Liberals have a new manifesto for fighting inequality, and it’s very liberal

[babylonsister]

Wonkblog
Liberals have a new manifesto for fighting inequality, and it’s very liberal
By Jim Tankersley May 12 at 7:50 AM


Joseph Stiglitz and a team of his fellow economists have a new plan to reduce inequality, grow the middle class and get the U.S. economy to work better for working people. It is firmly rooted in the conviction that more government can solve most of America's economic challenges. It is a plan seemingly designed to rally liberals, enrage free-market economists and push a certain presumptive presidential nominee to the left. It is, to borrow a Howard Dean phrase, the plan from the Democratic wing of Democratic economics.

Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner, and his co-authors will unveil their report for the Roosevelt Institute at an event today featuring Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York. Among their 37 policy recommendations are several versions of the term "public option." There is a public option for health care - opening Medicare to anyone, not just retirees. There is a public option for home mortgages, a public option for expanded retirement savings (on top of the existing Social Security system), even an expanded public option for the financing of political campaigns (in order to counteract the influence of wealthy individual donors).

There is government-provided pre-school for millions more children, subsidized child care and mandated family leave and sick leave. There is talk of nationally funding state research universities. There are additional regulations of the financial sector. There are higher taxes on returns to capital investments, on high-earning individuals and on corporations that do business internationally.

"To fix the economy for average Americans," Stiglitz and company write in Rewriting the Rules: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity, "we need to tackle the rules and institutions that have generated low investment, sluggish growth, and runaway incomes and wealth accumulation at the top and created a steeper hill for the rest to climb. It would be easier, politically, to push for one or two policies on which we have consensus, but that approach would be insufficient to match the severity of the problems posed by rising inequality."

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/12/liberals-have-a-new-manifesto-for-fighting-inequality-and-its-very-liberal/

[Doctor_J]

1. Wonderful. Unfortunately Secretary Clinton will simply ignore it, and president Clinton will

act like the last three presidents, in favor of wall street first, last, and always.

[ChiciB1]

2. Gotcha Doctor_J, So Many Blockades...

How far we've fallen!

[stevenleser]

10. Except that Stiglitz is a Clinton fan and has defended her in the very recent past

http://www.thestreet.com/story/13123932/1/clinton-buffett-not-super-rich-hypocrites-says-stiglitz.html

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Hillary Clinton reportedly may want to "topple" the 1%, but that does not make the multi-millionaire presidential candidate a hypocrite, says Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winning economist and author of "The Great Divide".


"The reality is that if you are going to get a voice to represent change in America you have to get elected first," says Stiglitz. "And until you get elected, you are not going to be able to change campaign finance reform and the other issues that have distorted our democracy and economy."

Stiglitz added that Clinton's sincerity will be tested if she wins the election, because she will then need to prove she is indeed serious about campaign finance reform. That's a test President Obama has thus far failed, according to Stiglitz, although he absolves Obama's inaction in the wake of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court.

"The President made a great display that he was getting a large amount from small donors, but he also got a lot of money from big donors and in the last few years things have gotten worse," says Stiglitz. "But not because of him. It's because of the Supreme Court."

[rhett o rick]

24. In other words she will say what's necessary to get elected and then do what she

wants. Kinda like Obama.

Added via edit: And it's a little naive to think that she will accept $2 billion with no "quid pro quo".

[stevenleser]

25. So you think Stiglitz is bad then? Dumb? Too pragmatic?

I thought we were praising him under this OP.

[rhett o rick]

26. I missed the post where you were praising him. Which post was that? nm

[stevenleser]

27. Just saying someone is a Clinton fan is praise by me. You should know that by now. So again...

is he bad to you now? Dumb? Too pragmatic?

[rhett o rick]

28. I think wealth inequality is the big issue. After receiving billions from the billionaires

I don't think HRC will do anything to change wealth inequality in our favor.

Fracking is a win-win for the Oligarchs. It brings higher profits for the oil barons, and it is destroying our water supplies making it more profitable for major corps to sell us water. HRC's stand on fracking ought to bring in millions from the Oligarchs.

Stand with the Oligarchs, stand with HRC/Goldman-Sachs.

[swilton]

30. ++++

What is the cliché? Fool me once....

