I will add that the “u-turn” affected American healthcare which became almost solely about making money rather than healing people and preventing sickness.
It also affected the health and wellbeing of average citizens because the quality of food declined significantly. People were working harder for less money and longer hours and went from affording healthy food and eating home-cooked meals to less expensive & faster processed foods & fast food from restaurants, both of which are designed in a laboratory for the purpose of making rich people richer and not the health of the people consuming the food.
I will also add that section 4 of this Substack Post is one of the biggest reasons next to mis/disinformation tactics and misogyny & sexism which cost Hillary Clinton a significant number of votes, as many people feared another Financial Center made catastrophe due to deregulation and more decline due to corporation power over people.
The 2016 election choices seemed to many as two bad choices and didn’t see much difference between either candidate - in terms of positive change for people over corporations. People who had a better grasp of Trump’s history and his character knew he was the worst choice and voted for Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils.
While there is no denying that Democratic Party helped continue Republican Party efforts to favor the wealthy and their industries, at least the crisis with losing American Democracy has helped wake up people like Joe Biden. Joe Biden was as Centrist as they get until he and some other Democrats and non-Trumpist Republicans finally saw how necessary it was to redistribute the wealth and power towards the New Deal heyday direction in order to prevent America from becoming like Russia with its oligarchy and its ultra-passive, hopeless, citizenry.
I’m not saying he’s perfect, but despite never having an adequate majority in Congress and with the power Corporations have over government, he really has helped started turning America around for the better for the people.
I think your summary is accurate, but you left out the role of the Supreme court. The Citizens United decision was a huge blow to representative democracy since it helped flood our elections with "dark money." The rest is history, which has mostly been downhill. Have we reached the point of no return?
I am looking forward to next week's concluding contribution to this series. I think many of us are sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to hear some solid pathways back to a functioning democracy of the people by the people and for the people that will not perish from the earth under the current assault by the ultra-wealthy and faux populists.
All on point. You are correct. Biden hasn't painted a vision, or addressed the underlying cause of Trump's unwavering 30%, systemic wealth inequality. Left or right, we can all agree we're getting screwed. Focusing on that common ground with your radicalized family and friends (if you're talking) is essential. Additional storm clouds are on the horizon, though, with climate change which will throttle the economy, regardless. This will further endanger a lurch into fascist leadership. Terrifying times.
I was one of the small contributors to Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign for president. I also collected petition signatures to get him on the ballot here in Indiana, and made telephone calls and knocked on doors for him. His positive populism, always working and advocating for ordinary people, appealed to me. However, the Democratic Party establishment absolutely did not want him as president, and the corporate news media disparaged him as a silly old man with pie-in-the-sky notions. I suspect that Biden would not have taken the anti-plutocrat actions described if it had not been for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the congressional progressive caucus.
Republicans have managed to promote for president two charismatic individuals, an actor and a facile con artist, who have led the country down a path of greed and selfishness. We really need a younger Bernie Sanders now.
I have a somewhat different view of the situation.
A recent RAND Corporation study of wealth and income inequality in America makes it very clear that there has been a quiet, sub rosa class war in the United States waged by the American oligarchy against the average working people of America since the early 1970s. This “reverse distribution” of income and wealth upwards, really a massive $2.5 TRILLION annual theft — and THEFT is not too strong a word for it — by the American oligarchy from the average working people of America explains why so many Americans are struggling financially, flat broke, working multiple low wage, often part time jobs, are mired deeply in debt, and it explains much of the social unrest and discontent in America over the last 50 years.
In the early 1970s, the far right wing backlash and counterrevolution to the reforms of the New Deal, the post-WWII era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Great Society began. It started with the infamous Powell Memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce of 1971 that served as a blueprint of how the American oligarchy could undermine the power that the American middle class had gained for itself and restore the primacy the oligarchy had prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The American oligarchy has followed the instructions of the Powell Memorandum closely for 50 years now, regained the power and influence it had lost, and shifted the political discourse and struggle in America dramatically to the right.
In 1973, began the Great Uncoupling of increases in American wages and salaries from increases in corporate productivity and profitability. Except for measly, grudging pay increases to cover inflation, and to be told that they were lucky they still had jobs, the average working people of America ceased to share in the tremendous wealth that their labor created for the bosses and the shareholders. Fifty years is a LONG time to go without a REAL pay increase, and it explains much of the social discontent in America in the years since.
