Les Leopold – Hillary’s Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash

Billed as a major populist economic address, Hillary Clinton recently put forth her jobs program in Michigan.

Wall Street is smiling.

Her program fits perfectly within the neoliberal framework as she focuses on how to use public funds and policies to promote private sector gain. There are tax incentives to urge large and small corporations to create more jobs in the U.S. There are tax breaks to encourage corporations to provide more training and profit sharing plans. And there are tax breaks to promote long term investment instead of short-term gains.  To balance this equation, she also calls for exit taxes if companies take tax breaks and then move out of the country. Her mantra is clear: if you do right to the American people, we’ll do right by you.

Along the way, she waxes euphoric about the buoyancy of the private sector:  “New businesses are opening. Families are moving in. The streetlights are on again. The buses and running again. There is a palpable feeling of pride and community and we have to spread economic revitalization to all of Detroit’s neighborhoods.” (See here [3] for full speech.)

Not a word is mentioned about public goods or public sector jobs. Clearly, the only real job is a private sector job.

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