When they try to scare you with the national debt, give them the national assets

I'm sure you've heard of the debt clock, right? That is that big electronic billboard ticking away at light speed in Times Square that shows the size of the national debt, which is currently at $17.3 trillion, and debt per citizen at $54,000.

Well, what they don't show you are the national assets, which are at least five times more. The national assets are $108 trillion and assets per citizen are at $341,000.

Walk into any bank and ask them for a loan. Then say, "Here are my debts." What do you think the banker is going to ask you? What are your assets!

However, in our national dialogue about debt our assets are never even mentioned. And by the way, our assets are WAAAAAY more than $108 trillion. If you count land value, natural resources, intellectual assets, etc, it's probably closer to a quadrillion dollars.

Dave Johnson — Republicans Demand Social Security And Medicare Cuts, Is It Reported?

Republicans are demanding cuts in Social Security and Medicare if Democrats want to change the terms of the “sequester.” I’m sure their Tea Party “base” would be shocked if they understood this. So would most Americans. So is the media giving Americans the information they need in order to make informed decisions?

Yesterday The Hill reported, in “House GOP says sequester is leverage in next budget battle,” that House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan is pushing for cuts in Social Security and Medicare:

In a meeting with House conservatives, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), told rank-and-file lawmakers that, as the party’s chief budget negotiator, he would push instead [of killing Obamacare] for long-term reforms to entitlement programs in exchange for changes to sequestration spending cuts that Democrats are expected to demand.

[. . .] Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) said that during the GOP meeting, Ryan pointed to sequestration as the party’s leverage with Democrats and said the Republican negotiators would not accept revenue increases in exchange.

“We’re going to try to push for some substantial reforms on entitlement spending and our backstop is sequestration,” Salmon said in describing Ryan’s remarks....

To many in the voting public the word “entitlements” does not translate to “Social Security and Medicare.” Ryan and the Republicans understand this. This is why they talk about “reforming” something that is not clearly understood as Social Security and Medicare.

So again, have any major news outlets explained to the public, using words that the public understands, that the Republican position in the current budget negotiations is a demand to cut Social Security and Medicare?

  Campaign for America's Future

Republicans Demand Social Security And Medicare Cuts, Is It Reported?
Dave Johnson

The obvious Democratic response is to accuse the GOP of attacking Social Security. Doh.

Bill Black — The Tea Party’s Tactical Brilliance and Strategic Incompetence

Bill sums it up brilliantly for your reading pleasure.

New Economic Perspectives
The Tea Party’s Tactical Brilliance and Strategic Incompetence
William K Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City

I would simply add that it may be getting more difficult to put across a Grand Bargain that cuts the welfare state now that so many people are waking up and watching the news with their own interests in mind. It could have been snuck in under the radar and would have if the Tea Party had not vetoed it previously. Now it may be getting to be too late. Progressives are now in high alert and the Democratic politicians are not notice that they are being carefully monitored by the base.

Mike Whitney — The “Debt Ceiling” Smokescreen

Here comes the Grand Bargain, if Boehner can sell it to the House when the extremists are set on defunding AFA instead.

Readers can see how the media is subtly shifting attention away from defunding Obamacare to negotiations on Social Security and Medicare. The two-party duopoly is using the faux “government shutdown” crisis to set the stage for a “compromise” on slashing vital safety net programs during upcoming debt ceiling negotiations. Obama will use GOP “hostage taking” as the proximate cause for caving in, saying that he had to give ground to prevent a catastrophic default that would have pushed the economy back into recession....

Obama has had his sites on Social Security and Medicare since he took office in 2008. It’s clear now, that he plans to use the cover of the stage-managed debt ceiling crisis to achieve his objective. 

Counterpunch
The “Debt Ceiling” Smokescreen

Mike Whitney

Brett Logiurato — Paul Ryan Writes An Op-Ed On 'Ending The Stalemate' In Congress, And It Doesn't Once Mention Obamacare

Rep. Paul Ryan has a must-read op-ed in the Wall Street Journal tonight on ending the fiscal impasse in Washington.