Much of this reactionary counterrevolution occurred quietly and secretly, through profound, but stealthy economic moves that occurred in corporate executive suites and boardrooms, and in right wing scholarly studies and propaganda coming out of the work of a small, but dedicated cadre of right wing academics, and out of a network of right wing propaganda mills masquerading as “think tanks,” and most effectively and tellingly, in the huge sums of money that the American oligarchy used to first undermine moderate center-right conservative politicians in the Republican Party, then to buy off business oriented politicians in the Democratic Party and push the “party of the people” hard to the right. There is today no real, effective leftist political party in America, other than the small, vocal, but outnumbered and largely neutralized “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party.
Sad to say, but most average working people in America have been kept in the dark about what was happening, like frogs in a pot of water that was being heated slowly, but surely, until it was too late to respond effectively. Also, caught up in the day-to-day struggle to make a living, which became increasingly more difficult as the years went by, the average working people of America were simply too distracted and exhausted to pay much attention to politics and its effects on their socioeconomic standing.
Today, the American oligarchy has pretty much succeeded in defanging and neutralizing the American political process as any sort of realistic threat to their power and wealth. The pathetic and limited choice at the election polls is, sadly, between two right wing bourgeois political parties: the neoliberal corporatist Democrats and the reactionary, increasingly fascist and bat shit crazy Republicans. Any “reforms” offered to the beleaguered working people of America are generally tepid, underfunded, incremental half measures at best. More often than not, the bourgeois blowhards of Washington, DC expend a great deal of energy creating political heat, without necessarily generating much political light or real action. Political gridlock and inaction isn’t just the result — it’s pretty much the intention.
Any REAL reform here in the United States will only occur when millions of Americans take to the streets participating in mass demonstrations and general strikes that paralyze America, bring the American oligarchy to its knees, and their bourgeois politicians to the bargaining table offering the REAL reforms and meaningful government policy changes that the American people so desperately need and want.
I wish that everyone in America could read this post. It makes so much sense and gives us a direction to go in. So much of the political, social, and environmental bad news that we hear every day just leaves people feeling hopeless, helpless, and angry. Here is the problem, how we got here, and how to get out of it.
Passage of Germany’s Enabling Act, The rise of Hitler, Reichstag fire, Dachau concentration camp completed, Gestapo created, non-nazi parties were forbidden, etc.
Fast forward. Today we’re looking at a would be President who kept a book about Hitler and his speeches next to his bed.
Looking at 1933, could we just avoid repeating everything except what FDR said and did?
Unlike Reich, mainstream Democrats have failed to recognize the anti-establishment sentiment that took over 3/4 of the electorate by 2016. Even Republicans got it, although with a reckless & dangerous faux populist in Trump.
The ideas Reich lays out under what progressive populism would look like are exactly what we need & what Democrats should run on if they want to really help the American people & if they want to win. Thank-you for delineating the things we need to stand for & do to bring back a thriving middle class & strong democracy!
First, thank you for citing John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the best mid 20th century voices for sound economic policy and an economist that makes the science both accessible and entertaining.
I find it ironic that Republican candidates/incumbents love saying small business is the backbone of our economic society all the while supporting the deregulation and support of mega businesses that will ensure small businesses’ inability to compete on a level playing field.
The progressive populism as espoused by the lifetime work of Bernie Sanders and the unfulfilled Build Back Better program advocated by Biden, and favored by a majority of US residents, was smashed by opposition outside of and within the Democratic Party. The oligarchy’s control of both major parties is devastating to our democratic aspirations and to a majority of the people. The ultimate distraction is the continued push for world dominance through arms production and sales and the continuous wars. The corruption of Congress, and the highest Court of the Land, along with a constant pervasive and persuasive propaganda machine and mass financial inequities have resulted in a confused and desperate populace, ready to return to power a wannabe dictator. And half the voters no longer participate in elections, tired of the choices put before them, picking the lesser of two evils. Meanwhile our Government is at a standstill on many critical matters, especially on quickly addressing the evolving devastations of
global warming.
Is there any visionary leader who can possibly turn the tide? Maybe. Look for the person who is the most discredited and defiled by organized politics and the big corporations, who is unconventional and black balled by the two party system and powers that be. No it is not Bernie this time.
Every candidate has faults. I would gladly overlook a few if that person was staunchly in favor of fighting against the vast power of the military industrial complex and the corporate takeover of our government.
Thank you so much Robert Reich for clearly and explicitly laying out the facts and numbers that have been blank spaces in my mind. Evere since we lost a second term of Jimmy Carter as President, I have been disillusioned by politics and it's control over our lives. Politics that have become increasingly controlled by money and that money is funneled away from the "common good" .
