"Ronald Reagan portrayed Black, inner-city mothers as freeloaders and con artists, repeatedly referring to 'a woman in Chicago' as the 'welfare queen.'... And the tension between the working class and the poor was easily exploited: Why should 'they' get help for not working when 'we' get no help, and we work? By the time Clinton campaigned for president, 'ending welfare as we knew it' had become a talisman of so-called New Democrats, even though there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs.... Yet when COVID hit, public assistance was no longer necessary just for 'them.' It was needed by 'us.'... The CARES Act, which [Trump] signed into law at the end of March, gave most Americans checks of $1,200 (to which he attached his name). When this proved enormously popular, he demanded the next round of stimulus checks be $2,000... But the real game changer... is the breadth of Biden's plan.... Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this bill unites them in its sheer expansiveness... Over 70 percent of Americans support the bill... The economic lesson is that Reaganomics is officially dead. It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."
Writes Robert Reich in "How Bidenomics Can Unite America" (Newsweek).
Posts
161 comments:
So clintonomics is dead?
The goal is the get the white working class on the dole so they stop complaining when their jobs are shipped off to China to help a tiny elite of billionaires get even richer.
Robert Reich, is, as usual, full of bovine fecal matter.
What could go wrong?
We need fresh, bold voices like Robert Reich in our government. What has this visionary been doing for the last 50 years?
Whenever I want an insightful economics opinion, Robert Reich is my go-to guy.
Bahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahhahahahhahahha!!! Robert Reich?? Really?? Yeah, let's just open the borders and give them all free healthcare and housing....Let's see how well America turns out.
Wasn’t Reich the guy W told to go pound sand when he called the Bush administration to try to get them to overlook the shenanigans at Enron? That Robert Reich? Who is paying him to write this I wonder.
.
We have moved into incredibly uncharted economic territory. I thought the post 9/11 bailouts were bad, the 08 bailouts damaging and the present round of bailouts dangerous.
We are a fundamentally different economy, government and nation that the one at the turn of this century.
there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs
Ha ha ha there was a boom in employment and college enrollment from the reform Clinton signed. Welfare to Work actually worked. But way back then even Krugman practiced real economics and supported this effective bipartisan approach to growing incomes by promoting work.
>>Over 70 percent of Americans support the bill
Over 70 percent of Americans like getting free cash.
That's not the same as "supporting the bill". I suspect 90% of Americans have no idea what is or is not in this bill. Or what a "bill" is and how one becomes law.
"Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this bill unites them in its sheer expansiveness"
Everybody gets everybody else's money! Problem solved.
More "dog whistle" lies. Guilt by mind-reading.
"a woman in Chicago' as the 'welfare queen.'"
That woman was real, sorry to harsh the narrative. "Chicago" as a dog-whistle is pretty weak sauce.
Though Reagan was known to stretch the truth, he did not invent that woman in Chicago. Her name was Linda Taylor, and it was the Chicago Tribune, not the GOP politician, who dubbed her the “welfare queen.” It was the Tribune, too, that lavished attention on Taylor’s jewelry, furs, and Cadillac—all of which were real.
As of 1976, Taylor had yet to be convicted of anything. She was facing charges that she’d bilked the government out of $8,000 using four aliases. When the welfare queen stood trial the next year, reporters packed the courtroom. Rather than try to win sympathy, Taylor seemed to enjoy playing the scofflaw. As witnesses described her brazen pilfering from public coffers, she remained impassive, an unrepentant defendant bedecked in expensive clothes and oversize hats.
Linda Taylor, the haughty thief who drove her Cadillac to the public aid office, was the embodiment of a pernicious stereotype. With her story, Reagan marked millions of America’s poorest people as potential scoundrels and fostered the belief that welfare fraud was a nationwide epidemic that needed to be stamped out...
The ONLY reason they quote that 70% of Americans support the bill, is because the Propaganda media hasn't presented the TRUTH about what is actually IN the bill. They would be PISSED off royally if they knew what they are leaving to their grandchildren to pay back.....
The goal is the get the white working class on the dole so they stop complaining when their jobs are shipped off to China to help a tiny elite of billionaires get even richer.
Yup. Trump wanted checks to help those affected by government imposed shutdowns, but also wanted to keep jobs in the US and reduce immigration which depressed wages. In other words, he wanted the working class to have the dignity of a job and a chance to build a better life. The Dems want you fat, stupid, and distracted as you live on the dole.
We need our brightest minds and clearest thinkers to tackle the truly enormous problems. Like “Mask Mumble,” which is making it impossible to understand what anyone is saying.
Trashing Reagan is a thing right now.
Trashing the individual is a thing right now.
We are all art of the collective.
Biden-economics = deep state Potemkin economics.
Get everyone on the government dole - make us all beggars. Yes - so the Billionaire/deep state class can build the walls around their compounds.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet own all the land now.
"For years, Republicans used welfare to drive a wedge between the white working middle class and the poor."
Right, cause it is TOTALLY racist to want each adult to earn their daily bread.
FYI, studies show, productive people are happier people...
I used my stimulus to buy gold. I wholeheartedly support the stimulus, especially when it's used in this way. Robert Reich's opinion on this matter is questionable, which I completely expect.
Reich forgot the most important component of Bidenomics how it would reduce looting by 22.5%.
Robert Reich. How can I miss him if he won't go away?
It’s a very strange phenomenon of our current governing glob that assumes any policy that had bipartisan popular support (secure the border!) now is rejected for being effective and attracting bipartisan popular support.
