The Looters Want a "Spending" Conversation Because Democracy Needs an "Unemployment" Conversation

Every time you hear a politician or a pundit speaking about our current economic woes as a "spending" crisis rather than an "unemployment" crisis, what you must immediately recognize and pay close attention to is that you are not hearing a serious discussion of our economic problems at all, you are hearing the voice either of a scoundrel or a complete ignoramus. This is not to deny any relevance to questions of spending priorities (no sensible person can contemplate the illegal immoral wars of choice based on lies of the dreary last decade and doubt that spending priorities deserve attention as part of the mess we're in), but it seems to me we are hearing the word "spending" something like ten times for every time we hear the word "unemployment" at this point and at a time when unemployment is at catastrophically high levels with no end in sight. The focus should be exactly the reverse, and the only reason it is not is because Republicans use literally any crisis, any problem, any state of affairs at all as an excuse to hammer at the nail of cuts to entitlements that protect everyday citizens from the brutal volatility of markets and cuts to taxes to protect the profits of incumbent-elites, all in their ongoing effort to demolish the institutions of democratic governance, to drown government of, by, and for the people in the bathtub, the better, they fancy, to loot the ruins and exploit the demoralized in their dream of a post-democratic neo-feudal order.