Robert Reich

Stop AI Before it's Too Late

Robert Reich — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:03:05 GMT

Friends,

I’m going to make a proposal today that’s almost certain to get me consigned to the neo-Luddite dustbin of history.

But first, let me lay out some facts.

Rather than producing jobs, the U.S. economy actually lost 23,000 job in July, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday. In addition, May’s and June’s job numbers were revised downward, showing a combined 103,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.

As if this weren’t bad enough, wage growth has also slowed. Average hourly earnings In July were just 0.1 percent higher than in June. This isn’t just a single month’s slow wage growth, either. Average hourly earnings increased just 3.2 percent over the past year — the lowest annual growth rate in five years.

What’s going on? It’s too early to tell. But evidence is mounting that artificial intelligence is playing a role.

New research by economists at Morgan Stanley shows that the rate of unemployment is half a percentage point higher than it would otherwise be in occupations exposed to AI, which they put at about 30 percent of all employment. The effect is even more dramatic among younger people.

Wage growth in jobs exposed to AI has contracted by 6.7 percent since 2023, according to research by economists Sania Edlich and Apollo Global Management’s Torsten Slok. This has resulted in at least $28 billion in losses for 5.8 million affected workers.

These findings still don’t explain the startling loss of jobs in July or the downward revisions for May and June. There are probably many factors at play. But they suggest that employers may be anticipating they’ll need fewer workers in the future — and won’t need to pay them all that much in order to attract them.

It’s possible that AI may create more jobs over the long term. But as John Maynard Keynes once noted, over the long term we’re all dead.

More than half of Americans surveyed by Reuters/Ipsos in June say they’re worried AI will put someone in their household out of work.

Edlich and Slok write that “the critical policy question is not whether AI will reshape the labor market more broadly, but how quickly, and whether workers will have the support they need when it does.”

As a former secretary of labor who’s kept his eyes focused on the Trump regime, I can assure you workers won’t have the support they need any time soon.

And even if AI begins to generate the productivity bonanza its advocates predict — but hasn’t yet — there’s no reason to assume American workers will see any of the benefits in their paychecks. If you hadn’t noticed, wages have been stuck even as the stock market has roared.

To the contrary, all signs point to vast riches for a few major AI investors and executives while most Americans are left behind.

Wealth inequality is already at record levels, and wealth at the top is quickly morphing into political power.

AI is creating a vast wave of campaign money. OpenAI’s superPAC “Leading the Future” has amassed over $140 million to influence upcoming elections, while Anthropic’s superPAC “Public First Action” isn’t far behind.

As the great jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said, “America has a choice: we can have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy, but we can’t have both.”

AI is pushing us further toward the first option.

Meanwhile, there’s the planet to consider.

Amazon is now investing in a large-scale natural-gas power plant as part of a huge data center in Pecos County, Texas — a facility that could become the largest single source of climate pollution in the United States.

It’s racing to build enough data centers to keep pace with other giant AI corporations and secure the electricity to power them. Amazon’s new gas-burning plant is permitted to release 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, regulatory records show, more planet-warming gases than any other power plant in America.

So much for Amazon’s promise to eliminate its planet-warming emissions by 2040 as part of its Climate Pledge. You can bet other giants in the AI race will be turning to natural gas, too.

Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the Frankenstein monster in the room. A few weeks ago, OpenAI admitted that two of its artificial intelligence models went rogue and successfully hacked into a digital library of AI technology.

The incident, which happened while OpenAI was testing the cybersecurity capabilities of its systems, was the kind of science-fiction nightmare that could soon be a reality. How soon before AI models escape all their cages?

Just last week, scientists published a study documenting how they used A.I. to create new kinds of viruses, raising the frightful possibility that the technology could be used to invent dangerous pathogens.

Lost jobs. Lost wages. Widening inequality. Data centers using up water and electricity and polluting the climate. Vastly more money polluting our politics. Models escaping their cages and hacking into everything, possibly threatening human life on this planet.

Can we pause for a moment and talk about what’s really happening here?

As sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom writes, AI has merged regressive politics with unchecked economic power under the guise of technological innovation.

Far too much money is giving a small group of unelected people extraordinary power to determine our future in ways that are likely to remake — and could possibly destroy — our lives.

We’re watching all of this roll out as if we have no choice, as if it’s inevitable, as if AI is just something we’re going to have to adapt to.

But why should we have to adapt to it, when it is the product of people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, and Dario Amodei?

Why should we be confined to being spectators at their enormously dangerous game? Why should we have to accept all these hugely negative, potentially life-threatening consequences?

The fact is, we don’t.

Communities across America are organizing against data centers near them. MAGAs and progressives are joining together to say “no” to the noise, higher electricity bills, and water shortages.

Well, then, why can’t we stop the whole damn thing? Why can’t we decide that the incalculable costs and risks of AI aren’t worth the potential benefits to the vast majority of us?

AI proponents argue that stopping or even pausing AI in the United States would risk American industry falling behind competitors overseas.

But if the costs and risks exceed known benefits, why not let China or any other competitor try AI out first? Why should we be the canary in this extraordinarily dangerous coal mine?

Other advocates of AI say we have no right to stop innovation in the free market. That’s baloney. We don’t allow private corporations to come up with new types of nuclear weapons or varieties of cocaine or biological pathogens. We protect the public from certain kinds of innovation.

So let’s protect ourselves here. Stop AI before it’s too late.

The Moronic Bullshit of the "Third Way"

Robert Reich — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:01:41 GMT

The kind of corporate BS now cropping up all across America

Friends,

The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day.

“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan.

Cowan is president of Third Way, described by The New York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.”

Pointing to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate primary last week, Cowan warns that “it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potential presidential swing states.”

Well, I find it deeply troubling that faux centrist groups are declaring war on progressives in the pages of The New York Times, without the Times revealing who they really are.

If you bother to look at the funding sources of Third Way — those that have been made public, that is (Third Way is structured as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that’s not legally required to publicly disclose its donors) — you’ll find a Star Wars cantina of billionaire megadonors, Fortune 500 CEOs, corporate dark money bundlers, and giant corporations.

Odd that The New York Times chooses to describe Third Way as a “leading Democratic centrist group” without revealing that it’s simply a Trojan Horse for corporate America.

Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett has even conceded that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector. (That’s the same Matt Bennett, by the way, who helped stage the infamous “Dukakis in a tank” photo-op that helped sink Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign.)

Here’s Third Way’s Board of Trustees (the most recent list available):

Jonathan Vogelstein, chairman of New Providence Asset Management and senior advisor to private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
David Heller, formerly global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs.
Bernard Schwartz (chairman emeritus), chairman and CEO of BLS Investments.
David Horvitz, chairman of the board and CEO of SouthOcean Capital Partners, LLC and SouthOcean Investment Partners, LLC.
David Coulter, managing director and senior advisor at Warburg Pincus, focusing on the firm’s financial services practice, and former vice chair of JPMorganChase.
William Daley, vice chairman of Bank of New York Mellon, former vice chairman of JPMorganChase, former board member of pharmaceutical companies Abbott Labs and Merck.
John Dyson, chairman of Millbrook Capital Management, Inc. (MCM), a private investment firm that manages a manufacturing company, a vineyard and wine group, and a hedge fund.
Michael Edwards, deputy CIO of investment adviser Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisors.
Andrew Feldstein, CEO and Co-CIO of BlueMountain Capital Management, board member of PNC Financial Services Group, former managing director of JPMorganChase.
Brian Frank, founder and managing partner of Declaration Partners LP, an investment firm seeded by the founder of a large private equity firm.
David Greenwald, chairman of finance law firm Fried Frank, former international general counsel and a deputy general counsel of Goldman Sachs.
Derek Kaufman, former head of global fixed income at Citadel and a member of the firm’s Portfolio Committee, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
Derek Kirkland, managing director and co-head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking.
Doug Lawrence, CEO of DPL Green Investment and also managing principal and co-founder of 5 Stone Green Capital, formerly a managing director at JPMorganChase.
Joseph Zimlich, CEO of private family financial manager the Bohemian Group, board member of First Western Trust Bank.
Mark Spilker, founding member of GPS Investment Partners LLC, chairman of Chiron Investment Management LLC, former co-head of Goldman Sachs’s Investment Management Division, former president of Apollo Global Management, former member of Google’s Investment Advisory Committee.
Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein, former venture capitalist, former partner at Warburg Pincus and Apax Partners & Co. Ventures.
William Reeves, co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management, former managing director at JPMorganChase.

