No more Bread and Circus

Governments should save during good times while everyone else is spending, so that they can spend in bad times, when everyone else is saving. We have done the exact opposite. During the relatively good years of the early and middle Bush administration, government, abetted by a Republican congress, spent like a drunken sailors and created record deficits. Going two years into a severe recession, they've decided to suddenly close the purse strings just when we need them open the most.

There are four general ways to grow an economy, which is how we measure GDP; Investment, Consumption, Government Spending, and Exports. During recessions, businesses are too scared to invest, consumers are too scared to consume, and the US is importing much more than it exports, and will for some time. The only option we really have to make up for all the declines in these other areas is to increase government spending, not indiscriminately, but, for example, to help the unemployed weather this recession.

1.4 million US workers have been unemployed for at least 99 weeks, and that number is rising. These people have reached the limit of emergency unemployment insurance benefits, and it will be harder and harder for congress, with a united Republican opposition, to extend them. The Democrats are not blameless for the current situation. The bottom line though, is that there is a very large likelihood of 2 million Americans suddenly losing their last lifeline.

To a lot of Republicans, this is a great thing. They believe the only thing stopping them from going out and getting jobs is their laziness, and their dependence on overly generous government aid.

The fact is, there simply are not enough jobs for the amount of unemployed in this country.

I wonder what would happen if Republican opposition worked, and 2 million people simultaneously lost their unemployment insurance. Hearing Republicans call them lazy, combined with a being forced to have lot of free time on their hands, how large a group would that be compared to the tea party movement?