Robert Reich Debunks Three Economic Myths by Drawing Cartoons

This is the worst eco­nom­ics video I have ever watched. This guy is seri­ous­ly delud­ed.

The pur­pose of a demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment is to enable the free­dom of cit­i­zens.

I have to agree with Kieren. This pre­sen­ta­tion does not even deserve a seat at the eco­nom­ic debate table; it is utter­ly vapid and non-sub­stan­tive. I’ll admit it was good for a chuck­le, though, when Reich attempt­ed to per­suade that gov­ern­ments cre­ate free mar­kets! This has got to be the pin­na­cle of silli­ness.

Giv­ing mon­ey to the rich and cor­po­ra­tions through tax reduc­tion is stu­pid and self defeat­ing. It will just make the cor­po­ra­tions rich­er, more pow­er­ful and will not cre­ate jobs. Trick­le down is BS. It was­n’t true when Rea­gan embraced it through Robert Laugh­er and is still not true. Why would any­one in a cor­po­ra­tion pay more for labor. Even if these cor­po­ra­tions have a boat load of mon­ey they will not give it away eas­i­ly. You must believe in a benev­o­lent dic­ta­tor. New indus­tries when cre­at­ed and high­er wages beget high­er wages. The more peo­ple spend the more there is a demand for work­ers and the high­er wages will be. So mon­ey giv­en to the top does very lit­tle. Man­agers of com­pa­nies pay as lit­tle as pos­si­ble. Low skill set and an over­abun­dance of work­ers leads to low wages. A Burg­er King is a per­fect exam­ple where all you need to know is how to flip burg­ers and how to do it fast. A good gov­ern­ment works to equal­ize the play­ing field. Good gov­ern­ment pre­vents monop­o­lies. Your igno­rance is astound­ing. You have no knowl­edge and you show it by not coun­ter­ing Reich’s argu­ments. You should read about Theodore Roo­sevelt and monop­o­lies. Mar­kets with­out some reg­u­la­tions do not work. It would be a mis­take to not have some reg­u­la­tions because then it would be the law of the jun­gle. Your igno­rance when com­bined with the col­lec­tive igno­rance will lead us to a bad end.

As much as this is not Robert Reich’s most com­pelling work, noth­ing he said in this video is incor­rect. I’m assum­ing none of the com­menters here have the kind of cre­den­tials that a for­mer Sec­re­tary of Labor has, myself includ­ed. If any of you Rhode Schol­ars and for­mer Har­vard Pro­fes­sors want to point me in the direc­tion of of your numer­ous New York Times best-sell­ing books are, I’ll buy one. I would come take your class at Berkley too but I prob­a­bly can’t afford the tuition since I’m a mem­ber of the mid­dle class… like most peo­ple.

The fact that so many peo­ple both don’t know who Robert Reich is and can’t artic­u­late why his ideas are so bad is a real demon­stra­tion of how effec­tive cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing and pro-busi­ness par­ties have been on most peo­ple.

Work­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly, labor will always be at a mas­sive dis­ad­van­tage when deal­ing with cor­po­ra­tions. The only force that can bal­ance the pow­er of cor­po­ra­tions is the Gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, once it’s co-opt­ed by dona­tions and out­right bribes by cor­po­ra­tions it leads to the mas­sive and grow­ing income inequal­i­ty you see in coun­tries like the US.

There are many sig­nals that cap­i­tal­ism is fail­ing but one of the most obvi­ous is that the stock mar­ket con­tin­ues to grow, and cor­po­ra­tions are becom­ing increas­ing­ly prof­itable, but more than half the US pop­u­la­tion is liv­ing pay­check to pay­check. This is why there is so much hand­wring­ing over whether a reces­sion is on the hori­zon. The econ­o­my is pow­ered by con­sumers who also form the labor mar­ket for cor­po­ra­tions. If they start los­ing their jobs the fragili­ty of the cur­rent sys­tem will be on full dis­play. You’ll see a rapid and sud­den col­lapse of the small busi­ness and hous­ing sec­tors and as large cor­po­ra­tions con­tin­ue to invest in automa­tion there will be few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to absorb these lost jobs. The extreme­ly wealthy will bare­ly notice though and in fact will prof­it by buy­ing up dis­tressed assets at fire sale prices. The sys­tem is stacked against indi­vid­u­als and until we start enforc­ing effec­tive labor laws on cor­po­ra­tions and lim­it their size and glob­al reach cap­i­tal­ism will even­tu­al­ly col­lapse.

For those not famil­iar with Reich, he was the Sec­re­tary of Labor for the US, so he knows about as much as any­one can know about these top­ics (of course he’s also a Rhodes schol­ar, grad­u­at­ed from Yale law school and the author of a num­ber of best­selling books on Eco­nom­ics). Every­thing he dis­cuss­es is based on data and sta­tis­tics so unlike many politi­cians or Tik­Tok pun­dits he can actu­al­ly show con­crete exam­ples.