Oh, and Third Way’s honorary co-chairs have included West Virginia’s former Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona’s former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Enough said about its governing structure.

In 2020, Third Way claimed that Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would add more than $13 trillion to the federal deficit, although most other analyses — including one by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center — found that Sanders’s plan would save trillions while providing healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans.

Well, of course Third Way attacked Bernie’s plan. Among Third Way’s donors are pharmaceutical giant Amgen, pharmacy benefit manager CVS Health (which acquired health insurance giant Aetna in late 2018), and health products and drug company Baxter International.

Other corporate donors to Third Way are or have been members of the GOP-aligned American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that links lobbyists with state lawmakers. Amgen, Baxter Healthcare, CVS Caremark, DuPont, and trade groups the Consumer Technology Association and NCTA - The Internet and Television Association are members.

Third Way donors have also given money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which helps elect Republicans who fight federal environmental and other regulations. Among them, Entergy, Facebook, Google, and Reynolds American, according to tax records.

Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland, revealed that Koch Industries secretly funded a report by Third Way intended to promote the Republican free trade agenda to Democrats.

After the Democrats’ 2024 election losses, Third Way argued that the party should reduce its dependence on small-dollar donors. In a five-page memo of “takeaways” from the election, Third Way asserted that small-dollar donors’ preferences “may not align with the broader electorate.”

The memo stopped short of naming alternative funding sources, but the implication was clear: Less grassroots support means more reliance on big checks from super PACs and wealthy donors, which is exactly what Third Way prefers.

The memo also included calls to curb “far-left influence,” adopt a “pro-capitalist” stance, and stop “demonizing wealth and corporations.”

***

So, please, disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.”

And pay no attention to headlines about “Democratic centrists preparing for war” against a “rising Left.”

Instead, focus on what’s really happening.

Voters want people in power who are going to fight for them, and not for the super-wealthy or big corporations and Wall Street.

This is especially true now — when the bottom 90 percent of Americans are struggling to pay the bills, a record portion of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the richest one-tenth of one percent, big corporations and Wall Street have never been as powerful, Washington has been taken over by legalized bribery and corruption, and there’s no “center” between democracy and neofascism.

Sunday caption contest: Arch

Robert Reich — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 21:02:02 GMT

Friends,

Please submit your caption in the Comments section and, as before, please use the Comments section only for captions.

Winners will be announced next Sunday. For consideration, please post your caption by Monday at 9 pm PT, 12 midnight ET.

Sunday thought: Criminals in Control

Robert Reich — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:02:19 GMT

Friends,

Yesterday, the Republican-led Senate confirmed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to be the next U.S. attorney general.

Like Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, Blanche has carried out the illegal orders of a president of the United States. As was Mitchell’s fate, Blanche should be behind bars. Mitchell served 19 months of a two-and-a-half year sentence for conspiracy and obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal.

Instead, Senate Republicans have given Blanche a promotion.

On Thursday, a Republican-led Senate panel voted to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for his refusal to answer questions at a hearing last week. At that hearing, Fauci sat stoically for three hours, invoking his constitutional right not to answer questions about his leadership during the pandemic because of his justifiable fear that Senate Republicans would try to find something he might say to charge him with perjury. As it stands now, Senate Republicans may ask the Justice Department to prosecute him for failure to comply with their subpoena.

Fauci is an American hero. He gave invaluable advice to seven presidents — from Reagan to Biden — through anthrax attacks, Ebola outbreaks, SARS scares, and the COVID-19 pandemic. He devised the U.S. global attack plan against AIDS. George W. Bush gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work on HIV and AIDS.

Senate Republicans promote Blanche and shit on Fauci? What the hell is going on?

Look, I’m the first to admit that too many Democrats in Congress are lily-livered, unwilling to fight as hard as they should against Trump’s neofascism.

But congressional Republicans are worse than profiles in cowardice. They’ve nearly become a criminal enterprise, actively colluding with the neofascist in the Oval Office.

They’ve confirmed Blanche even without any guarantees that Trump won’t use the $1.8 billion slush fund Blanche created for him to reward the Capitol attackers, or that Trump won’t use the IRS immunity Blanche also got for him to prevent the public from ever knowing the full extent of Trump’s criminal enterprises.

And what’s with the Republican obsession over Anthony Fauci? The guy is 85 years old and retired. Why bother? It can’t be about defending Trump or avenging any damage to him. COVID was six years ago. People don’t blame Trump for it. They probably should, but if they really did, he wouldn’t have had a chance in 2024.

It can’t be because Fauci’s role in the pandemic is a burning political issue, because polls show exactly zero percent of Americans care about going after Fauci.

Sure, Rand Paul has a personal grudge against him, but Paul is crazier than a shit-house rat. So why are so many Republicans and even some Republican state attorneys general joining in his crusade against Fauci?

The reason is simple. Republicans have nothing else to talk about in the upcoming midterm elections. Trump’s foreign policy and Iran war are disasters. His economy is a catastrophe. His immigration dragnet, a cruel calamity. His health policy, an embarrassment or worse. His environmental policies, a gift to Big Oil.

Congressional Republicans have gone along with all of it. They’ve also enacted Trump’s giant tax reductions for the wealthy and big corporations that are funded in part by cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.

Trump himself is bonkers and losing it by the day. His communist witch hunt is a bad joke. His polls continue to plummet to record lows. Ballroom? Reflecting pool? Crypto deals? All have become Republican nightmares.

So Republicans are desperate for something, anything, anyone — a fall guy, a scapegoat — to rant against, whip up the Republican base against, and raise money for their fall campaigns. Fauci is old, can’t defend himself, is easily demagogued.

Yes, my friends, it’s all upside down. Frightening and nuts. But may I remind you that there are just 86 days until the midterms, when we can throw many of these criminal Republicans out of office?

Which gets me to you. A few days ago I asked many of you how you’re coping with this ongoing horror.

In response, some of you said you’re tuning it out, or you’ve concluded that nothing can be done about it so why bother.

I get it. I sometimes can’t stand to hear another word about the loathsome Trump and his insufferable sycophants. And occasionally I despair that he and his regime will continue their reign of destruction regardless of what I or anyone else does.

But the vast majority of you told me you’re coping in two other ways: by choosing to be grateful for what’s good about America and by becoming more activist.

You’re focusing on the generosity you see around you every day, the simple acts of kindness, and the courage and dedication of people such as our teachers, nurses, social workers, and community leaders.

You’re protecting the vulnerable in your community, supporting good candidates, sending postcards to potential voters, protesting against Trump and his outrages, and boycotting companies that are enabling him.

As one member of our Substack community, Johan, commented a few weeks ago, it’s perfectly normal for people to wait to take action until they feel hopeful.

Yet in reality, hope emerges from action. It’s what activism pays back.

Which is also why hopelessness is a trap. “We’re all f*cked” may feel like clear-headed realism, but it’s just surrender — draped in the costume of being realistic.

The billionaire class and their Republican lackeys want us to fall into hopelessness so they can have it all without any resistance. Hopelessness costs them nothing, yet it costs us everything. It’s the cheapest possible win for them, yet some of us hand it over for free.

Gratitude is the most powerful and enduring sentiment of all — not because everything’s fine. Obviously it’s not. We’re in deep shit. Gratitude is powerful and enduring because when you feel gratitude, you pay attention to what’s still worth defending. This fortifies hope and adds urgency to activism. Or, as Johan reminds us, you keep your head by keeping your hands on something real.

I don’t want to be preachy or didactic. I just want to reassure you that despite the loathsomeness of those now in control of our government — despite the Republicans in Congress who have confirmed Blanche and voted to hold Fauci in contempt, and despite the malignant, sadistic narcissist they suck up to — we can be grateful for the kindness, generosity, and freedom we experience every day.

It is worth defending. It gives hope for a better future. It adds urgency to our activism. It fortifies our commitment to rid ourselves of the criminals and quislings now in control of our government, and to do what we can to replace them with good, honest, and capable people.