Everyone supports Nancy Pork.
Come on, man.
DanTheMan said...
>>Over 70 percent of Americans support the bill
Over 70 percent of Americans like getting free cash.
That's not the same as "supporting the bill". I suspect 90% of Americans have no idea what is or is not in this bill. Or what a "bill" is and how one becomes law.
3/18/21, 10:16 AM
Hell, 90% (or more) of the politicians that voted for it have no idea what is in it. The other 10% only care that it will make them and their friends richer.
"Because everyone has a right to other people's money."--Robert Reich, the real-life Wesley Mouch.
The goal is the get the white working class on the dole so they stop complaining when their jobs are shipped off to China to help a tiny elite of billionaires get even richer.
Spot on. Democrats' electoral strategy is a combination of (1) exploiting identity-based grievances and (2) buying votes and growing economic dependency on the government. Their hope is that the billionaire class can get rich enough from offshoring to offset the higher taxes they'll pay to fund the dole. Of course, the burden won't fall completely on billionaires. The middle class and upper middle class, who won't get any richer, will be called up to pay their "fair share."
Newsweek? Seriously?
Reich is a proven failure so I'm not sure why I should care about his opinion on anything.
Ha ha ha there was a boom in employment and college enrollment from the reform Clinton signed. Welfare to Work actually worked
>>
Not only that, but it worked exactly as predicted it would in Wisconsin prior to the national policy.
Just like vouchers worked and continue to work in Milwaukee.
As for the Welfare Queen, it's all like that.
I own rental properties that I rent to Section 8 tenants. The one working age resident (the rest are retired) collects all the benefits she can while she works under the table. I don't care as I'm getting my past taxes returned to me by the government, but the point is that she also has a gorgeous, cherry red classic Mustang among her numerous possessions.
She is by no means "poor." Yet she gets her housing, food, utilities all paid for.
As Biden would say, you're a bunch of chumps for paying taxes.
this:
"Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."
is hilarious.
It reminds me of the underpants gnomes profit plan.
Robert Reich is vertically challenged--his height being variously reported at 4 feet 11 inches--or as he got older 4 feet 10 and a half inches. And that was 20 years ago when he was running for Governor of Massachusetts. He's probably shorter now.
I will concede that Reich is a pretty smart fellow; but I am curious as to how he manages to package so much bull dung in such a short frame? And he keeps on pouring it out--usually in the friendly left leaning confines of the Manchester Guardian these days. And every time you think he must have exhausted his supply of the stuff, he says, like a TV huckster selling kitchen gadgets, "But wait--there's more." And yes in his next foray Reich proves there's more of that "stuff" where it came from.
This is probably why bitcoin is going through the roof. Nobody has “faith” in the dollar anymore.
Blogger tim in vermont said...
The goal is the get the white working class on the dole so they stop complaining when their jobs are shipped off to China to help a tiny elite of billionaires get even richer.
Exactly.
How can a single author get so many things wrong in so few words? Was this an entry in some sort of contest?
I wonder how many Americans really "support the bill" vs. how many Americans want a stimulus check and have been told that this bill will give it to them?
little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs
Really? I recall Giuliani's Workfare program in NY finding that about 1/3rd of the people on welfare couldn't appear at their workfare jobs because they interfered with their actual jobs. Granted, none of those people were discouraged from working by their welfare benefits. They were just welfare cheats.
But the real game changer...Over 70 percent of Americans support the bill
Essentially this guy is saying that people like it when they get money. And that's a "game changer" since the government can now just directly write checks to people under the aegis of it being "economic stimulous" or whatever.
Well... yeah... printing more and more money to give to voters is a "game changer". I mean, the government could just give everyone checks for a million dollars each I guess. That would certainly change the "game".
Consider the source.
In contrast, the welfare reform enacted during Clinton's administration succeeded beyond all expectations. And those who went back to work continued going to work.
Shorter Reich:
Everyone likes a handout.
Who is paying for this? Oh yeah. Your children and grandchildren.
I guess that is OK. I don't know them, so who cares?
“Because everyone has a right to other people's money."--Robert Reich, the real-life Wesley Mouch”.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
“Shorter Reich”. The jokes just wrote themselves.
Give away the seed corn as food and everybody will eat well.
Extra money is seed corn. It buys capital goods, like heavy equipment for ditch diggers.
Tax the rich more and you're handing out their investment money, not their lifestyle money. That's the seed corn.
And so we are back touting polls again, because they did such a wonderful job last year. The absolute gold standard of public opinion, obviously.
With this bill, I could manipulate the poll question such that I could get 90% approval or 10% approval depending on how I worded the question. (In our current polarization, It would probably be more like 75%/25% as some persons will support anything their party supports, no matter what it is. I could probably get a 20% approval for eating babies if Pelosi came out in favor of it.) If you focus only on the stimulus checks part, which even I support, the result is going to be a lot different if my question omits all mention of it and hammers away on the corruption pork. I doubt 90% of the people even know that this welfare reform is in the bill and if they did I suspect the large majority of them would not approve. Frankly, there's no reason for welfare reform to be in this bill, but then again there's no reason for the porkfest to be in this bill either. But that would require us to have a government that functions properly, which we don't.
Oh well.
We didn't get any fucking checks.
And Reich is a communist leprechaun so I'm not too interested in his commie opinion.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
More accurate:
For years Democrats and the media have use lies to state the Republicans hate you.
