Cutting the Wrong Deficit

Why doesn't the "soak the rich" line work? Even when Reich giving it his all, it lacks the ring of conviction.

Because there *is* an economic problem.

But it is the trade deficit, not the budget deficit.

In a sense, the "common sense" right-wingers are not entirely wrong: we cannot indefinitely continue to be a nation which produces less than it consumes. Of course, they've got their facts mixed up about the cause of the deficit (hint: it wasn't caused by lazy people), and, therefore, are way off on workable solutions.

But right-wing populists have caught wiff of a stinking fact of the system, they are right not to let it go.

So they've been set loose on the wrong deficit, and the "solutions" they're being offered funnel down the to level of personal allegory: the grotesque spectacle of flogging of public sector workers.

But politics is largely a matter of stagecraft, and if you want people to let go of one thing, you've got to give them something else to bite on.

But isn't that what "soak the rich" is? Red meat for the masses?

Only a nincompoop like Reich could think that it was. And there's nothing more insulting to a red-blooded plebian than trying to pass off this political tofu as red meat.

Ultimately, the "soak the rich" line derives comes from an underlying belief that there is no big problem, that this is all a manufactured crisis.

That may be easy for Reich to say, but I don't think I'll join him. It's an attitude comes from complacency, and only lead to complacency. Hardly the secret to Democratic "relevancy" (or is it)?