255 Comments

The man who proves that opportunities may run in families, but ability does not.

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You'd think the real estate lobby would be all over this.

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Right? It seems like a no-brainer to help with the housing crisis. Move people from apartments into homes, move people who can't buy homes into apartments.

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I've filled out many Schedule C's in my day and the first line is "wages"--so, if business taxes are high, the business is faced with a choice: give the money to the government or to your employees as wages and benefits come off the top--during the high tax days of the 1950's, wages and benefits were high, not because of altruism but economics. Then came the tax cutting 80's and guess what happened--employers directed more money to themselves and less to employees

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For 30 years or more, the fed has had exactly one weapon, interest rate increases. That's their hammer, and whether the problem is a nail, a screw, or a board that needs to be cut -- or laws dating back to the Reagan era that made increased profits to shareholders the only corporate rule -- they use that hammer to raise interest rates whenever people start getting raises and the unemployment rate gets too low.

The laws that enshrine "greed is good" were passed under Reaganism specifically to keep workers from getting their share, as they had done since the New Deal. Union-busting, cutting the top marginal tax rate from 78% to 28%, making corporate stock buy-backs legal, allowing pro-monopoly corporate consolidation ... all these policies were designed to reverse laws enacted during the Great Depression to balance the playing field.

Summers, the Chicago School of Milton Friedman economics, Jerome Powell of the Fed, and ALL Republicans abhor a level playing field. To them, a labor force under the heel of corporate behemoths' ceo's, and NO government regulation of business, is the goal. They like the Gilded Age and Roaring Twenties and even the necessary Depressions and recessions ... because they will never lose their power, money and positions. And to them, the banksters who jumped out of windows in 1929 were/are simply too "weak" to be cared about, a la Ayn Rand, their heroine-philosopher (who died broke and on the public dole after decrying public welfare for half a century!).

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The storming of the Tuileries Palace, 1792-8-10.

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Thank you!

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I have fantasies about Larry Summers. And a wood chipper. Unfortunately, I need to walk the dog now, so I can't elaborate.

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It’s amazing how executive compensation continues to go up no matter what the state of the economy is and jackholes like Summers never question it.

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A. There is no inflation. Ok there is some, but its clear that much of what passes for inflation is corporations price gouging. So go suck donkey balls, Summers.

B. I do not understand economics at all. But wouldn't actual inflation issues sort of level off after people are employed for awhile. Sure, the short term is painful but wouldn't it all even out in the long term?

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Besides, if a lot of them are unemployed, it should be easy enough to convince them that desperate asylum seekers took their jobs, and then Republicans can cut taxes for the rich again, the end.

This is always the way. Keep 'em uneducated, poor, and angry (at someone else).

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Sounds like something that could be solved by a federal financial housing program for first time homebuyers. But that would be soshalizm.

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Isn't this the proper response to any talk of Keynesian economic theory? https://media4.giphy.com/me...

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Just once I'd like to see a reporter call it CEO compensation inflation.

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I assume they want it in time for the 2024 election?

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