I am a Witch and not an economist. However, the current confusion and cluelessness of economists is giving me confidence in my intuitions.
The economy is not going to get better for any of the fiddling proposed by either Democrats or Republicans. The current economy has reached the hospice stage at which we work not for a recovery, but for an easy passing and auspicious rebirth.
The problem is that while most of us played Monopoly as kids, relatively few of us hung in to the end. Most of us got bored with the interminable length of the game, or frustrated with the older cousin who kept putting up hotels everywhere and charging outrageous rent. So we turned in our assets and wandered off to watch TV, or go for a swim. We never learned the lesson about capitalism that the game aptly demonstrates.
Monopoly ends when somebody like Cousin Dick finally has all the money and all the property, and nobody else has anything to play with, so there's no longer any game.
Now, when this happens, there happen to be options. Karl Marx predicted a proletarian revolution, but he did not realize how many proletarians were going to be distracted by literal interpretations of the Bible and the performance art of Sarah Palin. Another possibility, prescribed in a part of the Old Testament that modern fundamentalists generally overlook, is the Jubilee Year: to continue the Monopoly analogy, this means that you just start a new game. Cousin Dick has to give back all his play money and red plastic hotels, and everybody starts over again with an equal allotment of stuff, as dictated by the rules.
Or maybe, just maybe, there could be an entirely different kind of game that would be more fun.
