Agreed! Agreed! The problem is that Gil Smart has it exactly backwards. This is not a time for national austerity, in spite of the deficit, and consumers have no choice in the matter, but austerity. Consumers are unemployed, credit has dried up, refinancing houses has virtually ended. Given the imposed consumer austerity and the government’s ideological austerity, the economy sinks into depression.
Gil Smart and others, easy-to-say, “Bring it on”, forget, or are totally ignorant of what a depression really means. The human suffering breaks up people and families and institutions, anger builds to explosiveness, competition for scarce resources increases between people and countries, wars begin and the absolute terrors of that reality are far too horrific to comprehend.
The totem pole religion of free market capitalism almost collapsed recently and Republican and Democrats, to their credit did what was necessary; not what was desirable or pretty or even good. But the best minds in the country, Republican, Democrat, and Independent said it was absolutely necessary. So, we did that. To second guess that now and pretend that it never happened, and/or that we had nothing to do with it is disingenuous, self-serving and, with some people, a politically motivated bold-faced lie.
Because the consumer based economy is severely crippled, something needs to happen. If the government has been painted as the demonic, anti-Christ, we are stuck with destructive inaction. Some people will applaud the coming destruction as somehow in God’s plan but God gave us intelligence to take action in crisis, and to sit on our hands and do nothing is to throw it all back in God’s face.
