Never Learning Lessons

James Fallows on the stupidity of Republican economics, and Obama's mistake in going along with those morons:

Those days of the 1970s are now nearly 40 years in the past. And this morning's jobs report makes me wonder whether, as a political system, we ever learn anything. Even this basic thing: That when tens of millions of people cannot find work because of an overall "failure of demand" -- not enough paychecks going to not enough people who can not make enough payments to create jobs for enough other people -- the main problem facing the nation is not "runaway government spending." Any more than it was when Herbert Hoover tightened up on spending as markets crashed, in the wave of folly that Keynes and Ahamed in their different ways chronicled. A lot has changed since the 1930s, and the 1970s. But not this basic principle.

The Congressional Republicans, in saying today that the weak jobs report shows the importance of not raising taxes in tough economic times, understand half this reality. (Or maybe a quarter of it: there is no failure of demand in the top levels of the US income distribution, the levels whose taxes the Republicans fight hardest to hold down. I won't even get into the "propensity to spend" arguments about why higher taxes at the top could actually increase overall demand.) But they refuse to see how exactly the same logic undercuts their current anti-spending drive.

The Republican party is an evil combination of corporate shills and idiots.  The corporate shills know they are misleading people, but don't care because they are crooks.  The idiots just don't understand basic logic.  Too many voters seem to feel better when the Republicans blame government and poor minorities for all of our economic problems.  If Democrats don't get a spine and learn how to explain basic economics, the voters are going to continue believing Republican crap.  If these voters don't wise up, we're going to be up Shit Creek without a paddle.