Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Earlier this week NYTimes op ed writer and Nobel economist Paul Krugman offered a positive assessment of Joe Biden’s approach to job creation and yet another disparaging assessment of trickle down economics. Dr. Krugman’s  bottom line on job creation is summarized in his last two penultimate paragraphs:

The corporate tax plan, then, looks like a really good idea. In part that’s because President Biden, unlike his predecessor, has hired people who know what they’re talking about. And it also marks a welcome break with the ideology that says that the only way we can help American workers is indirect action: cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy in the hope that they’ll somehow deliver a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

What the Biden team seems to have concluded, instead, is that the way to create jobs is to create jobs, mainly through public investment, rather than by chasing unicorns and leprechauns.To the (partial) extent that direct job creation must be paid for with new taxes, the new taxes should be imposed on those who can afford to pay.

This seems to be a very simple equation: create government jobs and pay for them with taxes raised on those who can afford it most. Why, you might ask, has this not been done of late? Because everyone who ran for President from Michael Dukakis onward based their platform on the same assertion… the Reagan credo: GOVERNMENT is the Problem. And what has four decades of giving corporations tax breaks given us? A yawning gap between the rich and poor, a class of individuals (like the former President) who inherited great wealth and used it to secure endless power, and a set of awesome jobs like those described in the Lego Movie.