ROBERT REICH : DRIVE A STAKE THROUGH THE HEART OF DEAD END CENTRISM

Economist Robert Reich would find few supporters for his views within the Labour Government or the other market-loyal parliamentary parties.

THE BIDEN administration's plans for large scale financial relief and recovery from the economic  damage inflicted by the coronavirus is the kind of spending that would be regarded as reckless by our fiscally conservative Labour Government. The fact that the $US1.8 trillion relief package is being funded entirely by borrowing would be regarded as nothing less than 'unsustainable' by our finance minister Grant Robertson, a man who remains loyal to neoliberalism and the doctrine of austerity.

But economist Robert Reich doesn't think Biden's spending plans go far enough and he has called for 'public investment on a scale far greater than necessary for Covid relief or 'stimulus' - large enough to begin the restructuring of the economy.' Reich wants to see the final upending of neoliberalism.

Although he doesn't go as far as concluding that 'capitalism is irredeemable' - the view of congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - he has also lent his support to her push for a Green New Deal, writing that 'if we don't launch something as bold as a Green New Deal, we'll have to  spend trillions coping with the damaging effects of more hurricanes, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels'.

Reich has concluded that the United States, within its present market-led economic policy perimeters, is ill-equipped to deal with such pressing issues as growing inequality and poverty and climate change and rejects the assumption that they can be any return to a pre-virus 'normal'.

Writing on his website he urges Biden to 'drive a stake through the heart of dead end centrism' and that advancing democracy 'means boldly advancing the needs of average people over the plutocrats and oligarchs, of the white working class as well as Black and Latin people. It means embracing the struggle for racial justice and the struggle of blue-collar workers whose fortunes have been declining for decades.'

It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in New Zealand that the views of Robert Reich, which belong fairly and squarely within a progressive social democratic tradition, would gain next to no traction not only within the Labour Government but within the other parliamentary parties as well.

We live in a country where so-called 'progressives' defend Labour's neoliberalism as the 'lesser evil' and boast about its conservatism as 'the new radicalism'. We live in a country where the Green Party won't support a Green New Deal because it cuts across its support for so-called 'market environmentalism' or 'green capitalism'. We live in a country where the extremism of the political centre still prevails and where the continued defence of the economic status quo is driving more and more New Zealanders to the margins of society and is laying the foundations for a surge in support for the kind of right wing populism that led to the presidency of Donald Trump.  We live in a country where the political class regards someone like Robert Reich as a political heretic.