Big Money Loses | The Coffee Klatch for Saturday, August 8, 2026

Robert Reich — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:01:43 GMT

Friends,

Today, Heather and I take a deep dive into the so-called “civil war” inside the Democratic Party, between corporate Dems who keep spending enormous sums on primary races and progressives who keep winning them. We also look at the latest jobs report and Trump’s “trickle-down” economy, which continues to worsen. And we ponder why Anthony Fauci, of all people, has become the Republicans’ latest nemesis.

So grab a cuppa, pull up a chair, and join in the discussion.

The Enshittification of Everything (Part 2)

Robert Reich — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 08:02:31 GMT

Friends,

This is a continuation of the discussion I began last Friday.

The Incredible Shrinking American Middle Class

A half-century ago, America had the largest middle class in the history of the nation and of the world.

Then, those on the “left” wanted stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads, and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the “free market.”

But as power and wealth have moved to the top in America (and, to a lesser degree, in other “rich” nations, almost everyone else — whether on the old right or the old left — has become disempowered and less secure.

America’s huge middle class has become a small shadow of what it once was. The bottom 90 percent are struggling to make ends meet. The richest 10 percent account for a large and growing portion of all consumption. The top one-tenth of one percent holds an increasing portion of all wealth.

Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.

The word “oligarchy” comes from the Greek word oligarkhes, meaning “few to rule or command.” It refers to a government of and by a handful of exceedingly rich people who control the major institutions of society and therefore have most power over other people’s lives.

Oligarchs may try to hide their power behind those institutions, or try to justify their power with platitudes about the public good, or try to excuse their power through philanthropy and “corporate social responsibility.” But no one should be fooled. Oligarchs wield power for their own benefit.

Even a system that calls itself a democracy can become an oligarchy if power becomes concentrated in the hands of a corporate and financial elite. Their power and wealth increase over time — as they make laws that favor themselves, manipulate financial markets to their advantage, and create or exploit economic monopolies that put even more wealth into their pockets.

Modern-day Russia is an oligarchy. A handful of billionaires there control most major industries and dominate politics and the economy.

What about the United States?

John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913)

The Three Eras of American Oligarchy

America has experienced oligarchy three times in its brief history.

The first was at the nation’s start. Many of the men who founded the United States were slaveholding white oligarchs. America didn’t have much of a middle class. Most white people were farmers, indentured servants, farmhands, traders, day laborers, and artisans. A fifth of the population was Black, almost all enslaved.

A century later, a second oligarchy emerged, the robber barons. They were men who amassed fortunes through their railroad, steel, oil, and financial empires — men such as J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Andrew Mellon. They ushered the nation into an industrial revolution that vastly expanded economic output.

They also corrupted government, brutally suppressed wages, generated unprecedented levels of inequality and urban poverty, pillaged rivals, shut down competitors, and made out like bandits — which is why they earned the sobriquet “robber barons.”

World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930s eroded most of these robber barons’ wealth. And most of their power was eliminated after the elections of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

For the next half-century the gains from growth were more widely shared, and democracy became more responsive to the needs and aspirations of average Americans.

Although America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen, there was still much to do — civil rights and voting rights for Black Americans, wider economic opportunities for them and for women and Latinos, protection of the environment. Yet by almost every measure the nation was making progress.

A third American oligarchy emerged starting around 1980. Since then, the share of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest 400 Americans has quadrupled (from 0.8 percent to 3.7 percent).

The richest 130,000 Americans and their immediate families now own as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent — 117 million — combined. The three richest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population.

The only other country with similarly high levels of wealth concentration is Russia.

All this has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the political power of the super-wealthy and an equally dramatic decline in the political influence of everyone else.

Unlike income or wealth, power is a zero-sum game. The more of it at the top, the less of it anywhere else.

The average American now has little or no effect on public policy. Giant corporations, their CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have more influence than any comparable group since the robber barons.

Big Money in Politics

The power shift that’s occurred in America since around 1980 is directly related to a tsunami of big money into politics.

In the 2024 election, just 300 billionaires (and their immediate family members) donated more than $3 billion to candidates — almost 20 percent of all contributions to federal elections in 2024, either directly or through political action committees.

Billionaire families gave an average total of $10 million each in 2024, roughly equal to what 100,000 typical political donors gave, combined. One of them — Elon Musk — devoted a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s reelection. (This doesn’t count money that billionaires contributed through dark money groups that do not have to disclose their donors.)

Five presidential elections ago, adjusting for inflation, the share of billionaire spending on elections was almost zero — 0.3 percent, to be precise. That was before the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling that lifted many remaining campaign finance restrictions.

Corporate lobbying has also soared. The voices of average people have been drowned out.

Meanwhile, and largely because of this vast power shift, taxes on the wealthy and on corporations have been slashed. Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill of July 2025 cut taxes for the richest 10 percent of Americans by more than $14,700 per year, per household, and cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans by more than $50,000 per year.

Meanwhile, safety nets for the poor and middle class have unraveled. About 3 million fewer Americans have access to Affordable Care Act marketplace coverage than they did before the second Trump regime, due to higher premium costs. Approximately 4.5 to 5 million fewer Americans receive food stamps. Public investments in education and infrastructure have also waned.

The “free market” has been taken over by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts, and corporate welfare.

The American oligarchy is back, with a vengeance.

Not all wealthy people are culpable, of course. I am not advocating class warfare, although America’s latest oligarchy has waged it against everyone else.

The abuse has occurred at the nexus of wealth and power, where those with great wealth use it to gain power and then utilize that power to accumulate more wealth. This is how oligarchy destroys democracy.

As oligarchs fill the coffers of political candidates and deploy platoons of lobbyists and public relations flaks, they buy off democracy. Oligarchs know that politicians won’t bite the hands that feed them.

Dimon in the Rough

Which brings me back to Jamie Dimon — chair and CEO of JPMorganChase (the largest and most profitable bank in the United States) and the most influential CEO in America.

If you want to understand the American oligarchy, you need to understand Dimon.

As a lifelong Democrat, Dimon is a friend of Bill Clinton. He supported Obama in 2008 and mentored several of the people who became high officials in the Obama White House. At Obama’s inauguration in 2008, Dimon said to the incoming president, “Tell me what you need. I’ll send people down here. I’ll do anything.” In 2009, The New York Times called Dimon “Obama’s favorite banker.”

Dimon supported Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But he can be a switch hitter. Speaking from the World Economic Forum’s confab in Davos, Switzerland, at the start of 2024, Dimon heaped praise on Trump. “Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. Trump was “kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked.”

Hello? Trump has been dead wrong on immigration, the economy, and taxes. Why did Jamie Dimon — the most influential CEO in America — spout this nonsense in favor of Trump? Probably because he thought Trump had a good chance of becoming president again, and Dimon wanted to be in his good graces.

At a time in American history when the most powerful business leaders in America should be standing up loudly and clearly for the rule of law, for democracy, for decency, and against Trump, Dimon has led the charge in the opposite direction.

Dimon knows better. Over the years, he has frankly acknowledged the dysfunctions of the American system and urged that they be addressed.

In his 2017 letter to JPMorgan’s shareholders he warned, “We should be ringing the national alarm bell that inner city schools are failing our children.” In 2018 he told them that “middle class incomes have been stagnant for years. Income inequality has gotten worse” and cautioned that “no one can claim that the promise of equal opportunity is being offered to all Americans.” In his 2019 letter he noted that “a big chunk of [Americans] have been left behind.”

More recently, he told the Economic Club of Chicago that racial discrimination isn’t adequately understood by white people. “If you’re white, paint yourself black and walk down the street one day, and you’ll probably have a little more empathy for how some of these folks get treated,” and he called for making “a special effort because this is a special problem.”

Yet Dimon is full of contradictions. Let me list them, because Dimon represents the most responsible of the leaders of American business, and his contradictions suffuse corporate America (and are emblematic of so-called “corporate Democrats”).

1. Although he publicly worries about the plight of America’s poor, Dimon has never mentioned America’s growing concentration of wealth and power and the tight connection between the two.

