The Yahoo News article Bipartisan infrastructure plan: ‘If this is a take it or leave it…I’m going to leave it,’ Rep. DeFazio says has prompted this post.

Pretty good interview with Rep. DeFazio He and other Democrats still haven’t come up with a good answer on inflation. This was better than most, but still not good enough. He could mention that the Fed is already pumping inflation into the non-productive stock market and the hard asset market. He could point out that if we shifted that source of money to go to investments in the future, this will probably stave off any future inflation. In fact it is essential to remove the necessity of the Fed pumping up the stock market by shifting the monetary stimulus of the Fed to a more fiscally oriented stimulus from Congress.

YouTube has the INET video The Rise and Fall of the Black Blue-Collar Middle Class.

Umass Lowell Economics professor William Lazonick, outlines the history of how government and economic conditions favored the rise of a Black blue-collar middle class from the 1960’s to the 1970’s, and how shifts in policy and in the economy caused its unmaking from the 1980’s onwards.

The above quote does more justice to this interview that the title that INET chose to use.

Wow, this talk explains so much. I have just finished watching this. I’ll probably be digesting all I learned from this for a long time. One thing they did not get around to discussing were the rules that allow vulture capitalists to buy out any company that is trying to fix the current situation. Not only do the vulture capitalists make huge fortunes by stripping the assets of these companies, but they also scare any other companies from trying to do the right thing. At some point we have to change the rules to protect companies who want to do the right thing, and punish the vulture capitalists who want to ruin the society.