Krugman on Ryan budget: "Pink Slime Economics"
Paul Krugman is very blunt in his Monday NY Times column. After getting in some digs at the Conservatives on the Supreme Court in last week's hearings on the Affordable Care Act, he calls what happened in the House as almost equally disturbing as a spectacle:
Corporations for the 99%?
For on Thursday Republicans in the House of Representatives passed what was surely the most fraudulent budget in American history.Read those words again: surely the most fraudulent budget in American historyAnd if that is not blunt enough, Krugman really lays the hammer with his next paragraph:
And when I say fraudulent, I mean just that. The trouble with the budget devised by Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, isn’t just its almost inconceivably cruel priorities, the way it slashes taxes for corporations and the rich while drastically cutting food and medical aid to the needy. Even aside from all that, the Ryan budget purports to reduce the deficit — but the
Corporations for the 99%?
William Lazonick, a professor of economics and director of the University of Massaschussets Center for Industrial Competitiveness, has a very interesting piece up at Alternet with the title of How American Corporations Transformed from Producers to Predators The subtitle reads
Over the last 30 years, corporations have turned on the 99 percent. Here's how it happened and how to fight back.I find the piece well worth reading. I am not going to quote extensively, because I think Lazonick speaks very well for himself. He does offer three suggestions for how to fix things, to make corporations again work not only for the 1% - or perhaps the .1% - but for all of us. They are as follows:
1) Ban It. Ban large established companies from buying back their own stock, and reward them instead for investing in the retention and training of their employees.2) Link It. Link executive pay to the productive performance of the company, with increases in