On this panel, Paul Krugman gets it right as Larry Summers continues his attack on the American Rescue Plan. He complains about workers getting a break.
Paul Krugman & Larry summers on the American Rescue Plan
Yesterday I wrote a piece critical of ThisWeek’s host George Stephanopolous for allowing Wyoming Senator Jeff Barrasso to malign the American Rescue Plan with no robust challenge.
It is bad enough that we have Republicans attacking the bill, but to have the former director of the National Economic Council for President Obama’s attack is shameful as it gives Republicans a false talking point. In fact, Summers’ attack sounds exactly like one that one would expect from worker-oppressor Republican ideology.
Summers’s complaint is basically that the bill is not an investment in climate change policies, China competitiveness policies, and others. If one reads into it, he supports Republican and neoliberal orthodoxy where monies are given on the supply side, those “who know” what we should want.
These guys have yet to realize that supply-side economics is a failure, even if coming in a more palatable form from a “Liberal Economist.” Giving financial support to those who will spend it in the economy gives the masses a vote in determining the supply, products, and services they want instead of acquiescing what the “masters” want to have them buy.
What is even more disconcerting with Summers is his disregard for the American worker. He is concerned that many workers on unemployment are making more than when they were employed.
Did Larry Summers forget that there has been government-sanctioned wage theft on the American worker since Reaganomics? Has he forgotten that the minimum wage had not kept up with inflation? Just maybe it is time to give the American worker a break. After all, corporations and the wealthy have been getting them all for the last 40 years.
Paul Krugman concurs that the bill does what it needs to do. Moreover, he made it clear that most economists of substance agree.