Reich writes: "Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it. The answer is in front of our faces."

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)

Why The Economy Can't Get Out of First Gear

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

13 June 12

arely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer 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.

If you have any doubt, just take a look at the Survey of Consumer Finances, released Monday by the Federal Reserve. Median family income was $49,600 in 2007. By 2010 it was $45,800 – a drop of 7.7%.

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.

Starting around 1980, globalization and automation began exerting downward pressure on median wages. Employers began busting unions in order to make more profits. And increasingly deregulated financial markets began taking over the real economy.

The result was slower wage growth for most households. Women surged into paid work in order to prop up family incomes – which helped for a time. But the median wage kept flattening, and then, after 2001, began to decline.

Households tried to keep up by going deeply into debt, using the rising values of their homes as collateral. This also helped – for a time. But then the housing bubble popped.

The Fed’s latest report shows how loud that pop was. Between 2007 and 2010 (the latest data available) American families’ median net worth fell almost 40 percent – down to levels last seen in 1992. The typical family’s wealth is their home, not their stock portfolio – and housing values have dropped by a third since 2006.

Families have also become less confident about how much income they can expect in the future. In 2010, over 35% of American families said they did not “have a good idea of what their income would be for the next year.” That’s up from 31.4% in 2007.

But because their incomes and their net worth have both dropped, families are saving less. The proportion of families that said they had saved in the preceding year fell from 56.4% in 2007 to 52% in 2010, the lowest level since the Fed began collecting that information in 1992.

Bottom line: The American economy is still struggling because the vast American middle class can’t spend more to get it out of first gear.

What to do? There’s no simple answer in the short term except to hope we stay in first gear and don’t slide backwards.

Over the longer term the answer is to make sure the middle class gets far more of the gains from economic growth.

How? We might learn something from history. During the 1920s, income concentrated at the top. By 1928, the top 1 percent was raking in an astounding 23.94 percent of the total (close to the 23.5 percent the top 1 percent got in 2007) according to analyses of tax records by my colleague Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. At that point the bubble popped and we fell into the Great Depression.

But then came the Wagner Act, requiring employers to bargain in good faith with organized labor. Social Security and unemployment insurance. The Works Projects Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. A national minimum wage. And to contain Wall Street: The Securities Act and Glass-Steagall Act.

In 1941 America went to war – a vast mobilization that employed every able-bodied adult American, and put money in their pockets. And after the war, the GI Bill, sending millions of returning veterans to college. A vast expansion of public higher education. And huge infrastructure investments, such as the National Defense Highway Act. Taxes on the rich remained at least 70 percent until 1981.

The result: By 1957, the top 1 percent of Americans raked in only 10.1 percent of total income. Most of the rest went to a growing middle class – whose members fueled the greatest economic boom in the history of the world.

Get it? We won’t get out of first gear until the middle class regains the bargaining power it had in the first three decades after World War II to claim a much larger share of the gains from productivity growth.

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+44 # jcadams 2012-06-13 16:26

Let me add something that is perfectly obvious and that you may have also covered in a previous blog. And that is the fact that the American people own the U.S. economy. Not the elites with the concentrated wealth. Or the richest 1% and their GOP enablers in the House and Senate. These people only own the assets and wealth that is now in their name. But to take back control of OUR economy we need to wrap our minds around the concept that “we the people” --- not just the elites --- are the rightful owners of the U.S. economy. And that only “we the people” have the right to control the U.S. economy. This does not impinge upon the sacred right of private property or the perverted “conservative” mechanism that has prevailed over the last 30 years which has systematically weakened and destroyed the financial condition of the middle class. This concept needs your eloquence to be more effective. Please expand upon this concept in future articles.

+15 # jlohman 2012-06-14 03:41

Unfortunately, Reich does not (and never does) point to the real problem, a political system that lets the politicians share in the corrupt booty (via campaign bribes). Thus the politicians who are in control of the rules, like things just as they are. Until we have public funding of campaigns, live with it.

