama. It'll be one of those "everyone knows we need to cut" situations that allows the eroding of the foundations of those programs. Death by a thousand cuts.

It's amazing how the Republicans can still do that when they are out of power by forcing the Democrats to cower in fear.

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Oh.. and I left out the usual "most Americans are remarkably stupid about the whole issue". I suppose that can go without saying, but I like saying it.

If you're not basely stupid, you probably understand what I'm saying in that regard.