"How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on Economy "

[FOTD]

His satanic messenger would love to high light this very good read but it's too long for Mr. Moderwaiters approval. This is quite long, but well worth the read. It, at least, gives us an idea what and how Obama thinks on the economy. Makes me think he really is up for the job.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/magazine/24Obamanomics-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"The fact that the economy grows — that it produces more goods and services one year than it did in the previous one — no longer ensures that most families will benefit from its growth. For the first time on record, an economic expansion seems to have ended without family income having risen substantially. Most families are still making less, after accounting for inflation, than they were in 2000. For these workers, roughly the bottom 60 percent of the income ladder, economic growth has become a theoretical concept rather than the wellspring of better medical care, a new car, a nicer house — a better life than their parents had. "

Americans have still been buying such things, but they have been doing so with debt. A big chunk of that debt will never be repaid, which is the most basic explanation for the financial crisis. Even after the crisis has passed, the larger problem of income stagnation will remain. It's hardly the economy's only serious problem either. There is also the slow unraveling of the employer-based health-insurance system and the fact that, come 2011, the baby boomers will start to turn 65, setting off an enormous rise in the government's Medicare and Social Security obligations.

John McCain's economic vision, as he has laid it out during the campaign, amounts to a slightly altered version of Republican orthodoxy, with tax cuts at the core. Obama, on the other hand, has more-detailed proposals but a less obvious ideology.

"My core economic theory is pragmatism," he said, "figuring out what works."

Even some Republicans have started to wonder whether the Reagan strategy on taxes has run its course. Earlier this year, two young conservative writers, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, came out with a book called "Grand New Party." Their basic thesis is that the Republican Party, for all its successes over the past generation, has failed to cement its majority because of economics. If the party's agenda continues to revolve around tax cuts that mostly benefit the well off, the book argues, Republicans risk allowing a generation-long Democratic majority, like the kind that ruled the country from F.D.R. to L.B.J. To avoid this outcome, the authors offer an agenda of what they call Sam's Club Republicanism, focused on the working class."

McBush seem to be the repiglican leadership least tuned into this type of "Sam's Club Republicanism."

Our country can not afford another year of reckless supervision of our economy by another poorly schooled "leader."