It's perhaps more notable for what it doesn't once mention — Obamacare — as what it eventually proposes. That omission seemed to ignite the ire of conservatives Tuesday night. 

The key proposition in Ryan's op-ed, though, is a trade of entitlement reform for repeal of the sequester cuts. 

From the op-ed:

"For my Democratic colleagues, the discretionary spending levels in the Budget Control Act are a major concern. And the truth is, there's a better way to cut spending. We could provide relief from the discretionary spending levels in the Budget Control Act in exchange for structural reforms to entitlement programs."

Ryan also proposes a few ideas for entitlement reform — making wealthier Americans pay higher premiums for Medicare, reforming "Medigap" (Medicare supplement) plans to "encourage efficiency" and reduce costs, and asking federal employees to contribute more to their own retirement.

Ryan's entry into the current debate is significant — until now, the former Republican vice presidential nominee had been almost entirely silent....

Because of that clear omission, Ryan's op-ed was immediately slammed by conservative groups that have led the "defund" charge. 

Business Insider

Paul Ryan Writes An Op-Ed On 'Ending The Stalemate' In Congress, And It Doesn't Once Mention Obamacare

Brett Logiurato

Uh oh. Look out. Here's comes the Grand Bargain.

Ian Welsh — Why The Republicans Shut The Government Down and Threaten the Debt Ceiling

Parsing the kabuki. All toward selling a Grand Bargain to both parties?

Ian Welsh

Why The Republicans Shut The Government Down and Threaten the Debt Ceiling

Joshua Holland — 7 Theories Why Obama Keeps Getting Burned (Or Doesn't!) Negotiating with Republicans

You decide. Or maybe there is an eighth, ninth....?

AlterNet

7 Theories Why Obama Keeps Getting Burned (Or Doesn't!) Negotiating with Republicans
Joshua Holland

Warren Mosler — The MMT Grand Bargain: Raise Social Security Benefits and Suspend FICA!!!

Fact:

Every serious economic forecaster cuts his GDP and employment estimate
with tax hikes and spending cuts.

(AKA, the looming ‘fiscal cliff’!)

Fact:

Every serious economic forecaster would raise his GDP and employment estimate
with tax cuts and spending increases.

Fact:

All agree there would be no moral hazard or a waste and fraud issue with an increase in Social Security payments.

All agree that FICA is a highly regressive punishing tax on people working for a living, ideologically unacceptable to the ‘left’, and, of course, the ‘right’ is against any tax.

Fact:

Even with the presumed ‘current unsustainable path of future spending’ the Fed’s long term CPI (aka ‘inflation’) forecast remains at 2%, market participants via inflation indexed securities forecast equally low long term CPI increases, and there are no credible forecasts for any kind of ‘inflation’ problem from excess aggregate demand.

Fact:

The August 2011 debt ceiling debacle and downgrade of US credit, at the ‘worst possible time’, demonstrated that because the US ‘prints its own money’ the US government can’t run out of dollars; always has the unlimited ability to make any size dollar payment on a timely basis; is not dependent on and can never be dependent on dollar funding from foreigners, the IMF, or anyone else; pays interest rates based on rates voted on by the Federal Reserve; and is in no way is at any kind of risk whatsoever of becoming ‘Greece’.

Conclusion:

The MMT Grand Bargain for Prosperity:

1. Raise the minimum Social Security payment to $2,000 per month,

AND

2. Suspend FICA taxes

What’s so hard about this?

Feel free to distribute, particularly to your Congressmen!!!

The Center of the Universe
The MMT Grand Bargain: Raise Social Security Benefits and Suspend FICA!!!
Warren Mosler

New Deal democrat— A thought for Sunday: PEOPLE WILL DIE

If you make the simple, straightforward, and eminently reasonable assumption that people prefer to live rather than die, then the economic situation which saves lives is always an efficient, Pareto-optimal solution.

