is now “profoundly alarmed about the future” of the Democratic Party and the country, Robert Reich tells us with eyebrows raised.
And we should be, too, as long as reactionary hacks continue to insist that the Democrats continue their self-inflicted death spiral induced by the likes of Summers himself.
Reich is not impressed by the argument of Bezo’s editorial board at the Washington Post–remember, he is making no bones about his takeover of the editorial page==that “Mamdani’s proposals for a 2 percent annual wealth tax on the richest 1 percent of New Yorkers and for increasing the state’s corporate tax rate from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent.”
‘Mamdani’s tax plans,” the Bezos Board claims, ‘would spur a corporate exodus and drive more rich people out of town, undermining the tax base and making existing services harder to maintain.’
“It’s the same argument we’ve heard for 40 years,” Reich writes. “If you raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, you’ll drive them away — from your city, your state, your nation.
“Rubbish. The reality is that if you invest in your people — in their skills, education, affordable child care, affordable elder care, and the infrastructure needed to link them together — they’ll be more productive, and their higher productivity will attract corporations (and the wealthy). A major way to afford all these things is to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy.”
Reich calls the Democratic Establishment “the biggest problem for the party. They are standing in the way of it mounting a forceful response to Trump and providing a blueprint for the future.”