This Week In The Dream Antilles

It’s called the Dream Antilles, emphasis on dream. Here’s one now coming in from left field:

My fellow Americans. And especially those of you who are unemployed. I have called you to come together today, Labor Day 2011, 61,000 strong to Soldier Field in Chicago, so that I, your president, could explain to you how I am going to get you back to work and how I am going to re-start the economy. And to ask humbly for your support in pressuring Congress to enact these essential proposals that I will shortly lay out. I was going to tell all of this to Congress. But I see no reason, in light of Congress’s penchant for obstruction and delay and partisan politics, to talk further with Congress about my plan. No. I want to talk to you. Because you are the people that matter. And you will help me to increase employment.

I’m sure you understand that Congress is obdurate. That Congress plays politics with your lives on a regular basis. And that some of its members are nothing but stooges for the multinational corporations that financed their election. But that doesn’t matter right now. What matters is that you don’t have work. That you are unemployed. That you and your families are suffering hard times. And I want to put you back to work. Immediately. Without further delay.

I have a good plan that will put you back to work. I am going to describe it in detail this evening. But we all need to understand that to pass this bill in this most obstructionist Congress, I will need your active help. I will need you to stand up for this proposal. I will need you to be active, to make calls, to send emails, to write letters, to demonstrate, to picket, to speak out. I am asking you, if you agree with the proposal , to do these things and more to tell Congress clearly and explicitly that you demand that this proposal be enacted. And that the consequences of failure to enact these proposals are quite simple: those who block it will be replaced in Congress by legislators who understand the plight of the unemployed and who will enact measures to create employment. It’s that simple. Vote for the proposal, or go home.

My plan is unspeakably simple. It is a broad stimulus package, far larger than the previous bipartisan stimulus package, that will make America’s economy run again and will without any question greatly increase employment. My detractors in the media, and those who sit across the isle in Congress, and even some of those in my own party, and all those who seem to delight in ignoring your misery, will roll their eyes and rent their clothing because these measures will briefly increase the deficit. These measures will definitely increae the deficit in the short term.

But I tell you, and those who undertand economics will tell you that this increase in the deficit simply does not matter. At all. And those who argue that it is a problem will be enacting their ideology. But they will only demonstrate beyond all question that they do not understand macroeconomics at all and that they are simply pawns of those who would continue to siphon economic wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest 1% of our population, and continue unemployment at ridiculously high levels, and deny you the dignity of earning a respectable living.

I will not allow them to paralyze our economy further with their partisan, ideological nonsense. I will not allow them to increase the suffering of workers further by refusing to enact measures that will spur employment. I will not allow them to block the taking of necessary, short term steps to re-start the economy and provide employment.

America’s problem is not its debt. It is not its deficit. It has never been its problem. America has always paid its debt and it always will. America’s problem is simply this: creating jobs. And there is absolutely no way to create jobs without increasing government spending. We know this because we’ve tried everything else. We’ve tried tax cuts and created more misery and it hasn’t created a single job. The Federal Reserve has already done all it can with monetary policy. It hasn’t been able to spur employment. So. Fiscal policy is the only device left that can spur employment.

When we create jobs, when we get the economy running again, the deficit will heal itself. Because tax revenues will be increased, because more people will be working and more people will be paying taxes.

Most important, this is not a time to contract government spending by cutting programs. The contrary is required: we need to spur employment by increasing government spending. In short, those who insist on balancing the budget, on decreasing the deficit, on cutting spending have a fundamental misunderstanding of macroeconomics. And I am not going to permit their willful ignorance of economics further to destroy the nation’s economy….

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it is not actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles. For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles. Please leave a comment so that your Bloguero will know that you stopped by. Your Bloguero likes to know you've visited.