Free Markets and Partisanship are Destroying Economic Recovery

A letter in the Los Angeles Times weighs in on the recent extension of tax cuts for the wealthy:

Republicans demand tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires — at a time of great need for tax revenue — when the rich are doing just fine and don't even need a tax cut.

Thus, Republicans laid bare what nearly everyone knew already: They are the party of the rich, never the party of lower-income people, whose ranks are growing.

Joseph Stiglitz , a Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel laureate in economics, discusses how the free-market philosophy is failing the Global economy, and says that "in the U.S., the Republican party would rather see President Barack Obama fail than the economy succeed."

The same kind of partisanship that has poisoned our political climate, as engineered by our own Republican/Neoconservative prime minister.

Stiglitz speaks of reducing tax income, at a time when income is required to stimulate the economy.

This is not the only, or even the most important, downside risk facing the global economy. The gravest threat comes from the wave of austerity sweeping the world, as governments, particularly in Europe, confront the large deficits brought on by the Great Recession, and as anxieties about some countries’ ability to meet their debt payments contributes to financial-market instability.

The outcome of premature fiscal consolidation is all but foretold: growth will slow, tax revenues will diminish, and the reduction in deficits will be disappointing. And, in our globally integrated world, the slowdown in Europe will exacerbate the slowdown in the United States, and vice versa.

And with our economy so closely tied with that of the United States, we could be in for a tough year. But what has our government done? Wasted millions and millions of dollars on self promotion, while wasting billions on prisons, unnecessary and excessive crime measures and military hardware.

And to top it off, they plan to go ahead with further tax cuts for the wealthy in January.

Time to pull the plug. We can no longer afford to feed the free-market/neoconservative beast.