TREATING ECONOMIC ANEMIA WITH AUSTERIAN ECONOMICS.

I use the term Austerian rather than Austrian on purpose because that's its economic premise...it embraces austerity. Austerity at the right time is a good strategy to employ. However, austerity is not a good economic strategy in times of recession, depression or deflation.

Do you starve your body of nutrition when you’re anemic?

If you believe in “austerian economics” (which a majority of Republicans, a smattering of Democrats, and almost all Teabaggers do) you are advocating consciously electing to go on an all out diet when your body is the weakest.

We have an anemic economy. Consumption is suffering. There is languishing demand for goods. We need strength. Our corporations have decided to sacrifice increasing their payrolls and hoard a mountain of cash they have on hand. Rather than use those cash assets to stimulate the economy creating a rash of new customers and tax payers they've decided to hoard that cash for outlandish salaries and bonuses for a fraction of a percent of their executive staffs...the very top executives in their companies. So the only game in town is the United State of America. Yes...we the people. We have the capability to create demand, which can get our workers re-employed and make taxpayers out of those currently needing the assistance of social safety nets.

If our corporations were really patriotic...they'd use all that liquidity they possess to hire new workers. They'd shave upper level executive salaries in favor of creating more workers from the middle class ranks. Remember...it's not the middle class making between $50,000 to $250,000 per year that are causing the problem...those workers are spending those wages because they have to. It's the executives earning $10 million to a billion dollars per year that are bottlenecking economic growth. Those earners save on average about 90% or MORE of their earnings. They’re not creating demand which would result in hiring workers, instead they’re pumping those earnings into equity stocks, and bonds...and in some very sad cases sending those resources oversees to help foreign competitors.

When you're sick and anemic is no time to start an austerity diet. That's the time you need to take in as much nutrition as you can no matter what the source...borrowed or otherwise. When you get well...that's the time to lose weight.

We should have been on austerity diet in 2001 when rather than use the accumulation of a budget surplus to get our fiscal house in good shape the Bush Administration chose another path. We squandered the surplus on tax cuts for top 2% of earners that neither needed nor wanted tax relief. We squandered the surplus on a Medicare Act that lavished un-needed subsidies on health insurance companies who added no value to the health system and have a 30% administration expense (compared to 2% for Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA). Then finally, we squandered the surplus on two wars, one justified (Afghanistan) and one not (Iraq). That's where we put on all that weight and made ourselves sick. Now is the time to get better. Take on the nutrition our economy needs that will get people back to work. Once we're well we need to look at that diet seriously once again.

When we get around to that diet we're going to need protein to burn the fat and we're going to need to cut back on the carbohydrates to lose the fat. That means that we're going to need to make cuts that make sense and consider taxes that are fair. It means that we'll probably need to compromise on social programs, entitlements, defense spending and tax increases to those who can afford them.