Confused tripe

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor from 1993-1997, starts out well enuf:

To claim that people shouldn't have access to Wal-Mart or to cut-rate airfares or services from India or to Internet shopping, because these somehow reduce their quality of life, is paternalistic tripe. No one is a better judge of what people want than they themselves.

Then Reich engages in his own tripe, which may be blamed but not excused on space constraints. It is his job to make his point persuasive.

The only way for the workers or citizens in us to trump the consumers in us is through laws and regulations that make our purchases a social choice as well as a personal one. A requirement that companies with more than 50 employees offer their workers affordable health insurance, for example, might increase slightly the price of their goods and services. My inner consumer won't like that very much, but the worker in me thinks it a fair price to pay.

So why did Mr. Reich not just go to the American store selling over-priced merchandise in the first place? He feels guilty that he didn't, and needs to expiate his guilt by using the government to force him- and his fellow Americans- to Buy American. Essentially a "Stop me before I shop again" at the point of the regulators' guns.

One problem with this column is that he makes not the slightest attempt to tell us how his regulations would encourage Americans to buy American. He offers only nostrums which would make American goods and services even less competitive by driving up government-imposed costs. How does that help?

Reich knows perfectly well that driving up American costs will not help if Americans are allowed to shop overseas: the only way he could make this work is by imposing the same costs on overseas companies: that is, making American laws apply to those in India, Taiwan, Malaysia, and everywhere else. He knows that, but he doesn't make that obvious point.

Reich may have sophisticated arguments, but he makes none here, and that failure makes his column in fact tripe. Shame on the former Secretary of Labor.