+11 # John Locke 2012-06-14 07:20

jlohman: that option will never happen because the politicians like things just the way they are.

Sadly the only way to make the changes that are necessary to hold onto our fragile and dying democracy is a revolution! I am not advocating a Revolution, only making an observation...

It is currently in the air, just as it was in France for the 10 years that led to 1789, I believe the Revolution that will happen here will be even more extreme.

This let them eat cake Philosophy in Washington and Wall Street is garnering much anger, but the people haven't directed that anger as yet in the right direction. When they figure it out, watch out, there will be a lynch mob mentality.

+19 # She Cee 2012-06-13 19:57

IT's really no secret that what would get this country and the economy on the right track is simple. Fixing the infrastructure in this country requires workers = jobs & Jobs = people have the money to buy things and voila. Factories need to start up producing again. Very simple. But the GOPers refuse to spend money on rebuilding anything because they don't want Obama to have a victory.

I am totally disenchanted with Obama as I am with all politicians (with a few exceptions). As far as I'm concerned, they're all corrupt. The things Obama has accomplished are insignificant compared to the things he has not fought for or against. Corruptions runs rampant and he has only given us are sweet words about fighting the banks, oil companies, Wall Street, the environment, fracking, etc. He has betrayed us on all the important issues.

Now what do we do?

+27 # DHa7763100 2012-06-13 20:46

Oh, thank god someone gets it about infrastructure and jobs. I do disagree with the the Obama thing though. If you really look at what he has done and not the major one, I think you will realize that he has done a lot. But what do you expect him to do when he comes up agains a brick wall, Congress. Hold a gun to their heads? He has limited power, but he does need to be meaner to Congress...bein g nice has not worked. I wish he had more power and could tell Congress to go to hell, that he will fix the problems whether they like it or not.

-2 # CTPatriot 2012-06-14 02:21

These excuses for Obama and the Democrats grow old. Anything that has to do with budget can be passed through budget reconciliation, which requires a simple majority vote and cannot be filibustered.

Not only have the Democrats failed to use this option at nearly every opportunity, but they shot themselves (and the 99%) in the foot by caving in to GOP hostage taking and extending the Bush Tax Cuts. That jacked up the deficit and forced the cutting of programs to help the poor and middle class as well as the loss of tens of thousands of public sector jobs across the country.

Obama and the Democrats are their own worst enemies when it comes to economic policy.

+26 # Skippydelic 2012-06-13 21:13

Now what do we do? Re-elect Obama. Period.

Regardless of how Obama has let us down, we can't forget for a *minute* that the GOP has fought him tooth and nail against EVERYTHING, *including* measures that would benefit the *majority* of Americans!

Worst of all, though, the GOP did all of this out of SPITE!

If there was at least some *semblance* of principle in *anything* the Republicans were doing, I might be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, but there's NO principles, NO action for the greater good, NOTHING!

No matter how bad Obama has been, the GOP is FAR WORSE!

So we *have* to re=elect Obama and the Democrats!

Once we get the majorities back, then we can work towards getting *Progressives* into office.

But re-electing Obama is the first step!

0 # LAellie33 2012-07-30 16:10

"Totally disenchanted with Obama?" Tell us, what would YOU have done to change things that even God couldn't penetrate the lying secret billionaire machine to effect change. NOTHING, NADA, NIL. This is just another ploy at deceiving the American people with tea party/republiKK Klan twisted rhetoric. Want to know the real "axis of evil?" Rmoney and his very best friends Cheney and Rove.

-26 # MidwestTom 2012-06-13 20:10

We, both personally and nationally, are caught in a squeeze, and there is no simple painless way out. We are used to borrowing and then spending all that we can. As inflation increased our wages and our costs, we borrowed more and paid more and more interest, Those who save their money in the bank that then loans it to us., slowly gain both money and power. The income of people who save and the wealthy, to whom we pay the interest, goes up with every dollar that we borrow.

