Art Decco: That never happened.

My reply: Underwood-Simmons Act (first ever federal income tax), Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission, Child Labor laws, 8 hour workday (for Railroad workers- Commerce Clause), federal government loans to farmers, prohibition amendment. To name a few federal usurpations of state powers.

Whatever your drinking, I want some.

That’s overstated. It is true that his academic career is a demonstration of how, even at elite levels, higher education can function as a patronage mill for the nomenklatura. Someone with Reich’s foundational expertise but without his collection of swell friends might have been a professor at a 2d tier law school with a clutch of publications on the issues he was addressing prior to 1981. Or he might have remained at the Federal Trade Commission. Or he might be at Brookings. Instead, he’s gone from the FTC to the Kennedy School to Clinton cabinet to the public policy program at Brandeis, to the public policy program at Berkeley.

Like John Kenneth Galbraith, he’s published a mess of books pitched to professional-managerial class liberals (and people one ratchet down) who are reading outside their field. However, he’s published only a modest quantum scholarly literature and that portion thereof which was not an extension of topical commentary was found in law reviews which hit the presses between 1972 and 1986. Given the content of his magazine journalism and his general interest books, I was stunned to discover he had no background in economics or in the study of business, or in business enterprise. He’s a lawyer, and one who hasn’t had an actual law job since his days at the FTC. I’ve been able to find no indication that he ever immersed himself in the literature of statistical analysis, yet there he’s been on a public policy faculty. Figures as disparate as Thomas Sowell and Paul Krugman have provided critiques of JK Galbraith’s career. Reich merits the same treatment.

Again, if you remember him at The New Republic or on PBS ca. 1983, you’re struck by the decay of his intellect and civic virtue. It’s a cautionary tale for everyone. I don’t think in his last years as a public figure Galbraith was any worse than he’d ever been. Not so Reich.

I haven’t forgotten it at all. Your scenario is largely imaginary. It took 59 years for federal authorities to discontinue fixed exchange rates, so I’m not sure why you fancy so doing was an inevitable result of erecting a central bank. There’s a reason the federal authorities got rid of gold – it generates unnecessary policy dilemmas and ultimately provides scant benefit. It can, in select circumstances, be quite injurious (see the period running from 1929 to 1933).

“The one troublesome thing which dates from that era would be the foundation of the Bureau of Public Roads,”

Have you forgotten the establishment of the Federal Reserve and its pressure to move the US to our fiat money system or do you assert it to be of no importance?

pat toomey was elected in part on the tea party banner, against specter, but he very quickly resolved to swamp factory settings (see gun control restrictions) and he enabled the steal in his state,

That never happened. During Wilson’s administration, the ratio of federal expenditure to domestic product was < 0.02. The one troublesome thing which dates from that era would be the foundation of the Bureau of Public Roads, as it was among the 1st instances of the federal treasury providing grants to state governments. IIRC, some of the federal regulatory legislation of that era was rather vague about just what the powers of the agencies being incorporated were, and that was also troublesome.

The expansion of the public sector in general has not accelerated. It has tended to increase in a step-wise fashion, with the most salient period being that running from 1940 to 1974. The ratio of public expenditure to domestic product has tended to fluctuate around a set point since 1974. We've seen two attempts in the last 15 years by the Democratic Party to knock it up another step. That's one thing that has to be resisted before you can begin to reduce the public sector to a more appropriate dimension and menu of powers.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what is for lunch.”

The senate filibuster, presidential veto, and any legislation that requires a supermajority to pass is protection from the tyranny of the majority.

Schumer and all the others complaining right now about this fully support those principles when they oppose something.

And Cornhead has identified Schumer’s reason #1.