Middle Out To Where?

I spent much of this morning playing with PHP scripts, so this will be brief.

President Obama has started laying out his economic vision, a mere 5 years into his presidency, and it's called middle-out. It's supposed to be this huge rebuke to supply-siders and libertarians. Whatever. Google the thing if you're interested. It's more of the same within his I-am-my-brother's-keeper theme. It's also typically ignorant and clearly came out of the same Ivy League bubble as all of his advisers and underlings where they think everyone is just like the people they meet in the faculty lounge.

In Detroit, some 47% of the population is functionally illiterate. Here are the details from that frantic, right-wing, racist, teabagger rag, the Huffington Post.

Honestly, what's the plan here? Middle out to where? "A rising tide doesn't lift all boats!" yells our president. Well, of course it doesn't, not when they've chained themselves to the sea bottom. It's never been easier to learn how to read. There has never been more funding for schools. And yet, 47% of the population of one of our major cities took a pass on the project.

There's no economic plan in the world that's going to lift those boats until they do something about the problem themselves. Middle-out is doomed.