The Leech Economy

It's not what the repugs say it is.

By email:

In the old days, if a "doctor" thought that your skin looked too red, the standard prescription was . . . leeches. Fever? Leeches. Rash? Leeches. Bruise? Leeches. In fact, if you seemed to have an unfortunate tendency to get angry, the treatment for that was – you guessed it – leeches.

This was not some passing fad. This went on for 2,700 years, throughout Asia and Europe, and then the New World.

The leeches actually were grown on leech farms. Doctors bought the leeches in lots, and kept them in an earthenware jar with little breathing holes in it. Whenever a patient "needed" one, the doctor would apply it to the patient. And then the leech would suck the patient's blood out.

Yuk.

So, basically, whatever was wrong with you, the doctor would attach a blood-sucking parasite to you, and that was supposed to make it better.

And that actually sounds very much like the right-wing's economic policies. Whatever might be wrong with the economy, let's just drain all the blood out of it, and see if that helps.

Unemployment? Let's cut teacher jobs. Deficit? Let's cut police and firefighter jobs. Trade imbalance? Let's cut sanitation and public transport jobs. Banking crisis? Let's cut nursing jobs.

Just bleed that sucker.

Yesterday, in the New York Times, Paul Krugman described right-wing economics in a similar way: "suicide by economic crisis." The greedheads who run Europe are exploiting the economic crisis in weaker countries like Greece and Spain to wipe out pensions, benefits, unions and public healthcare everywhere. They don't just want to tear the social safety net. They want to nuke it.

The saddest thing about that is all of the pain that it inflicts on the vulnerable and the needy. But the next saddest thing is this:

It just doesn't work. Bleeding a patient with leeches doesn't make him healthy. Even if you bleed him dry.

And now the greed-heads are coming for us, with their Ryan Budget and their Medicare vouchers and their Social Security cuts and their Medicaid block grants and their student vouchers and their privatization. Now, they're coming for us.

Well, here is my answer:

No.

Now get lost, you leeches.

Courage,

Alan Grayson