How to End the Great Recession

Commenting on Robert Reich's September 2 NY Times op-ed piece How to End the Great Recession SEC policy adviser Rick Bookstaber calls it "a reasoned argument for income redistribution based not on some notion of fairness, but on economic results."

Rather than the government priming the pump through fiscal measures, which is obviously a short-term solution, he argues that we need to change the structure of the system to shift income toward those who will consume.

While saying positive things about Reich's proposals, Bookstaber goes on to speculate that our increasing reliance on technology may exacerbate the problems Reich identifies — "that the marginal propensity to consume drops with an increase in income, and second, that the contribution of labor to production declines over time" — to the point that "no magic can return us to the economy we have enjoyed in the past."

Read Bookstaber's The Technology-Driven Consumption Gap and Reich's How to End the Great Recession.