It’s beyond incredible that someone so myopic could get paid so much to say so little.   It got me off on a bit of a rant last time.

We’re going to be doing a lot of deficit cutting over the next several years. The country’s future greatness will be shaped by whether we cut wisely or stupidly. So we should probably come up with a few sensible principles to guide us as we cut.

[full story]

And the first thing we need to cut is taxes on the wealthy, right David Brooks, of the NYtimes?  Oh right, we already did that, hence the fiscal crisis.    Hold on.  Let’s try this again.  We’re talking about what *everyone knows needs to happen* to solve this crisis.  Open up that link, hit Ctrl-F, type “taxes”.  Tell me what you find.

So there’s no mention of the word taxes here, so obviously we have to cut something else to solve the crisis we got into by cutting taxes.   Can we just, I dunno, raise taxes back to what they were when we had a balanced budget?  (400B/tax cuts/year * 10 years = $4T…the exact size of our hole).   Right?  O.k., well, since that’s the obvious, easy, moral, answer, it’s not on the radar for Republicans and their pundits, and I think I’ve only heard 2 or 3 Dems mentions…so what else is there?

I love it…listen to this…it’s genius.   So we’ve already decided to screw over future generations by loading up their debt.  We’ll tell them from birth that they all have to share it, right. They might have an issue with this, so in order to play dumb, we’ll just de-fund history class.   And teachers.  That way, the entire next generation will wake up ignorant of why shits all retarded and stuff.

And if that one, really, really, really smart kid asks “How the hell did y’all screw this up so bad?”  we just say that nobody knows, it’s a complete mystery, but the important thing is that you shut the hell up and get back to work paying off the “mystery debt”, and stop talking all faggy.

—

BTW, Brooks is about as disingenous as you get.  After he bitches and whines about the teachers unions, he then plays like they don’t exist…

As a result [of the tax-cut induced fiscal crisis], seniors are being protected while children are getting pummeled. If you look across the country, you see education financing getting sliced — often in the most thoughtless and destructive ways. The future has no union.

See, this is just crap.  The funding for education mostly goes to teachers, to pay them to teach.  You, David, and your party are doing their best to destroy those unions.  Chris Christie, the Rush Limbaugh clone that runs New Jersey, thinks public teachers are the “elites” and is working to crush them.  *There’s your union for the future* and you cheer while it crumbles.

I wish I could say Brooks was the worst of the lot for these kinds of folks, but this is barely even par for the course.

UPDATE:  This is the context of the $1,659,000,000,000 Elephant currently romping around the room.   I had to update this, cause I like the new title better.

American businesses earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter, according to a Commerce Department report released Tuesday. That is the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago, at least in nominal or noninflation-adjusted terms.

The other element mixed with the context is a bit more technical, frankly.  As our productivity continues to increase…

Unit labor costs in nonfarm businesses declined 0.6 percent in the fourth
quarter of 2010, as the increase in productivity (2.6 percent) outpaced the
increase in hourly compensation (1.9 percent).

…without an increase in wages…we see the record profits.    More productivity means the need for less workers, more competition for jobs and less wages.  More profits.

And now, thanks to Citizens United, we can *finally* get a business friendly environment cause Corps are people too, doan’cha’know Justice Roberts, and money is speech and politicians are *our* voice.

This “downward spiral of civilization” is suggested to lead to a “new normal” (the one Brooks refers to…but misses what it really is…and what he’s really saying..peasants…)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Economists used to say an unemployment rate around 5% was normal, but the recession may have changed all that.

The new norm may now be more like 6.7%, according to a paper released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Monday.

The report comes amid much discussion about what the “new normal” should be. Unemployment has remained above 9% for 21 straight months, and economists and policymakers, including Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, have repeatedly said it’s likely to remain high through the next several years.

The point here being, for essentially this entire generation of workers, we are not going to see unemployment rates of  less than, roughly 7%.   Past that and it gets too expensive to try and push harder, where the economic models start to break, and the Fed will push the other way.   Roughly 2% more of the job-seeking population is expected to come up short.  Forever (relatively).

So..2%..of 300,000,000..is..6,000,000 people.

That elephant I mentioned in the title.  It has got a $1.7 Trillion head and 6,000,000 people in its ass, needing to be dumped at the first opportunity.

Everyone say “Hi, Normal!”

Let’s see how long this ridiculous beast takes to fall down…