Robert Reich has been a stalwart in the Progressive movement by keeping the body politic informed. Most importantly he challenges those who spew lies and misinformation like he did with Trump economist Stephen Moore. This one was a doozy.
Once again Robert Reich nails a Trump economist for lying to the American people, this time about tax cuts increasing the income of the middle-class.
Robert Reich nails Trump economist Stephen Moore.
Robert Reich schools Trump economist lying about tax cuts & middle-class income (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/Ni7ehGZa94
— Egberto Willies, Politics Done Right host 🇺🇲🇵🇦 (@EgbertoWillies) October 17, 2017
Erin Burnett pointed out that Kevin Hassett, president of the Council of economic advisors did a study that concluded that corporate tax cuts would result in an income increase of $3.000 for middle-class Americans. But there is a caveat.
“Because that looked like a lot of money,” Erin Burnett said. “I looked up what has happened to the median income in the last few years. Here is what I have found. 2014, just shy of $54,000. 2015, just shy of $57,000. If you look at the years that we’ve just seen, 2014, 2015. 2016, it’s going up $3,000 a year. Steve, that is without this big tax cut. So they are trying to say, oh, this tax is going to get $3,000. They are already getting $3,000. That would mean this tax cut is not a good idea.”
Stephen Moore balked at her fact-based analysis. He attempted to conflate what occurred during the economic meltdown with the recovery. He then continued the false premise that companies would invest their tax windfall on employees. Robert Reich would have none of it.
“I am looking at history,” Reich said. “Corporations have never done as well as they are doing now., They have huge profits. Where are those prophets going now? They are not going to wages. They are not going into jobs. They are going into executive pay and they are going to shareholders. And the top 1% of Americans have a huge percentage of the total shares of shares of stock in this country.”
Reich continued. He debunked the supply-side economic theory of trickle down. He said the only way to create jobs is to put the money in the hands of the masses and not the elite. The marginal propensity to spend of the masses is much greater than that of the wealthy. As such they will spend much of what they get from the tax cuts. The demand created would likely cause corporations to expand and higher to cover the demand.
Reich further pointed out that over the last 44 years supply-side economics failed.