América

Paul Krugman comenta os protestos sindicais no Wisconsin:

 

Wisconsin Power Play - Paul Krugman - NYTimes.com:

Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor, Scott Walker — demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday — Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”

It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.

In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.

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E  um dos colaboradores do blogue Free exchange - The Economist comenta o comentário - a subida dos impostos é modalidade considerada aberrativa no actual contexto político-ideológico actual dos EUA:

Fiscal policy: The right to be certain | The Economist:

Indeed a severe recession borne of the financial crisis is what brought Wisconsin to fiscal meltdown. But this has merely accelerated a recognition of Wisconsin's bigger structural issues. Blaming Wall Street is a convenient way to avoid the elephant in the room—that people must rethink the social contract between state workers and taxpayers. As health care gets more expensive and people live longer, the old model simply isn't sustainable. This means that either benefits must be cut (which, given legal hurdles, is unlikely) or state residents must pay more taxes. 

The worst possible outcome is the cautionary tale provided by Prichard, Alabama. Hard choices where not made in time. The pension fund ran out of money and the local government did not have the tax base to pay benefits. The retirees stopped receiving their benefits and now face severe poverty and uncertainty in their old age. Perhaps if state workers took on a little risk now, such as less job security and private pension accounts, they’ll manage to avoid a similar fate.

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