The economy is in shambles because (1) Bush II helped his frat brothers at the Yale chapter of Deke and gave them and their peers huge tax breaks in 2001 and (2) took us into one-and-a-half unnecessary wars. I say one-and-a-half because after 9/11 Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan. We were justified to seek him out and capture or kill him. Other than that, our experience there has been the same as that of the British in the 1920s and the Soviets in the 1980s. Those who fail to study history are condemned to repeat it. After Bush II blew getting bin Laden, we made the mistake of remaining in Afghanistan and got stuck in the quaqmire that foreign involvment there inevitably becomes.

   So how do we get out of the economic problems we face? Do we give more tax cuts to the rich? Do we invade another country (or engage in another half-war)? Mmm---I think not. How about, at the least, we return tax rates to what they were during the Clinton administration? I know the really rich will not be able to move as much money off-shore, but the bankers in Antigua and Barbados have profited enough. And for another idea, let's pull out---pull out, not merely reduce forces in---of Iraq and Afghanistan. "But then those people will have died in vain!" That was a refrain I heard during the Vietnam War. On the one hand, if one means the American casualties, then more people dying in a pointless war does not validate the lives previously lost. If, on the other hand, one means the Afghani and Iraqi lives lost, I think most of the people there will say the lives were lost in vain at the start. 

   If we take these measures, we will have a much better economy.