The article by Stephen Crockett is actually headlined GOP Eyes Big Gains Over the Economy.

The article is another restatement of the economics that makes the Republican plan so bad for the country.  The more different ways this can be explained, the more the chance that enough people will finally get it.  If enough people finally understand what the Republicans are doing, then the predicted Democratic losses in November will not happen.

Some of the paragraphs of wisdom include:

Jobs are not created by just having large pools of investment money available. There must be the opportunity to invest in a business that will have customers who can buy the goods and services before the investment money flows into job creation activities.

And this:

Tax cuts for the wealthy create huge investment money pools but not jobs. The United States has plenty of money sitting idle in corporate and personal coffers. Corporations have almost a trillion dollars sitting essentially idle in corporate accounts at this time.

And this:

The former middle class disposable income now controlled by the economic elite funds speculation and unsound “bubbles” in the economy instead of a healthy economy because sound businesses now lack paying customers.
Deregulation helps corporations charge excessive prices. Not enforcing anti-monopoly laws permits price gouging. Not capping interest rates concentrates wealth and reduces consumer spending.

And more.  Read the whole article.

Sign Al Franken’s PETITION: STAND WITH ME TO SAVE NET NEUTRALITY AND STOP THE CORPORATE TAKEOVER OF OUR MEDIA

Bob Herbert’s column in The New York Tines is under the headline A Sin and a Shame.

The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse — far more treacherous — than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession.

Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy.

He further goes on to say:

Productivity tells the story. Increases in the productivity of American workers are supposed to go hand in hand with improvements in their standard of living. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work. That’s how the economic pie expands, and we’re all supposed to have a fair share of that expansion.

What a way to misunderstand the world of capitalism.  Where is it written that the invisible hand will make capitalist private companies hire workers that they don’t need?

In no description of capitalism have I seen a rule that says it is good for companies to run inefficiently by employing people that they don’t need.  The whole point of competition is that it drives companies to become more efficient.

There used to be other factors that made it sensible for companies to pay decent wages to the workers that they needed. See the blog post Are the American people obsolete? Of course we used to have strong labor unions too.  Companies that were not unionized felt compelled to treat their workers well, lest they decide to form a union.  Now that the pressure of unions has diminished greatly, we see what unfettered capitalism can do.

If you cannot understand how a system works in a way that is consistent with its own internal driving forces, then you won’t ever be able to figure out what external forces to apply to fix it.  By trial and error you may be able to find something that seems to have a short term benefit, but why depend on luck?  Why not study capitalism and economics without a preconceived notion of “how it ought to work?”

Lauren French of McClatchy Newspapers wrote the article Justice Lawyers Plan Crackdown On Sex Offenders.

The Department of Justice released its first-ever national strategy to combat child exploitation and abuse Monday, which calls for a crackdown on the most dangerous sex offenders in the country.

Besides applauding this worthy effort, I highlight this effort to make a connection to political thought.  After all, this is a political blog.

It has recently come to my attention the possible connection between extreme right wing and libertarian points of view and the suffering of childhood sexual abuse.  The shattering of the bond of trust by what should be a respected adult may lead to a lifetime of mistrust of all authority figures.

Barbara Shelly of The Kansas City Star has written the commentary Freeloading On Health Care Isn’t Freedom Of Choice.

The Missouri Hospital Association is nothing if not persistent. It keeps pushing this crazy idea that people should have health insurance.

The article goes on to describe how insistent are the Republicans in the Missouri House of Representatives in cutting off their nose to spite their face (or in this case to spite President Obama).

Paul Krugman’s latest column is Defining Prosperity Down.

And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.

This is a valuable column as far as it goes.  In future columns I’d like to see him explain why the high unemployment does not have to be a “structural” part of our economy.

As I wrote to my friend ScottC, here is my argument as to why it does not have to be this way.

The media and so called economic pundits are all talking about how our economy is 70% based on consumption.  They are all trying to figure out when the American consumer is going to spend again like they did during the bubble.

Well that resumption ought not to happen if we consumers have any sense.  During the bubble people were treating the rising value of real-estate as a second income.  They kept refinancing and taking the added equity out as cash.

The second income stream died with the crash.  If the values start to rise again, I hope people will not keep turning it into cash via refinancings.  You need a rising level of equity as a cushion against disaster.

So what will power our economy in the future?  It has to be exports.  There are places in the world where this over consumption from a real estate bubble did not happen.  In fact there is under consumption in these places compared to the rising real wealth (standard of living) of the people in those countries.  You probably know from your own experience with coworkers and customers that India, China, Korea, and Viet Nam are growth areas, to name a few.

If we figure out how to regrow our competitiveness in exports, then we will recover.  If we don’t we will sink back to the level that is maintainable by our own consumers at realistic levels of income.  Of course we will lose some even there because of imports replacing locally produced products and services. This replacement causes the loss of good wage jobs in this country.

If we cannot convince the wealthy of this nation to rejoin the compact as described in the article mentioned in my post suggested by ScottC, Are The American People Obsolete?, then there may be no solution but emigration.  By convince, I mean give them a reason.  No amount of attempted coercion will do it.  They will just leave and take their money with them.