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Article Artículo

Robert Samuelson and the Second Great Depression Myth

Robert Samuelson decided to once again push the second Great Depression, applauding the Obama administration for preventing the Great Recession from turning into a depression. This is the great myth (I'm tempted to say "fake news") that establishment types push endlessly with zero foundation.

It is important for the worldview they like to promote, in which we have seen a massive upward redistribution of income over the last four decades, well you know, that's just because that is the way the world is. We may not like this rise in inequality, and after all President Obama did raise taxes on the rich and propose an increase in the minimum wage, and gave us Obamacare (all very good policies), but growing inequality is just baked into the genetics of the modern economy.

The Wall Street bailout that stands at the center of the second Great Depression avoidance myth is the world's largest slap in the face of promoters of the baked-into-the-genetics story. After all, other aspects of the rigging (yes, I'm promoting my free book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer) are more subtle.

We have free trade in manufactured goods but rigged protectionist measures that no one knows about that protect doctors, dentists, and other highly paid professionals. We have ever stronger and longer patent and copyright protections. These protections take hundreds of billions of dollars each year out of the pockets of the bulk of the population and give them to the people in position to benefit from them. Protection adds more than $350 billion a year to the cost of prescription drugs alone. We have a Federal Reserve Board that raises interest rates to throw people out of work, and keep workers from getting bargaining power, as a way of ensuring that an arbitrary inflation target is not breached.

CEPR / December 19, 2016

Article Artículo

Labor Market Policy Research Report, December 16, 2016
The following reports on labor market policy were recently released: The Center for Law and Social Policy Juggling Time: Young Workers and Scheduling Practices in the Los Angeles County Service Sector CLASP, UCLA Labor CenterDemosThe Parent Trap: The Econ

Lara Merling / December 16, 2016