In my opinion, it’s important to keep in mind that Summers is a bourgeois economist, and thus writes for the upper echelons of society; this is not written for you or me, although he occasionally mentions us. It’s for policy makers, to comfort business elites, and to manufacture consent of the more well-employed (the types to read WP) so that when the fed does shit, they won’t be caught off guard and can have a mild reaction to it happening for real; so they can rest assured that (bad-faith) experts have been “thinking hard” about it, etc.

Stuff like this

Higher minimum wages, strengthened unions, increased employee benefits and strengthened regulation are all desirable, but they, too, all push up business costs and prices.

“You fucking moron, don’t you know that when good things happen to you that’s actually bad?”

But in general, a lot of this first portion, the “evidence”, is basically “look, stuff is happening so fast, X is growing and Y is falling at unprecedented rates!”. IMO, coming out of the most extreme economic downturn since the Great Depression, yeah, there’s a lot of room for all this shit to grow. And none of it will even reach the path we were on before the pandemic; there’s gonna be permanent “scarring” to both macroeconomic measures GDP etc, as well as employment prospects for so many workers.

So whatever, a bunch of shit I find questionable—since we know living conditions are not rising for the majority of Americans, except that those fortunate enough to get unemployment payments have had something of a brief respite (a huge issue I have is also focusing on big aggregate numbers that lump together the poorest and wealthiest so that when the number gets bigger he can say “we’re all doing great, look, it’s right there in the data!”)

What is he advocating?

First, starting at the Fed, policymakers need to help contain inflation expectations and reduce the risk of a major contractionary shock by explicitly recognizing that overheating, and not excessive slack, is the predominant near-term risk for the economy. Tightening is likely to be necessary, and it is critical to set the stage for that delicate process. Meanwhile, the administration needs to continue to respect the independence of the Fed as it changes course. Clear statements that the United States desires a strong dollar will also be helpful in anchoring inflation expectations.

I don’t fucking know what this means, it’s not for us, remember. The best sense of it I can make is that he’s saying we need to tell “job creators” (the mortal enemies of the working class, who expropriate the wealth that we create) that we’re gonna be tough on poors. “Slack” means that the economy isn’t running at full speed; that we can do more employment and make more stuff and profits. But business dicks can rest assured this is not the case cause, that in fact it’s the poors that have it too good; they have it so good that being able to pay rent has actually overheated the economy.

Third, it is essential to make long-term public investments to increase productivity and enable more people to work. It would be a grave error to cut back excessively on public-investment ambitions out of inflation concerns. That is not because of the immediate jobs they create, but because of the long-term increases they generate in productive potential, sustainability and inclusivity. But where possible, infrastructure investments should be financed by reprogramming of Rescue Plan funds, such as those now being used by some states to finance tax cuts. Additionally, current spending financed by future taxes might further stimulate an already overheated economy. The opposite — revenue increases ahead of spending, or at least parallel to spending — can ensure more sustainable growth.

I find this kinda confusing. Seems like he’s saying the feds shouldn’t stop investing, but cut back on investing. Just absolutely dogbrained “let the private market sort this stuff out!”. Also appeals to austerity; “we can’t spend money unless we have the money first; our great grandchildren are gonna be saddled in debt” shit

But here’s the real point of the article IMO. It’s the middle of three suggestions so you see it, but it doesn’t catch your attention too much by being either first or last.

Second, policies toward workers should be aimed at the labor shortage that is our current reality. Unemployment benefits enabling workers to earn more by not working than working should surely be allowed to run out in September; in some parts of the country they should end sooner. Re-employment bonuses should be considered, and a major focus should be on promoting mobility and training workers for occupations where labor is short. Where “made-in-America” requirements exacerbate labor shortages and raise prices, they should be reconsidered.

This is the big ass-showing by Summers. From above, we know the poors have overheated the economy (leading to inflation) by spending the great gobs of money they’ve been given, and now we’ve got the real solution: it’s time to shut off the spigot.