We, the 99 % and our Congress keeping wanting and getting more and more benefits that cause more and more borrowing; and therefore more transfer of wealth and power to those not in debt. We are approaching an endgame in borrowing, and the economy is telling us that fact.

+13 # BradFromSalem 2012-06-14 04:42

Tom,

The big flaw in your thinking is that people that saved money gained anything. I believe you are not talking about the 1% but instead those that fit into the larger but still powerless group of 6 figure earners. Especially the lower half.

That group has had a large portion of their savings stolen from them during this fiscal crisis, and that is what happens when you allow bankers to make the rules of banking instead of the people that are affected by banking.

So typically the Right Wing just gets so much stuff backwards. We use banks, therefore we should make the rules. If the bankers cannot make any money under our rules, then they will get out of the banking business. Our need to have banks will then force us to modify the rules. If banks make the rules, we get no say in how they handle our money.

+7 # tabonsell 2012-06-14 11:41

This argument that we are in trouble because of "wanting and getting more and more benefits that cause more and more borrowing" is nonsense. Our social benefit programs are no problem. And we borrow because of Reaganomics and GOP continual trashing of the economy.

We are in trouble because we have too many freeloaders accepting the benefits of society without helping pay their way (a problem now sinking Europe). Those freeloaders go by the titles of corporations and multimillionair es (not all multimillionair es, but a large number).

Just before and after World War II, corporations were paying 47% of the income taxes in America, individuals picking up the other 53%. Now, corporations are paying less than 10% of income taxes and individuals who pay more than 90% of income taxes -- in addition to most gasoline, tobacco and liquor taxes -- don't have the spending cash, as the professor keeps telling us.

Those same freeloading corporations hoarding about $2 trillion in tax-havens overseas only add to the problem. That money needs to be in the United States economy and taxed so that there are no more freeloaders.

There is no specific plan for a solution coming from anyone (including Prof. Reich) but the book "Saving America: Using Democratic Capitalism to Rescue the Nation from Economic Folly" does offer a way out of our mess.

+33 # X Dane 2012-06-13 21:00

Professor Reich, you are right in your observations, but improvements will not come until or......if the republicans can be stopped.

As long as they keep obstructing and preventing job creations, NOTHING will improve. they must be shamed into stopping.

And the country HAS to REALIZE, that the republicans are the ones that are DETERMINED to crash the economy, to prevent the re election of Obama.

WE understand, and Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann are on a number of TV programs promoting their book and they sure make it clear that the republicans are the ones obstructing, so hopefully more people will begin to get the true picture.

-8 # CTPatriot 2012-06-14 02:24

It would be nice if the Democrats actually tried to do something about it rather than constantly repeating the false claim that "it takes 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate." They could have rewritten the filibuster rules in 2010 but were too chickenshit to do it. Or they are the political version of the Washington Generals. Your choice.

+6 # sgmp 2012-06-14 04:10

"DETERMINED to crash the economy, to prevent the re election of Obama......" .

Sadly, I know one liberal who has said she'll vote for Romney just to watch that crash take place. She thinks that will mobilize the 99%. I wish President Obama would listen to Robert Reich.

+6 # jlohman 2012-06-14 05:14

The Republicans AND the democrats are being paid handsomely by corporate givers to keep the system broken. Otherwise their cash flow will stop.

+7 # Susan W 2012-06-13 21:14

I don't know very much about "economics" in the large, global sense but it appears to me that if you base your economy on people spending money, shed millions of jobs and underpay everyone left then ruin is on the horizon. So how long do those in the 1% think this will last? Seems to me they are working against their own long term survival.

The obvious answer is a massive public works project that would not only fix our crumbling infrastructure but add to the overall economy by providing real-wage jobs to people who now have nothing. Contrary to what they blather every day in Congress, a government job is a real job. If that is not true then I guess none of them have a real job so we can quit paying them and they can work for pay at the nearest burger joint. That should help the deficit.

-1 # X Dane 2012-06-14 16:45

Susan

I used to think too that the well to do were cutting their own throat. They ARE NOT HURTING. they can afford to send their children to the best schools. They live in really nice safe areas.

The corporations don't need us to buy their wares, for they can sell them all over the world.

Then I thought, but they need a well educated youth to work the jobs?....... ...Well a number of the big corporations have divisions in Canada....so no problem.

What about all the young people with hardly any education??.... ...The corporations need them to fight the wars they are so eager to undertake. Our biggest production is weaponry of all kinds. That stuff need to be used, so we need some wars. PROBLEMS SOLVED!!!

0 # X Dane 2012-06-16 19:01

The truth hurts. Please let me know, what you dis?agree with

+10 # RMDC 2012-06-14 02:57

Who says we are in a recession? Unemployment is high but that is by design. Businesses have been going lean on workers since the 80s and technology is also making fewer workers needed. That's they way the economy is going by design. Maybe workers don't like it but business do. It is called "productivity."

Although I admire Reich very much, I think he's making a mistake here. Yes, consumer bubble economies characterized the period from the 80s to 2008, but consumers no longer matter. Most money made by our economic aristocracy comes from investment gambling. Most corporations that used to make stuff to sell to consumers are now really banks. GM is a bank. It would actually prefer not to make cars. The classic case is Enron which was a bank fronted by an energy company. Banks don't need consumers. They make money by speculating in arcane investments like derivatives. Reports say that there are about $1000 trillion dollars worth of derivatives out there. That's where the money is.

Old econominies like China, Germany, Japan, Italy make money by making consumer goods. the US is a truly postmodern economy. Most stock trading is done by computers that make a million trades a minute. This is not about owning stock in a company. This is about churning up nothing in order to throw off profit.

Most of us want to live in the old economy of manufacturing and consumption. Our economic elite no longer care about consumption or making.

+3 # Salty 2012-06-15 08:45

I agree with you. Our old economy distributed wealth through jobs. When wages were sufficient to match worker's needs, we had a viable and large middle class, and we were relatively happy. Now our manufacturing jobs have wandered overseas where labor is cheap and laborers work for pennies. Technology has reduced the number of remaining jobs. We need to find some new way of distributing wealth other than through jobs, but our leaders have sold out to the rich and the rich won't willingly share more than a few pennies. The rich are not even American rich. We need a system that makes it possible for all to share. Capitalists call this Socialism. We are controlled by criminals, and we need to act to put them where they can no longer harm the great mass of people.

+8 # RMDC 2012-06-14 03:04

Part II -- the best example of the transition to a fully synthetic economy came in the 80s when US Steel got out of the business of making steel or making anything. It became an investment banks. US Steel changed its name to USX. The president of the company explained that the name was changed because they did not want to make steet or be associated with any commodity. "X stands for money. We make money."

That's really true for all US corporations now. Commodites often get in the way of making money. They require workers who are always a problem with their needs for healthcare, vacation days, and the rest. Why not just make what they really want in the first place -- money. And why not do it by churning up paper investments and throwing off profits. And why not do it with money borrowed at 0% interest from the FED.

The future of the US economy is clear. It will move more and more in the direction of USX until nothing is made, almost no one has a job, but the GDP soars on churned up investment profits.

This is not an accident. This is all be design. The chief design factor is federal taxes. You pay 15% income tax on capital gains and 35% income tax on manufactured good. Which sort of business do you think business men are going to get into? The 15% capital gains tax is also just nominal. there are deductions that reduce it quite easily to zero.

+5 # Aaron Tovish 2012-06-14 03:12

''
Get it? We won’t get out of first gear until the middle class regains the bargaining power it had in the first three decades after World War II to claim a much larger share of the gains from productivity growth.
''
Robert, none of the commentators seems to have 'got it', so I will supply your unstated point: get off your butts, folks, and organize!!
You only have bargaining power when you are organized -- in unions and in elections. I trust the Occupy activists are on the case; let's join them.

+5 # mdhome 2012-06-14 03:34

I am afraid we are heading into armed revolt territory.

+4 # Bruce Gruber 2012-06-14 04:04

To MidWest Tom and other Tea Party mimics of plutocratic propaganda:

WHEN GOVERNMENT (that's SUPPOSED to be OUR democratically elected engine for policy consensus on public/citizen/ aggregated priorities) IDENTIFIES PRIORITIES (that's OUR investigative/r egulatory/imple mentation solution of last resort), THE ACTION IT (WE) TAKE(S) IS TO INVEST OUR RESOURCES (TAXES AND LABOR) IN ADDRESSING AMERICAN'S PROBLEMS AND CONCERNS. THIS BUILDS CAPITAL VALUE - NATIONALLY.

Our economy seems to accepted the concept of running on credit since the 50's (the financial sector loves it). In the 30's FDR's Brain Trust conceived of long term mortgage guarantees (FHA, Farm Credit, etc.) to allow a "middle class" to grow, accumulate and participate in wealth/capital/ stuff accumulation. The plutocrats hated it then and have worked diligently to overturn those enhancements to 'average family' success. Lawyers, lobbyists, 'acquired politicians', 'thimk-tanks' and 'entertainment' news sources all are designed to return the top 1% to the Gilded Age.

Worrying about what we 'borrow' as a nation to finance capital investment (through the 'private' sector outsourcing that is so prevalent today) seems ONLY to bother you deficit hawks if it addresses equality of opportunity problems for the 'least among US'. There is so much more to be said about this disconnect.

+5 # stonecutter 2012-06-14 04:26

So here's another perspective to add to the larger picture. The Boomer generation is just entering retirement as a ginormous tsunami of entitlement demand: Medicare, Social Security, public and private pension claims in the countless billions, and so forth, malignantly undermined by historically depressed home values, net worth and dramatically reduced purchasing power, as Dr. Reich points out. This demand will only go up steeply between now and 2045-50, when most Boomers will by then have died. Younger Americans actively employed have to cover the great bulk of this aggregate cost...the question is how? What strategies will be developed to meet this massive fiscal challenge? How the hell will a Congress composed of RomneyWorld ideologues, incompetents, corporate stooges and obfuscating do-nothings climb this Everest? How can we talk about bi-partisan solutions without laughing our heads off at the absurdity of that concept? What further economic, fiscal and social catastrophes have to befall us before we wake up?

Obama may win this year, but if he's left with a GOP-controlled House, let alone Senate, we're in for several, if not many more years of severe economic pain, especially if Europe starts disintegrating (watch the Greek elections this week). If Romney takes the whole enchilada, including Congress, it'll be like blasting off and landing on another planet; I can't even stomach him for 5 whole minutes...presi dent Romney?? Unthinkable.

+7 # Bruce Gruber 2012-06-14 08:09

"entitlement demand" suggests a blind obsession with Faux propaganda.

"Medicare, Social Security, public and private pension claims in the countless billions" represent contractual obligations of all of us as citizens. We 'invested' together on a weekly basis with the understanding that we 'earned' a return at some future date.

If your banker told you he had changed his mind - not only would your deposits earn no interest, they were no longer yours. He had used them to speculate on derivative, securitized, manipulated high commission mortgage securities. They went bust right after he collected some fees ... but he was counting on you to pay additional taxes and lower his tax obligation so that YOUR government could guarantee his continued rape of your resources. Oh, and his profits could be 'invested' in a super PAC to insure your interests would never influence this process ... Our pain isn't likely to diminish in such a world under ANY circumstances.

ALL CHANGE IS PAIN (to someone). It's THEIR turn ... Time for the 1% to write off 40% of THEIR net worth.

0 # stonecutter 2012-06-14 14:59

" 'entitlement demand' suggests a blind obsession with Faux propaganda."

