On 9 Jan 97 at 15:05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > . . . > Please, let's not talk about the _public_ (or worse, the > _national_) debt. Rather, it's the _government's_ debt. Sure, it > might be argued that the U.S. "public" (whoever that is) owns the > government, so that the "public" is responsible for its debts. > But most of the government's debt, i.e., treasury bonds, bills, > and notes, is also owned by the U.S. "public." (Once that is > emphasized, at least one of the fallacies of deficit-bashing > falls away.) To me "public" connotes collective, which clearly differs from members of the public holding government bonds individually. "Government" connotes more of an alien presence, though I use the term as much as anyone. I would like to point out that a rhetorical device of the Right is to distinguish government from public in the same way. I was debating a goober named Grover Norquist on radio and said something to the effect that the government needs revenue. He jumped on that, saying, notice the reference to "the government's needs," not to OUR needs, yadda yadda yadda. The problem is that a left critique of the state can lend itself to forces which favor no state, or one devoted to little else but repression. The same goes for denunciations of the US Congress. For all its follies and corruption, the Congress is the only democratic branch of government. Diminish its power to score cheap political points, something else I've done myself, and you ultimately diminish the only institution of potential reform. Of course, if you reject the efficacy of reform, just fire away! > This reminds me of the December MOTHER JONES article by Paul Krugman, > in which he uses the word "we" to refer to (1) multinational > corporations; (2) the US government; and (3) the US population as a > whole. This kind of thinking is heavily infused with the liberal > ideology that the US is a classless society and simply leads to fuzzy > thinking. To choose an especially outrageous example, in Howard No, it's centrist ideology that the U.S. is classless. In fact, one of Krugman's few positive achievements is to say some effective things about adverse changes in income distribution. I'm in the ADA, temple of liberal ideology, and I can assure you we don't sit around singing hymns to the disappearance of class in the US. > Wachtel's labor economics textbook [1984: 201], he concludes that "We > all benefit from the existence of the poor, particularly the working > poor." I don't know where this comes from, but in moving from Krugman to this bizarre remark from Wachtel, we're really telescoping (backwards) the view of US liberalism. >From the wide angle, MBS =================================================== Max B. Sawicky Economic Policy Institute [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1660 L Street, NW 202-775-8810 (voice) Ste. 1200 202-775-0819 (fax) Washington, DC 20036 Opinions above do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone associated with the Economic Policy Institute. ===================================================
