http://www.salon.com...emium%29_7_30_110

R. Reich tries for KISS (It's Salon, after all) re some Duh observations, apparently as ... all go Zoooom over the D.C. Mafiosi.

Duh simplified, for the mouth-breathers from the Confederate States--sites of the most jaw-dropping unrationales in the history of infotainment:

[. . .]

Here’s the problem: Both categories of customer are buying less.

Individual consumers are buying less because they have less take-home pay. Their wages are dropping (the median wage is 8 percent below what it was in 2000, adjusted for inflation). And their taxes have gone up. The expiration of the Social Security payroll tax cut will shrink the typical paycheck by more than $1,000 this year.

Less take-home pay is causing 45.7 percent of consumers to pull in their belts, according to a survey released Thursday by the National Retail Federation. A quarter of consumers are putting off big-ticket purchases. A third are cutting back on eating out. A fifth are spending less on groceries.

This is why January’s retail sales rose at their smallest rate in three months.

What about the other big customer – government? It used to be that when consumers spent less, government stepped into the breach and spent more in order to keep people employed. That’s what we were supposed to have learned from the Great Depression.

No longer. Government is cutting back, too. Deficit hawks and government-haters are insisting on it.

At some point, simple mental health shall dictate that I cease even absording such Live/bogus Crap--
resembling the stench on Hiway 5, as one passes The Harris Ranch: acres of poor fucking cattle knee-deep in that Other form of literally pure-shit.

your *Credentialed* hat:
It offends the academics/intellectuals and suggests.. a limited vocabulary; besides:
the substantial-Difference between Bizness majors and 'Economics' majors is:

The bizness droids are {merely and always} striving to discover new ways to foil any sane regulations which confound their over-developed reptile brains aka: It's All about Me-Me-Me
-and-
The Econ folk (imagine that they) are all about designing algorithms for a decent/livable society [Well, the Decent ones are]
and only the Best of these have copped to the truth that: *there is no such thing as, "The Market" == that mythical Thing
--which needs no outside/socially-responsible: CONTROLS.

* An excellent synopsis on Moyers, last night (here):

Taming Capitalism Run Wild
Economist Richard Wolff on economic justice; journalist Saru Jayaraman ("Behind the Kitchen Door") on the pay and working conditions within the restaurant industry.

Or, simpler (if I have properly distilled countless 'essays' over the eons--til I can't stand to add one more):
There is NO ALGORITHM for designing a Livable society; Reason and Wisdom, applied frequently IS ALL the tool box we have for eternal vigilance.

The formula-seekers are soo mentally-fucked, they aren't even wrong.
This is BAD for mentally lazy and innumerate Muricans: they haven't ANY tools for the massive reorganization coming, via difficult, painful planning or ... by nasty mob action.

{{sigh}}

So Glad I'm not 30ish with 2.2 children and imagining ... ... that Murican Dreamscape.. just around the corner!
The 1% possesses neither shame nor scruples--merely calcified-Greed. I see: I see ... strife enroute;
no fine temperate words shall alter their solipsism: Blood will, because they have compromised in the past,
but only when Forced.

Aux Barricades!