I had difficulty tracing backwards from this entry at TPM Cafe, so I couldn’t read the discussion preceding this entry. However, this entry provides enough information for me to know that the discussion is ridiculous. With economics so poorly misinformed, I’ll bother to offer only the obvious rebuttals. This is more interesting just to understand how some economic thinking can be accepted by so many, while still being so wrong. Consider these progressive economic solutions:
1. Raise the minimum wage. This is a proven winner for working Americans, especially women. Senator Kennedy has just introduced the Minimum Wage Act of 2005, to increase the minimum wage to $7.25. Let’s get behind it, shall we?
A proven winner? Politically, maybe, but not economically.
2. Support the right of workers to form a union. The AFL-CIO has a proposal for an Employee Free Choice Act. Check it out at http://www.aflcio.org/joinaunion/voiceatwork/efca/ I’m for it. …
I’ve never much cared for unions, although I understand the (foolish) reasons some people like them. Rather than a discourse here, I like how Kip at A Stitch in Haste describes unions as “a Twentieth-Century solution to a Nineteenth-Century problem and have little if any role in the Twenty-First Century.” That’s about right.
3. Increase Social Security benefits. Social security benefits are wealth! Social Security wealth is distributed to every working American on a truly progressive formula. It is by far the best means the country has ever devised to build wealth and security for working Americans and their surviving spouses and children. The Social Security System should of course be protected. But if you want additional wealth creation for working Americans, why not use this channel? Why not, say, credit a modestly restored estate tax to an expanded benefit? …
According to my last projected benefit statement from Social Security, I’d classify Social Security as an opportunity to buy french fries once a week in retirement. Primarily that arises from redistributing wealth, which I think I’m supposed to acknowledge as “good.” Of course, who can forget that gays and lesbians don’t get the full benefits of the “built wealth” that everyone else gets. I guess it’s very Progressive to support a system that continues to exclude gay partners but not a system allowing private ownership of retirement funds to be bestowed opon the recipient’s desired heirs. But we must remember that Social Security creates wealth, but we don’t want it to create too much, because wealth crossing from livable wage territory in to rich territory is so bad that we must tax it progressively. Schizophrenic Economic Policy 101.
4. Universal health insurance. Anyone awake during the debate over the recent bankruptcy bill knows that health crises cause bankruptcy. Want a win-win for the wealth of working Americans? Let’s protect them all from this source of disaster. …
Since there are no specifics, I can only speculate that this means government-funded insurance instead of privately-funded insurance. Better to bankrupt America than individuals, maybe, but the flood insurance system works so well, let’s replicate it. Correct me if I’m wrong.
5. Protect home equity. How do working Americans build wealth in the real world? As we all know, they do it by buying a home. If they are prudent, patient and lucky [ed. note: Huh?], they then keep their debt below the appreciation in their equity. It’s a great system, and it works pretty well. Any thoughts on how to improve it? How about steps to expand it to millions of others, including many minorities, who do not own their homes? …
If they’re too poor to save any income, as the earlier parts of the entry state, how are they buying houses? My personal experience says they’re not. And do I need to point out the implications in the last argument about minorities?
Surprisingly, the comments are worse than that. Read it if you’re interested in a little mental punishment.