Tax Cuts Were Not Going To Be

Most People, I Suspect, Still Have In Their Minds An Image Of America As The Great Land Of College Education, Unique In The Extent To Which Higher Learning Is Offered To The Population At Large. That Image Used To Correspond To Reality. But These Days Young Americans Are Considerably Less Likely Than Young People In Many Other Countries To Graduate From College. In Fact, We Have A College Graduation Rate That's Slightly Below The Average Across All Advanced Economies.

The World Economy Is In A Nosedive, And Understanding What I Call "depression Economics" - The Weird World You Get Into When Even A Zero Interest Rate Isn't Low Enough, And A Messed-up Financial System Is Dragging Down The Real Economy - Is Essential If We're Going To Avoid The Worst.

If We Discovered That, You Know, Space Aliens Were Planning To Attack And We Needed A Massive Buildup To Counter The Space Alien Threat And Really Inflation And Budget Deficits Took Secondary Place To That, This Slump Would Be Over In 18 Months. ... There Was A Twilight Zone Episode Like This In Which Scientists Fake An Alien Threat In Order To Achieve World Peace. Well, This Time, We Don't Need It, We Need It In Order To Get Some Fiscal Stimulus.

Consumer Spending Is Now Plunging At Serious-recession Rate ... Even If The Rescue Now In Train Succeeds In Unfreezing Credit Markets, The Real Economy Has Immense Downward Momentum. In Addition To Financial Rescues, We Need Major Stimulus Programs.

Wealthy Individuals Bought Themselves A Radical Right Party, Believing - Correctly - That It Would Cut Their Taxes And Remove Regulations, But Failed To Realize That Eventually The Craziness Would Take On A Life Of Its Own, And That The Monster They Created Would Turn On Its Creators As Well As The Little People.