Robert Reich: Obama can can take on Romney and the system that allows private-equity managers to continue to make huge profits at the expense of average Americans.
JP Morgan’s $2 Billion Case for Breaking Up Big Banks
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Robert Reich: Let’s also stop hoping Wall Street will mend itself. What just happened at J.P. Morgan reveals how fragile and opaque the banking system continues to be.
Not Socialism, but Better, Fairer Capitalism
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Robert Reich: The answer is to reform capitalism. The world’s productivity revolution is outpacing the political will of rich societies to fairly distribute its benefits.
The Stall Has Arrived
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Robert Reich: @idening inequality is the underlying culprit. As long as almost all the gains from economic growth continue to go to the top, the vast middle class doesn’t have the purchasing power to boost the economy on its own.
The Tinder-Box Society
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Robert Reich: Most of the gains from the productivity revolution are going to the owners of capital, while typical workers are either unemployed or underemployed, or else getting wages and benefits whose real value continues to drop.
The GOP’s Death Wish
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Robert Reich: How can a political party be so dumb as to piss off Hispanics, women, and young people? Because the core of its base is middle-aged white men.
How Europe’s Double Dip Could Become America’s
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Robert Reich: Republicans have become the U.S. party of Angela Merkel, demanding and getting spending cuts at the worst possible time – and ignoring the economic and social consequences.
Did O’Reilly Really Call Robert Reich a Commie?
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Robert Reich: What makes America’s current polarization remarkable isn’t the severity of our disagreements but our utter lack of engagement debating them.
Thoughts on Tax Day 2012
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Robert Reich: I worry about the well-financed big lies that the very rich are the nation’s “job creators,” that the benefits from tax cuts on the rich “trickle down” to everyone else.
Fair Economy Essential to Growth
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Robert Reich: Wealth percolates upward from working people who are adequately educated, healthy, sufficiently rewarded, and who feel they have a fair chance to make it in America.
Mitt’s Low-Tax Killing
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Robert Reich: Now that Mitt Romney is the presumed Republican candidate, it’s fair to ask how he made so much money ($21 million in 2010 alone) and paid such a low tax rate (only 14.9 percent).
Beyond Outrage
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Robert Reich: I have never been as concerned as I am now about the future of our democracy, the corrupting effects of big money in our politics, the stridency and demagoguery of the regressive right, and the accumulation of wealth and power at the very top.
What Today’s Job Numbers Mean
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Robert Reich: We’ll avoid a double-dip, but the most likely scenario in coming months is a continuation of the same – an anemic jobs recovery.
Social Darwinism or a Decent Society
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Robert Reich: The Romney-Ryan plan, by the way, is the most radical reverse-Robin Hood proposal propounded by any political party in modern America.
Turning America Into a Giant Casino
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Robert Reich: In the most recent Mega Millions game – whose winning tickets were drawn last week and whose jackpot rose to $640 million – lottery ticket buyers shelled out some $1.5 billion, most of which went to state governments.
Whose Recovery?
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Robert Reich: The reverse-Robin Hood budget plan just announced by Paul Ryan and House Republicans (and endorsed by Mitt Romney) would make the lopsidedness far worse – dramatically cutting taxes on the rich and slashing public services everyone else depends on.
Healthcare Jujitsu
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Robert Reich: With a bit of political jujitsu, the President could turn any such defeat at the Supreme Court into a victory for a single-payer healthcare system – Medicare for all.
Mitt: We’re No Longer in an Etch-a-Sketch World
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Robert Reich: There will be too many videos of Willard “Mitt” Romney during the primary saying things that were designed to appeal to increasingly far-right, far-out GOP primary voters – but will strike most Americans as bizarre if not despicable.
What Republicans Argue When They Have Nothing Left to Say
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Robert Reich: It doesn’t even matter that the new Republican tax cut plan would probably raise taxes on many lower-income Americans, All that matters is the headlines.
Why Goldman’s Greg Smith’s Critique Is Way Too Narrow
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Robert Reich: If you took the greed out of Wall Street all you’d have left is pavement. The problem is endemic abuse of power and trust.
Bye Bye American Pie
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Robert Reich: Although the nation is now producing more goods and services than it did before the slump began in 2007, we’re doing it with six million fewer people.
Stop Starving Public Universities and Shrinking the Middle Class
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Robert Reich: Public higher education has been the gateway to the middle class but that gate is shutting – just when income and wealth are more concentrated at the top than they’ve been since the 1920s, and when America needs the brainpower of its young people more than ever.
The GOP’s Big Investors
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Robert Reich: Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner? If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president.
The Gas Wars
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Robert Reich: Nothing drives voter sentiment like the price of gas – now averaging $3.56 a gallon, up 30 cents from the start of the year. It’s already hit $4 in some places. The last time gas topped $4 was 2008.
Manufacturing Illusions:
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Robert Reich: Suddenly, manufacturing is back – at least on the election trail. But don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing.
The Sad Spectacle of Obama’s Super PAC
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Robert Reich: The sad truth is Obama has never really occupied the high ground on campaign finance. He refused public financing in 2008. Once president, he didn’t go to bat for a system of public financing.
Mitt Misses Middle Class’s Decline
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Robert Reich: January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.
Why Jobs Still Matter More Than Budget Deficits
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Robert Reich: Government should extend unemployment benefits, and not cut spending until the nation’s rate of unemployment is down to 5 percent. Then, and only then, should we move toward budget austerity.
The Republican Myth of Obama’s “Entitlement Society”
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Robert Reich: Regressive Republicans pretend they’re about opportunity. In reality they’re back at what they’ve been doing for years — promoting Social Darwinism.
What’s the Economy for Anyway?
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Robert Reich: The biggest problem is that corporate money is undermining democratic institutions in the name of better deals for consumers and investors.
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