Rave Reviews

I admit it: I always gloat a bit when the mainstream pundit class finally catches up. Today's NYT Sunday Review section has the Reich piece, which digs into the data to demonstrate the thesis that you don't grow an economy by making the middle class (and those below) yet poorer. My only quibble is that he didn't j'accuse to Reagan and the Bush Boys. Stop being so prissy.

The second piece, which shares the full double page center spread with Reich, is a similar take to the urbanization thesis. Not so surprisingly, the author is at "The Economist". Europeans, having lived on that piece of ground for millennia, get it. The Tea Baggers insist on the impossible, that the USofA can conduct itself as it did in the 18th and 19th centuries, when there was this whole fresh continent full of natural resources to squander. Those times are long gone, and we're all European now. If my thesis is correct, either the Tea Baggers stage a coup, a la 2000, and we descend into urban/civil warfare (as Uruguay did in the 60s and 70s, propelled by the same de-industrialization fervor), or the electoral process remains intact, and the Tea Baggers are relegated to the dunce corner.