Fighting Inequality vs. Creating a Business-Friendly Environment

I find myself torn between the perspective on inequality and how to fix it offered today in Today's Times by Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobelist and author of "The Price of Inequality," and the ever-moderate and even-tempered Thomas Friedman. Stiglitz wants entitlements expanded, early childhood programs to be fully funded, and higher education to be far more affordable through government financing. Friedman urges the President in the same Times' Opinion section to adopt a set of policies that would maintain basic programs like Medicaid and Social Security that protect middle and working class people from neglect and abuse, while also cutting the GROWTH of these programs so as to encourage the business community to more readily invest, innovate, and engage in productive risk taking.

As you know, people like Stiglitz and Paul Krugman rarely talk about creating an encouraging climate for business investment, and people like, say, Grover Norquist, who has had great success promoting the no-tax pledge for years now, NEVER talk about protecting the people who depend on programs like Medicaid and Social Security.

Somehow, Friedman wants to keep both groups happy, which seems almost impossible, though he does suggest that if the President could find the right framing to bring moderate conservatives into the fold, this might solve the problem and once and for all show up the radical conservatives for being the crazies that they are.

Yet, it still seems as if the ledger is so heavily tilted toward support for the rich in getting richer that it would also send the wrong message to the American people about what our priorities are. 

What Friedman and other moderates don't talk about nearly enough is finding the money to address inequality without raising taxes. Where? Our bloated military budget. If we let the sequester that is due in March to go through just for the military, that would give us 50 billion annually to fund programs that would primarily support low-income people without asking the rich and well off for one additional dime. What do you say everybody? Let's make good on the sequester solely for the military and cash in the savings to support poor folks that will, in the long run, help everybody big time.