Accurate article title:
How Republicans will be blamed for the economic destruction of Bidenomics to further divide America.
Public smoothing functions (e.g. welfare) are first-order forcings of progressive corruption and dysfunction. They are especially harmful to people with strong wills and sense of personal responsibility. This is how the Great Society drove wedges between husband and wife, and destroyed families. This is how elective abortion (i.e. wicked solution), in addition to being an effective [voluntary] planned population scheme, produces collateral damage: people... persons with secular incentives and spiritual emptiness, which is in addition to babies (i.e. survivors) left on metal slabs to die in darkness.
Communist pyramid scheme. Sooner or later you run out of other people's money.
Robert Reich is an idiot. Printing money doesn't create wealth. Having cash is great, when there is something to buy. Venezuela could gift each of its citizens a billion Bolivars, they would still be eating zoo animals. I have never heard Reich say anything that does not combine abject ignorance with willful stupidity.
We had our own Chicago-style welfare queens here in SoCal. If Howard was really from San Bernardino he would know. Circa 1994 when I was teaching and finishing up my MBA and my wife-to-be was working in the Blood Bank lab we moved into my late great-Aunt's house on Genevieve south of Highland Avenue to fix it up so my mother could sell it. We shopped at the Stater Bros. grocery on Baseline and Waterman, which at the time still had "the projects" across the street. I can remember us being in line with a pound of burger and other necessities, when the bejeweled queen in front of us literally bought steak and lobster with her welfare stamps and Crown Royal with a crisp $100 bill pulled from her Gucci handbag. She had really nicely done nails too. When we left the store she was getting into a Cadillac with gold-plated hub caps and gold trim where normal Caddy's have chrome. Her man was parked illegally in a handicap spot. We got into our beat up Honda and took our burger home. This anecdote is but one data point in a long life lived in Berdoo and nearby communities. It is not atypical. We all knew what Reagan and the Tribune meant.
Marginal acquaintances we knew were dealing meth and loved accepting food stamps because they only remitted half the face value in drugs but spent the entire amount on qualified groceries.
It's kind of genius that all it took for middle class people to support government subsidy is to tell them they can't earn their normal living or operate their businesses for a year. Why didn't some Democrat think of that sooner?
I think most people would have preferred to keep working.
The government shut us down, took away our job and shut down our businesses.
So, it sorta owes us.
Remember when black unemployment hit historic lows under Trump?
Amadeus 48 said...
Shorter Reich:
Everyone likes a handout.
I didn't think it was possible to get Reich even shorter.
What is the thrill that people like Robert Reich get from making so many people dependent on his policy? That he gets to play God with their lives? That they are dependent on him and his clique? Why such an evil kind of pleasure at the thought? Why doesn't he prefer to see people living their lives on their own terms, under their own steam?
Why should 'they' get help for not working when 'we' get no help, and we work?
@Althouse, I notice that neither you nor Reich answer the question.
Simpler
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-announces-rollback-of-all-jobs-created-by-trump
As a senator, Biden had supported Clinton's 1996 welfare restrictions as did most Americans. What happened between then and now? Three big things.
First, COVID... The second big thing was Donald Trump... But the real game changer here is the breadth of Biden's plan.
Notice, Reich never attempts to explain the change in Biden's economic philosophy over 25 years that resulted in "Biden's plan."
Reich knows Biden's Plan is the pure opportunism of Biden's Faustian bargain with the left, circa the 2020 South Carolina primary.
"For years, Republicans used welfare to drive a wedge between the white working middle class and the poor."
They do the same thing between mother, father, and baby... Fetal-American.
Also, they promote emigration reform to mitigate progress of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] immigration reform and collateral damage at both ends of the bridge and throughout.
Diversity [dogma] that breeds adversity. The Rainbow of inclusive exclusion. Sex chauvinism for profit, too.
And who can forget the year over year excess deaths at Planned Parent/hood.
Can they abort the little "burden", cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too?
"It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone"
Hand out enough money, and the whole world will be rich!!!
The government shut us down, took away our job and shut down our businesses.
So, it sorta owes us.
Exactly, a refundable credit to most Americans, and public smoothing function (i.e. welfare) to fill in the missing links.
Follow the intuitive science? Take a knee? Restrictive mandates, civil rights violations, have consequences.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
Hand out enough money, and the whole world will be rich!!!
Climate cooling... warming... redistributive change. Dibs on a beachfront estate in Martha's Vineyard.
Has this little putz ever been right about anything?
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
The democratic/dictatorial duality.
I'm too lazy to look up everything in the bill. I've gotten pretty resigned at this point.
If they are going to tell people they can't operate their businesses, and scare people away from doing business where they are partially opened, then yeah I think they need to pay the people. Otherwise it's theft.
I suspect my state is getting some money from the new bill, because we finally got the unemployment we were supposed to be eligible for a year ago. There was a problem they were slow-walking getting fixed, and then just after the bill was signed, BAM! we got the payment in one lump sum.
It's terrifying, the number of people - lawmakers included- who say things like COVID kept spreading because we were unwilling to pay people enough to not work. As if you can just lock the doors to your business and think it will still be there in a year. There are too many people in government who have only ever gotten a salary.
And the tension between the working class and the poor was easily exploited: Why should 'they' get help for not working when 'we' get no help, and we work?
I'd like to know the answer to that myself. I'd also like to know if Reich realizes that when he writes things like that he makes it sound like such states of being are inescapable much like a caste system.
"Why doesn't he prefer to see people living their lives on their own terms, under their own steam?"
