Lewis, not to be confused with the exponentially more optimistic actor who played Grandpa on The Munsters, was his typical curmudgeon self declaring that the United States has another decade of recession ahead. God forbid if he's right because that would put my 30s into my 50s, what would be the most productive years in anyone's life, in the country's worst economy ever.
The local news anchor closed Lewis's piece by saying the economy is not expected to turn around before 2020 because, "that's when the next generation of will enter the workforce and will bail out the economy much the same way baby boomers did in the 1970s."
What?
The media is grasping at straws at this point because a.) they don't know what's wrong with the economy or b.) they know how to fix it and are afraid to tell us. I vote for Option B, and if they told us they'd piss off their corporate masters.
There's a demand problem in the economy. People demand things but don't have the money to pay for them. This is because the wage floor has fallen out due to the three-decade attack on labor and the exporting of our manufacturing base.
Corporate America, which also owns most media, benefits tremendously from cheap labor and cheap goods. However, most Americans are pinched now because their money supply is dwindling. Wages have not increased as much as productivity. This is great for company owners (i.e., capitalists, the elite, the "job creators") but horrible for the working class. In fact, it's dismal.
There are two very sensible fixes to the economy that Congress could do tomorrow. First, reinstate high tariffs on imported goods to level the playing field between domestic and foreign manufacturers. Secondly, it that doesn't work, tax the bejeesus out of corporate holdings. Corporate America is sitting on an estimated $2 Trillion in cash and it won't do anything with it unless there's penalty for not spending it. Any economic system, not just capitalism, requires that money move through it.
But you're not going to hear this from the likes of the pundits who draw their paychecks from the corporations who caused this disaster.
