The end of the binge
Washington is offering perfectly “normal remedies” to our coming “recession, or worse,” says Robert Reich in The New York Times. Too bad “this isn’t a normal downturn.” We’re at the end of a three-decade “spending binge” by consumers, because consumers have “run out of ways” to “live beyond their paychecks.” The coming stimulus is “temporary” assistance, but “the problems most consumers face are permanent.” And they know it. The core problem is that median wages have been flat or declining for 35 years. And the only “lasting” way to get the party restarted is to give the “bottom two-thirds of Americans” a long-needed raise.
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