It takes a bigger man than Robert to do that.
For years, Republicans used welfare to drive a wedge between the white working middle class and the poor."
There is certainly some truth to this, and I've long made a similar critique of the Republican Party. The move towards market liberalization and financialization has been a huge boon to the wealthiest Americans and has decimated the white working class.
"In the full enjoyment of the gifts of heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society--the farmers, mechanics and laborers--who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government." -Andrew Jackson, 1832
"Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate na individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came." -Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice, 1797
Blogger I'm Not Sure said...
...
It takes a bigger man than Robert to do that.
Talk about a low bar...
Bilwick, "The real-life Wesley Mouch" is right. There are a lot of loathsome soi-disant "economists" about these days, but Reich remains the worst of the lot, not at all improved by being outside this or that administration.
He used to be a fixture in the SF Chronicle, but while he's still nominally there, he only publishes every few months or so. (Haven't checked in for the last couple of months, so that may have changed again.) I believe he used to live in Berkeley in connection with a position on the UC faculty. I do remember selling him a classical CD occasionally, way back, and being staggered the first time by how very, very . . . small he was. (Not making fun; it's just that height is something you really can successfully camouflage on TV.)
But whoever said it first above is right: 70% of the people are "in favor" of this bill b/c (a) they haven't read it any more than the Congress did; and (b) it gives them money. Which is torn from thin air by magic flying unicorns.
Shorter Robert Reich: a rising boat lifts all tides.
Wasn’t Reich the guy W told to go pound sand when he called the Bush administration to try to get them to overlook the shenanigans at Enron? That Robert Reich? Who is paying him to write this I wonder.
---------------------------
Maybe Paul Krugman, another hack economist?
"In 1999 Paul Krugman was paid $50,000 by Enron as a consultant on its “advisory board,” and that same year he wrote a glowing article about Enron for Fortune magazine."
@J Farmer
I keep hearing young people say they’re screwed... but...
I’m retired but I can think of half a dozen ways I could make very good money in tech.
I just don’t want to work 60 hour weeks any more.
I see unlimited opportunity out there, but if your objective is lifetime security at one company... well... that ended in my generation. I never cared about that because I didn’t want lifetime security at one company.
My daughter and son-in-law who are about your age are doing exceptionally well.
The nature of the contemporary job market is that you have to keep moving and changing. That’s very tough on a lot of people, but I always thought it was a good thing.
It's worth noting that another term for a "wedge issue" is a "centrist position." I.e., one that peels away voters from the other party.
The republicans worked tirelessly to destroy high paying rust belt union factory jobs... now the victims think republicans will bring them back.
The bill in question is an horrific pile of Democrat pork. As usual, Americans who increasingly are succumbing to the enticement of government free loads support a measure without the slightest idea of its content or impact.
All is proceeding as Reich and the other old commies have foreseen.
If the policy is sound, why stop at 2000 dollars?
Reich has been banging that drum for decades. No more convincing now than it ever was.
My parents both worked at those rust belt factories.
Their unions killed those factories. The unions kept insisting on more money and perks for less work until the factories were non-competitive with Japanese and Taiwanese labor.
The jobs sucked and were dangerous, dirty and mind killing.
Both my parents went back to school, learned non-factory skills and were very glad they did.
This cycle keeps repeating. I doubt you can get Japanese or Taiwanese to do crappy low level factory any more. That’s moved to China and the Philippines.
Manufacturing has returned to the U.S., however, in small scale, boutique operations.
Higher quality goods, better working conditions and better wages.
Somehow, to Robert Reich, giving money to 2/3rds of the population, instead of 100% (through tax cuts) is *better*.
Reich is like Californians who, stepping over all the sad mental cases sleeping in the streets, say "this is because Reagan closed the mental hospitals when he was governor 45 years ago." Old, tired bullshit from old, tired writers.
"How Bidenomics Can Unite America"
Giving black farmers $118,000 each is a good start.
See what i mean
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/03/16/dem-ags-whoa-there-on-the-infrastructure-projects-easy-does-it-on-the-economic-recovery/
"gave most Americans checks of $1,200"
By the way, Ann Althouse, emerita professor of constitutional law, where does the Constitution, which I know is more than 100 year old, and probably racist, grant Congress the authority to just give "most" people money?
Fuck that socialist leprechaun.
This is why leftists spend their lives trying to control education and media. The propaganda value is incalculable.
Yes, let's celebrate fascism along with Robert Reich. Let's celebrate giving astonishing amounts of money to Robert Reich and all of his fellow fascists for being the right sort of people.
Let's celebrate firing people and making them unemployable for not being fascists.
Let's celebrate magic money tree economics. After all, it's not like this hasn't been tried over and over again throughout human history and hasn't been a failure every single time, is it?
Let's celebrate giving money and resources to people because of their skin color.
Let's celebrate taking money and resources from people because of their skin color.
Let's celebrate creating two completely standards of justice, one that is applied to fascists and the other that is applied to people that are not fascists, and let's celebrate the fascists pretending that it's the same system and that our judges are principled.
And let's celebrate burning the books that document our past and that are otherwise inconvenient for fascists.
It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."
So why not give the bottom 2/3 $10 million each? Hell, why not a billion...then we'd really be cooking!
I collect brass bookends. I been working on finding Claire McCaskle / Hillary Clinton political toad bookends. In the future I'll will search for economic itellectual midget Krugman / Riech bookends. Any help would be appreciated.
