Robert Reich: Running On Intellectual Empty

Robert Reich is a brilliant economist. At least that's what I've heard. He's some kind of guru for the left, but I have to admit I'd never read his work. I finally broke down and read this.

I'm not going to bother to excerpt it. It's pretty horrible. Here's a summary: "lather, rinse, repeat." Don't cut spending because it will increase suffering, cut the military and raise taxes on the rich. The logic against cutting spending is that unemployment is over 5%. Of course, when unemployment was under 5%, he didn't want to cut spending, either. I presume there's some kind of aggregate demand basis for this, but if that's the case, why cut defense spending? That's aggregate demand, too. Dittos for raising taxes on anyone.

Anyway, no matter what, don't cut social spending.

There. That's it. That's the logic. It doesn't matter what's going on, we need to spend, spend, spend.

In news that would seem trivial and unrelated to someone of Robert Reich's massive mental powers, the US now has something like $61T in unfunded liabilities. Those are entitlements we've promised to people in the future, but don't even have plans to think about considering to discuss the start of talks to ponder how we will pay for them. But don't cut them, either.

Sigh.

Here is a picture of some grass. It has the same intellectual heft as Robert Reich.