In the debates that have been going on it seems for an eternity about economic policy, two sides of the argument talk about different things like they are talking past each other. I thought it might be good to create a table that showed the conservative economic policy point with its polar opposite progressive economic policy.
| Faulty Conservative Economic Policy | Viable Progressive Economic Policy |
|---|---|
| Maximize the size of the economy in terms of asset values that may be inflated like a bubble and may be concentrated among the wealthy few | Maximize the size of the economy in terms of the living standards of the largest number of people possible |
| budget deficit cutting as soon as possible despite lackluster strength of the economy. | extension of stimulus spending until self-sustaining recovery |
| Cutting taxes during economic booms rather than paying down debt, thus stimulating asset bubbles, inflation, and inability of the government to respond to economic downturns | Using well designed tax rates during boom times to run budget surpluese, pay down debt, temper inflation and the tendency for asset bubbles, and build up an economic reserve for handling economic cycles. |
| Structure the taxes so that the wealthy pay a significantly smaller percent of their income than the middle class. | Have a truly progressive tax structure based on the income that exceeds the bare necessities. |
| Curtailing investment in needed infrastructure while economy is down and waiting to invest until prices are high | Full investing in needed infrastructure while economy is down and prices are low |
| Promoting redistribution of wealth to the rich, preventing the possibility of a self-sustaining recovery. | Promoting some redistribution of wealth to the middle-class as the only way to achieve a self-sustaining recovery |
| Keeping tax policies that favor financial industry and growth of non-tangible assets to improve the lives of only the rich. | Changing tax policies to favor industries that create tangible assets to improve everyone’s lives. |
| Promoting increased “productivity” that requires workers to produce beyond the limits of human endurance. | Promoting policies of more successful advanced economies such as Germany where workers have a balanced life and the total economy is doing better than ours. |
| Concentrate the profits from all the increased work output in the hands of the few. | Have the profits from increased productivity fairly distributed among all members of the corporation including workers and owners. |
| Cut the social safety net, so that knowledge workers have to concentrate a large part of their brain power on how to provide their own safety net and decreasing the time spent on innovation. | Increase the social safety net so that knowledge workers can devote more of their brain power to keeping us competitive with the rest of the world. |
| Have strict austerity budgets that force decreased support for education, making it harder for our workers to compete with the rest of the world for high skilled jobs. | Increase support for education, so that our workers will find it easier to increase their skills to a wolrd class high standard. |
I’ll take suggestions for entries in the table above.