All Life Is Problem Solving

In my last post I continued my analysis of the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, focusing on Step Five in the decision process used in the meeting. In that post I was critical of the overall bias in the general orientation toward the options workbook and the choices to be made in the process. In this post I’ll continue with my examination of step five of this process, shifting my attention to the specific option choice frameworks and the bias inherent in the way they were structured by AmericaSpeaks. Here once again is a statement describing step 5.

Working through the Options Workbook and arriving at decisions about what cuts in Federal Expenditures or tax increase to make in order to cut the projected Federal Budget. Reporting to the group about the choices made by each participants and something of the reasoning behind these choices. Summing up by facilitator highlighting the most popular choices of options for reducing the deficit.

There were four categories of Government spending that organized the items in the options workbook: Health Care; Social Security; All Other Non-defense; and Defense Spending. The workbook provides an introductory discussion of each category giving the line of reasoning used to arrive at the options for cutting spending offered to participants in the options exercise.

In the health care category, AmericaSpeaks provided a summary of the background of the current situation of Federal expenditures, with brief descriptions of how Medicare and Medicaid work. The workbook goes on to describe rising health costs and opines that rising health care costs and the aging of the population will greatly increase Federal spending on health care from 5.1% of GDP, to 7.5% of GDP by 2025, and then says: [Read more →]

In my previous three posts analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event, and discussed the pre-conference phase and the first four steps. These reflect a strong and consistent bias toward socializing participants into the idea that there is a deficit problem and that it has to be treated by cutting expenditures and/or raising taxes. The bias was reflected in many little ways in the materials used for the meetings and in the way the first four steps were carried out. The framing of exercises in the decision process continually restricted choices to ones that bring participants back to the supposed problem of a deficit and debt crisis. The web-streamed talks about national conference proceedings and orientations, and the brief constricted discussions of major values issues all worked to fit participants’ thinking to the ideas and frames presented in worksheets and the Federal Budget 101 presentations. Lines of discussion that would have led outside of the intended framing were politely aborted by the facilitators, pleading limited time, and the need to get through the agenda, and give everyone a chance to speak, so that any person developing counter-themes to the major narrative did not have a chance to develop these counter-themes and counter-narratives in the context of the supposedly unbiased process. In this post I’ll continue with my examination of step five of this process. [Read more →]

In my first two posts analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event and discussed the pre=conference phase and the first two steps. As we saw, these steps reflected a strong bias toward socializing participants into the idea that there is a deficit problem and that it has to treated by cutting expenditures and/or raising taxes. The bias was reflected in many little ways in the materials used for the meetings and in the way the first two steps were carried out. Here I continue my account with Step Three. [Read more →]

By

James K. Galbraith

Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

President Obama and his economic team face a daunting challenge: how to deliver economic growth they know can only come from deficit spending, while deferring into the future the “fiscal consolidation” which is being pressed on them by practically everyone, from Peter G. Peterson to Angela Merkel.

Clearly the “bipartisan deficit commission” — like practically all bipartisan commissions — was a device to deflect this pressure. The President created the Commission while pressing for a stronger growth strategy, and has sent every discreet signal (notably in the commission’s minuscule operating budget) that the exercise should not be taken seriously.

Nevertheless, there is a danger that the Commission will take a path — “stimulate now but austerity later” — that will lead to unnecessary, economically-damaging and socially destructive cuts in Social Security and Medicare. And there is a danger that such cuts will be stampeded through Congress in the months immediately following the 2010 elections.

In a statement made on behalf of Americans for Democratic Action to the Commission, I make the case against cutting Social Security and Medicare as a “deficit strategy” — on the grounds that it’s not necessary and it won’t work. Instead, we need an economic policy built on realistic assumptions and focused on our actual economic problems: jobs, the state-local budget crisis, public investment, energy and climate change. In my statement to the Commission, I have tried to explore these issues a bit further: [Read more →]

In my first post analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event and then began a discussion of the steps. I broke off my account in the middle of my narrative of Step Two.

Primary Facilitator states the purpose of the meeting, reviews the agenda, and hands out materials for the event, including a pre-survey, short survey on basic values, Federal Budget 101, and the Options Workbook. Participants watch the web-streamed Philadelphia event, including various notables speaking about the deficit problem, and also The Federal Budget 101 video giving the AmericaSpeaks narrative about the “fiscal crisis.” (continued)

Next, we received the problem orientation web-streamed to us from the national meeting, including a number of speeches about how exciting and important it all was, from notables representing AmericaSpeaks, The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and one from Alice Rivlin, who has been pushing fiscal responsibility since her days as the first Director of CBO back in the ’70s, and who is now on the President’s “Catfood” Commission. Alice is one of the best at summarizing the argument for the deficit crisis in just a few words, and she did it again here. [Read more →]

On June 26th, AmericaSpeaks, an organization claiming unbiased neutrality on deficit issues, but funded by the Peter G. Peterson and other Foundations who share the Peterson view that US deficits and the National Debt are something to worry about, convened some 19 Town Meetings, and more than 40 smaller “community conversations,” all tied together through web streaming, to elicit citizen views on “this problem.” Here are some claims by AmericaSpeaks about their neutrality and lack of bias. [Read more →]

After going to one of the AmericaSpeaks community conversations yesterday, I’m even more confident that the deficit crisis being promoted by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, AmericaSpeaks, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and the Obama Administration, as well of much the world’s global elite is a fantasy. There is no truth to it, and it is a dangerous fantasy, because if one believes it, then that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The austerity they recommend for the long-term can make the slow growth and difficult times they project come true. It can catch us all in a nightmare of their making. The “reasoning” behind their fantasy is simple enough. It is: [Read more →]

In Part One, I addressed the question of whether the AmericaSpeaks argument showing that increasing deficits, debts, and public debt-to-GDP ratios is a real problem America needs to solve make sense. I concluded that their reasoning doesn’t show there’s a real problem because they assume that interest rate levels for Government debt instruments are determined by the market because deficits require dollar for dollar financing by debt instruments. However, this assumption is false because the Government can, if it chooses, spend without issuing debt, and implementing this choice, in turn, can drive interest rates toward zero, so that, in fact, Government interest costs can decrease over time on those debt instruments the Government does choose to issue.

[Read more →]

The deficit terrorists ask us to believe that the US has a deficit/national debt problem, to believe in their projections about the future, and to make certain hard choices involving spending cuts and tax increases because we believe in the likelihood of their projections coming true if we don’t act to prevent them. Tomorrow, AmericaSpeaks, an organization claiming unbiased neutrality on deficit issues, but funded by the Peter G. Peterson and other Foundations who share the Peterson view that US deficits and the National Debt are something to worry about, will convene some 19 Town Meetings, and more than 40 smaller “community conversations,” all tied together through web streaming, to elicit citizen views on “this problem.” Prior to the meetings, I thought it would be worthwhile to review their argument, as reflected in the video below, about why they think we have a problem. [Read more →]

This one is a deconstruction of a piece in the Detroit Free Press by a gentleman in the MSM who’s decided to join the Peter G. Peterson/Catfood Commission echo chamber. (My thanks to Sisterkenney for calling it to my attention.) [Read more →]