America's Ruling Elites Are Screwing The Rest Of Us Out Of Selfishness And Greed

"We can't have a prosperous economy," explains former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in the video above, "without a large and growing middle class." Over the weekend, his column dealt with the Republican Party's systematic sabotage of the economy. They're opposing policies that grow and sustain the middle class and they're pushing an agenda that pushes more ordinary working families into economic distress and poverty. Reich focuses on the GOP's obstruction of every attempt to improve the jobs situation. They're not just not doing anything to help in the House, they're using their power in the Senate to prevent the majority Democrats from doing anything, "even," he points out, "last week’s almost absurdly modest proposal by President Obama to combine corporate tax cuts with increased spending on roads and other public works." The Austerity agenda that Paul Ryan and Republicans who back him and his childish Ayn Randian ideas want to bring to the U.S. after its tragic failure in Europe is so obviously non-viable that not even the House Republicans can pass budgets based on it any longer. So why are the Republicans holding down job creation? Reich knows who to blame-- and why:

The real answer, I think, is they and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter. Why? Three reasons:

First, high unemployment keeps wages down. Workers who are worried about losing their jobs settle for whatever they can get-- which is why hourly earnings keep dropping. The median wage is now 4 percent lower than it was at the start of the recovery. Low wages help boost corporate profits, thereby keeping the regressives’ corporate sponsors happy. 

Second, high unemployment fuels the bull market on Wall Street. That’s because the Fed is committed to buying long-term bonds as long as unemployment remains high. This keeps bond yields low and pushes investors into equities-- which helps boosts executive pay and Wall Street commissions, thereby keeping regressives’ financial sponsors happy.

Third, high unemployment keeps most Americans economically fearful and financially insecure. This sets them up to believe regressive lies-- that their biggest worry should be that “big government" will tax away the little they have and give it to “undeserving" minorities; that they should support low taxes on corporations and wealthy “job creators;" and that new immigrants threaten their jobs.

It’s important for Obama and the Democrats to recognize this cynical strategy for what it is, and help the rest of America to see it.

And to counter with three basic truths:

First, the real job creators are consumers, and if average people don’t have jobs or good wages this economy can’t have a vigorous recovery.

Second, the rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than their current big share of an economy that’s hardly moving.

Third, therefore everyone would benefit from higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments in roads, bridges, public transit, better schools, affordable higher education, and healthcare-- all of which will help the middle class and the poor, and generate more and better jobs.

One caveat to blaming the Republicans. They have willing allies in most of this agenda among the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the self-styled New Dems. Voters may think New Dems like Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Patrick Murphy (FL), Ron Barber (AZ), Scott Peters (CA), John Delaney (MD), Bill Foster (IL), Bill Owens (NY), Dan Maffei (NY) and Joe Garcia (FL) are "progressives" because they are pro-Choice and pro-gay, but when it comes to economic policies, they're as bad as a garden variety Republican and make common cause with the GOP on behalf of Wall Street. Each of these New Dems has earned a primary challenge. None of them have one. Instead, voters will be asked to chose between these worthless Big Business shills and Republicans just as bad or worse. Last time that happened-- in 2010-- millions of Democrats across the country stayed home on election day and the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse saw the effective end of that right-wing branch of the Democratic Party-- and the rise, in DC , of the New Dems, financed by the same special interests and criminal K Street lobbyists.

By the way, as long as we're on the subject of delusion, you remember back in the '90s when fast food workers were flinging pizzas out of their Rolls Royces, right?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart