Really, really major good news

Jonathan Chait, writing on New York magazine's web site, "The Daily Intelligentsia," explodes two myths that form the basis of the whole Republican agenda:

     Myth 1.  That immediate austerity can boost economic growth.
     Myth 2.  That the slowing of health-care inflation is a temporary dip from the recession.

According to Chait, both are false and have now been factually debunked.   Here are excerpts from his article, titled "The Facts Are In, and Paul Ryan Is Wrong":

"The doctrine of expansionary austerity — the premise that we must cut deficits not just eventually but immediately — has suffered a series of disastrous reversals. It has failed repeatedly in Europe, and its most prestigious academic basis, a paper by Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, was exposed for a series of fundamental errors. . . .

"Less visible, and possibly more interesting, is the growing mass of evidence that the health-care-cost inflation problem is indeed solvable. . . . Over the last few years, health-care inflation has indeed decelerated — far more deeply than even the most optimistic backers of the law dare hoped. The federal budget for Medicare and Medicaid in 2020 is now projected to be 15 percent lower than forecasters expected a few years ago.

"At first, the sharp slowdown in health-care costs was assumed to have happened because the recession is making people cut back on their medical care. . . .  Several studies have found that the recession does not account for all, and possibly not even most, of the slowdown. . . .

"But the key thing is that the conservative program since 2009 has hinged on the absolute truth of both these provisions. The certainty of the imminent debt crisis, and the certainty that Obamacare would worsen rather than ameliorate it, undergirded the party’s entire strategy. . . .

"The debt crisis is irrefutably happening,” Ryan insisted recently. Obamacare, he said yesterday, "will collapse under its own weight."  Ryan and his party are so certain of these foundations his worldview rests upon that he can’t even be bothered to look down at the rubble all around his feet."

And that, my friends, is good news for the Democrats . . .  if only the people will listen to intelligent news analysis and not continue to be misled by Republicans who have nothing to offer but lies, distortions, and fear-mongering.

Ralph