Somehow, to Robert Reich, giving money to 2/3rds of the population, instead of 100% (through tax cuts) is *better*.
You can't give tax cuts to people who don't pay taxes.
This is the beginning of the push for UBI.
It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."
China will thank you.
Just checked bank account. Stimulus deposit pending.
Reich is just coasting. He simply makes claims here without bothering to back them up with data and argumentation. He does not address the source of the new welfare funding. He gives credit/blame to Presidents for the actions of the legislature. Junk.
The article is no more enlightening than some goober's blog post or Twitter thread - but I'm sure he was paid well.
You can't give tax cuts to people who don't pay taxes.
If they have an income, they pay taxes, albeit not directly, and perhaps not net if they benefit from public smoothing functions (e.g. welfare), but dispersed through payments for diverse services and products.
"Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."
No, their increase purchasing power will drive prices up. Where are the price controls? I had trouble in Econ 101 because constant LSD use made the graph hard to decipher but the concepts were pretty basic.
@Shouting Thomas:
My daughter and son-in-law who are about your age are doing exceptionally well.
The nature of the contemporary job market is that you have to keep moving and changing. That’s very tough on a lot of people, but I always thought it was a good thing.
I don't deny that there are people my age doing well. I am not speaking of my own economic circumstances but those that confront the nation as a whole. The economic environment the working class find themselves in did not emerge spontaneously but was a planned set of policy ideas that were pursued and enacted. The entire point was to allow US business to reduce their costs by using foreign labor and facilities. Mass immigration, legal and illegal, also hurts wages.
There are no free markets. Every country has a mixed economic system that regulates markets. The existence of political borders regulates markets. People don't want to be stratified along a global division of labor where a small number of ultra-wealthy globalized elites dominate.
Robert Reich: Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone.
No one who says this unironically can be taken seriously as an economist.
"Give cash" that comes from where, exactly? The government produces no goods and provides no services of its own. Everything it does is funded by the productive work of the electorate. There is no Keynesian multiplier; that's one of the big myths. Purchasing power doesn't go up when the government "prints money;" it goes down. In the modern era of effectively instantaneous communication, by the time the Fed engages in OMO, the inflation expectation is already priced into every asset class. It's the days when the government could manipulate the masses with fiscal and monetary policy shenanigans that are over, not "Reaganomics" (which, to be fair, was itself barely more than warmed-over Friedmanite monetarism).
Next someone will propose the minting of a trillion-dollar coin.
Does a dollar given have the same value as a dollar earned?
Yes.
They both have just became worth less.
Big time inflation is on the way.
"even though there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs"
Wow. How shameless do you have to be to tell that lie?
I can break this down quickly. Robert Reich has never been correct on any of his claims, predictions, books, articles. He's among the most lame of our 'expert class' and has been for decades now.
Yes- when you forcibly close down all commerce for a year, people are going to need any help they can get. Even if it comes late and too little from our government who sees more profit in sending billions to Pakistan than to Gary, IN.
Robert Reich claims that 70% of Americans support the bill? Where does he get that? Americans and Congress alike have ZERO idea what's in the friggin bill. I guarantee you Robert Reich also has almost no idea what's in the bill other than the talking points he (and the entire media) have received as members of JournOlist (or whatever they're calling it these days.) Americans will happily agree to a poll question asking them if they approve of a bill that sends them a direct deposit. Duh.
He's a propagandist at best. He is not someone you go to for economic ideas or economic policy. Anyone who does not concede that Democrats do nothing but spend time separating people are themselves separated from reality.
Quick note: In September, Pres. Trump wanted to make the stimulus a $2000 check to every American. The Dems pushed that away, spent months working on the fraud election, and now months later, use a less than proper method (reconciliation) to pass a bill that has about 10% of it's trillions of dollars in covid relief. This bill, or what Reich calls Bidenomics- sets up the next generation for even more debt, and a massive hit when the actual bills come due. Oh...and his comment, "Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone." is pure bullshit. People have been out of work or making half of what they normally do for a year. Do you think they're going out to buy watches and blouses with the stimulus check? How about mortgage, car loan, rent, food, lights, heat?
Reich is face-palm ridiculous. Yes- I have a particular hate for his career level of deception.
"The economic lesson is that Reaganomics is officially dead. It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone." The political lesson is that if you offer to give some money, everyone will vote for it, and no one in politics can say no, regardless of what a bad idea it might be economically.
"The nature of the contemporary job market is that you have to keep moving and changing. That’s very tough on a lot of people, but I always thought it was a good thing."
Some of that is because people have to move and some is because they are impatient and just want to move.
My 31 year old son is doing very well for himself. But if he had stayed at the job he took right out of college with a major technology company he would now be a millionaire many times over (I never point that out to him).
There's a lot to be said for patience.
The republicans worked tirelessly to destroy high paying rust belt union factory jobs... now the victims think republicans will bring them back.
This reminds me of a couple of lefty friends who were astounded because rank and file union members supported Trump, that shouldn't be possible they thought because he tried to crush a union when he owned a casino in Jersey. I refrained from telling them that he was probably a Democrat back then. I didn't even tell them the obvious, its not the 1980s anymore. Its not even the 1990s when Bill Clinton went all in for exporting jobs and importing cheap labor. We are now 21 years into the 21st Century. The situation has changed.
Robert Reich is such a stupid shit.
"The nature of the contemporary job market is that you have to keep moving and changing. That’s very tough on a lot of people, but I always thought it was a good thing."
