Reversing the Tide that Swamped Small Boats

The vast majority, the 99 percent, want a simple, straightforward relationship with their government. They’re not seeking guarantees or handouts. But they do believe their government should facilitate opportunity.

Opportunity requires a good educational system, from pre-K for all children to affordable technical schooling or college for all who want to go. Opportunity requires access to affordable health care so that an illness or accident doesn’t cause bankruptcy or death. Opportunity requires assurance that Social Security and Medicare will serve every generation so that old age isn’t utterly feared. Opportunity requires good jobs with good benefits, and with the economy still sluggish, the best way to spur job creation is investment in renewable energy sources and in the nation’s deteriorating roads and bridges and public transit.

This idea, the concept of investing in the future to promote growth, is gaining strength worldwide. The top financial officials of the world’s largest economies – the finance ministers and central bank governors for the G-20 countries – issued a joint statement earlier this month endorsing government spending to strengthen the global economy.

It is working in Japan, a victim of stagnation for nearly two decades before the Great Recession. Analysts attribute the significant first-quarter growth in the world’s third largest economy to the aggressive monetary easing and massive public spending by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in December. His party won a huge victory in elections this month, giving him a mandate to continue what’s called “Abenomics” – investing in his country to spur recovery.

Similarly, China is launching additional initiatives, including railroad construction, to jump start its economy, though smaller than the massive spending – $586 billion – by the government in 2008 that fairly successfully prevented the world’s financial crisis from damaging the Asian giant’s flourishing economy.

Republicans insist all that’s required to bail those inundated middle class boats is more tax cuts for the rich and more service cuts for the middle class. It’ll never work. What it takes to float a middle class boat is government investment in America, government growing the economy from the middle out and direct government attention to average Americans.