atotaltotalfan2001
September 7th, 2007, 06:22 AM
This article is written by a highly partisan guy, the scretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You may hate/love or be indifferent to his political party, but what about the theories in this commentary?
And is it possible to discuss them without partisan and/or "left wing vs right wing" bashing?
I ask because I know we lose the potential for creating either compromises or new ideas by being as polarized as this country, and this message board, is.
Anyway, an except and then the link....
An Introduction to Economic Populism
Robert B. Reich
It came down to two simple questions. Suppose a proposed policy will increase the incomes of some people without decreasing the incomes of any others. Should it be implemented? Bob (Rubin) and I agreed it should. But suppose the people whose incomes will rise are already wealthier than everyone else. Although no one will lose ground, inequality will widen. Should it still be implemented? I won’t tell you where he and I came out on that second question. But we agreed that people who don’t share in such gains feel relatively poorer. Widening inequality also further tips the balance of political power in favor of the wealthy.
That conversation (with Rubin)occurred a decade ago. Inequality is far more worrisome now. The incomes of the bottom 90 percent of Americans have increased about 2 percent in real terms since then, while that of the top 1 percent has increased over fifty percent.
Yet the philosophical debate is coming up all the time these days, and it helps explain the new economic populism. Consider, for example, the Bush cuts. They’ve mainly benefitted the top fifth of taxpayers. Supply-siders argue the cuts have generated enough extra revenues to pay for themselves so they haven’t enlarged the budget deficit. That’s debatable but let’s make the heroic assumption the supply-siders are correct and no one has been made worse off. Yet even so, most Americans have not benefitted – nothing has trickled down. Real median wages have barely budged since they were enacted. So the underlying question is whether they’re justified by the fact that rich Americans have gained from them while no one has lost ground. The answer is no. They’ve widened inequality.
Or consider trade-opening agreements. They give Americans access to more low-cost products and services from abroad. This makes Americans’ dollars go further. But the agreements especially benefit the rich, who spend more than the middle class and the poor because they have more income to spend. The agreements also typically impose a burden on working-class Americans who thereby lose their jobs to foreigners. These job losers get new jobs, but studies show the new jobs pay 10 to 15 percent less than the old ones. Even if you assume that access to cheaper goods from abroad adds about 10 to 15 percent to their purchasing power, these working-class wage earners come out about even, at best. That means the overall result of most trade agreements is to widen inequality. Do the efficiency benefits of trade outweigh this result? Maybe a decade ago when inequality was less pronounced. Probably not, now.
http://www.robertreich.org/reich/20061222.asp
And is it possible to discuss them without partisan and/or "left wing vs right wing" bashing?
I ask because I know we lose the potential for creating either compromises or new ideas by being as polarized as this country, and this message board, is.
Anyway, an except and then the link....
An Introduction to Economic Populism
Robert B. Reich
It came down to two simple questions. Suppose a proposed policy will increase the incomes of some people without decreasing the incomes of any others. Should it be implemented? Bob (Rubin) and I agreed it should. But suppose the people whose incomes will rise are already wealthier than everyone else. Although no one will lose ground, inequality will widen. Should it still be implemented? I won’t tell you where he and I came out on that second question. But we agreed that people who don’t share in such gains feel relatively poorer. Widening inequality also further tips the balance of political power in favor of the wealthy.
That conversation (with Rubin)occurred a decade ago. Inequality is far more worrisome now. The incomes of the bottom 90 percent of Americans have increased about 2 percent in real terms since then, while that of the top 1 percent has increased over fifty percent.
Yet the philosophical debate is coming up all the time these days, and it helps explain the new economic populism. Consider, for example, the Bush cuts. They’ve mainly benefitted the top fifth of taxpayers. Supply-siders argue the cuts have generated enough extra revenues to pay for themselves so they haven’t enlarged the budget deficit. That’s debatable but let’s make the heroic assumption the supply-siders are correct and no one has been made worse off. Yet even so, most Americans have not benefitted – nothing has trickled down. Real median wages have barely budged since they were enacted. So the underlying question is whether they’re justified by the fact that rich Americans have gained from them while no one has lost ground. The answer is no. They’ve widened inequality.
Or consider trade-opening agreements. They give Americans access to more low-cost products and services from abroad. This makes Americans’ dollars go further. But the agreements especially benefit the rich, who spend more than the middle class and the poor because they have more income to spend. The agreements also typically impose a burden on working-class Americans who thereby lose their jobs to foreigners. These job losers get new jobs, but studies show the new jobs pay 10 to 15 percent less than the old ones. Even if you assume that access to cheaper goods from abroad adds about 10 to 15 percent to their purchasing power, these working-class wage earners come out about even, at best. That means the overall result of most trade agreements is to widen inequality. Do the efficiency benefits of trade outweigh this result? Maybe a decade ago when inequality was less pronounced. Probably not, now.
http://www.robertreich.org/reich/20061222.asp