There is one thing you can depend on with all oil salesmen, no matter what your ailment happens to be, the snake oil sales man will claim that his snake oil is just the cure. Robert B. Reich is a snake oil salesman. Reich’s particular brand of nnake oil is public policy. Note to snake fanciers, I not comparing Reich to a snake, just a snake oil saleman. A comparison of Riech to a snake would be unfair to the snake. Reich writing in the Wall Street Journal [1]attempts to defend the one’s economics:
Reaganomics surely marked the beginning of one of the longest bull markets in American history and generated enormous gains at the top. But its benefits were not widely shared. After the Reagan tax cuts, growth in the median wage slowed, adjusted for inflation. After George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the median wage dropped. Meanwhile, an increasing share of total income went to the top 1% of income earners. In 1980, before Reagan took office, the highest-paid 1% took home 9% of total national income. By 2007, before the economy melted down, the richest 1% was taking home 22%.
Obamanomics, by contrast, holds that an economy grows best from the bottom up. The president proposes to increase taxes on the highest 2% of income earners starting in 2011. Those tax increases will fund more Pell grants allowing lower-income children to attend college, better pay for teachers that show they’re worth it, broader access to health care, improved infrastructure, and more basic research. These and related expenditures are designed to help Americans become more productive. You might think of it as “trickle up” economics
Ronald Reagan, never called his policy ‘trick-down” nor claimed to have invented a new form of economics. The Gipper just fixed the mess he inherited from Jimmy Carter.
In contrast, Reich is long on detailing supposed flaws in Reagan’s plan, and in showering Barack Obama’s plan with nobility of intent. See book on Road to Hell, chapter of paving material. Reich provides no evidence of where Obama’s economic vision has ever worked any where in the world at any time.
Extraordinary claims, as the claim of benefits of a radical new economic system, require extraordinary evidence No such evidence is provided. Note, in an attempt to sell the benefits of his economic plan, Obama has to get a professor of public policy to pushes it. Reich is not equipped to make this sale. Reich comes up short.
Hat tip and more, Lance Fairchok, American Thinker [2]:
Robert Reich, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley and the former Clinton Administration Secretary of Labor thinks we are all idiots. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Obamanomics Isn’t About Big Government,” Mr. Reich tells us that catastrophic government spending, un-constitutional legislation, uncontrolled earmarks, corruption, cronyism-bloated bureaucracies, class warfare, and social engineering are “trickle-up economics.”
The old adage, when the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Reich’s hammer is big government.