It is also a strategy, especially in tech where stock options can be a big incentive.
My wife uses this successfully.
Get a job with options (preferably pre-IPO), put in your four years getting vested, then move on to another opportunity.
It's a way to diversify your portfolio...
"The republicans worked tirelessly to destroy high paying rust belt union factory jobs."
^^^^ This is utterly false.
"My parents both worked at those rust belt factories. Their unions killed those factories. The unions kept insisting on more money and perks for less work until the factories were non-competitive with Japanese and Taiwanese labor. The jobs sucked and were dangerous, dirty and mind killing."
^^^^ This is completely true.
I watched it happen in the middle of the Rust Belt era. From about 1970 to about 1982. In my industrial-heartland city the manufacturers caved to their unions contract after contract because they didn't think they could make it through a strike. The unions finally got the numbers so high that the companies had two choices: go south to non-union labor states or go bust. There were plenty of both. And my city turned into a ghost town.
We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And an enormous debt to boot!
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1939)
And incidentally, I don't blame the unions alone for the deindustrialization of my home town. The unions deserve maybe 30% of the blame. Management in a lot of those businesses was inept, blind and cowardly. Management gets maybe 35% of the blame. The federal government, which puts its thumb on the scale of organized union bosses, gets the other 35% of the blame.
all in for exporting jobs and importing cheap labor
Immigration reform works (pun intended).
re: insourcing/outsourcing
Labor and environmental arbitrage, too. Don't be green, go Green.
Sending checks to everybody was arguably a decent strategy very early on in the crisis when nobody knew what would happen with either the course of the disease or the economy. After a couple of months it was clear than a lot of people would be able to keep working at least as productively as before. The second round of 'stimulus' should have been narrowly targeted: extended unemployment benefits was really all that was required, along with some lending schemes for small businesses.
Shooting the cash cannon out onto the fruited plain in March of 2021 makes no sense economically. Good politics, though, I guess.
The goal is the get the white working class on the dole so they stop complaining when their jobs are shipped off to China to help a tiny elite of billionaires get even richer.
Not just the white working class. Everyone that earns a living. Pelosi's quote sticks with me. "We feed them." Voters (the entire American populace) are cattle to be kept for use by these people. Nothing more. It's why they don't see massive immigration as a problem. More cattle is better right? Although I'd guess Pelosi considers us more along the lines of swine than cattle.
Trump, no matter his failings or what you thought of his policies, considered people as individuals. That goes against all modern political thought. People are herds to be managed.
I note that Madison city workers are not being laid off because the city got money from the Federal Government. I have to ask: Why is it a bad thing for the city to experience some financial hardship so they can decide who is truly vital?
Trump, no matter his failings or what you thought of his policies, considered people as individuals
Yes, color-free judgments and labels. Diversity of individuals, minority of one.
1. Reich can't wrap his mind around the idea that most of the working poor don't want welfare.
2. "Bidenomics" looks like the root word could be "bidet," not "Biden."
We have never made good on our promises I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And an enormous debt to boot!
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (1939)
Luckily for American industry, the US was about to spend a huge amount of money fighting WWII.
After reading the great comments (Howard = not) on this thread, I have to admire the ease with which the Professor trolls her commentariat.
Via Wiki:
The 1970s and 1980s were an altogether more hostile political and economic climate for organized labor.[26] Meanwhile, a new multi-billion dollar union buster industry, using industrial psychologists, lawyers, and strike management experts, proved skilled at sidestepping requirements of both the National Labor Relations Act and Landrum-Griffin in the war against labor unions.[40] In the 1970s the number of consultants, and the scope and sophistication of their activities, increased substantially. As the numbers of consultants increased, the numbers of unions suffering NLRB setbacks also increased. Labor's percentage of election wins slipped from 57 percent to 46 percent. The number of union decertification elections tripled, with a 73 percent loss rate for unions.[37] The political environment has included the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Department of Labor failing to enforce the law against companies that repeatedly violate labor law.[41]
Labor relations consulting firms began providing seminars on union avoidance strategies in the 1970s.[42] Agencies moved from subverting unions to screening out union sympathizers during hiring, indoctrinating workforces, and propagandizing against unions.[43]
By the mid-1980s, Congress had investigated, but failed to regulate, abuses by labor relations consulting firms. Meanwhile, while some anti-union employers continued to rely upon the tactics of persuasion and manipulation, other besieged firms launched blatantly aggressive anti-union campaigns. At the dawn of the 21st Century, methods of union busting have recalled similar tactics from the dawn of the 20th Century.[44] The political environment has included the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Department of Labor failing to enforce the labor law against companies that repeatedly violate it.[45] [46]
Case Farms built its business by recruiting immigrant workers from Guatemala, who endure conditions few Americans would put up with. From 1960 to 2000 the percentage of workers in the United States belonging to a labor union fell from 30% to 13%, almost all of that decline being in the private sector.[47] This is despite an increase in workers expressing an interest in belonging to unions since the early 1980s. (In 2005, more than half of unionized private-sector workers said they wanted a union in their workplace, up from around 30% in 1984.[48]) According to one source -- Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson—a change in the political climate in Washington DC starting in the late 1970s "sidelined" the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Much more aggressive and effective business lobbying meant "few real limits on ... vigorous antiunion activities. ... Reported violations of the NLRA skyrocketed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Meanwhile, strike rates plummeted, and many of the strikes that did occur were acts of desperation rather than indicators of union muscle." [49]
I would not consider knowing how to elicit great comments “trolling.”
It’s a skill she developed in a lifetime of classroom teaching.
Be sure to continue supporting union busting by purchasing cheap china crap through the Althouse Amazonian gateway to Jeff Bezos' wallet.
Howard quotes Wikipedia as an authoritative source!
I never belonged to a union because I didn’t need to. Nobody in tech wanted to be in a union because it just took your money and gave you nothing in return.
The 80s and 90s were a boom period of great wealth and full employment.
The nature of the workforce changed, Howard.
We all saw the wild corruption of union management and didn’t want to give them our money.
The kind of jobs we did changed so radically that unionization was a foolish strategy./
The U.S. is still fantastically rich. Obesity is our #1 health problem.
Everybody has everything they need, including every conceivable tech toy.
I really could care less whether the rich have gotten a lot richer. Other than jealousy for the sheer sake of it, I don’t see your bitch, Howard.
I wouldn’t want to work in an Amazon warehouse. Seems like a really shitty job.
Unionization won’t fix that.
Those jobs will be gone soon. The workers will be replaced by AI robots.
"I have to admire the ease with which the Professor trolls her commentariat."
Nothing in the post meets the definition of trolling. You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
She does troll sometimes - just not in this post.
There is no "Bidenomics". There's barely even a "Biden" there. There's no "man with plan"--there's a shell of a man. I'm sure Valerie Jarrett is proud.
Shorter ST: Trump's whole bring back manufacturing platform was bogus.
Manufacturing has returned, as I said, on a boutique level.
My homeboys back in Illinois are all doing their manufacturing in one or two man shops. Technology has made this possible.
They sell on the internet and at trade shows.
They are doing very well.
There’s really no future for workers in large scale manufacturing in any country.
Human workers are being rendered obsolete.
“Be sure to continue supporting union busting by purchasing cheap china crap through the Althouse Amazonian gateway to Jeff Bezos' wallet.”
I just bought a beautiful small, 2.5 quart enameled steel Dutch oven made in Germany, it was pricey, but it’s one of those enameled pots that get passed down from mother to daughter to granddaughters. I’d rather purchase quality items that last over breakable replaceable junk. Having said that, cheap goods have a place in the households of people who can’t afford more expensive items yet. Germany is the land of labor unions, Germans like them.
At the beginning of March I got a letter from the IRS telling me about my second economic stimulus payment. Why did they waste money sending out that letter? The $600 had been deposited in my account last December.
Was it to remind people that they already got $600 so when they got $1400 instead of the promised $2000 they would accept the change? It felt like the Biden administration was trying to take credit for sending out the $600.
U.S. GDP per capita income: $71,488
Germany: $50, 089
Comparison of average wage in 2018:
U.S.: 63,475
Germany: 49,813
Spend stimulus money on:
1. conservative news outlets
2. slightly more expensive American or European made goods.
3. Local stores (go on Amazon to read the reviews and then go through the company or a local store.)
4. Prepper items. I'm thinking of getting an electric bike.
I belonged to a union in college. My dues went straight to the mafia.
All the other decades in tech were mercifully union-free.
We worked our asses off and got paid accordingly.
If we didn't like our jobs we went to a new company.
@Joe
Same here.
“3. Local stores (go on Amazon to read the reviews and then go through the company or a local store.)”
Exactly what I did! I bought my little Dutch Oven made in Germany at Williams Sonoma after reading Amazon reviews.
Inga said...
I just bought a beautiful small, 2.5 quart enameled steel Dutch oven made in Germany
Come on, guys. Who wants to step up and give the lovely Inga a Dutch oven?
“I belonged to a union in college. My dues went straight to the mafia.”
My son, as a millwright journeyman, belonged to the Carpenter’s Union. When he died, being unmarried, I was his sole beneficiary. The Union provided a very generous amount of money based on the benefits of belonging to the Union. I couldn’t be more grateful that my son belonged to the Union. I’d much rather have my son, alive and well and living to a ripe old age, and enjoying the fruit of his labor himself, but the monies from his Union membership are truly appreciated. This is where my son’s Union dues went.
When my wife died, the tech company she worked for paid out on her life insurance policy.
All companies, unionized or not, do this is you check off the box to accept the insurance and pay a small premium.
Most people think that the only thing in the bill is $1400. But $1.9T works out to over $5700 per person. There's a lot in that bill that people don't know about.
‘All companies, unionized or not, do this is you check off the box to accept the insurance and pay a small premium.’
The benefits included far more than life insurance policies, although the Union provided three of them.
All the tech companies I worked for offered 2 weeks vacation to start and up to 6 weeks within a few years, subsidized gym fees, full health insurance, subsidized college courses, etc.
I’d wager the cost was quite a lot less than union fees, and I didn’t have to support a politicized union, like, for instance, SEIU which is a Democratic Party front.
I actually preferred to work as a contractor, and I did for 90% of my working career.
I paid for my own benefits and commanded a much higher salary as a result. I think I came out well ahead in that deal.
The Biden administration, by the way, is trying to make it illegal to work in the manner I worked.
Sounds like a Deutsch oven, Inga.
"Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."
I get alarmed when I see educated people say things like this. It reminds me of a short bit from one of Terry Pratchett's books. In it he presents a scenario where there was this crashed space ship that had numerous survivors that had limited and dwindling supplies. There were hundreds of survivors and they were all educated. And so they tasked a group led by economists to design a system to efficiently allocate the resources. They wound up adopting a system where they used some dried leaves they found nearby as their currency and then proceeded to manage it like a monetary supply managed by a government. Meanwhile their supplies continued to dwindle and it ended with one of the creators of the plan remarking how surprised he was at just how many leaves he had to pay for one of the ship's small food items when it had been half that just the other day.