He has never talked about the role of big money in politics. He has never advocated campaign finance reform. He doesn’t mention how the prospect of lucrative jobs on Wall Street upon retirement tempts some public officials to pull their punches.

To the contrary, Dimon lobbied Congress intensively for Trump’s 2017 and 2025 tax cuts. Overall, the tax cuts have rewarded the already wealthy, enriched big corporations, and exploded the federal debt while delivering no measurable benefits to America’s working class or poor; almost nothing trickled down.

Dimon is correct that many Americans have been left behind, but he has failed to address the role he and his bank have played in leaving them. For example, JPMorgan paid $13 billion to settle Justice Department claims that it defrauded borrowers and investors in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis when he was at the helm. Among its victims were many left-behind Americans.

2. Dimon has spoken about the devastating effects of climate change, including its effects on left-behind Americans who can’t afford homes able to withstand storms and floods and have no insurance against climate catastrophe.

Yet Dimon’s bank is the world’s leading financier of fossil fuels, according to the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report. This year alone, JPMorganChase pushed $58 billion toward fossil fuels, up 13 percent from 2024. A report, “Banking on Climate Change,” issued by a coalition of six major environmental groups, named Dimon the “world’s worst banker of climate change.” The likely consequence: More Americans left behind.

3. Dimon decries racial discrimination and points to the money JPMorgan is investing in poor cities.

Yet his bank has prevented Black people from getting loans. In January 2017 JPMorgan agreed to pay $55 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against minority borrowers by allowing its mortgage brokers to charge them higher interest on home loans than it charged white borrowers with the same credit profile, causing the Black borrowers to pay tens of millions of dollars in additional mortgage costs. The result: More Americans left behind.

4. After the August 2019 mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Dimon wrote a well-publicized email to his employees calling on them to “recommit ourselves to work for a more equitable, just and safe society.”

Yet Dimon’s bank is the largest source in the United States of financial services to gun makers and gun retailers, and of loans to gun buyers. If Dimon were serious about controlling the use of guns, he could stop this financing and urge other banks to do the same. He could have his banking and credit card systems track gun sales. He could use his formidable lobbying prowess to enact laws requiring that financial institutions create a world-class system for tracking gun sales with built-in safeguards.

But he has not. The result: more Americans killed, injured, and left behind.

5. Dimon has long expressed concern about gender discrimination and women’s rights.

Yet JPMorganChase maintained a long and close financial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, processing $1.1 billion in more than 4,700 transactions for him across the 15 years spanning 1998 to 2013, including at least seven years after he pled guilty for solicitation of prostitution.

In a 2011 email, the bank’s general counsel, Steve Cutler, warned that Epstein “is not an honorable person in any way. He should not be a client.” Yet the bank allowed Epstein to make large, recurring cash withdrawals totaling millions of dollars. Bank accounts managed by JPMorgan were used by Epstein to facilitate financial transfers and payments to victims of his trafficking ring.

The bank later paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits accusing it of enabling his sex-trafficking operation.

6. Dimon expresses concern about workers who don’t earn enough to live on.

Yet JPMorgan pays its bank tellers peanuts. In April 2019, at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, Congresswoman Katie Porter noted that the starting salary for a JPMorgan bank teller in her district in Irvine, California, was $24,000, which left the teller $567 a month short of what she needed to live on. “How should she manage this budget shortfall while she’s working full-time at your bank?” Porter asked Dimon.

“I don’t know, I’d have to think about that,” Dimon said.

“Would you recommend that she take out a JPMorganChase credit card and run a deficit?” Porter continued.

“I don’t know, I’d have to think about it,” Dimon repeated.

“Would you recommend that she overdraft at your bank and be charged overdraft fees?” Porter asked.

“I don’t know, I’d have to think about it.”

“Mr. Dimon, you know how to spend $31 million in salary, and you can’t figure out how to make up a $561 shortfall?”

After Bank of America agreed to increase its minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2021, Dimon was asked if JPMorgan would match it. “It’s not an arms race,” he said.

Hypocrisy or something else?

I’ve focused on Jamie Dimon because he’s the Democrats’ favorite CEO. He’s thought to be liberal on social issues, moderate on the economy. His views are trusted by the establishment. He is the establishment.

But Dimon is awash in contradictions. He says he’s a patriot before he’s CEO, but in all the ways I’ve noted, he behaves as if his first responsibility is to maximize JPMorgan’s profits.

The underlying issue here isn’t hypocrisy. The world is filled with people who say one thing and do another. And let’s be clear: JPMorgan — its directors and shareholders — expect Dimon’s first priority to be JPMorgan’s profitability. That’s his job, and he’s paid handsomely for it.

The underlying problem is power and deception. Dimon has enormous public and political influence. But despite his rhetoric and the occasional trappings of social responsibility, he is using his public influence for private purposes: to make more money for JPMorgan.

When he takes public stands on issues, he clothes himself in the garb of the public interest. He appears to be a public leader whose primary interest is the good of the nation when he announces his support for Trump’s tax cuts, publicly opposes a wealth tax, proffers his alleged economic expertise on CNBC and other media outlets, urges members of Congress to loosen bank regulations, or warns Democrats against nominating someone other than a political moderate.

But his job is to do whatever he can to boost the profits of JPMorgan, even if and when that goal conflicts with the public interest. And one of the ways he achieves that goal is to exercise significant influence over government.

So how can the public, the media, and members of Congress ever trust his — or any oligarch’s — advice on the economy, taxes, financial regulation, the environment, widening inequality, and all else? Why should we think that he seeks any goal other than making more money for himself and his bank?

We cannot, and should not.

Disempowering Oligarchy

Dimon and his fellow oligarchs — Elon Musk and his billionaire bros; Brad Carp and many of America’s elite corporate lawyers; Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Ellisons — have kissed Trump’s assets to obtain corporate welfare, giant tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust acquiescence, and war contracts, and to avoid his wrath. They’ve given Trump billions for his inauguration, his ballroom, his 250th birthday, his family businesses, and his superPAC.

All have sold their integrity in exchange for large profits. They’ve created media empires that won’t criticize Trump, financial empires that feed Trump’s crypto, energy empires that feed off Trump’s war, and legal empires that allow Trump to ride roughshod over the rule of law.

All have abdicated public responsibility to maintain the health of our political-economic system at a time when it is succumbing to authoritarianism.

They have used their power to siphon off the gains of the economy to give themselves unprecedented wealth — which has bought them even more power. They have justified their wealth and power as being in the interest of the public, but the public has been shafted.

They’ve changed the rules of American capitalism to favor themselves and harm most other people. They’ve eroded trust in the system. They’ve undermined democracy.

As long as the oligarchy is in control of America, there will be no meaningful response to the failure of most people’s paychecks to rise, nor to climate change, nor to the emerging dangers of Artificial Intelligence, nor racism, nor the soaring costs of health insurance, college, childcare, and housing.

These would require resources from the oligarchs or their corporations, which they don’t want to provide. As long as they control the purse strings, the oligarchs are unwilling to bear tax increases. They want their taxes to continue to drop.

As long as the oligarchy is in control, there will be no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of their giant corporations. Instead, their corporations will continue to grow larger, raise prices for consumers, and become more politically powerful.

As long as the oligarchy is in control, there will be no meaningful constraint on Wall Street’s dangerous gambling addiction. The gambling will grow.

As long as the oligarchy is in control, there will be no limits to CEO pay, and Wall Street hedge fund and private equity managers will rake in billions more.

As long as the oligarchy is in control, government will dole out even more subsidies, bailouts, and loan guarantees to big corporations, and it will continue to eliminate protections for consumers, workers, and the environment.

The propagandists and demagogues behind the oligarchy (Donald Trump included) are pouring salt into some of the nation’s oldest wounds. They’re stoking racial resentments, describing human beings as illegal aliens, fueling hatred of immigrants, and spreading fears of communists and socialists.

This strategy gives the oligarchy freer rein: It distracts Americans from how the oligarchy is looting the nation, buying off politicians, and silencing critics.

***

The only way to disempower the oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and take power back.

This will require a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy and fighting against concentrated wealth, power, and privilege.

