End This Depression NOW--For Real This Time!

The latest news shows that the Dow Jones recently reached a record high, and remains above 16,000.  Corporate profits are at a record high, and even the unemployment rate has FINALLY dropped to a 5-year low of less than 7%.  So by these numbers, some people seem to think that the recession is finally over for good.  Happy days are here again!  So cue the music, Maestro:

HALLLELUJAH!  HALLELUJAH!  HALLELUJAH, HALLELUJAH, HALL.....er, wait a minute.  Seriously?  This is the kind of thing that passes for "recovery" these days?  Please.  The majority of Americans would certainly NOT consider happy days to be here again!  Certainly not with sobering statistics like these:

• A real unemployment rate (U6) that is actually in the double-digits (13%), and not falling nearly quickly enough.  In fact, when long-term discouraged workers are included and added to U6, it reaches nearly 25%, and has actually risen since the phony "recovery" began in 2009.
• A labor force participation rate that has fallen to a 35-year low, reflecting (in part) those discouraged workers who simply gave up looking for a job.
• A poverty rate that remains stubbornly higher than in 2009, as evident in the record number of people on programs like SNAP (food stamps).
• Near-record levels of income and wealth inequality, approaching Gilded Age levels.  The top 1% controls nearly half of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 80% are left to fight over crumbs.
• Falling real wages, with a real minimum wage that is at least 30% lower than in the late 1960s despite a doubling of productivity.
• Cities declaring bankruptcy.  Detroit is the canary in the coal mine.
• Record levels of student loan debt ($1 trillion), combined with considerable unemployment and underemployment of college graduates.
• A national debt of over $17 trillion, and growing despite fairly harsh austerity measures.
• A real inflation rate that is nearly 10% when measured the way it was in 1980 and earlier.  Combined with the real unemployment rate, the real "misery index" would be a whopping 22-33.  Ouch!

So by just about any rational measure, we are still stuck in a pretty deep depression.   In fact, the progressive site Daily Kos coined a new term to describe it:  stagpression (a combination of stagnation and depression).  So why the huge disconnect between corporate profits and the stock market with the reality on the ground?  The answer is pretty simple.  Our government has been giving money, favors, and tax cuts to the rich and mega-corporations for years now, and what have the plutocrats done for us in return?  Sit on their massive cash, pay CEOs more, cannibalize their workforces, and buy back (i.e. manipulate) their own stock to paper over their declining sales.  And historically, what do they do if they get higher marginal tax rates?  Re-invest more in their own businesses and/or hire more workers.  Counterintuitive, yes, but it actually makes sense when you think about it.  As for "quantitative easing", the Feral Reserve has been printing trillions of dollars out of thin air, and nearly all of it goes to the big banks (i.e. the plutocrats) where it certainly does NOT trickle-down in any meaningful way.  To date, both fiscal and monetary policies have consisted of weak and inefficient half-measures, where the benefits accrue to the elites while the consequences (inflation, debt) accrue to the rest of us.  Thus, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class continues to shrink.  And the customers become too broke to buy anything, and the economy continues to stagnate or sink even further in a downward spiral.   No wonder our "recovery" has been so hollow!

So how can we break this vicious cycle for good, before the resulting bubble bursts leading to the next big crash?  The answer is really quite clear:  adopt the TSAP party platform ASAP.   But since it is unrealistic to expect either corporate party in the elephant/jackass duopoly to take up an entire platform that literally threatens their own interests, we have devised a list of the highest-priority measures to take before the inequality-fueled crash of 2016 happens:

1. Raise the top marginal tax rate to at least 50% (if not 70%) for incomes above $1 million, and simplify the tax code by removing loopholes geared towards the wealthy.
2. Reduce the corporate tax rate to 20-25%, remove all loopholes, and tax only retained earnings.
3. Reduce tax rates for the bottom 80% of Americans, and un-tax small businesses with earnings less than $100,000 per year.
4. Raise the minimum wage to at least $10/hour if not higher, and index it to inflation from now on.
5. Remove the "sequester" cuts ASAP, and sharply increase funding for infrastructure, education, green energy, and other crucial goals to put Americans back to work.

Of course, it would even better if the entire TSAP platform were adopted, but doing just these five things alone would probably be enough to, in the words of Paul Krugman, "end this depression now".  Because that's what this "recession" really is.  And ending it is long overdue--five years overdue to be precise.

But if we could do just one thing that could be done to end the stagpression quickly, it would be this:  replace "quantitative easing" (that really only benefits the rich) with direct payments of about $2000 per person or so to ALL Americans, yesterday.  It would take an Act of Congress to enable the Fed to do such a thing, but it would be well worth it.  Of course, followers of the TSAP know that we have long advocated a guaranteed basic income (citizen's dividend) for all Americans period with no strings attached, ideally funded via various kinds of tax revenue such as carbon taxes and financial transactions taxes.  But this alternative means to the same end would be the next best thing, at least temporarily until our other ideas get implemented.  And if it happens, the depression will be over and full employment restored within a year or two--provided it does not end abruptly without some of our other measures to replace it next year.  So what are we waiting for?