Balance the budget!

[catsittingstill]

The New York Times has an interactive puzzle where you try to balance the budget. The web page is here.

My choices are here (if I've figured out how this works.)

You know, you can do almost all of it simply by restoring taxes to their Clinton-era levels? I remember the Clinton years. The economy was quite healthy. I would like to see taxes indexed to inflation but that wasn't an option.

I did also reduce Social Security payouts for the very rich (but didn't make poor people, with their lower life expectancy, work longer) and institute a carbon tax (the latter not so much for the money but for the inevitable emphasis on conservation and switching to sustainable energy. I don't like that it hits the poor harder, but I hope we can find ways to fix that.)

Anyway, you are free to disagree with me. Go to the link and try your hand.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point. I wonder, though, if it is going to reach the people who we most need to reach. There's plenty as consider the NYT an agent of Satan, or at least a bastion of the lying liberal media.

Bring back the fairness doctrine! Put a Communist on Fox!

[benet.livejournal.com]

I've never really understood that meme; every time I've picked up the NYT and glanced at the editorial page, I've found it about as right-wing as I could stand without actually throwing the paper across the room in a rage.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

That would explain Doubthat. Maybe he's not just a fluke outlier.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Journalist Eric Alterman wrote a whole book on this entitled, yes, What Liberal Media? He puts it down to a right-wing propaganda victory, and that's certainly part of the story. But also, I think, most US newspapers are fairly far right. Against that background, the NYT looks liberal, even if it's to the right on Nancy Pelosi, herself almost exactly at the US center as far as I can tell.

When Grover Norquist and Noam Chomsky are treated as equally radical by a news source, I will believe it is unbiased.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

We can only reach people who have actual contact with the real world. That's a given. But if we reach all of *them* maybe it will make a difference.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

True. But I don't think anything in the NYT is going to reach them. They are more likely to be persuaded by conservatives who have given up on the radical right, people like Charles Johnson (Little Green Footballs) and John Cole (Balloon Juice.) But these are bloggers. I know of no major news source that has swung from right-wing to moderate, yet that is what we need.