We must get big money out of politics. End corporate welfare and crony capitalism. Bust up monopolies. Stop voter suppression. And strengthen the countervailing powers of labor unions, employee-owned corporations, worker cooperatives, state and local banks, and grass-roots politics.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.

Who's the World's Worst Billionaire?

Robert Reich — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 21:00:59 GMT

Friends,

Who’s the world’s worst billionaire? Is it Elon Musk — for buying an election, dismantling the government with DOGE, and spreading anti-immigrant racism around the globe?

No. He’s disqualified, because — at least in recent weeks, he’s been a trillionaire.

What about Mark Zuckerberg, for sowing division with his Meta platforms? Almost, but there’s an even worse billionaire.

Or perhaps Larry Ellison and his son, David, for turning the great CBS News into a Trump propaganda machine? They’re bad, but not as bad as the worst.

Or maybe Peter Thiel, for hating democracy? You’re getting closer. But no.

The winner is …

Who's Responsible for This Mess?

Robert Reich — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:02:04 GMT

Friends,

The New York Times says the “Justice Department struggles” with Trump’s demands that it prosecute his enemies.

But who exactly is struggling? Career lawyers whose professional ethics are being compromised? Trump-loyalist appointees who presumably knew what they were getting into before they joined the regime? Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who desperately wants to be the real thing?

The same ambiguity crops up when the media reports that the “White House” wants this or that, that the “Department of Homeland Security” is taking some action, that the “Department of the Interior” is undertaking or undoing something, and so on through the squalid chaos atop this regime.

These are buildings and departments, not people. We need to know who.

In normal times, the White House and federal departments are also institutions containing professionals with expertise hewed over decades of experience, guided by institutional norms for making decisions and the insights and perspectives that come with their unique roles in the federal government. (I should know. I headed one.)

But we’re no longer in normal times. Trump and his sycophants are actively destroying the professional integrity, expertise, norms, and unique insights and perspectives of all these institutions.

That’s why the public needs to know who is doing what when important decisions are made inside these buildings and departments. It’s the only way anyone can ever be held accountable.

For example, news reports continue to characterize the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund at the center of the storm over whether to confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general as “the Justice Department’s” fund.

This characterization hides a crucial reality: The fund doesn’t belong to the Justice Department. It wasn’t even an official offspring of the Justice Department. Instead, it emerged from meetings between Trump’s personal lawyers and acting attorney general Todd Blanche (who was once also a personal lawyer for Trump) over how to dispose of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service.

It was never the “Justice Department’s” fund. It was Trump’s fund, right from the start. The same with his deal to immunize himself from IRS audits.

Similarly, when the media reports that the “Justice Department” is “formally rescinding the order that created the fund,” it obscures the most important fact: The order wasn’t rescinded by the Justice Department. It was rescinded by Blanche himself. In fact, Trump now says he “wasn’t involved” in the revised plan.

So why should we suppose that any future Trump attorney general will be bound by Blanche’s order?

Similarly, when we hear that “the White House claims” that vandals caused damage to the bottom of the reflecting pool, we don’t know who in the White House made that deceitful claim. Did it originate with the vicious nativist, Stephen Miller; the fanatical Russell Vought; Trump’s zombie chief of staff Susie Wiles; or with Trump himself?

And when it’s reported that District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “blamed the Department of Interior” for her failed criminal case against David Hearn, a former Olympian whom she accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool, we don’t learn the most important thing: Who’s responsible for this fiasco?

Did Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, mislead Pirro about Hearn’s alleged behavior? Or did Trump instruct Burgum to blame the former Olympian for damaging the pool, rather than own up to the botched job?

Trump had insisted for months that vandals were responsible for the damage, which gained national attention when the pool bottom began to peel and algae blooms turned the pool from blue to green.

Pirro’s office charged Hearn with “a violent effort to rip up the sealant from the bottom of the pool” and secured an indictment against him for felony destruction of government property — carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

But in Friday’s court filing, Pirro conceded that problems plaguing the newly renovated pool were caused by a “botched installation not vandalism” and that, had the Department of the Interior “been forthcoming with the information clearly in its possession, the government would not have sought a grand jury indictment.”

This is a serious matter. A U.S. attorney charged an American citizen with a crime that could have resulted in his serving 10 years in prison but then dropped the charges when it turned out that Trump — or was it Burgum? or someone else? — was just trying to save face. But we still don’t know who’s responsible.

In the midst of the authoritarian chaos of the Trump regime, the public needs to know who’s doing what. When is Trump giving orders to his lackeys? When are they making decisions on their own? What’s legally binding, and on whom? Who’s responsible for what?

My friends, there will be a reckoning. And when that reckoning occurs, the individuals who have enabled this dictator, or who have conspired and collaborated with him, will be identified and held to account for what they did or failed to do.

That’s why the current record of responsibility is so important. Rather than report that “the White House” or the “Justice Department” or the “Interior Department” or some other building or agency did something, we need to know exactly who did what.

Buildings and departments are not destroying the rule of law and undermining American democracy. Individuals are. The media must tell us whom to hold responsible.

The Real Meaning of El-Sayed's Victory

Robert Reich — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 19:12:14 GMT

Friends,

With the victory of progressive Abdul El-Sayed over Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic primary yesterday, prepare yourself to hear enormous quantities of bullsh*t about the Democratic Party now being “taken over” by “Democratic Socialists.”

Or as the reliably establishment New York Times described what’s at stake, “can an insurgent candidate, with unabashedly left-wing positions, win in a moderate state?”

Oh, p-l-e-a-s-e.

Michigan Democrats didn’t choose El-Sayed because he’s “unabashedly left wing” or a Democratic Socialist (in fact, he’s not).

They chose him because he’s a fighter — at a time when America needs fighters willing to stand up to the worst tyrant who has ever occupied the Oval Office.

Corporate Democrats — such as Haley Stevens, along with Rahm Emanuel, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries — aren’t up to the task because they won’t bite the corporate hands that feed them campaign money. They won’t criticize the billionaire class. They refuse to see how big money has corrupted America.

Yet it’s big corporations and the billionaire class that are supporting Trump’s neo-fascism. They’ve sucked up to Trump for corporate welfare, giant tax cuts, tariff exemptions, antitrust acquiescence, and war contracts. They’ve given Trump hundreds of millions for his inauguration, his ballroom, his 250th birthday, his superPAC.

Jamie Dimon and Wall Street; Elon Musk and his billionaire bro’s; Brad Carp and his corporate lawyers; Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the Ellisons — all have sold their integrity for huge profits. They’ve created media empires that won’t criticize Trump, financial empires that feed Trump’s crypto, energy empires that feed off Trump’s war, and legal empires that allow Trump to ride roughshod over the rule of law.

Which is why America desperately needs people in Congress who will fight against Trump and his sycophants.

The Democratic Party isn’t being taken over by Democratic Socialists. There’s no civil war between progressives and moderates. This isn’t about Israel or Netanyahu. We aren’t witnessing an ideological battle between the “left” and the “center.”

We’re seeing America wake up to the tyranny that’s engulfed us, and to a crisis of affordability that’s causing most Americans to struggle financially while fueling the biggest stock market rally in history.

When corporate America and Wall Street are unleashed — when the president of the United States has made an implicit deal with the moneyed interests to back him and his authoritarian regime in exchange for tax cuts, deregulation, monopolization, and pay-to-play corruption — of course prices soar and wages stagnate.

Tyranny is the handmaiden of the moneyed interests.

The Democratic Party’s mega-donor class may be horrified by the rising tide of progressive populism overtaking more than a few primaries this cycle. It spent tens of million of dollars on Stevens — making the Michigan primary one of the most expensive in American history.

Too bad. It’s time that the Democratic Party’s mega-donor class recognizes that its real choice is between democracy and tyranny, between an economy that works for all or one that works for a small sliver at the top. If the mega-donor class chooses the latter, it may be acting in its narrow self-interest, but it will also be acting against the future of this nation.

Office Hours: How are you coping?

Robert Reich — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 08:03:19 GMT

Friends,

For a year and a half, we’ve been subject to the daily onslaught of Trump and his cruel, corrupt, and incompetent second regime.

My question to you now, in the middle of the summer of our discontent, is what strategies you’re using to cope with this horror.

