by Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, www.nofica.com
This is the fifth in a series of posts titled, “You never will know what you have lost” (Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV)
Each post describes the invisible, but real costs of federal deficit reduction, aka “austerity.” The first of the posts contained these paragraphs:
Since austerity never has benefited any Monetarily Sovereign nation that has tried it – 100% record of abject failure, often culminating in economic disaster – it is amazing that people still believe in it. But that is exactly what our own government is trying, now.
The list goes on and on: The lame who might have walked. The blind who might have seen. The children who might have given to America. The tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes that might have been foreseen. The money that investors might have saved. The inventions never invented. The recessions and depressions that might have been avoided. The wars that might have been won or prevented. The life-saving drugs that might have been developed. The people who might not have died too soon. The beauty never created. The ideas lost. The better world that might have been.
You never will know.
The income/wealth gap is what makes the rich rich. If there were no gap, no one would be rich, and the wider the gap, the richer and more powerful are the rich. Widening the gap is the single, most important goal of the rich.
The rich have bribed the politicians, the media and the university economists to widen the gap, which is accomplished via reductions in federal deficit spending, most of which benefit the middle and lower classes.
The politicians, media and university economists tell you your children and grandchildren will have to pay for the federal government’s deficits and debts, so deficit reduction protects them. It is The Big Lie.
Our federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, never can run short of dollars to pay its debts. Even if your children and grandchildren paid $0 taxes, the government could continue deficit spending, forever.
And, being Monetarily Sovereign, the federal government has absolute control over the value of the dollar, meaning it has the absolute ability to control inflation.
So, it is not federal deficit spending and federal debt that threatens your children and grandchildren, but rather The Big Lie and the widening gap.
Here are some examples:
Science News Magazine
Science slowdown
Recent federal shutdown just the latest shock in a deepening funding crisisBY Beth Mole, NOVEMBER 15, 2013
For two weeks in October, the largest maneuverable radio telescope in the world stood still. With the federal government shut down and the employees who control the Green Bank telescope on furlough, the research of astronomers around the world came to an abrupt halt.
Astronomers Sheila Kannappan and David Stark of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had been allotted 80 hours of observing time on the gigantic West Virginia telescope to study how gases flow between galaxies and fuel star formation. Now it’s unclear when, if ever, they will get to complete those observations.
How important is astronomy to your children’s and grandchildren’s future? Are landing on the moon and Mars, exploring the solar system, finding inhabitable planets, understanding the universe important to your children and grandchildren?
They never will know what they have lost.
The recent federal government shutdown, which furloughed more than 800,000 government workers . . . may have cost the nation as much as $24 billion. In just 2 1/2 weeks, experiments were spoiled, careers derailed and proposed reserach initiatives delayed or suspended.
This is just the latest blow to a research community already weakened by funding cuts and fiscal uncertainty.
How important are research, and the scientists who do research, to your children and grandchildren? They never will know what they have lost.
In the last decade, federal funding for basic and biomedical research has stagnated. The budget for the National Institutes of Health has dropped 23% since 2003, after inflation.
Competitors abroad are boosting their research investments. China, for instance, has increased its science funding more than fivefold since 1999.
Is maintaining a lead in scientific research important to your children’s and grandchildren’s futures? They never will know what they have lost.
Just 15 years agao, the NIH awarded funding to more than 30% of all proposals. (Today), some research programs, accept only 10% of grant application.
After some of his funding ran out, Andrew Singson of Rutgers University, had to lay off one of the four postdoctoral researchers working in his lab, which aims to identify genetic components linked to infertility in humans.
When another postdoc in the lab left last summer, Singson was not able to hire a replacement.
Might Singson have made a discovery of benefit to your children and grandchildren? They never will know.
Larry Suva, an orthopedic researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, worries that the current challenges are scaring off the country’s next generation of scientists.
For the first time in his 30-year career, Suva saw one of his graduate students take a job abroad to avoid the U.S. funding climate.
Even a few years ago, the U.S. was the world’s leader in research funding. Now China is poised to surpass the U.S. in science funding and published discoveries.
Is this important to your children and grandchildren? They never will know what they have lost.
Suva’s lab collaborates with researchers at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center to study how bone diseases link to obesity. The experiments involved giving mice daily dietary supplements.
But some of his collaborators were furloughed during the recent shutdown and couldn’t give the mice their supplements.
Could this research have benefited your children and grandchildren? They never will know what they have lost.
The funding cuts, pauses and uncertainty aren’t over. When Congress passed legislation to reopen the government on October 17, it did so only until January 15, at which point another budget battle likely will ensue.
(Professor) Trower of Harvard’s Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education said, “We’ve seen year after year of cut and cut, down to the bone. People are realizing that it’s never going to come back. I don’t like to be gloom and doom, but I don’t think it will.”
So which will hurt your children and grandchildren more — the federal deficit which they will not ever have to repay, and which adds dollars to our economy, or The Big Lie that has put America on a trajectory toward becoming a second rate nation?
Your children and grandchildren never will know what the rich-bribed politicians, media and university economists have cost them.
Will their lives be shorter, their futures dimmer, their existence sadder? Cancer, ALS, Altzheimers, osteoporosis, heart disease, arthritis, stroke, Parkinsons, diseases of the kidneys and liver and brain — will they continue to plague your children and grandchildren because research is lacking?
From where will come the next antibiotic, the next gene therapy, the next heart replacement surgery technique?
Your children and grandchildren will not blame the rich for there lesser futures, though they should. And they won’t blame you, though they should.
For, they never will know what you have cost them. They never will know what they have lost.
THE RECESSION CLOCK
As the federal deficit growth lines drop, we approach recession, which will be cured only when the lines rise.