In bemoaning the chasm between rich and poor, Reich harps on high CEO salaries but ignores how rapidly corporate pay tails off below this level. He also avoids mentioning that many of the best-off people in America have their pay fixed by political means, or otherwise batten on government largess--civil servants, doctors, lawyers, foundation executives, and academics, for example. Could it be that the government is actually causing some of the disparity by subjecting the lower ranks to the market while insulating the rich? Or by sopping up investment funds? Or by a vast regulatory apparatus that raises the need for paper pushers? Don't ask Reich. But you can ask "B," who, as you will not learn in the book, looked out over a recent fundraiser of fat cats and joked about how many people have gotten so rich helping the poor.
The government described by Reich is also wildly incompetent at every level. A modest reform in the administration of unemployment compensation finally gets through, more or less by accident, but it takes 20 years. At one point Department of Labor regulators are hell-bent to zap a minor-league baseball team for child labor law violations because it used a bat boy. Reich stops this, but solely because of the bad press it generated for his department and without a thought that strict enforcement of the law is flawed in other, less eye-catching areas. The White House is a pediacracy, without structure or coherence, lurching from one position to another, consumed by politics, swallowed up by concern over the deficit and then by the values of Morrisism. The cynicism of the good Democrats in Congress is exceeded only by the cynicism of the bad Republicans.
Nonetheless, this is the government that Reich wants to endow with even more power to tax, micromanage, spend, and regulate. On the basis of the evidence he presents, you wonder how he avoids becoming a libertarian. He avoids it easily, though, largely by exhibiting the most irritating characteristic of modern liberalism--self-righteousness. He shows no awareness that any opponent could possibly be his moral equal, acting on principle. He jumps from facile analysis to policy prescription (more power and money for DOL programs), then elevates the conclusion into a moral imperative which automatically converts opposition into immorality.
In end, you are left with puzzles. If anyone is qualified to make a coherent case for liberalism, it is Reich. So why does he completely shun the attempt? Does he actually believe his own propaganda? Does he care about nothing but selling books, and political analysis does not sell these days? Does he find the degeneration of his party into a pirate band glued together solely by love of loot too awful to gaze upon?
Does he really think such a party will help the downtrodden? Why does he focus his animus on "business," ignoring other targets--does he think business people have a monopoly on avarice? Or that avarice for power is not as deadly a sin as avarice for money? If the propaganda portion of this book presents the best case that one of the ablest liberals can summon up, then the left is in sad shape indeed.
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