“Why Aren’t Americans Happier about the Economy? Asks Robert Reich. I’ll Tell You Why, Bob …

Bob Reich is a right-minded guy and I like him, but there are caveats.

Bob’s a career professor and political advisor and his credentials are superb: Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley since January 2006. Formerly a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University. He has also been a contributing editor of The New Republic, The American Prospect (also chairman and founding editor), Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. CVs don’t come any stronger than that.

But, like the man who identified 3,000 positions for sex, Reich doesn’t know any women

Obviously I say that metaphorically, but his life history puts him academically close to the disadvantaged but I doubt he’s ever spent any time walking in their shoes. The very question of his article discloses that separation. “On Friday, the labor department announced that the US economy added 209,000 jobs in June,” he writes.

Further on he asks, “And wages? For a while, real (adjusted for inflation) wages were falling, but now that inflation is subsiding, real wages are picking up again. So why do so many Americans continue to think the economy is awful?”

Because it is, Bob. Remember the days when we had ‘heads of family?’

That man or woman was the single wage-earner that sustained a middle class family of four. In this economic ‘condition’ in which we live today, dad works, mom has a job, the kids are part-timing and no one sits down to a Norman Rockwell dinner together. “So,” you ask, “the obvious question is, why are Americans feeling so bad about an economy that’s actually damned good?”

It’s not damned good for them, Bob, and hasn’t been since pre-Reagan. Hasn’t been since that particular ‘great communicator’ busted the unions, privatized everything in sight and enabled the privateers to grab the reins of our industrial base and ride it off into the Chinese sunset.

There went the fishing boat in the driveway, sending the kids to college, sitting down to dinner as a family and taking a modest summer vacation

Did you notice, Bob? Or were you too focused on those damned good economic statistics? You might remind yourself that if you torture them sufficiently, statistics will confess to anything.

Abha Bhattarai of The Washington Post reports in this morning’s edition that “The number of people who worked part time, but want to work full time, rose by 452,000 in June, the biggest jump in more than three years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In all, 4.2 million people were employed part time for economic reasons beyond their control, a 12 percent increase from the month before.”

Think about that.

For every job you report so positively, she reports more than twice as many who had to take part time work to survive. Don’t see much of that over at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley I wouldn’t think. But outside the Goldman School, out there on the mean streets of what used to be, 74% of Americans think America is in the economic dumper.

The Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates on American workers who are increasingly living pay-check to pay-check  and maxing seven credit cards—ostensibly to slow the economy and control inflation. Jesus, Bob, these 74% need an aggressively expanded economy, higher wages and a graduated tax structure with offshore loopholes closed.

Instead, more than a year into the Fed’s campaign, which has caused borrowing costs to rise at the fastest rate on record, there are growing signs that the economy is softening: The housing market is in decline. Manufacturing (what little is left of it) is on the downswing. And job openings are waning.

Does that answer “why aren’t Americans happier about the economy?”

Or does the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley since January 2006 have a policy card up his sleeve he has not yet disclosed?

I have a great deal of respect, and even affection, for you Bob for the writing you continue to do on behalf of the underprivileged—who I prefer to call dirt poor. But I also have a prejudice about the word policy. Policy is not a numbers game, nor is it decided by lying to the people you hope to attract as voters, as both parties have done for half a century.

The overwhelming percentage of Americans want gun control, access to abortion, a living wage somewhere around $45 per hour, a return of American industry, homes for the homeless (don’t dare to call them unhoused), a better life for their kids than they have (not bloody hard to do in these tragic times), fair taxes fairly paid, equity in the courts and a chance to sit down to dinner with their family, say grace if that’s their habit and bow their heads for a moment to remember America the Beautiful.

And they will by god have it. If it is not fairly provided, they will take it

I would love to hear your response, because I treasure you as a policy advocate and know your heart is in the game.