[HenryWallace]

3. It is important to speak to the vast uninformed middle!

First a “Democratic Socialist” articulates reasonable policy positions (sounding like the grown-up in a room of insolent children).

Now positive policy prescriptions are enumerated to fix specific and pervasive economic ills (Oh, and they just happen to be liberal solutions which run counter to the neoliberal economic orthodoxy of the last 30 years).

PS: Have been following Brad DeLong for several years; I knew his hands had to be all over this.

[ibewlu606]

4. Kicked!

Your damn right HRC will ignore it!

[think]

5. Oustanding

[jtuck004]

6. Investing in yourselves and your neighbors, so that everyone does better. We should try that. n/t

[hifiguy]

8. Crazy idea. isn't it?

[Enthusiast]

7. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

[Beartracks]

29. 100th rec!!! n/t

[hifiguy]

9. Kickety rec!

[polichick]

11. k&r

[Beowulf42]

12. Okay.

Very Liberal? I don't see anything in this that is so Liberal. When surveys plumb the depths of public opinion the general populace says yes to these issues by majority scores. So are we saying that being a Liberal, having thoughts of things to the left of center isn't really an accurate picture of the desires of the majority of Americans? This tells me that when we are given information about the left of center this and the left of center that, the reality is that we need to adjust "the center" to the left. In some case, by a huge amount.

[hifiguy]

13. For the last 30 years the M$M has been telling the sheeple

than anything to the left of Raygun is Maoism, Stalinism or both. None of this has happened by accident.

[RoccoR5955]

14. try to the left of Nixon or even Goldwater

This country has gotten so far to the right, that these conservatives are now considered to be radical leftists.

There are no real leftists in the US.
If there were, they would be calling for the nationalization of every bit of the Commons that is now in corporate hands.
They would be calling for the reforming of the capitalist model for a more cooperative model. They would call for the jailing of wall street execs and day traders, and nationalizing the banking system. They would be dismantling the military industrial complex, and investing more in public transportation. They would close the nuclear plants, and offer more subsidies for renewables.
Until all this happens, you will not convince me that there is any "left" in the US.

[gratuitous]

20. Welcome to death by a thousand nitpicks

If the plan gets any air at all in the media, it'll be "Liberal, liberal, liberal!" The details, if mentioned, will be subsumed by stern faces and many references to how bad this will be for wealthy Americans. Any jobs will not be "real" jobs, any increase in take-home pay will be mourned because it will take money away from the courageous captains of industry who totally deserved their bailouts.

That means it will be up to us to talk it up, learn the facts, and carry the day without assistance from the popular media. And how pathetic is it that the likes of us have to save the country from the greedheads?

[Terra Alta]

15. K&R

Since the Reagan administration, the middle class has been squeezed smaller and smaller in this country, the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer. We need a President who won't cater to the 1% and who will fight for the middle class and the poor.

[bvar22]

16. I'm in favor of most 'public options",

but NOT one for Social Security.
Social Security is already the Public Option.


If the Democratic Party starts trying to sell "Private Accounts" like Time Shares in Cancun, I'm out of here.

[nashville_brook]

17. kick

[PowerToThePeople]

18. k&r!

[Rockyj]

19. PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY so many CONGRESS DEM'S WOMEN & MEN OVER 50

FOREHEADS ARE so DAM SMOOTH & HAVE no EXPRESSION!

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

21. K&R nt

[woo me with science]

22. K&R

[AdHocSolver]

23. Capitalism only works for the masses when there is competition and regulation.

Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act under Clinton effectively allowed the merger of commercial banks and investment banks to enable the corporate buyouts, mergers, and acquisitions that led to the horizontal and vertical integration of once competitive corporations.

The concentration of control in the hands of a few financial oligarchs led to massive political corruption at the national, state, and local levels. Democracy can only exist in an environment of competing centers of economic and political influence.

The TPP, if approved, will make it much more difficult for centers of financial and political power to arise to compete with the existing oligarchy. The TPP will provide political legitimacy to an oligarchy that already has accumulated enormous economic clout.

[swilton]

31. Even when capitalism is well regulated

the wealthy who have written those regulations know how to circumvent them and will do so. An entirely new economic system is required - such as starting with workers cooperatives.