That is correct. Larry Summers happens to be right, this one time, on the issue of what needs to be done to lift the economy out of it's sluggishness.
Some will say that I have not considered the source and will recite decades worth of things Summers has said and done that do not mesh with Progressives values. You know what? They would be correct.
But so what? If he's right now, he right. This is one of those instances where one must decide to be useful, or maintain orthodoxy.
Let me explore further after the orange-squiggly-break-thingy.
The big news here is that Summer's is calling for more stimulus! He happens to be correct.
Here is part of what Summers per the diarist:
...providing the payroll tax cut to employers as well as employees. ...
Here is part of what Reich said:
Enlarge the payroll tax break for workers — not just for employers. Exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes for a year.
They are both proposing the same payroll tax cut. Yet one is praised, and the other has engender and entire diary and comment stream that is all about Summers-hate and not about whether or not, this time, he is correct and therefore useful to us.
While they're proposals may not be exactly the same, they are obviously reading from the same book of demand-side economics. That is the right book from which to capture ideas to help this economy.
Again, here is Summers:
Summers wrote that demand is likely to stay weak without the government taking steps to spur spending.
Here is Reich:
The problem isn’t on the supply side. It’s on the demand side. Businesses are reluctant to spend more and create more jobs because there aren’t enough consumers out there able and willing to buy what businesses have to sell...
Summers again:
He also advocated more spending on public works projects in the near-term, arguing in the Financial Times that the government should "take advantage of a moment when 10-year interest rates are below 3 percent and construction unemployment approaches 20 percent.
Now Reich:
...Create a WPA for the long-term unemployed....
If Summers had offered up some b.s. about a need to cut Medicare, people would rightly be upset and as some would surely say that he was floating a trial balloon or giving us an indication of where the White House is leaning. But now that he is apparently joining all the favorite economist here at DK in calling for more stimulus, not austerity, we aren't listening because we have taken the focus off of helping people in order to maintain orthodoxy.
I think this might, I said might, be a trial balloon from someone now outside the White House, but still possessing some influence. It might be clue that something big is going to happen, maybe in one big package, maybe in pieces, after the debt ceiling crisis is averted and Americans have had their fill of talking about deficits. It might be easier for him to do this now that he is not charged with any responsibilities. His words no longer come from within the "inside".
The past is the past. He has been wrong. But people and the economy need help now and they aren't going to be discerning about who gives it to them if it is the right thing to do!
We should be willing to work with Summers or anyone who happens to have the right idea. If we are ever going to be the dominant political force (does anyone even care about anymore?), we have to learn to play well with people we don't like but who may, from time to time, prove useful to furthering our agenda.
Today, I applaud Larry Summers, for these particular ideas. He happens to be right on the issue of stimulus. Progressives should agree; reactionaries, will not, and will continue to be distracted from actually getting anything done to help people.