My informal survey of friends and acquaintances suggests four major ones, listed below. Which best describes yours? (As usual, I’d appreciate your total honesty — with yourself and others in our Substack community.)

The Biggest Cost of Trump

Robert Reich — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:02:25 GMT

Friends,

I used to think the major tradeoff was between “guns and butter” — between defending the nation and attending to our most pressing social needs.

That view put the federal budget at the center of debate. And it assumed a zero-sum game in which the more we spent on the military, the less we had for the poor. As Ike said in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

But that old zero-sum game isn’t the biggest cost Trump is imposing on us.

Yes, Trump’s war in Iran and the $1.5 trillion he wants for the Defense Department next year will make it harder for us to meet the nation’s other needs. As will the dramatic cuts he’s made or proposed in public health, education, Medicaid and Medicare, and nutrition assistance.

Yet the biggest cost is the cost of doing nothing about three worsening crises that threaten the very survival of America and the world: climate change, AI, and widening inequality.

Almost all Americans — indeed, most human beings — are now subject to the escalating costs of climate change. How much more evidence do we need?

This summer has been a living hell. Wildfires have forced around 60,000 people to evacuate parts of Washington state, destroying hundreds of buildings and leaving thousands without power. Fires in Canada turned the skies orange and the air foul across a large part of the eastern United States. Millions of lives have been threatened by a deadly heat dome.

Even if Trump weren’t worsening climate change by subsidizing fossil fuels, simply doing nothing would be shameful enough because the crisis is growing so fast. Years ago, climate scientists predicted exactly what’s occurring right now. Trump’s lack of leadership — no, his outright sabotaging of global efforts to stop the planet from becoming uninhabitable — is one of the worst sins of his sinful regime.

AI’s dangers are also now upon us.

If you believe that humans are in total control of AI, you haven’t been paying attention. Recently, at least two of OpenAI’s models escaped a sealed testing environment and broke into the servers of another AI company. The AI models “reasoned” that the solutions to a cybersecurity test were on that other company’s servers, so the models snuck onto the internet and hacked into the other company’s solutions.

This is chilling. The possibility of AI models escaping human control to do horrendous damage to human life is growing exponentially. Here again, the Trump regime’s inaction is a huge cost that’s soaring by the day.

My candidate for the third existential threat is wealth inequality, which is also out of control. Billionaire wealth is surging to monarchical heights while the wages of the typical American aren’t even keeping up with price increases — meaning that most of us are getting poorer.

The problem isn’t inequality per se. It’s the consequences of inequality — especially widening corruption. Billionaires are using their wealth to bribe politicians to reduce their tax rates (which are already lower than most Americans face) and to stop lawmakers from regulating fossil fuels or AI.

Full circle.

Of course, there are still guns-versus-butter issues. Federal budget priorities are important. America faces a yawning budget deficit and can’t possibly do everything that needs to be done. Dollars spent on the military are literally taking food from America’s hungry.

Yet on the largest existential crises of our time, where the costs of inaction are rising to frightening levels, the solutions don’t require extraordinary government expenditure. They require thoughtful environmental and AI regulations, and far higher taxes on the wealthy.

Democrats and progressives running for Congress, governorships, and other positions must speak out loudly and clearly about the rapidly rising costs of inaction on climate change, AI, and inequality.

Demand action. Educate the public. Condemn the Trump regime and its backers — Big Oil, AI, and the billionaire class — for threatening the very survival of humans on the Earth.

The Stink of Musk

Robert Reich — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:02:31 GMT

Friends,

Elon Musk will be spending $100 million to $120 million in at least eight states to help elect Republicans in November, according to The New York Times.

Musk’s spending is set to begin next month, targeting Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, and potentially North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Musk will also spend in House races in states including California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

The money won’t be spent only on TV advertising. Musk’s “America PAC” is lining up firms that focus on knocking on voters’ doors. Fake grassroots.

But Musk’s money shouldn’t be viewed as a problem. It’s an opportunity.

Recall that Musk spent millions of dollars on a pivotal election for Wisconsin’s highest court in April 2025. It pitted Musk’s candidate — Trump-endorsed former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel — against progressive Dane County Judge Susan Crawford. The winner would determine the supermajority of the court.

Schimel lost, largely due to Musk’s support — which backfired. The public was outraged that the richest person in the world was spending some of his massive wealth on the election. They also recoiled at the wreckage Musk wrought at DOGE. And his unbridled racism.

In Crawford’s victory speech, she acknowledged the significance of Musk’s money to the outcome of the race. “As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” she said. “And we won.”

She described the election as a victory over an “unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” adding “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”

Musk’s support will backfire again this year, in race after race — if voters know about it.

So let’s make it a kind of smell test for any Republican that Musk and his “America PAC” are supporting. A Republican candidate who stinks of Musk must be presumed to be against average working Americans.

Keep your nose to the ground. If you get a whiff of Musk, alert your family, friends, neighbors, and associates. If they’re even slightly uncertain about whom to support, the Musk test should convince them.

Sunday caption contest: Reflecting

Robert Reich — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:01:02 GMT

Friends,

Please submit your caption in the Comments section and, as before, please use the Comments section only for captions.

Winners will be announced next Sunday. For consideration, please post your caption by Monday at 9 pm PT, 12 midnight ET.

Sunday thought: Real Patriotism

Robert Reich — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 08:01:49 GMT

Friends,

This morning, while standing in line at a local deli, I met an older couple named Larry and Wendy. They are from Galveston, Texas, and are briefly in northern California visiting their children.

“We recognized you,” Larry said, with a broad smile. “Just want you to know we’re Democrats! Can’t admit that to too many people in Texas!” he laughed.

“Welcome to California!” I said, grinning and extending my hand.

When Larry reached out, I couldn’t help notice that his fingers were almost curved shut. “Arthritis,” he said defensively. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” I said quickly. “Must be painful.”

“Well, yes,” Larry said, adding, “Doesn’t stop me, though!”

I must have looked puzzled because Wendy chimed in, “We write postcards.”

“Postcards?”

“We wrote postcards all July to people in North Carolina.”

“Tell me more,” I asked.

Larry explained: “We get their names and addresses from our local Indivisible chapter. They’re people who haven’t voted in the last several elections, so we remind them to vote and tell them how crucial this upcoming election will be. The postcards will be delivered in October.”

“You’ve got a big election coming up in Texas, too,” I said.

Wendy smiled. “In June, before we wrote to North Carolinians, we wrote to people in our part of Texas,” she said, proudly.

I must have glanced at Larry’s hand, because he quickly said, “It’s been a bit difficult, but, hell, it’s the least I can do.”

We continued talking until it was their turn to pick up their order. Then they turned to say goodbye.

“I appreciate your activism,” I said.

“It’s for our kids and grandkids,” Larry said. “I wish we could do more.”

I’ve been thinking about Larry and Wendy from Galveston, and how their postcards written by hand to people in North Carolina and Texas are acts of patriotism in these dark times. Larry has been writing them through his pain.

Trump’s war is a fiasco, and his economy is a disaster. According to The Washington Post, Republican pollsters and political groups are raising the alarm that Republican voters are listless and demotivated.

Yet Trump will do everything and anything to maintain control. He has shown repeatedly that he doesn’t feel bound by laws, norms, or patriotism. His only goals are wealth, power, and vengeance.

His billionaire backers, including Elon Musk, are prepared to sink record amounts of money into Republican campaigns.

Trump and his backers have power, money, and ruthlessness on their side.

But we have the people on ours.

It will be a colossal stress test of our electoral system. But I believe We the People will prevail. And after speaking with Larry and Wendy this morning, I’m convinced of it.

It's Still The Economy, Stupid | The Coffee Klatch for Saturday, August 1, 2026

Robert Reich — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:01:49 GMT

Friends,

Today, Michael and I delve into Trump’s plummeting approval ratings and ask whether they’re due to the economy, Trump’s war (which obviously affects the economy), the Epstein files, Trump’s skyrocketing inflation, or Trump’s corruption. Along the way, we explore what Democrats ought to be advocating (and not) in the upcoming midterms.

Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and join in the conversation.

A Realist's Guide to the American System

Robert Reich — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:02:13 GMT

Friends,

I’m devoting the next several Fridays to what I’m calling a “Realist’s Guide to the American System.” If you hadn’t noticed, almost everything’s going to hell.

