Both parties want to starve the beast — underfund government so drastically that it can’t function alone. Both parties want to privatize public services. I was not joking, or being excessively snarky, when I wrote that the Democrats are every bit as evil as the Republicans when it comes to economic policy.With details.
If you don't die first, you will get old. You might have a pension (if the fund doesn't get looted, if the company doesn't go bankrupt, if you don't get grandfathered out), you might have savings (if you don't get sick or have long periods of unemployment or buy a house in the wrong economic market or need to help someone else out), you might have investments (if they don't "go south" or get taken over by vulture capitalists). I do. But I'm not a millionaire. Hey, I'm not a thousandaire. I planned on having adequate resources in my old age. You know the joke about plans and God.
Again: The government is not going broke. The fiscal crisis is ginned up. Closing corporate tax loopholes (*oooh! class warfare!*) would more than pay for schools and libraries that are now being closed.
Why that is is an exercise left to the reader.
ETA: Why one should finish the day's reading before posting: Digby (Hullabaloo) on the conservatives' stance on Social Security and Medicare (they don't like them). Via Avedon's Sideshow. And 4 ways politicians don't understand poverty, from Cracked.
EFTA: Bogus theories of poverty, and the reality, by AlterNet's Joshua Holland.
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