Reich Debunks 6 Big Lies About The Economy

Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme as Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry claims? Noted author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich debunks that claim and five other lies the right-wing tells about taxes, government and the economy. The lies Reich debunks: 1) Tax cuts to the rich and corporations trickle down to the rest of us. (No it doesn?t and it never has.) 2) If you shrink government you create jobs. (No, you get rid of jobs that way.) 3) High taxes on the rich hurts the economy. (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.) 4) Debt is to be avoided and it is mostly caused by Medicare. (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.) 5) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (No, its solid for 26 years. Rick Perry is ?lying through his teeth? says Reich. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.) 6) We need to tax the poor. (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any ?tax reform? needs to involve all Americans because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.) The worst thing is, because these ?facts? from the right-wing are repeated over and over, the media repeats them without challenging them and people accept them as truth. Reich says this is intentional. ?The greatest enemy we have is mass cynicism?, said Reich. ?When people really get to the point where they think nothing can be done, the other side wins. That?s what they want, by the way. That?s what they want. They want government because it is starved for money, because it is going to be underfunded ? all the regulatory agencies?they want government at all levels to function so badly that people say ?well government can?t work. I told you.? ?And they also want politics to be so bad and so paralyzed that most Americans say ?nothing can be done. I?m going to give up on our democracy.? ? Reich was speaking at the ?Summit For A Fair Economy? in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 10, 2011. Transcript of Robert Reich debunking 6 big right wing ?lies? about the economy. One of the big lies that we?ve been told over and over again for years, and again some Americans start to believe it because they hear it over and over again, is that if you give tax cuts to the rich and to the corporations everybody will benefit. It will all trickle down to everybody else. A lie. It has not happened. It has never happened. They don?t need more tax cuts. Big corporations are now sitting on two trillion dollars of cash. There are higher corporate profits now then that we have seen in 35 years. The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than its been since before the great depression of the 1930s. And so when you hear somebody say the corporations need tax cuts or they need regulatory so-called relief, they need to cut their costs, they need in other words to have even more profits to create jobs, don?t you believe them. That is a downright bold faced lie. Now another lie you hear over and over again: If you shrink government you?ll create more jobs. This is unbelievable, how it is by shrinking government you create jobs. I still? I debate a lot of people, a lot of conservative economists and others on television who keep on saying this. And I keep on saying tell me your theory, how is it that if you lay off teachers and social workers and firefighters and police officers, if you have fewer people building the roads, building the highways, building the infrastructure, fewer people re-building our schools, fewer people doing all of the public?s work, how can that create more jobs? And the answer I get is: ?Government always gets in the way?. I say, ?But tell me exactly how is it that if you shrink government you?re going to create more jobs, particularly when consumers are holding back because they can?t do it.? And the answer I get is: ?Government always gets in the way?. In other words there is no intellectual basis for the ideology, and it is purely an ideology that says you shrink government you get more jobs. If you shrink government you get fewer jobs. You remember the baby boomers? How many of you were born between 1946 and 1964? All of you. No. (laughter) Well we boomers had the advantage of huge investments in public education and higher education, in public higher education. Huge expansion. We invested in infrastructure, we invested in education. We had a tax structure in those years in which the top income earners never paid below a marginal income tax of 70 percent. 70 percent. In fact under Dwight David Eisenhower, who nobody would call a socialist, I don?t think we would. Some would now? Yes. (laughter) The top marginal income tax rate on the top earners was 91 percent. And even with deductions and tax credits tha

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[bludgerdb]

The truth has a liberal bias...

[TheJsmth1234]

awesome awesome awesome

[timber2403]

GREAT JOB ..KEEP IT UP TAKE DOWN THE SUPER RICH MASTERS

[LibertyDownUnder]

Reich doesn't site any references, he is ignoring decades of evidence, and misrepresenting opposing opinions.

In the early 20s the Government was cut by 50% and the economy boomed. Same happened in the late 40s. This alone refutes his argument.

The argument for less spending on Government infrastructure projects, is that they're inefficient, wasteful, they push up prices & discourage private investment. Simple.

And Medicare & Medicaid already have a bigger budget than defence.

Very poor video.

[phatphred]

One of the greatest uncorrected travesties this nation continues with are the changes that were made and not fixed in the 1986 tax code.

[johammbass]

Lol, so are the corporations eating that money, going to sea with that money, driving that money? It seems like they are not really benefiting from the money they are sitting on, can't you grasp it? What is the point of "sitting on the money"? Have you thought about it? Maybe you are a retard?

[MrCally1]

This guy is an old school socialist stuck in a left-right political dichotomy. Although he has some very sympathetic things to say. We have more insight now. - Jobs or creating jobs is not the answer to our problems. To design a sustainable society is. - The jobs are not coming back as most things will be automated. Therefore we need a economic paradigm shift and re-evaluate our value system. - -0-

[brendafos]

Reich is a knowledgeable spokesman for the wisdom we learn from understanding our past. The data is there to support all his clarifications of the Republican lies which have no basis in fact.

How can average citizens fall for these lies - I believe it is because our news has been taken over by the for profit corporations who have gotten richer and richer by hiding the truth from the masses.