Robert Reich and Irresponsible Ideology

Robert Reich is one of the spokesmen for the responsible far left in the USA. I say "responsible" since Reich is a former cabinet secretary and he does not advocate violence or permanent protest like the Occupy crowd. Nevertheless, when Reich sets forth the current economic ideology of the left, it is not hard to see just how irresponsible that dogma really is.

Reich just wrote a piece which has been published on Salon and picked up by other sites. Reich explains in his article that manufacturing jobs are not going to come back to America. According to Reich, the efforts by Santorum and Romney to promote manufacturing jobs in their economic plans are a waste of time. Reich even somewhat criticizes Obama for pushing for manufacturing jobs. American labor costs are too high to compete according to Reich, and even if the plants come back they will be heavily mechanized with many fewer jobs available. According to Reich, there is just no future in manufacturing jobs.

But Reich also says that all is not lost; there is a way for the portion of the American middle class with no college degrees to get back their good jobs. The answer, Reich says, is more unionization. That's right, this guru of leftist thought tells us that while there will be no jobs, unions will provide an answer. And while Reich never clearly sets forth just what that answer will be, he does intimate that it involves having unions force American companies to pay out a much higher share of their profits to support or employ American workers. So if an American company is actually able to compete on a global basis, Reich wants to bring in a union to drive up costs and change the equation so that the company will no longer be competitive.

This has to be the most irresponsible ideology I have ever heard, short of using human sacrifice to placate the gods. Reich wants to shake down successful companies for cash which will inevitably drive those companies either out of business or, at least, out of the USA. It is the inevitable result of economic competition that only the most efficient can survive, but Reich, who well knows this, wants to make all American companies less efficient by dring up their costs. In the Middle Ages, certain sick people were suspected of being attacked by demons. In order to cure these folks, holes were drilled in their heads so as to let the demons out. Of course, the patients died, but those "treating" the patient felt like they were doing something to help. Reich's sort of help is much the same thing.