Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Why Reich is wrong

Robert Reich
Robert Reich (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The other night I saw Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton and a very bright academic, on the Bill Maher show.  Reich apparently has a new documentary out about what's wrong with our economy. On Maher's show he made the claim that even the rich suffer when the middle class doesn't have enough money to spend.  Here's why I think Reich is wrong.

It's the global economy.  Today international corporations and the one-percenters don't need the American middle class to come back to pre-2008 levels of prosperity.  Its all right if our boat gets a lot lower int he water, because the rising middle classes of India, China and elsewhere in Asia are rising up.  We'll all meet at some level, most certainly lower than what was traditional in America.  But it doesn't matter that we 300 million Americans have less spending power, since billions of Asians will have dramatically more.  FOr those at the top, the net gain will be enormous.  And that's why we can expect the wealthy, and their puppets in Congress, to resist all efforts to increase taxes, fund Obamacare, or do anything else for the greater good of the American people.


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