Mnemosyne thanks for clearing up the confusion about the Democratic ‘majority.’ While the party is certainly in a better position now than it was, it is a far cry from an unchallengable majority, especially taking over for a Republican house actually found to be the most uncooperative ever blocking more legislation than any congress in history (if you call me on it folks i’ll track the source down for you all). The other problem is that while the Democratic party is better than the Republican party (by far), both parties ultimately represent upper class economic interests, and neither is interested in disrupting the status quo to promote true economic justice in this country.

Last I heard, they had a majority in Congress and can pass anything they damn well please.

Actually, they can’t. You need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, and the Democrats have 49. The way the game is currently played in the Senate is that the Democrats propose a bill, the Republicans inform the Majority Leader that they object to it and would filibuster, and the matter is dropped.

Because, of course, everything has to stay all nice and clean and polite in the Senate, and it would never do to make the Republicans actually stand up and voice their objections to children’s health care or mortgage reform. No, better to let them torpedo things behind the scenes than to cause a stir.

This story is only one example, but all you have to do is Google “Republican block bill” to get a dozen more.

I agree that we need a third party of regular, working people to shake things up a bit, but I don’t think anything meaningful will actually change unless we get up off our collective asses and so something about it. And that means more than just voting for whoever is the least evil of a bunch of really evil politicians who are all beholden to corporate interests and profits. At the least it’s going to take massive organizing and demonstrations to remind those bastards they are supposed to work for us, and at this point, I’m not convinced that anything less than full out revolution will do that.

I’m afraid your economic knowledge is insufficient. Particularly with respect to the minimum wage. The minimum wage in some instances supports increased salaries for high wage labor, and higher unemployment for low income labor – but not in all instances. The outcome is highly dependent on the facts and circumstances of the economy involved, the structure of the labor market, etc. As a graduate student in economics I spent a good deal of time studying minimum wage laws and their impact on various economies. Sometimes real world research is more valuable than the safe models we create.

Low income people do not have a lot of spending power, so the bulk of their spending goes towards basic necessities which would have been purchased anyway.

Further, this makes no sense. Lower income people spend a larger percentage of their income (because they have to in order to purchase the same basket of necessities that the rest of us purchase). How does this imply that they do not as a group have purchasing power? Additionally, how do you infer that they would have purchased those necessities anyway? Without income they are unable to buy those items. Finally, government “handouts” as you put it are a key component to the growth of an industrialized economy. They increase the mobility of labor, increase the education levels of the population, and provide a type of micro finance insurance.

I know it goes against everything you’ve ever been taught by your neoclassical professors, but look sometime at the work of the industrial economists down the street. They have some well considered opinions that may interest you.

Democracy Now! yesterday had Robert Kuttner from American Prospect magazine talking about the recession. One of his points was that even talking about a “stimulus package” which is 1% of GDP, at this stage, is ridiculous. What is needed is an Economic Recovery Package. The recovery package would address the deep, systemic problems that nearly 50 years of a “perfect storm” (to turn a smarmy mass-media phrase somewhat sarcastically) of deregulation, corporate welfare and government abetted larceny, and the massive sell-off of publicly held infrastructure has wrought. The last 6-7 years have been particularly devastating with the criminal-in-chief and his henchmen (Rice notwithstanding) accelerating not even bothering to cover-up their crimes.

The Oil Wars are coming. Are you ready?

Having just about slipped into full Senile Douchebag Mode by then, Sen. Miller sent it back to me, saying it wasn’t his money and he therefore had no right to do anything with it. (Of course, a few days later, 9/11 happened and I sent all the money to the Red Cross, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Seven years later, we still have this idea that we can solve economic downturns by throwing money at people like a seventh-grader trying to win the race for class president by bribing all his classmates with lollipops. When is someone going to have the guts to stand up and say just how stupid this is?