Found here. Reproduced here for fair use and discussion purposes. My comments in bold.
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Dr. Reich is profoundly myopic regarding what impacts the country's economic performance. This man holds a doctorate, he was a Rhodes scholar. Yet as we read we will discover that he attributes the economic performance of the country to a single factor, the political party occupying the White House, and from there infers an entire economic framework. As if the hundreds of other factors, like tax policy, business regulation, wars, the political composition of Congress, labor laws, technology, and court rulings somehow don't come to bear. Read on:
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Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are zeroing in on inequality as America’s fundamental economic problem. (Unfortunately, it isn't the fundamental problem. Government profligacy is.)
Bush’s new Political Action Committee, called “The Right to Rise,” declares “the income gap is real” but that “only conservative principles can solve it.”
Mitt Romney likewise promised last week that if he runs for president he’ll change the strategy that led to his 2012 loss to President Obama (remember the “makers” versus the “takers?”) and focus instead on income inequality, poverty, and “opportunity for all people.”
The Republican establishment’s leading presidential hopefuls know the current upbeat economy isn’t trickling down to most Americans. (And who is the occupant of the White House?)
But they’ve got a whopping credibility problem, starting with trickle-down economics. (Wait. I thought the income gap was increasing under Obama? Is his economic plan based on trickle-down? And what is trickle down except for an epithet to be used by leftists to impugn Republicans?
Trickle down in reality is the natural workings of the economy as its prosperity benefits everyone. However, the intervention of government with tax redistribution plans and stimuli that neuters the free market and cause it to favor the rich and influential.
Consider that if government were restricted to its constitutional boundaries and could only act within its enumerated powers, its size would be reduced by perhaps 2/3, and the moneyed interests and deep pockets would have no reason to lobby for favors this limited government didn't have the power to give.
So in actual fact, it is the big, involved, control and command government Dr. Reich advocates that is causing the problems he is complaining about.
We also need to note that there is no trickle down economic plan in operation. We've had interventionist government economics for the past 80 years, and its increasingly so. It is leftist economics in operation, the very things Dr. Reich wants even more of.)
Since Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, Republican policies have widened inequality. (Reagan left office 25 years ago. Is Dr. Reich suggesting that the intervening presidencies all retained this mythical "trickle down?")
Neither party deserves a medal for reversing the trend, (Ahh, so here's the tepid admission that Leftist policies have remained intact over the years and have yielded little fruit.) but evidence shows that middle-class and poor Americans have faired better under Democratic presidents. (There we have it. Only the President matters. This is astonishingly simple minded.)
(Here comes the irrelevant statistics, solely focused on the political party of the president.) Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more with Democrats in the White House than Republicans.
Under Bill Clinton, in whose administration I am proud to have served, even the wages of the poorest fifth rose.
According to research by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, more jobs have been created under Democratic presidents as well.
These broad-based job and wage gains haven’t hampered economic growth. (Whaaa? Why would they? More jobs and more wages would "hamper" economic growth?) To the contrary, they’ve fueled it by putting more money into the pockets of people who spend it — thereby boosting business profits and hiring. (Duh. This encapsulates the fundamental misapprehension of the Left regarding economics and what they think Republicans believe. They think that Republicans don't want people to have jobs, that Republicans want to keep all their eeevil profits by not paying people, that trickle down is really a scheme to get rich people richer. It's almost anti-intellectual to be so completely clueless about what their opposition believes.)
Which is why the economy has grown faster when Democrats have occupied the Oval Office.
I’m not saying Democrats have always had it right or done everything they should. The lion’s share of economic gains over the past thirty-five years has gone to the top regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans inhabit the White House. (Another admission that the predominate economic policies of government remain largely unchanged no matter who occupies the presidency.)
The most recent recovery has been particularly lopsided, President Obama’s intentions notwithstanding.
Nor can presidents alone determine how the economy performs. (I guess he takes it all back.) At best they orchestrate a set of policies that nudge the economy in one direction or another.
But that’s exactly the point: Since Reagan, Republican policies have nudged it toward big gains at the top and stagnation for everyone else.
The last Republican president to deliver broad-based prosperity was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the 1950s.
Then, the gains from growth were so widely shared that the incomes of the poorest fifth actually grew faster than the incomes of the top fifth. As a result, America became more equal than ever before or since.
Under Ike, the marginal tax rate on the richest Americans reached 91 percent.
Eisenhower also presided over the creation of the interstate highway system – the largest infrastructure project in American history — as well as the nation’s biggest expansion of public schools.
It’s no coincidence that when Eisenhower was president, over a third of all private sector workers were unionized. Ike can’t be credited for this but at least he didn’t try to stop it or legitimize firing striking workers, as did Ronald Reagan.
Under Reagan, Republican policy lurched in the opposite direction: Lower taxes on top incomes and big wealth, less public investment, and efforts to destroy labor unions. (Isolating factors again. However, we need to note that government revenues increased 69% under Reagan. It was a time of economic prosperity for all Americans. Poverty rates decreased. Middle class saving increased. Unemployment came down precipitously for the disastrous Carter years.
Dr. Reich apparently doesn't remember Carter. He doesn't recall 18% mortgages or long gas lines. He doesn't remember the "malaise." History apparently skips directly from Ike to Reagan.)
Not surprisingly, that’s when America took its big U-turn toward inequality.
These Reaganomic principles are by now so deeply embedded in the modern Republican Party they’ve come to define it. (Perhaps so, but what is embedded in the Republican party isn't relevant. What is embedded in the economy is, however. And that is big interventionist redistributive government. That is the system that Dr. Reich is criticizing while ironically calling for even more.)
As a matter of fact, they’re just about all that unite the warring factions of the GOP – libertarians, tea partiers, and big corporations and Wall Street.
Yet because these very principles have contributed to the stagnation of American incomes and the widening gap between the rich and everyone else, Republican aspirants who says they want to reverse widening inequality are faced with an awkward dilemma. (Wrong, wrong, wrong. "These very principles," as we have noted, are not in operation.)
How can they be credible on the issue while embracing these principles? Yet if they want to be nominated, how can they not embrace them?
When Jeb Bush admits that the income gap is real but that “only conservative principles can solve it,” one has to wonder what principles he’s talking about if not these. (Well obviously Dr. Reich's leftist principles have not helped. He's admitted as much.)
And when Mitt Romney promises to run a different campaign than he did in 2012 and focus on “opportunity for all people,” the real question is whether he’ll run on different economic principles.
That the leading Republican hopefuls recognize the economy has to work for everyone and not just a few is progress.
But unless they disavow the legacy of Ronald Reagan and adopt the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower, their words are nothing more than soothing rhetoric — akin to George W. Bush’s meaningless “compassionate conservatism.” (It's amazing to me how much the Left hates Reagan. As mentioned, he's been out of office for a quarter century, yet his astoundingly successful presidency haunts the Left. They must continue to destroy the man and impugn his success in order to justify their own failures.
And why is Dr. Reich so concerned about the Republicans? Why is he giving advice on how they can succeed? In actual fact, what he is advocating is that Republicans need to be more like Democrats. As is typical for the Left, it is everyone else who needs to change, to compromise, and to yield to the superior ideology of big government.)
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