“Protect the banks. Protect the corporations. Give them everything they ask for,” Milton’s translucent aura will say.

Our legislators fully understand that they are the "net source" of money in the economy, not banks or the wealthy. The problem they face is an econ illiterate voting populace that has bought into the neoliberal language of debt and deficit and cheers for their own economic demise that balanced budgets would bring about.

Anyone with their nostrils still above water blames the flood on the very people they are standing on to enable their ability to breathe and views their government as a "cost", not the source of money that drives resources into the economy without interest or debt overhead. The wealthy have purchased our communication networks, orthodox economists, politicians, much of academia, and have created "think tanks" to perpetuate the false concept of government funded by the people instead of the truth of government funding the people.

If I were a politician facing such profound ignorance with my career on the line I'm not so sure that I would attempt to go against the flow only to be labeled a "socialist" for telling the truth. Americans may well deserve to be driven to bankruptcy and servants to their private debt. The fact that the GOP managed to capture the working class vote with no pushback from Democrats would imply that there is little downside to the lies the neoliberals and fascists have so successfully made a part of our economic system.

It may have to fail completely before it can be fixed.