While the right continues to spin the ignorant horse race aspect of their recent drubbing, what has largely gone unnoticed and generally undiscussed here and elsewhere, is the actual damage their stupendous policies have done to the nation's economy. The policies and the agenda implemented and pursued by the idiotic "teaparty patriots" have cost untold billions in lost productivity and have done lasting damage to an economy that they have kept in the doldrums with their idiotic intransigence and stubbornness in the face of overwhelming evidence that what we need is a jump start not forced austerity. The evidence of this continuing damage is overwhelming but still the right maintains that we need to reduce spending and put more people out of work, resulting lower tax receipts, lower expenditures across the economy and other dangerous and damaging reductions that they hope to turn into an election issue next spring.
Here's how bad it is:
You may say that Republicans would be crazy to provoke another confrontation. But they were crazy to provoke this one, so why assume that they’ve learned their lesson?
Beyond that, however, it’s important to recognize that the economic damage from obstruction and extortion didn’t start when the G.O.P. shut down the government. On the contrary, it has been an ongoing process, dating back to the Republican takeover of the House in 2010. And the damage is large: Unemployment in America would be far lower than it is if the House majority hadn’t done so much to undermine recovery.
A useful starting point for assessing the damage done is a widely cited report by the consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers, which estimated that “crisis driven” fiscal policy — which has been the norm since 2010 — has subtracted about 1 percent off the U.S. growth rate for the past three years. This implies cumulative economic losses — the value of goods and services that America could and should have produced, but didn’t — of around $700 billion. The firm also estimated that unemployment is 1.4 percentage points higher than it would have been in the absence of political confrontation, enough to imply that the unemployment rate right now would be below 6 percent instead of above 7.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/opinion/krugman-the-damage-done.html?hp&_r=0
Here's how bad it is:
You may say that Republicans would be crazy to provoke another confrontation. But they were crazy to provoke this one, so why assume that they’ve learned their lesson?
Beyond that, however, it’s important to recognize that the economic damage from obstruction and extortion didn’t start when the G.O.P. shut down the government. On the contrary, it has been an ongoing process, dating back to the Republican takeover of the House in 2010. And the damage is large: Unemployment in America would be far lower than it is if the House majority hadn’t done so much to undermine recovery.
A useful starting point for assessing the damage done is a widely cited report by the consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers, which estimated that “crisis driven” fiscal policy — which has been the norm since 2010 — has subtracted about 1 percent off the U.S. growth rate for the past three years. This implies cumulative economic losses — the value of goods and services that America could and should have produced, but didn’t — of around $700 billion. The firm also estimated that unemployment is 1.4 percentage points higher than it would have been in the absence of political confrontation, enough to imply that the unemployment rate right now would be below 6 percent instead of above 7.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/opinion/krugman-the-damage-done.html?hp&_r=0
