Slashing spending is only part of the answer and sometimes makes it worse.. .

[Warpy]

3. Face it, America needs a raise

more than the people in this country need anything else. With a substantial rise in the minimum wage, more people will be paying taxes, more people will be out there with the money to demand more goods and services, and the pipeline the supply siders have choked for the last 40+ years will actually start to move.

A rise at the bottom has a ripple effect all the way up--that's how the money pump works, bottom to top. Siphoning money off the top to recirculate it at the bottom through public works jobs is how a wise government goes about restarting a stalled pump while sowing the seeds for a large and stable middle class.

Part of the proof of this is the dead silence from doomsayers six months after every raise at the bottom. Before it, everybody was going to go out of business and a fast food burger was going to go up to ten dollars. After it, the burger is the same price it started and demand has increased that the franchisee is thinking about opening up a couple of new restaurants to handle it. That's how it works.

Cheap labor conservatives have had a long run but their economic theory doesn't work. Even the plutocrats are getting a little testy since it's harder to get their numbers to go up using hedge funds and accounting shenanigans.

It's time to get things back on track. Raise taxes on the rich and corporate. Give the bottom a big raise in the minimum. Repair the infrastructure for the next big boom because with money recirculated at the bottom, it will happen.