Throughout his first year in office, Reich was a leading proponent of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was negotiated by the George H. W. Bush administration and supported by Clinton following two side agreements negotiated to satisfy labor and environmental groups. Reich served as leading public and private spokesman for the Clinton administration against organized labor, who continued to oppose the Agreement as a whole.
In July 1993, Reich said that the unions were “just plain wrong” to suggest NAFTA would cause a loss of American employment and predicted that “given the pace of growth of the Mexican automobile market over the next 15 years, I would say that more automobile jobs would be created in the United States than would be lost to Mexico… [T]he American automobile industry will grow substantially, and the net effect will be an increase in automobile jobs.” He further argued that trade liberalization following World War II had led to the "biggest increase in jobs and standard of living among the industrialized nations [in] history. "[31]
Sounds more like him being wrong and/or lied to by the Clinton administration that was mostly far to the right of him on just about anything than any sort of malice on his part, much less “going out of his way to screw the working class”…
Yes, really, because you want to give him this huge benefit of the doubt when it’s one of the few things where he actually had influence and what he did was the opposite of all the principles he professes. Occam’s razor there is that it’s just classic political hypocrisy, waxing poetic all day about your principles but then doing the wrong thing any time it actually counts.
No, I’m giving him the benefit of everything else he’s ever done. That’s not just doubt, that’s evidence of a several decades pattern of behaviour that in no way fits your supposition.
As for it being “one of the few things where he actually had influence”, that’s overstating how much influence he ever had when Clinton set his mind to something while simultaneously ignoring his massively influential work in academia and documentary film making.
Occam would take his razor away from you since you obviously have no clue how it or indeed anything works.
First of all, NAFTA wasn’t Reich any more than the IRA was Bernie Sanders; it had been in the works since 1988 and his involvement wasn’t significant enough to merit a single mention in the Wikipedia article (unlike such people as Al Gore, Chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers Laura Tyson, Director of the National Economic Council Robert Rubin, and even Republican Congressman David Dreier, all of which were mentioned specifically by Clinton at the signing), so giving him the blame is absolutely ridiculous.
As for HIS actual accomplishments, this reply is already plenty long, especially considering that you have probably made up your mind and won’t believe it no matter what, so I’m just gonna direct you to his Wikipedia article where you can see for yourself.
In what way did Robert Reich of all people “go out of his way to screw the working class”?
This should be good…
Guessing it’s this:
Sounds more like him being wrong and/or lied to by the Clinton administration that was mostly far to the right of him on just about anything than any sort of malice on his part, much less “going out of his way to screw the working class”…
That is an extremely generous take.
Not really, no. Would be extremely out of character and go against what he’s been doing for all the rest of career to deliberately hurt workers.
He didn’t leave the Clinton administration because everyone agreed with him and let him do what he thought was best without undue influence…
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Yes, really, because you want to give him this huge benefit of the doubt when it’s one of the few things where he actually had influence and what he did was the opposite of all the principles he professes. Occam’s razor there is that it’s just classic political hypocrisy, waxing poetic all day about your principles but then doing the wrong thing any time it actually counts.
No, I’m giving him the benefit of everything else he’s ever done. That’s not just doubt, that’s evidence of a several decades pattern of behaviour that in no way fits your supposition.
As for it being “one of the few things where he actually had influence”, that’s overstating how much influence he ever had when Clinton set his mind to something while simultaneously ignoring his massively influential work in academia and documentary film making.
Occam would take his razor away from you since you obviously have no clue how it or indeed anything works.
OK, what were his other accomplishments, or points of big influence? Anything bigger than NAFTA?
First of all, NAFTA wasn’t Reich any more than the IRA was Bernie Sanders; it had been in the works since 1988 and his involvement wasn’t significant enough to merit a single mention in the Wikipedia article (unlike such people as Al Gore, Chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers Laura Tyson, Director of the National Economic Council Robert Rubin, and even Republican Congressman David Dreier, all of which were mentioned specifically by Clinton at the signing), so giving him the blame is absolutely ridiculous.
As for HIS actual accomplishments, this reply is already plenty long, especially considering that you have probably made up your mind and won’t believe it no matter what, so I’m just gonna direct you to his Wikipedia article where you can see for yourself.