Rain Today, Gone Tomorrow

A fine mist this morning greeted my weary eyes on the short walk over the Crossroads train tracks to work. At least I have a job in this crap economy, I thought, as my gaze carried over Main Street and into Washington Square Park where the homeless struggled for comfortable sleeping positions on the hard concrete benches. They will all be roused and booted out by tomorrow as the tents and booths go up for Irish Fest at Crown Center. If I let my gaze really stretch out and waif up the hill where the Liberty Memorial stands erect, then I could see the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City cast a dramatic and ominious shadow over the industrious business district of KC.

Economists are calling for the FED to be more active in staving off deflation and worry that the U.S. could become like Japan. We need more stimulus spending! say Krugman and the neo-Keynesians. But the deficit hawks say no! It is Obama's runaway checkbook and stifiling regulation that's created such uncertainty that businesses are unwilling to invest in new projects and thus more employees. For it is entitlement programs and unions that are producing sticky wages and high unemployment!
And people who actually have a job are being asked to shoulder more of the burden for health care:

Workers’ share of the cost of a family policy jumped an average of 14 percent, an increase of about $500 a year. The cost of a policy rose just 3 percent, to an average of $13,770.

Are things just going to shit? Can we no longer afford this air-conditioned, American dream anymore? Was my grandpa's generation really the "greatest generation" and not that they're dead the whole shithouse is burning down?

Robert Reich continues the theme of his earlier books that middle class Americans have not shared in the economy's boom for the past 30 years, shown by the fact that the median male worker makes less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago. The only way the American consumer has been able to keep up their consumption has been to bring in more women workers, work more hours for the smae pay and go into serious debt. Now we have income inequality of the kind not seen since just before the Great Crash of 1929.

Reich's policy solutions: TAX THE RICH! We have less income equality when the marginal income tax rate was between 70 and 90 percent for the very rich. With more money then redistributed to the middle class, the economy would start humming along as aggregate demand is increased by lower to mid-income consumers buying more of the stuff made by American companies in America rather than glitzy financial instruments and foreign speculation. His proposal is to extend Federal Income Tax Credits to the middle class by raising taxes on the rich, expanding early childhood education to create a better skilled job force with a fee on financial transactions, making public universities free but having graduates contribute 10% of their incomes in the first 10 years to pay for program and earnings insurance which would make up the difference between new, lower paying job and previous job for two years in leiu of unemployment insurance.

I like Reich because he is policy-oriented -- he actually proposes various policy measures to accopmlish his goals. But are his goals too far-fetched in this free market-oriented country where Republicans cry "socialism" when any politician proposes increasing the economic burden on the absurdly wealthy -- "But they currate jobs!" they howl from their privledged senate chambers and stuffy offices at the Wall Street Journal. His NY Times article did not create much buzz in the econ blogs today or ever because I think he heralds pretty much the same message everytime he writes. But does this mean it's not still relevant?