Posted By: willywonka4u
I avoid copying & pasting, but the following summed this up better than I could.
"Merriam-Webster announced that the 2010 Word of the Year is Austerity. Defined as “enforced or extreme economy,” it has been presented as a solution to state and local budget shortfalls as we head into the fourth year of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression."
"Breaking government, starving the beast, is the goal of anti-government GOP officials...who are now focused on using the ruse of austerity as a means to that end."
"In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie recently hinted in a ’60 Minutes’ interview that his state may default on its pension obligations", stating, “If you don’t partner with me to get this done, in ten years you won’t have a pension”.
Economist Dean Baker noted:
"Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned that growing budget deficits imperiled the economy's long-term stability." This is the same Bernanke who as "a Federal Reserve Board governor from 2002 to 2005, chief economic adviser President Bush, and then Fed Chair since January of 2006" missed the $8 trillion housing bubble.
Baker also noted that:
"The problem is the economy faces is not enough demand or spending. We had a housing bubble that was creating a huge amount of demand. That demand has disappeared...Austerity takes us the wrong way. We are going to deal with the shortfall in demand by having less demand. It’s the wrong solution to this problem."
And the shortfall in demand is the reason why the economy has been so slow to recover. And as unemployment has remained high, wages have fallen, further compounding the problem.
As Minnesota Public Radio noted:
"Overall, median wages in Minnesota for open jobs have fallen from $11 an hour in the fourth quarter of 2007 at the cusp of recession to $10.19 an hour in the second three months of 2010, about a 7 percent drop."
Of course, the push for austerity measures has several other benefits for the GOP. If it is successful at keeping the economy sluggish over the next two years, the GOP can use this to win the White House in 2012. This from the same group whose last Presidential nominee ran on the platform of "Country First".
sources:
http://www.theliberaloc.com/2010/12/22/austerity-whos-really-paying-for-the-great-recession/http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/beat_the_press_archive?month=04&year=2010&base_name=ben_bernanke_who_missed_an_8_thttp://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/minnecon/archive/2010/09/wages-new-jobs-and-the-recession.shtml 
