Prosperity
Feb 2nd, 2008 at 9:48 am by Susie
While this is good, and I’m happy to hear it, I still don’t like the very conservative economic advisors who make up Obama’s policy team:
WICHITA, Kan. — Senator Barack Obama says the top priority of the next president should be to create a more lasting and equitable prosperity than achieved by either President Bush in the current decade or even Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
In an hourlong interview outlining his economic views, Mr. Obama praised the Clinton administration for reducing the deficit and setting the stage for the ’90s boom. But he said Mr. Clinton had failed to halt a long-term increase in income inequality that had left the middle class feeling squeezed.
If elected, Mr. Obama said he would to try to forge a popular mandate for policy changes that could reverse a generation of slow wage growth and outlast any one administration. At the top of his list would be shifting the tax burden more toward the wealthy and making investments — in health care, alternative-energy research and education — that would cost a significant amount of money but could ultimately lift economic growth.
“The project of the next president is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth that George Bush has been so enamored with,” Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, said.
One thing he can do would be to backpedal from earlier comments on Social Security being in crisis.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
“The project . . . is figuring out how do you create bottom-up economic growth”
Are you kidding me? The US had the most vigorous economy in the world, until republicans foisted self-serving agenda on a gullible public. How about reinstating the policies that republicans in their greed destroyed? You know labor rights, a progressive tax policy and anti-monopoly regulations. How about rebuilding america’s infrastructure and putting americans to work for a change. The false holy grail of neo-con crap has become so revered, it’s impossible for economists to break free of their self-delusions.
There was an article I read somewhere (sorry memory isn’t what it used to be), that said with the debt left by the bush administration, the next administration will be VERY LIMITED in what it can accomplish. As for taxing the rich, good luck. Only the most progressive of wealthy people understand and would accept more taxes, and that is on a local level (I live in a very expensive town in Southern Oregon, but live in mobile home just so I can afford to live here, and our income is fairly reasonable). Take the increase taxes for the wealthy to the congressional level and the noise machine would likely stop it in it’s tracks. God I want it to be different, but reality says it just isn’t going to happen. But I won’t give up hope, nor trying to change it in my own very small way.