February 19, 2012
The Great American Impasse
Walter Russell Mead
Not all the Democrats are celebrating the January unemployment numbers as morning in Obama’s America. Robert Reich, Clinton’s labor secretary and one of Via Meadia’s favorite liberals, notes dourly that most of the hiring is happening in lower-wage sectors.
With more Americans impoverished than at any other point over the past fifty years, Reich finds candidate Romney’s proposals to, as Reich would have it, eviscerate safety nets and benefits for the poor especially wrongheaded. Romney believes the rise in benefits is a sign of mounting dependency; Reich believes it is a sign of growing poverty:
Romney and other Republicans point to government data showing that direct payments to individuals have shot up by almost $600 billion since 2009, a 32 percent increase. And 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit such as food stamps or unemployment insurance, up from 44 percent in 2008. But Romney and other Republicans have cause and effect backward. The reason for the rise in benefits is that Americans got clobbered in 2008, and many are still sinking. They and their families need whatever help they can get.
Like Reich, we don’t think that shredding safety nets while preserving carried interest loopholes for hedge fund fatcats is a magic path to recovery, but Reich’s approach, however humanitarian, seems likely to flop as well. America’s deep economic problems won’t be cured by Dr. New Deal remedies any more than by opening orphanages and workhouses for the poor...