Why? Trump is horrendous, but he isn’t causing all the failures of that system. He’s a consequence of that system. Think of him as a boil on its backside — an infected pustule on the giant ass of the American system. The boil would have become infected eventually because of deeper flaws in how the system has evolved.

The best way of beginning is to introduce you to Jamie Dimon.

Jamie Dimon

In the spring of 2018, Jamie Dimon phoned me at my office at the University of California, Berkeley. I had criticized him publicly, and he was not pleased. He sounded off on the phone for several minutes without stopping.

Dimon has a great deal of influence over the system. He heads the largest bank on Wall Street, JPMorganChase, which survived the 2008 financial crisis better than any other big bank. After the crisis, The New York Times gave Dimon the back-handed compliment of being “America’s least-hated banker.” He has also headed the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group of the most powerful CEOs in America. He is featured regularly on cable news and in the business press. His opinions carry significant weight on Capitol Hill.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.” He is a lifelong Democrat. He admirably speaks out about the injustices and inequalities of contemporary America. He is not just talk. He has pushed his bank to invest in poor cities and to create better opportunities for the disadvantaged.

I believe he’s sincere. But he is awash in self-delusion, a condition especially dangerous in people who have significant power over others.

Dimon doesn’t see how he has contributed to the mess we’re in. He doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his preferred self-image as “patriot first” and his roles as CEO of America’s largest bank and former chairman of the Business Roundtable. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Dimon is emblematic of an abdication of public responsibility to maintain the health of our political-economic system at a moment when a comparative few at the top have more power over it than at any time in over a century.

They have used their power to give themselves unprecedented wealth, which has bought them even more power. They have justified their wealth and power as being in the interest of the public, but the public has been shafted.

Dimon is among the most capable of American CEOs, adept at promoting and defending his corporation. He also understands some of the failings of the system and has called for some useful reforms. If he weren’t running JPMorgan, someone else would be, and probably not doing so nearly as well.

Nonetheless, a big part of Dimon’s job is to siphon off the gains of the economy for the benefit of a few at the top. As he does this, he’s eroding trust in the system. He’s undermining democracy.

This is how we got into the quagmire we’re in. Dimon is simply playing his part in the current system as it has evolved. He’s responding to how incentives within the system are designed.

To the extent Dimon or others like him are blameworthy, the fault lies in their unwillingness to buck these incentives in order to change the system for the well-being of the vast majority.

This may be an unrealistically high bar. Dimon has no legal obligation to reach it. But I believe he has a moral duty to try to change the laws and incentives so no one ever again can become as rich and powerful as he and his fellow CEOs at the Business Roundtable and as other major financiers on Wall Street. He has a moral obligation to ensure that the American system is no longer rigged in favor of people like him.

I’ll return to Dimon next week, but right now I want to talk about the consequences of all this.

The enshittification of America

Millions of Americans, whether on the left or right of the political spectrum, know something has gone profoundly wrong.

The concentration of wealth in America has created a political system in which the super-rich can buy Congress and the presidency, an education system in which they can buy admission to college for their children, a healthcare system in which they can buy care others can’t, and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail.

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate greed, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.

The term “enshittification” was coined in 2022 by novelist Cory Doctorow to describe the declining quality of almost everything. Monopolistic corporations are charging more for the products they sell and cutting back on services. Stuff breaks more often than it used to. Government is being starved of tax money to provide even the most basic of public services.

The whole system seems to be collapsing in on itself.

The word “enshittification” has been officially incorporated into major lexicons like the Merriam-Webster dictionary because of people’s increasingly common experience of being crapped on by big corporations, big hospitals, big energy, and big insurance, and of being bogged down in seemingly endless legal quagmires of corporate and government bureaucracies. As the New Yorker put it, we live in the “Age of Enshittification.”

The advent of AI has highlighted the possibility of mass unemployment and also the growing impossibility of boosting workers’ share of both corporate and national income.

The oligarchs who are now spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI — with funds funneled to them by Jamie Dimon and others on Wall Street — have done everything in their power to keep workers’ wages low, prevent them from organizing or joining unions, and stop them from having more political power, and they’re now funding campaigns to protect their fortunes against higher taxes on capital income and wealth.

This mammoth, systemic dysfunction is generating a great deal of heat — anger, frustration, and outrage. That anger is a major reason why Trump became president, twice (even though he has further enshittified America and much of the world).

Heat in any system signals potential change. Like tectonic plates causing earthquakes and volcanoes as they crash into each other, heat is a sign of underlying tumult. In today’s America, the status quo is unsustainable. Subterranean tensions are building.

Trump exploited those tensions for his own malignant ends. But even if Trump is replaced by someone who’s noble, humble, and talented, and who cares more about America than himself — in other words, someone who’s the opposite of Trump — we’d still be in trouble.

The system is out of whack. It needs fundamental change.

The 16 Realities

If you want to understand why the American system has become so dysfunctional, and what you might do to help it to meet the needs of average people, you need to reassess many of your likely assumptions about it.

1. First, forget politics as you’ve come to see it as electoral contests between Democrats and Republicans. Think power. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none.

2. Forget what you may have learned about the choice between the “free market” and government. A market cannot exist without a government to organize and enforce it. The important question is whom the market has been organized to serve.

3. For the same reason, don’t try to separate economics from politics. They’re two sides of the same issue. (Be suspicious of anyone who tries to separate them.)

4. Forget the standard economic goals of higher growth and greater efficiency. The issue is who benefits from more growth and efficiency.

5. Don’t be dazzled by “corporate social responsibility.” Most of it is public relations. Corporations won’t voluntarily sacrifice shareholder returns unless laws require them to. Even then, be skeptical of laws unless they’re enforced and backed by big penalties. Large corporations and the super-rich ignore laws when the penalties for violating them are small relative to the gains for breaking them. Fines are then simply very manageable costs of doing business.

6. Don’t assume that we’re locked in a battle between capitalism and socialism. We already have socialism — for the very rich. Most Americans are subject to harsh capitalism.

7. Don’t define “national competitiveness” as the profitability of large American corporations. Those corporations are now global, with no allegiance to America. Real national competitiveness lies in the productivity of the American people — which depends on their education, their health, and the infrastructure linking them together.

8. You can also forget the ups and downs of the business cycle. Focus instead on systemic changes that have caused the wealth and power of a few to dramatically increase during the last 40 years at the expense of the many.

9. Forget the old idea that corporations succeed by becoming better, cheaper, or faster than their competitors. They now succeed mainly by increasing their monopoly power.

10. Forget any traditional definition of finance. Think instead of a giant gambling casino in which bets are made on large flows of money, and bets are made on those bets (called derivatives). The biggest winners have better inside-information than anyone else.

11. Don’t assume the system is stable. It moves through vicious spirals and virtuous cycles. We are now in a vicious spiral. The challenge is to turn the vicious into the virtuous.

12. Don’t believe the system is a meritocracy in which ability and hard work are necessarily rewarded. Today the most important predictor of someone’s future income and wealth is the income and wealth of the family they’re born into.

13. Don’t separate race from class. Racial discrimination is aggravating class divides, and wider inequality is worsening racial divides.

14. Think systemically. Most people’s incomes haven’t risen for four decades, and they are becoming less economically secure. Meanwhile, climate change is intensifying competition for arable land and potable water around the world, generating larger flows of refugees and immigrants. Together they allow demagogues to fuel bigotry by blaming immigrants for the stagnant incomes and economic insecurity.

15. Don’t confuse attractive policy proposals with changes in the system as a whole. Even if enacted, such proposals at most mitigate systemic problems. Solving those systemic problems requires altering the allocation of power.

Power

16. Most importantly, you need to understand the nature of power — who possesses it and why, how it is wielded, and for what purposes.

Power is the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others. On a large scale, power is the capacity to set the public agenda — to frame big choices, to influence legislators, and to get laws enacted or prevent them from being enacted, to assert one’s will on the world.

Power has been leached out of conventional discussions about what is occurring. Power doesn’t show up in standard economics texts, finance courses, or even political science and law. But you cannot comprehend today’s system without confronting power head on. It is the most important subterranean force.

