Economic Remedies

> Were Republican prescriptions for economic health effective, there would have been some balanced budgets under Republican administrations, instead of the 10x increase of national debt since 1980 and even bigger increases of private debt.
> The periods of apparent prosperity and economic vigor in the past three decades depended on irrational behavior by every segment of society. Ordinary citizens were irrational to take on mortgages so large that other forms of saving were precluded, to believe that prestige could be gained from owning a larger house or fancier car, to shop recreationally, to chronically carry credit-card balances, to take out second mortgages exceeding appraised values, to contract for ballooning or ARM mortgages, to believe that most businesses can increase revenues faster than inflation.
> Policy makers were irrational to cut taxes when spending exceeded revenues, to allow unfettered off-shoring of manufacturing jobs by multistate retailers for pennies per item, to neglect incentivizing wind and solar electricity generation, to neglect world-wide family planning, to organize society such that it depends on constant economic growth when the earth cannot support existing economic activity and when most of that activity is un-needed fluff.
> It is now clear that the our socio-economic system, capitalism, can't function when people start behaving more rationally. If tax cuts were the remedy, we'd have a hot economy now.