Conservatives and republicans and their think tanks would do and say anything just to defend the richest 1% of Americans. That is what they exist to do. I don't believe anything a conservative or republican says about taxes, deficits, or spending because it is all calculated to transfer more wealth from the working poor and middle class to the wealthiest people. but this is how the ruling elites have always gotten rich -- they hire shills to front for them. Our nations is crawling right now with shills for the wealthiest 1%. Why even listen to them or talk about what they say. We know it is all a lie.

Stiglitz - Time most influential - why not in Obama administration? - Once incomplete and imperfect information are introduced, Chicago-school defenders of the market system cannot sustain descriptive claims of the Pareto efficiency of the real world. Thus, Stiglitz's use of rational-expect ations equilibrium assumptions to achieve a more realistic understanding of capitalism than is usual among rational-expect ations theorists leads, paradoxically, to the conclusion that capitalism deviates from the model in a way that justifies state action—socialis m—as a remedy.[23]
The effect of Stiglitz's influence is to make economics even more presumptively interventionist than Samuelson preferred. Samuelson treated market failure as the exception to the general rule of efficient markets. But the Greenwald-Stigl itz theorem posits market failure as the norm, establishing "that government could potentially almost always improve upon the market's resource allocation." And the Sappington-Stig litz theorem "establishes that an ideal government could do better running an enterprise itself than it could through privatization"[ 24] (Stiglitz 1994, 179).[23]

The upper 1 percent have been sscrewwing the American middle class/working class for so looonngggg...th at they think it is their god-given right to do so...and we should all just lay down and "ante-up" to these rich-trustfund- daddys'money crowd!..The R and R rule is coming! Rifles..and Revolution...my friends!

For J.Chait, go back to Bushs give away, read it over, two wars, many years of no taxes for the rich !! Corporations fleeing abroad.Thats why we are asking to raise the taxes on the rich, look at the polls.

Maybe we should look at ourselves and ask why, as citizens, we permit the House, Senate, current and past Presidents, to continue to be celebrated and paid ridiculous benefits for the job they have done in bringing this country to the brink of disaster. They did not EARN their pay nor have they done a good job. Most people entering Congress are wealthy to begin with. Why are we paying them full salaries once they leave? They can easily afford to take care of themselves. It was never designed to be a career choice, and it was Congress themselves that made it so by voting for it themselves without asking the people. With the exception of the President, does Congress need private jets to cart them and their families around? They are touts who have no problem taking money from lobbyists to write laws that support the corporations, yet the American people are suppose to give them their full salary in retirement along with their other benefits. After retirement, they themselves end up working as lobbyists for the corporations. It was Congress who set these benefits up for themselves, not the people. Personally, there is no sacrifice on their part in this economic disaster. Whatever they do or vote for has basically nothing to do with them and everything to do with the American people. We should demand personal cuts now in Congress. And...how about eliminating the Federal Reserve?

The democrats repeatedly fail to make a case for taking the right amount of money from each economic group. I propose the following: The United States should have a Wealth Preservation Fee on every household earning over $250,000 per year of 3% of the amount over $250,000. This fee will become available to the household to pay future federal income taxes should their income drop below $250,000 in a later year. If, in their lifetime the money is not needed in any suceeding year, the fee goes to the government like an inheritance tax on the death of the heads of household the hand the inheritance tax is eliminated after 10 years of the Wealth preservation fee being in place. For a single person, it would just be on the death of the head of household. No fees pass to future generations.