Tim Bjorkman, South Dakota’s Robert Reich, Calls for Middle-Class Tax Relief

Well-read Democratic candidate for U.S. House Tim Bjorkman wittily dismisses the Trump/Noem tax plan as horse-and-sparrow economics.

But problem-solver Bjorkman also tells WNAX what tax reform we should do instead:

The middle class and the lower middle class who are out there working our jobs and fighting our wars, they need a tax break, and the best way to stimulate the economy is to put more money in their hands… because the one thing the middle class does is they spend most all of their money back into the economy, and that’s something that isn’t going to happen if we return to the kind of trickle-down economics that the Bush Administration last brought us, which led to the Great Recession with a sluggish decade economically… [Tim Bjorkman, in “SD Congressional Candidate Doesn’t Like Tax Cut Plan,” WNAX, 2017.11.28].

Now if Congress were really after economic stimulus, we’d be focusing on increasing spending, not cutting taxes, because, as we learned in the Great Recession, food stamps, unemployment benefits, infrastructure investments, and aid to state governments all provide more economic juice per dollar than tax cuts. But if tax cuts are all the Trump Congress is willing to do, then Bjorkman is right: cutting the top rates for the rich don’t have any predictable effect on economic growth.

Or should I say Bjorkman is Reich—Robert Reich:

The answer [to the anemic recovery from the Great Recession] is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008….

All of the gains from economic growth have been going to the richest 1 percent – who, because they’re so rich, spend no more than half what they take in.

Can I say this any more simply? The earnings of the great American middle class fueled the great American expansion for three decades after World War II. Their relative lack of earnings in more recent years set us up for the great American bust [Robert Reich, “Why the Economy Can’t Get out of First Gear,” blog, 2012.06.12].

In 2012, Reich called for a much broader scheme of wealth de-concentration than mere middle-class tax cuts to bring the consumer-driven economy back to full strength. But he agrees with Bjorkman that a tax plan offering permanent and feckless tax breaks to the richest and eventual tax hikes to the middle and lower classes is the opposite of what we need to do.

How refreshing it will be to have a Democratic Congressman who grounds his discussion of tax policy in proven economic facts instead of the fantasies our current Snow Queen Congresswoman peddles.