February 19, 2016
by Robert Reich
A few days ago, Neel Kashkari
– now president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis, who was the senior
Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations
helping to save the big Wall Street banks – said “I believe the biggest banks
are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to
our economy,” and called for them to be broken up. “The question is whether we
as a country have the courage to actually take action now.”
That seems to me to be the
question on a lot of fronts. Our health costs continue to rise and are about to
soar as boomers need more health care. A single-payer system is necessary to
restrain those costs and provide the care people need. Anyone who still harbors
doubts should take a look at these studies:http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-system-cost
.
It’s the same with widening
inequality and structural discrimination.
Failure to take action on the
biggest banks, a single-payer plan, widening inequality, and discrimination
will almost certainly harm the economy. We can’t afford another near-meltdown
of Wall Street. Health care costs continue to be a huge drain on the economy.
Widening inequality is robbing the vast middle class of the purchasing power it
needs to keep the economy growing. And structural discrimination is making it
hard for many Americans to be successful and productive members of our society.
As Bernie Sanders has said,
taking action on all these fronts would therefore spur growth, employment, and
median incomes. (In this respect, I disagree with the views of four former
chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors from the Clinton and Obama
administrations.)
The question is whether we as
a country have the courage to actually take action now.
No comments:
Post a Comment