You'll never hear that simple fact pointed out no matter how far you go in your academic economic training.

The Bonddad Blog
A thought for Sunday: PEOPLE WILL DIE
New Deal democrat

The Third Way and the Grand Bargain

Now that the Grand Bargain is upon us, it is time to review the Third Way, initially brought to US politics by Jimmy Carter and later carried forward by Bill Clinton as the compromise with Reaganism. This is is the political philosophy of President Obama, who models himself more on Presidents Reagan and Clinton than FDR. In the UK, it was the position of Tony Blair as the Labour compromise with Thatcherism.

The term Third Way refers to various political positions which try to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies.[1] Third Way was created as a serious re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to the ramifications of the collapse of international belief in the economic viability of the state economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism; and the corresponding rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right.[2] The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and social liberal movements.[3] Third Way social democrats assert that their support of the Third Way is part of their intention to create a modernized social democratic form of socialism while rejecting state socialism, which they regard as "traditional socialism" and to be obsolete.[4][5]

It supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this.[6] It emphasizes commitment to: balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital, and protection of the environment.[7]

The Third Way has been criticized by some conservatives and libertarians who advocate laissez-faire capitalism.[8] It has also been heavily criticized by many social democrats, democratic socialists and communists in particular as a betrayal of left-wing values. Specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and America.

See Wikipedia — The Third Way for the full article.

You get the drift — buffoonery.

Mark Gongloff — Here's Hoping Obama's Fiscal Cliff Summit With CEOs Devolved Into Screaming And Dish-Throwing

Mark Gongloff doesn't like what he sees.

In his press conference on Wednesday, President Obama rejected their approach as a non-starter, a hopeful sign that maybe the CEOs have been unconvincing. But as Salon's Alex Pareene points out, the CEOs, and Peterson, and Simpson, and Bowles, have managed to convince most of Washington, including the journalist corps (and also CNBC), that something close to their way is the best approach to cutting a "grand bargain" to fix the deficit and avoid the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts looming with the turn of the calendar.
We know Obama would love a grand bargain. The risk is very real that the CEOs will end up getting their way.

The Huffington Post
Here's Hoping Obama's Fiscal Cliff Summit With CEOs Devolved Into Screaming And Dish-Throwing
Mark Gongloff | Chief Financial Writer

Lloyd Blankfein weighs in for a Grand Bargain

The Obama administration should model itself after the Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression and World War Two, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said in an opinion piece published Tuesday evening on the Wall Street Journal website.

In the 1930s there was "extreme bitterness between the business community and the Roosevelt administration," Blankfein wrote. Corporate executives deplored President Franklin Roosevelt's policies. Roosevelt, in turn, said he welcomed their hatred.

Yet, the two sides eventually worked together, spurring a colossal increase in industrial production that lifted the U.S. out of the Great Depression and crushed its enemies.

Blankfein sees a similar opportunity now, and wants the Obama administration and the corporate community to compromise and reconcile so as not to derail the fragile recovery....

"Broadening the personal income-tax base by closing loopholes will generate substantial additional revenue while minimizing increases in marginal rates that could stifle risk-taking and robust growth."

Blankfein also stressed the importance of restoring confidence in public finance by implementing spending cuts, entitlement reform and revenue increases. He also wrote that tax increases, especially for the wealthiest, are appropriate so long as they are accompanied by serious cuts in government spending and entitlements.

Can Jamie Dimon be far behind?

The Huffington Post
Lloyd Blankfein On Fiscal Cliff: Obama Needs To Channel FDR
Reuters

Lots of other CEO's also chiming in. But the problem is that they are demanding debt reduction long term. While they are not deficit hawks, they are deficit doves. That doesn't augur well for the "Grand Bargain" as they pressure the president and other representatives of the people.

The Huffington Post
CEOs Sound Off On Dangers Of The Fiscal Cliff

Reuters