| I did. "The rich spend a much smaller proportion of their incomes than the rest of us." Not from my experience. "The rich don’t necessarily invest their earnings and savings in the American economy." In fact, the rich fund quite a bit of investment in the American economy, and no numbers are provided to show how much they do or what percentage of American investments go towards the American economy. "Little has been done since 2008 to widen the circle of prosperity. Health-care reform is an important step forward but it’s not nearly enough." No backing data here. Nice throw-in of what I assume means that we need socialized healthcare. How would socialized healthcare improve the economy overall? "Policies that generate more widely shared prosperity lead to stronger and more sustainable economic growth - and that’s good for everyone. The rich are better off with a smaller percentage of a fast-growing economy than a larger share of an economy that’s barely moving." A.k.a. the author is saying that "spreading the wealth" (known by some as socialism) is good because it takes away money from the rich and gives it to the poor. If the author just embraced that on its own, that's fine- the author is a Socialist, and that's just an opinion. But the author argues that the poor will then spend it, which will increase revenue to companies, which will create more jobs. This is the opposite approach as the Trickle-down Economics of the Reagan era, but suffers the same problem of assuming that any group (rich, middle-class, or poor) will spend during a down economy if the government gives them money (directly via tax breaks or via various programs, etc.). The fact is no one spends during a down economy. Instead what the government should do is to do as much as they can to be supportive of businesses of all sizes (even individuals) while working to stabilize the economy, pay down our national debt, and promote education and research. Then and only then will our economy recover. |