He was the one who wanted to index the minimum wage to inflation.

Yet the rich devote a smaller percentage of their earnings to buying things than the rest of us because, after all, they’re rich. They already have most of what they want. Instead of buying, and thus stimulating the American economy, the rich are more likely to invest their earnings wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

Sure, building factories, investing in new technologies, and creating wealth production have nothing to do with economic growth. Economic growth is all about buying things, many of which are made overseas anyway. To build a new widget factory, a company simply waits until enough middle class people have bought widgets to save up the profits on each widget until they have the money for expansion. Capital? What's that?

A larger earned-income tax credit, financed by a higher marginal income tax on top earners, is required. The tax credit functions like a reverse income tax. Enlarging it would mean giving workers at the bottom a bigger wage supplement, as well as phasing it out at a higher wage. The current supplement for a worker with two children who earns up to $16,000 a year is about $5,000. That amount declines as earnings increase and is eliminated at about $38,000. It should be increased to, say, $8,000 at the low end and phased out at an income of $46,000.

This is simple wealth redistribution for political gain.

The bottom 50 percent of all income tax payers is set at an income level below about $31,000. The income taxes paid by this group are nil, with 66,365,000 taxpayers coughing up a grand total of $29.6 billion dollars, or about three percent of all income taxes paid. A tax credit to people who pay no taxes is a welfare payment. But hey, it buys votes.

We also need stronger unions, especially in the local service sector that’s sheltered from global competition. Employees should be able to form a union without the current protracted certification process that gives employers too much opportunity to intimidate or coerce them. Workers should be able to decide whether to form a union with a simple majority vote.

Not surprising, either. Unions are largely mechanisms for funneling worker money into Democratic Party coffers.