Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Derek Thompson at The Atlantic writes—We Can Prevent a Great Depression. It’ll Take $10 Trillion:
[...] Does the government really have to spend $5 trillion in three months? Can the United States afford to dump such unfathomable amounts of money into the economy?
The answers to those questions are yes and absolutely yes. [...]
Preventing another Great Depression requires more relief, spread in at least four directions. The ideas and price tags below are a result of interviews with sources on the Hill.
For families: [...] Total cost: $1.2 trillion. [...]
For businesses: [...]Total cost: $600 billion. [...]
For state and local governments: [...] An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that state budget shortfalls in the next three years could approach $700 billion. [...]Total cost: $500 billion to $1 trillion. [...]
For public health: [...]Total cost: $200 billion. [...]
The last recession’s miserable recovery showed that congressional politics often slows down or entirely blocks urgently needed economic stimulus. One solution: Put stimulus on autopilot. Rather than capping the four-pronged relief package described above at some arbitrary number, Congress should include automatic triggers—also known as stabilizers—that would reauthorize emergency spending for families, businesses, local governments, and public health if the economy fails to recover in the next year or two.
When you add it all up—the $3 trillion already spent, the $3 trillion now required, and trillions more to accelerate the U.S. recovery—the total price tag for averting another Great Depression could be about $10 trillion.
That number is a stunner, but so is the crisis. The U.S. economy is $22 trillion—or at least it was before the crisis. If the federal government spends $10 trillion over the next, say, four years, that would mean a fiscal shot of about 10 percent of total economic activity over that period. In an economy where one in five Americans are out of work and several industries have no clear path to normalcy, it’s not ludicrous to think that the appropriate fiscal medicine for an unprecedented crisis will amount to a tenth of GDP over several years.
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QUOTATION
“…there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land; and my home, after all, was down in Maryland, because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.”
~~Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1868)
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Oil-subsidized Senators just returning the favor:
When Republican Senators (with two exceptions) decided on a procedural motion Tuesday not to take up a bill that would have removed $2 a billion a year in tax "incentives" for the world's five largest private oil companies, they had one good reason in their pockets. Over the past two decades, since 1989, they have collectively accepted just under $21 million in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Democrats (with three exceptions), plus the Senate's two independents, voted that there should be a debate about the incentives—a collection of tax breaks that amounts to subsidies of the five oil giants, which in the first quarter of this year made $36 billion in profit. Collectively, the Democrats and independents who voted for a debate have accepted just under $5 million in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies.
Six Republican Senators alone took in twice as much in career oil-company contributions as those 48 Democrats and two independents who voted "Aye" in the Senate. They are: John McCain of Arizona ($2,718,774); Kay Bailey Hutchison ($2,141,025) and John Cornyn ($1,734,950), both of Texas; James "Climate Change Is a Hoax" Inhofe of Oklahoma ($1,256,023), David Vitter of Louisiana ($943,885), and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ($914,811).
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Trump says dumb thing. OK, duly noted. States fake stats in support of reopening, while a GA church re-closes. News on "re-positivity." IG fired over Saud arms deal? Organized, int’l UI fraud spotted. Joan McCarter on stalled next round of virus relief.
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