Power is exercised through big Wall Street banks, global corporations, the executive and legislative branches of government, the Federal Reserve and the Supreme Court, the military, elite universities, and the media (including social media as organized by Big Tech).

But these institutions don’t wield power on their own. Particular people have outsized influence over them. They include CEOs like Jamie Dimon, large investors, hedge fund and private-equity managers, media moguls, key lobbying groups like the Business Roundtable, and major donors to political candidates and universities.

To comprehend the nature of their influence over the system you need to understand the role of wealth. In the system we now have, power and wealth are inseparable. Great wealth flows from great power; great power depends on great wealth. Wealth and power have become one and the same.

I don’t intend for these underlying realities to make you more cynical about the system or resigned to its intransigence. To the contrary, the first step toward changing the system is to understand it.

If we cannot comprehend the truth, we become entrapped in conventional falsehoods and false choices, unable to envision new possibilities. Seeing the system for what it is will empower you to join with others to change it for the better.

Please join me next Friday when I’ll continue this discussion. I look forward to reading your comments.

We are in a Populist Revolution

Robert Reich — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:01:15 GMT

Friends,

The Incredibly Shrinking American Workforce

Robert Reich — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 19:00:51 GMT

Friends,

This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the labor participation rate — the percentage of people of working age who are working or actively looking for work — is now down to 61.5 percent. That’s 0.6 percentage points lower than it was at the first of the year.

In other words, the U.S. economy has lost 1 million workers since January.

It’s the lowest level of labor participation in 50 years outside the pandemic.

The official unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, which is considered relatively good. But don’t be fooled. That’s 4.2 percent of people who are working or actively seeking work. If you add in all the people who are no longer working or seeking work, the official rate would be far higher.

What accounts for the disappearance of so many workers? Some baby boomers have taken early retirement. Some workers have been caught up in Trump’s undocumented dragnet.

But the biggest reason is the scarcity of stable, well-paying jobs.

Lots of people have concluded it’s not worth it. The cost commuting to — or paying for childcare in order to hold down — a shitty and insecure job has led them to give up on paid work altogether. They’re living more simply, moving in with parents or friends or adult children, or just doing without.

The best measure of how America is doing isn’t the unemployment rate, or the stock market, or the rate of economic growth, or the inflation rate, or the average wage.

It’s how well most Americans are living. The reality is that most Americans are struggling.

Trump's huge hidden upward redistribution

Robert Reich — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:02:41 GMT

Friends,

As Trump’s tariffs and his war with Iran drive up prices of everything from oil to steel, you’d think big American corporations would be screaming bloody hell. Presumably, Trump’s tariffs and war are squeezing their profits just as they’re squeezing the wallets of average Americans.

To the contrary, corporate America is quietly encouraging both Trump’s war and Trump’s tariffs. Why?

One possibility is they’re raking in money off the war as defense contractors and suppliers.

Some surely are, but this can’t account for the acquiescence if not outright support by most big American corporations that have nothing to do with the defense-industrial complex.

Another possibility is they don’t want to piss off Trump, fearing his retaliation.

But if they were really concerned about the negative effects of Trump’s war and his tariffs on their bottom lines, surely they’d be using their armies of lobbyists and piles of campaign contributions to stop his war and his tariffs. After all, that’s what the armies and piles are for.

There’s a much simpler explanation for corporate America’s silence if not encouragement. In point of fact, both Trump’s war and Trump’s tariffs are helping their bottom lines.

Trump’s war and his tariffs are allowing domestic U.S. producers to raise their prices to match the elevated prices of imports. And those who aren’t directly affected are using the higher import costs as excuses to raise their prices, too.

Presto! — corporate profits have exploded, and their stock prices have soared.

But American consumers are getting shafted. Both Trump’s war and his tariffs are pushing up prices for a vast range of goods and services. The result is a massive redistribution of income and wealth from American consumers to big American corporations.

This is the story of the American political economy under Trump that’s rarely if ever told, but it’s critical to understanding why Trump has been getting away with his war in Iran and his tariffs without much political opposition.

Start with oil.

Brent crude is now selling for $90.05 a barrel. If the war drags on it could push crude prices much higher, especially if it further depletes oil inventories, and spreads to Houthi militants starting a naval blockade in the Red Sea and to other Gulf states.

Oil prices are set globally. As global supplies dwindle, oil prices rise across the board — including prices charged by domestic U.S. producers. They’re enjoying a huge windfall.

With crude oil prices averaging $95 a barrel between March and June — up from about $66 before the war — ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Occidental Petroleum have collectively raked in some $31 billion in earnings for the second quarter of this year, according to FactSet estimates.

That’s up from about $12 billion for the same period last year.

These windfall profits have helped boost Big Oil’s stock prices. Big Oil’s investors and executives (who are paid partly in shares of stock) have done wonderfully well.

But American consumers are bearing the burden, as gas prices once again soar past $4 a gallon, a dollar more than they were before Trump started his war on February 28.

So is it any wonder that Big Oil isn’t criticizing Trump’s war, and is quietly rooting it on?

Or consider steel. Trump imposed steel tariffs of 50 percent in March and June 2025. These tariffs have driven up steel prices in the United States.

The tariffs have been a boon to American steelmakers, who have raised the prices they charge their American customers to match the higher prices now charged for steel from abroad.

As a result, leading American steel producers like Nucor and Steel Dynamics report significant year-over-year earnings increases.

Nucor’s profits in the second quarter of 2026 were $1.16 billion, up from $603 million a year earlier. Steel Dynamics has reported a second-quarter income of $534.1 million, nearly double its net income compared to the same period last year. A third U.S. producer, Cleveland-Cliffs, earned $97 million in the second quarter of this year (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), compared to a loss of $213 million last year, and the firm anticipates doubling earnings next quarter.

Who’s bearing these higher costs? American consumers of steel — in the prices of everything we buy that contains steel (such as cars and appliances).

The Producer Price Index (a widely used proxy for input costs) for steel mill products is now sitting at its highest point since May 2023.

American-based producers that utilize oil and steel have been able to pass those costs on to their customers without harming their profit margins. Some corporations that don’t depend on oil or steel have used the higher import costs as excuses to raise their prices, too.

Hence, Trump’s war and Trump’s tariffs are wins for corporate America. Profit margins are up, the value of shares on the stock market are up. Shareholders are happy.

Big corporations aren’t raising a fuss about the war or tariffs because they like what’s happening.

But American consumers are getting shafted. Their wages aren’t keeping up with the price increases. Yet they have no alternative but to pay the higher costs for energy and steel and everything else — which is the whole point.

As the inflationary effects of Trump’s war and his tariffs (taxes) on imports spread throughout the economy, they’re hiding what’s really occurring: an upward redistribution from consumers to big American corporations.

American consumers need to know the truth: Two of the major reasons why everything is less affordable are Trump’s war and his tariffs.

Consumers may not have armies of lobbyists and piles of campaign contributions to do their bidding, but they do have a way to express their disapproval. They can vote out Trump Republicans on November 3.

Office Hours: What's Trump's Most Likely Move on the Midterms?

Robert Reich — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:02:27 GMT

Friends,

With just 97 days until the midterm elections of 2026, Democrats are fired up, while Republicans are in the doldrums. That means Democrats have a good chance of retaking control of the House. It’s even possible (although less likely) that Dems will retake the Senate.

One of the biggest uncertainties is what (if any) tactics Trump and his lapdogs will use to reduce the odds of a Democratic victory, especially in the House, where 435 seats are up for reelection.

I’ve spent the last several days talking with election experts and political advisers. When I spoke with them last year, they were most worried about gerrymandering, restrictions on mail-in voting, voter IDs, and the demise of what’s left of the Voting Rights Act.

They’re still worried about many of these things (Trump just filed with the Supreme Court an emergency request to allow his executive order that restricts voting by mail, after a federal appeals court blocked key parts of it over the weekend).

But now, with 97 days to go, they’re most worried about the elections process. I’ve summarized their concerns below.

It’s possible that Trump will do nothing to interfere in the elections, of course. It’s also possible that he’ll do everything the experts fear he might do. Please weigh in with your thoughts about what he’s most likely to do.