The Big Lies

Subject: Propaganda 101: the Big Lie

Knowing it's a lie is the first step.....knowing how to explain the truth is the next step.

"Demagogues through history have known that big lies, repeated often enough, start being believed - unless they're rebutted. These seven economic whoppers are just plain wrong. Make sure you know the truth."

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
The Seven Biggest Economic Lies
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's blog
12 October 11

The president's jobs bill doesn't have a chance in Congress - and the occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can't become a national movement for a more equitable society - unless more Americans know the truth about the economy.
Here's a short (2 minute 30 second) effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take America backwards. The major points:
Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else. Baloney. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans' wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and has dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

Higher taxes on the rich would hurt the economy and slow job growth. False. From the end of World War II until 1981, the richest Americans faced a top marginal tax rate of 70 percent or above. Under Dwight Eisenhower it was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, the top taxes on the very rich were far higher than they've been since. Yet the economy grew faster during those years than it has since. (Don't believe small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax; fewer than 2 percent of small business owners are in the highest tax bracket.)

Shrinking government generates more jobs. Wrong again. It means fewer government workers - everyone from teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and social workers at the state and local levels to safety inspectors and military personnel at the federal. And fewer government contractors, who would employ fewer private-sector workers. According to Moody's economist Mark Zandi (a campaign advisor to John McCain), the $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by the House GOP will cost the economy 700,000 jobs this year and next.


Cutting the budget deficit now is more important than boosting the economy. Untrue. With so many Americans out of work, budget cuts now will shrink the economy. They'll increase unemployment and reduce tax revenues. That will worsen the ratio of the debt to the total economy. The first priority must be getting jobs and growth back by boosting the economy. Only then, when jobs and growth are returning vigorously, should we turn to cutting the deficit.


Medicare and Medicaid are the major drivers of budget deficits. Wrong. Medicare and Medicaid spending is rising quickly, to be sure. But that's because the nation's health-care costs are rising so fast. One of the best ways of slowing these costs is to use Medicare and Medicaid's bargaining power over drug companies and hospitals to reduce costs, and to move from a fee-for-service system to a fee-for-healthy outcomes system. And since Medicare has far lower administrative costs than private health insurers, we should make Medicare available to everyone.

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. Don't believe it. Social Security is solvent for the next 26 years. It could be solvent for the next century if we raised the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. That ceiling is now $106,800.

It's unfair that lower-income Americans don't pay income tax. Wrong. There's nothing unfair about it. Lower-income Americans pay out a larger share of their paychecks in payroll taxes, sales taxes, user fees, and tolls than everyone else.
Demagogues through history have known that big lies, repeated often enough, start being believed - unless they're rebutted. These seven economic whoppers are just plain wrong. Make sure you know the truth - and spread it on.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written thirteen books, including "The Work of Nations," "Locked in the Cabinet," "Supercapitalism" and his latest book, "AFTERSHOCK: The Next Economy and America's Future." His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.


The Rev. Holly Beaumont, D. Min.
Organizing Director
Interfaith Worker Justice - NM

PO Box 23468

Santa Fe, NM 87502
505-660-5018
hbeaumont@iwj.org
www.iwj.org

“A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.”

I only disagree with this post on one area: telling the truth will not get people to believe the truth. The truth is what money pays for. The truth is a Madison Avenue fiction. The truth is Special K to lose weight; the truth is the medicines for depression and everything else that are hawked on television; the truth is a Whopper with all the fixings; the truth is Donald Trump's opinions and the opinions of those who have the money to promote.

Truth today is what money can buy. The best thing I've heard so far is that President Obama is going to start using his executive authority to put in place policies that will help this country. It's a pitiful necessity, scarey actually that our democratic system that we push on the world as superior has reached this stalemate of ineffective legislation.

It goes to the same thread that money and power control. I don't have any money. My neighbors are just making it. Everybody I know is trying hard to survive and just doesn't have the time to determine what's truth and what's false. They just hang onto a television station or a radio station to tell them their truth. They don't read. They communicate on social media. They surround themselves with like thinkers.

I ride to the Y four days a week with three people who believe the lies. They have comfortable retirements because they worked hard. They want to hold onto what they have and the Republicans will do it for them. Big government is the destroyer of individual freedom. To hear them finding something worthy about the current slate of Republican candidates is laughable. They shut me up by calling me a liberal, a person who wants government to take care of people so the industrious gain nothing for their labors.

I'd like to see what the industrious have today. They lost their houses (oh, that was those who should not have had a house in the first place). I almost lost mine; I guess I deserved that for helping an ill family member and exhausting my reserves because of the lack of universal health care.

If they are working, they are working scared and not moving up, not making waves, not taking risks. The ability to take risks and start new ventures is what made this nation economically sound.

People need work to build hope and pride. The country needs infrastructure. It's a no brainer. However, those whose lives go on unfettered by this economy have no need to help this country; they are global. Their money comes from our high gas prices. No matter how we live, they prosper. They prosper more with lower taxes and less government. Both mean free reign for corruption and the rape of the earth's resources: air, land, water, minerals, vegetation....

Too early.

Thanks, Abe, for trying to shed some light on truth. Lady truth has left the room.