“Sounds like a Deutsch oven, Inga.”
Howard, what’s funny is that the company is actually from Holland, they just make them in Germany. So it’s a Dutch Dutch Deutsch oven. It’s so darn cute and in a wonderland rich blue, which complements my kitchen which has a lot of vintage Dutch items in it.
Blogger Howard said...
Be sure to continue supporting union busting by purchasing cheap china crap through the Althouse Amazonian gateway to Jeff Bezos' wallet.
Finally, a good reason to buy from Amazon!
I was a member of the Teamsters for a while in high school. I attended a strike vote.
The young guys with no family all wanted to strike to show "those bastards in management they can't fuck around with us." The guys with families voted no.
Very educational.
Chinese workers are already getting fat and lazy.
Give them another generation and they’ll refuse to work in the factories, too.
The low skill jobs will move to Cambodia or Bangladesh, or some such place.
This cycle will continue until all low skill jobs are automated out of existence.
By the way, doesn't phasing out the payments based on income disproportionately impact Whites? Sounds like systemic racism.
"This is where my son’s Union dues went."
I have nothing against unions per se.
My father was a tradesman and unions were a good fallback when times were lean as they often were.
But my union was in the service industry and the money was going to shady actors.
In tech, I have never thought that unions were necessary. You compete for jobs with people from all over the world and are pretty much paid what you are worth.
Salaries and stock options were always negotiated.
"Chinese workers are already getting fat and lazy."
I taught high school math in Beijing and I didn't find the students to be that dazzling overall. A lot of "single child" spoiled lazy kids with a level of obsession over material goods that would make American valley girls seem modest. They're all convinced they're coming to the USA to attend Princeton and Harvard as well.
No need to read beyond the TEDIOUS headline.
“Robert Reich is an idiot. Printing money doesn't create wealth. Having cash is great, when there is something to buy. Venezuela could gift each of its citizens a billion Bolivars, they would still be eating zoo animals. I have never heard Reich say anything that does not combine abject ignorance with willful stupidity.”
There is a saying in monetary economics that money is a veil. Printing money doesn’t create wealth, just the impression of wealth. Wealth in an economy is the goods and services produced. Printing money doesn’t affect the amount of goods and services produced in the economy, and the only real value of cash money is what goods and services can be purchased by it. Thus, if you have more money, you feel like you can buy more goods and services. But, spread across the economy, you can’t, because there is a fixed quantity of wealth (goods and services) produced in the economy. With more money in circulation, in your (aggregate) pockets, everyone just thinks that they can buy more. (Note - this impression of wealth can be used as a very temporary economic stimulus, for situations when believing you have more wealth than you do is helpful overcoming a liquidity trap at the low point in a recession). Inflation can be defined as more money chasing the same basket of goods and services.
MV=PQ (P=price level, V=velocity of the money supply, M=Money supply, Q=quantity of goods and services) is called the Equation of Exchange. It is a (mathematical) tautology, which means that it is always true. If M increases faster than Q, P will naturally increase, which equates to inflation (V turns out to be fairly stable short run, but long run it is dependent upon P, since people don’t hold onto their money as long with inflation, since it is worth less over time). The money supply essentially increases through the Treasury borrowing money. Keynesian economic is based on temporarily artificially increasing aggregate demand for goods and services by increasing the money supply. Consumers and businesses feel like they have more money to spend, until P catches up to MV, and expectations catch up to reality.
Remember, the government, for the most part, cannot create goods and services. All that it can really do is increase the price of goods and services through making money worth less - I.e. Inflation.
Eventually you run out of other people's money. Biden is repeating the economic policies of pre-Thatcher Britain, a dirty, filthy place characterized by hopelessness,decline,despair and graft.
"The government shut us down, took away our job and shut down our businesses.
So, it sorta owes us."
Finally, some reparations us white folk can support!
However, the purchasing power isn't paired with production of goods, so countries like China get a benefit as well as large retailers like Amazon and Walmart. .
Additionally, does anyone seriously think the rest of the 1.9 Trillion won't be largely funneled into the pockets of Democrats?
Luckily for American industry, the US was about to spend a huge amount of money fighting WWII.
I wouldn't call entering that world war luck. The Great Depression ended in 1946 when Congress repealed the excess-profits tax, cut the corporate tax to a maximum 38 percent, and cut the top income tax rate to 86 percent. In 1948 Congress sliced the top marginal rate further, to 82 percent.
People get an awful lot of mileage out of that welfare queen comment. I never heard Reagan say it, but people have been saying that he said it for fifty years. I don't think he ever said it when he was president. I don't doubt that he said it, but when? And how many times?
And was it really some illegitimate comment? Welfare fraud happened and happens, just like COVID relief fraud happens. Leftish commentators label the "welfare queen" story a myth, as if nobody ever gamed the system. These are the same people who believe studies like the one Reich cites, saying that welfare isn't a disincentive to employment.
And the "dog whistle" thing? Sometimes a woman in Chicago who gets multiple welfare checks is just a woman in Chicago who gets multiple welfare checks. If Reich and others are assuming she's African-American, that's on them.
The idea that everybody getting a check from the government is going to bring us together is ridiculous and either terribly naïve or terribly cynical.
Post a Comment