The problem isn’t ‘inflation’. It’s that most Americans aren’t paid enough | Robert Reich

The real worry is the gap between what the country produces and what average folks can afford to consume. Inequality is eating our economy

Hours after the Democrats passed their $3.5tn budget for Joe Biden's American Families Plan - including childcare, community college, extended Medicare and measures to slow climate change - the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, whose vote is necessary to get it through the Senate, made an ominous announcement. He had serious concerns" about its size, warning it would add trillions of dollars to the national debt and spur inflation.

One expects Republican lawmakers to demagogue about inflation and spending. To hear this from a Democrat is jaw-dropping.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist