What will the Republicans do to get the economy moving again?  Find out, in these two videos!

Welcome to "Trickle Down Tales",  where all your economic questions will be answered:




 Plus, Austerity & Neo-Nazis, Oh my!



Despite what conservatives would have you believe, the economy is not like an indebted family. Our economic debt is mostly money we owe to each other; even more important, our income mostly comes from selling things to each other. Your spending is my income, and my spending is your income.

Slashing spending while the economy is trying to recover from a recession is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the recession, and in fact risks a slide into a full blown depression. What happens if everyone simultaneously slashes spending in an attempt to pay down debt? The answer is that everyone’s income falls — my income falls because you’re spending less, and your income falls because I’m spending less. And, as our incomes plunge, our debt problem gets worse, not better.

Recent events, above all the austerity death spiral in Europe, have dramatically illustrated this truth.

And there’s a clear moral to this story: When the private sector is frantically trying to pay down debt, the public sector should do the opposite, spending when the private sector can’t or won’t. By all means, let’s balance our budget once the economy has recovered — but not now.

“The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.” -- John Maynard Keynes

A smart government would be wise during a recession to, one, not substantially cut services, and two, invest massively in public works projects and sustainable energy programs, education, training, etc., that put money in the pockets of the middle class and working poor. Then they in return can pay taxes and spend, thus improving the economy.

This is exactly the steps that were taken that led our economy to recover from the Great Depression. We've seen enough of crony capitalism in the past three decades to know that large corporations and the wealthy feeding at the public trough via tax breaks/tax loopholes and unnecessary subsidies does nothing to help the majority of the population, and thus our economy at large.

In fact,  as the economist  Paul Krugman pointed out in a recent article, "the austerity drive isn’t really about debt and deficits at all; it’s about using deficit panic as an excuse to systematically dismantle social programs" while doing absolutely nothing to grow the economy.