Saturday, February 28, 2015

Oklahoma, Michigan, Wisconsin, … Greece?

Every now and again we hear that "The United States will turn into Greece," a country with massive debts it is unable to pay. Well, how did Greece get there?
  1. Massive tax evasion by its rich.
  2. Government spending without regard to debt.
  3. Losing control of its currency.
  4. Punitive economic policies by the coalition of the European Committee, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund—the infamous troika.
Is the USA subject to any of this? No, actually, though tax evasion by wealth is a thing and may get to be a bigger thing. But the states of Oklahoma, Michigan, and Wisconsin are. Oklahoma, thanks to tax-cutting without comparable spending cuts, is insolvent, and Michigan and Wisconsin are headed there and no US state has its own currency. The national Republican Party supports cuts in the national social insurance programs, without those programs, matters would be much worse in all of those states; there is I suppose, a parallel with the Euroausterians.

So there's the story: the right wing of the Republican Party wants to turn the USA, or at least as many states it can control, into Greece.

Croak!

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