I see your valid points, but just for the record, I was using the term 'demand" in the economic sense (i.e., supply and demand), not in the social sense that there's something illegitimate about entitlement; of course all those pensions are valid, but the fact is billions have been underfunded, or funds diverted to other uses, or melted down during this crisis, and the funds will have to be replaced and paid when due, and that will have to come from somewhere.

+2 # Bruce Gruber 2012-06-14 16:46

But the term "entitlement" is itself a conservative pejorative designed to project a negative non-producer attitude of 'gimmee yours' toward recipients of government program partiption. It is the Rovarian divide and conquer button/dog whistle designed to make people who are struggling defend themselves against the next rung down the ladder rather than demanding consideration from the interests who are 'renting' the ladder to them while retaining the ability to spread the rungs further apart - or even randomly remove some rungs.

-1 # stonecutter 2012-06-14 17:57

Sorry, IMO you're parsing a bit too much. Entitlement means entitlement; programs legislated over the decades to provide various benefits to Americans, who are therefore "entitled" to receive these benefits. "Rovian" bullshit which attempts to cast these programs in some other "pejorative" context are just that: transparent bullshit, notwithstanding the sad fact that millions of voters who've been brainwashed by FOX want hot sauce with that.
You can have the last word on this: I'm done.

0 # LAellie33 2012-07-30 16:18

LET'S DO IT RIGHT. REELECT PRESIDENT OBAMA WITH A FILIBUSTER-PROO F DEMOCRAT MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE AND WATCH CHANGE HAPPEN!

+6 # mrbadexample 2012-06-14 04:33

There's also a large issue of DEMOGRAPHICS. The spenders in the US economy were/are the baby boomers, and they're retiring. It's one thing to carry credit card debt as a worker at peak earnings; it's quite another to have a big Visa balance when you have fixed income (even if supplemented by pension or savings). And (between the war on Unions and the off-shoring of jobs) the post-Boomer generations will not have anything like the generous salaries and benefits of that generation.

Many of my retired Boomer relatives are also using their disposable incomes to help out their kids, who are struggling with a horrific economy. You aren't spending on restaurants and new cars if you're sending the kids a few hundred to tide them over every month so that they don't have to move to your basement.

The credit card society will not come back. 'Shopping Therapy' is so last decade. there's a widespread understanding that things are not going to get better anytime soon. The habits of thrift are coming back.

-2 # sangjmoon 2012-06-14 07:24

Economic correction is a normal step in the cycle. What we did which was wrong was to artificially prop up the economy by increasing debt which in turn made the economic corrections far more drastic. Instead of learning our lessons, instead we spent even more to get out of each successive correction which only made the next correction even worse. The increasing disparity between the rich and poor is a result of overinflating the money supply as a result of all this debt because the real economy couldn't recirculate the money back down through reinvestment fast enough causing the money to accumulate at the top. Any attempt to artificially redistribute the money will only be temporary at best and at worst, it will have an overall negative effect on the economy ala USSR. The true long term solution is to decrease the size of the money supply so that it keeps pace with the real economy and not go skyrocketing more than the real economy can stably support it.

0 # Salty 2012-06-15 08:28

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. You cannot have a viable middle class if most of the manufacturing jobs have mysteriously swum overseas, and if technology has eaten into what remains, and if the wealthy owners of banks and corporations and the very rich (the so-called one percent) are unwilling to share their newly found vast accumulation of wealth, controlling nearly 40% of the economy according to some pundits. Capitalism has failed to distribute the money fairly. The Rich used to need workers, but now they don't. They have packed up their jobs and won't play no more. We have lost our hundred years war with Big Money, and we don't quite get it yet. The rich are not gonna give it back. Occupy is a beginning. Capitalism is clearly the enemy. Public ownership and public laws that distribute wealth fairly represent one solution. Revolution is the alternative to fair sharing. Better to fight than starve slowly.

0 # LAellie33 2012-07-30 16:15

AGREE.

0 # LAellie33 2012-07-30 16:29

Why my "truthful" posts aren't posted? Probably not this one either.

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