The document argues that the current federal budget deficit and debt levels are unfairly blamed on ordinary Americans, who did not cause the issues. It claims the true causes were decades of bad economic policies, including unjustified wars, outsourcing of jobs, tax cuts for the wealthy, financial deregulation, and stagnating middle-class incomes. Resolving the debt crisis requires addressing the underlying economic crisis first through solutions that help, not penalize, average Americans, rather than continuing policies advocated by those responsible for the problems. Fair debt policy should not scapegoat citizens for issues they did not create.
2. An Introduction There is no dispute from any portion of the political spectrum that the federal budget deficit is rising and that the debt has reached its highest levels since WW2. What is under dispute is why the deficit and debt are this high and what can be done about it. The bigger dispute perhaps is whether we are viewing the symptom as the problem instead of the real problem – in other words, would we be in a debt crisis if there hadn’t been a Great Recession or decades of bad economic policy? The Debt Crisis is the direct result of a larger crisis which was borne as a result of the implementation of unfair policies. Adding more unfair policy now makes no sense .
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4. The Debt Crisis did not begin with the Obama Administration. It began during the 1980’s.
5. Fair is Smart One of the main principles of Fair Economics is that the Fair policy is also the Smart policy. This applies to Fair Debt Policy as well. Common Sense Rule Number 1 – if economic policy penalizes those who represent the majority of economic activity the economy will of course destabilize. Rule Number 2 – if you invest trillions of dollars outside of your own economy / nation, you’re taking away trillions of dollars that could have gone into the nation. Rule Number 3 – if you remove all the safeguards from the financial market, it will no longer be safe.
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7. Deficits and Debt are not random outcomes – they are tied to policy – always…
8. What Not to Do The worst thing we could possibly do is what our leaders are advocating now – to penalize the American people because of the greed, irresponsibility and stupidity of the handful of people who brought the world to brink of financial collapse. Not one of the people who caused the current crisis have been indicted or tossed in jail – in fact many of them had their debts bailed out by us, the taxpayers at 100 cents on the dollar. This is hard to believe, but this is what happens when corruption drowns out the needs of the people. Current policy is being dictated by exactly the same people who created the crisis that caused the debt. These people blame us for everything…
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11. The main causes of the current deficits are; revenue shortfalls (from tax cuts and the Recession), the cost of war and bailouts that didn’t go to ordinary Americans anyway. The added expenditures have not been directed to policies that would solve our actual economic crisis. That’s the real problem.
