The Next New Deal

October 1, 2008 6:27 PM

The Next New DealWith the vaunted post-Cold War "Peace dividend" evaporating, the United States found itself unable to invest adequately in either its infrastructure or its children. Eventually people began to talk of another Great Depression, before the coming of the next New Deal.
posted by Kwantsar (8 comments total)

See, this is interesting, but it's a single link to a magazine article from 1992. Still, it's nice to know that some reform proposals are fairer minded than others, even if including a COLA would mean I actually get more money, thus making conservatives heads explode.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 7:18 PM on October 1, 2008

Actually what makes it interesting is that it's an article from 1992.
posted by JaredSeth at 7:37 PM on October 1, 2008

Thanks for this link, Kwantsar!
posted by puckish at 7:39 PM on October 1, 2008

In the motherfucking Atlantic, first to the barricades for torture in the days after 9/11.
posted by mwhybark at 7:39 PM on October 1, 2008

I have such fond memories of the 1991-1992 U.S. recession. Of course, I had just turned 21, I earned about $22k a year, and in the first presidential election I was old enough to vote in, I selected Bill Clinton because he seemed like a regular guy. The recession was too abstract for me; I was generally HAPPY in spite of it.

This time around I'm solidly middle-class, a homeowner, a well-informed voter, and ENRAGED.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot at 7:55 PM on October 1, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

and nothing has really changed since then...

if you really want to watch entitlements munch your budget, look at the state level. ouch. well at least in NJ. I have a buddy who is an attorney and has a part time municipal job, 10 hours per month. Each year he works this municipal job he accumulates a year of state pension benefits. If he retires from his private sector job, with pension, and then works for a few years as an attorney for the state, he will get a second full pension based on his state attorney job salary and on his years of service as a part time municipal employee. Aren't you going to get two full time pensions? Don't you want to fund his second pension? He really is a nice guy. Wouldn't you give up your shore house so that he could have one? He really likes the ocean.
posted by caddis at 10:49 PM on October 1, 2008

One thing that caught my eye was the example given of how "government experts" predicted the demise of Medicare by 2006:

"In 1991 Medicare spent nearly $19 billion subsidizing the health care of households earning $50,000 or more. That year government experts projected that the mounting cost of Medicare would cause the program to collapse within fifteen years, and that if current trends continued, total health-care spending would rise to an economy-shattering 44 percent of the gross national product by 2030. No one listened."

Of course, 2006 came and went, and Medicare is still around. Granted, I'm certainly no expert on this, and I know Medicare's still a huge problem, but I think it's predictions like this that cause people to think "hey, they keep saying Medicare/Social Security/Entitlement Program X will fail within n years, but it never happens, so I can ignore the latest warning."
posted by brandman at 5:58 AM on October 2, 2008

What's all this talk I hear about nude eels?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:01 AM on October 2, 2008