Robert Reich: The seven biggest economic lies as seen by a Progressive

Kenneth Schortgen Jr
Examiner.com
November 15, 2011

On October 12th, Berkeley Economist and former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, Robert Reich discussed the seven biggest economic lies that Americans are given by economists, the media, and Washington politicians.  These ‘lies’ range from issues on taxation, job creation, and how the federal deficit affects the economy.

Unfortunately, each of these issues and perspectives have either a failed premise, or lack many key points that make the answers not black and white.  Some answers contain a smattering of truth, but it is in Reich’s conclusions, or even in his failure to lay out the full details of the question, that show his position is one from a progressive point of view, and not a pure capitalist one.

1.  Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else. Baloney.Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans’ wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and has dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. - Economist Robert Reich’s Blog via Reader Supported News

What Reich fails to mention here is that the rich arent ‘individuals’… they are corporations and trusts. Earned income is offset by the rich being able to write off 70-90% of all their expenses because they own nothing, and control everything.

The problem has never been tax cuts, the problem has been tax collection. If you collected all 36-40% from corporations, people in upper tax brackets, etc…, and then lower the tax brackets to about 20% for the middle classes and 10% for the poor, and have no deductions, then things would change at every level.  Most jobs are created by the middle class small business levels, while most of the wealth is created by the rich using leverage.  The trickle down theory was indeed a false premise, but the basis behind wages flattening had nothing to do with rich receiving tax cuts.

Read full article here

This article was posted: Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 10:01 am

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