To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mybOUF6DOyo
How to build the economy? Not through trickle-down
economics. Tax cuts to the rich and big corporations don’t lead to more
investment and jobs.
The only real way to build the economy is through “rise-up” economics:
Investments in our people – their education and skills, their health, and the
roads and bridges and public transportation that connects them.
Trickle-down doesn’t work because money is global. Corporations and the
rich whose taxes are cut invest the extra money wherever around the world they
can get the highest return.
Rise-up economics works because American workers are the only resources
uniquely American. Their productivity is the key to our future standard of
living. And that productivity depends on their education, health, and
infrastructure.
Just look at the evidence.
Just look at the evidence.
A recent study by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth found, for
example, that every dollar invested in universal pre-kindergarten delivers
$8.90 in benefits to society in the form of more productive adults.
Similarly, healthier children become more productive adults. Children who
became eligible for Medicaid due to expansions in the 1980s and 1990s were more
likely to attend college than similar children who did not become
eligible.
Investments in infrastructure – highways, bridges, and public transportation
– also grow the economy. It’s been estimated that every $1 invested in
infrastructure generates at least $1.60 in benefits to society. Some research
puts the return much higher.
In the three decades following World War II, we made huge investments in
education, health, and infrastructure. The result was rising median
incomes.
Since then, public investments have lagged, and median incomes have
stagnated.
Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’s tax cuts on the top didn’t
raise incomes, and neither will Donald Trump’s.
Trickle-down economics is a hoax. But it’s a convenient hoax designed to
enrich the moneyed interests. Rise-up economics is the real deal. But we must
fight for it.
Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy
at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum
Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective
cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent,
"Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American
Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
"Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common
Good." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving
Capitalism," which is streaming now.
