Here's Ralph Nader, who has a new book out and is promoting it in this rambling book appearance in Washington DC, that I saw recently on C-SPAN.
In a long, rambling and endlessly repeating speech, with question-and answer after.
http://c-spanvideo.org/program/SteameNader appears to be drinking the OWS Kool-Aid, and completely ignores that OWS, while ostensibly opposing corporatism, actually
is the left side of corporatism, in the form of Unions, MoveOn, CodePink, and supporting of corporate welfare that occurs through Obama's "green technology" to corporations like GE and Solyndra.
I voted for Nader in 2000. I would never do so again. He reveals himself here both deluded and partisan, in what he willfuly ignores about OWS and the left.
I don't know if Nader is veering away from the Occupy Wall Street crowd at all. But here's a more concise offer of his proposed solutions to revitalize the economy and stagnant wages.
From 4 nights ago on O'Reilly's program:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html#/v/3551623204001Nader proposes:
1) Raise the minimum wage, and the increased wage will be spent by workers and stiumulate the economy.
2) Get rid of corporate tax shelters and corporate subsidies that they don't need.
3) Stop all our overseas wars and bring the money spent on them home to the U.S.
4) Eliminate "job destroying, sovereignty-shredding free trade" that lowers U.S. wages, takes capital and jobs out of the U.S., and empowers brutal dictatorships.
5) Make corporations pay fair taxes like workers do (vs. the above listed tax shelters and subsidies).
6) Break up the "too big to fail" investment banks that risk destroying our entire economy.
O'Reilly gives good counterpoint of what raising the minimum wage would logically do (i.e., raise prices and eliminate 500,000 jobs), and of what Nader's other proposed reforms would do.
Nader said his projections, that raising the minimum wage would stimulate the economy and create jobs, were "based on research". But he didn't cite any stats or sources to support that assertion. I agree about splitting up and diminishing the size of "too big to fail" investment banks, and eliminating corporate subsidies.
I like Nader, and would like to believe he is offering real alternative solutions. But he increasingly seems ideologically dug in, and resistant to the fair criticisms offered about what the things he proposes would logically do.
How corporations would not just tolerate these changes inside the U.S., but would instead legally dodge these reforms, pass on the added cost to consumers, and ultimately move to nations with lower corporate tax rates.
It's easy to offer platitudes about how things "should" be, and harder to come up with pragmatic solutions that companies, workers, and governments, will adhere to.
