The piece that seems to get the least play in all the coverage about austerity and budget cutting is that when you take money away from public employees (by laying them off, cutting their benefits, etc), you also take that money away from the local economy. And where is it going? The tax cuts are mostly going to the very top. That's where they've mostly gone for 30 years.
The crisis in funding is due to the collapse of the economy, which in turn is due to the fact that the middle class, broken by years of globalization (ie rich people investing their money in other parts of the world) and union busting (reducing the compensation paid to the middle class) means that the money isn't here anymore to support the kind of society we have come to expect. The worst part is how meagre our expectations have become.
The United States used to be a great place for ordinary people. Now, our educational system is collapsing, our infrastructure is crumbling, and our health-care system is still inaccessible to millions -- even after the passage of the pathetic health-care reform law, which enshrines gigantic profits for the private companies that provide the services.
We spend half our budget on the military: more than all of the rest of the world combined. And, although other countries cannot confront the US directly, our attempt to squash terrorism by intervening in other countries has destabilized every place we've gone and has not improved our actual security. But most people seem to accept that the US will be constantly fighting war now. How did we sink so low?
We did it so that the hyper-wealthy -- all around the world -- could be even richer.
- Steven D. Brewer's blog
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