The "common good" is what could bring about a better America and the 🌍
Americans don't want to do what they need to do. Not by a long shot. Real, charismatic leadership can blow through this but Biden doesn't have it. If the party as a whole had it things might work out but it's not there. Even I think of abortion and transsexuals when I think of Democrats, a catastrophic failure of messaging. I never liked Clinton. I thought we should get a Yankee president once a generation or so. Obama was my guy. Imagine my disappointment, though I thought I understood why he failed. That we were well into the hostage crisis by then, the result of the Rummy/Cheney/Buchanan faction under Reagan and then the troll invasion under Gingrich. These are our Huns.
We were a shotgun wedding, North and South, and the South has had a gun to America's head ever since. Leave us alone in our racist shithole or we'll blow it all up. Then came desegregation. We fucked with the wrong racists because, by this time, the racism was institutionalized and mostly unconscious. To say it was entrenched fails to get it. This was denial unto death on a mass scale. The stuff of the anti-vaccine fanatics who got Corona and died still uttering Fox nonsense like some nut with a suicide vest counting virgins as his head spins through space. That level of insanity isn't alien to us at all. It's running the country in the form of Trump. We're one big Kochist, laissez-faire fûhrerbunker.
What to do.
Firstly, recognize a society built on energy subsidies isn't a model for anything. Europeans loosed on a continent of unexploited natural resources, we have now run out of continents to plunder. Wait, we can string this out for a while on Mideast oil. Anybody's oil. Anything but grow up and live like adults. Meanwhile, the rich people are convinced they can become so rich they're immune to the inevitable crash. But they need brownshirts. Enforcers. Those racist southerners should work. Rednecks should work. Throw them a bone. Delegate throwing them bones to professional bone throwers. Go fixate on making money and reducing the country to rubble.
So it can't fight back. Set timer for 30 years. You're inconceivably rich. Really inconceivably. The country and certainly the social contract are increasingly a ruin. Success! Uh, oh. Remember those rednecks? They've grown into a movement and, the uppity idiots, now want to run things. This is a little scary. So, here we are, Hatfields on one side, McCoys on the other, and the old slaveholders circling the wagons around their virtual encampments and -- no shit -- building bunkers. Do we see how insane this is? We need a complete reinvention or we're toast. Hold on, the boomers might make it through before the thing falls apart. So, fuck it. Elect Bluto president again. But remember the Cadillac. You're stupid enough to loan the frat boys the Cadillac?
And it gets demolished? That's on you. That's on us. Who would be stupid enough to entrust something you care about to the absolute worst people ever? We would.
Brilliant, Robert. A brilliant analysis of the history of our economy. Finally, you’re naming names associated with the greedy deeds of politicians. I’ve noticed a lack of that in your previous blogs - especially the traitorous Democrats who sold us for 30 pieces of silver. You finally give due credit to the greatest politician in modern times. Bernie Sanders. He’s a saint! Please continue to point him out to constituents so they can tell the difference between the lies and truths spoken by the others.
I will add that the “u-turn” affected American healthcare which became almost solely about making money rather than healing people and preventing sickness.
It also affected the health and wellbeing of average citizens because the quality of food declined significantly. People were working harder for less money and longer hours and went from affording healthy food and eating home-cooked meals to less expensive & faster processed foods & fast food from restaurants, both of which are designed in a laboratory for the purpose of making rich people richer and not the health of the people consuming the food.
I will also add that section 4 of this Substack Post is one of the biggest reasons next to mis/disinformation tactics and misogyny & sexism which cost Hillary Clinton a significant number of votes, as many people feared another Financial Center made catastrophe due to deregulation and more decline due to corporation power over people.
The 2016 election choices seemed to many as two bad choices and didn’t see much difference between either candidate - in terms of positive change for people over corporations. People who had a better grasp of Trump’s history and his character knew he was the worst choice and voted for Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils.
While there is no denying that Democratic Party helped continue Republican Party efforts to favor the wealthy and their industries, at least the crisis with losing American Democracy has helped wake up people like Joe Biden. Joe Biden was as Centrist as they get until he and some other Democrats and non-Trumpist Republicans finally saw how necessary it was to redistribute the wealth and power towards the New Deal heyday direction in order to prevent America from becoming like Russia with its oligarchy and its ultra-passive, hopeless, citizenry.
I’m not saying he’s perfect, but despite never having an adequate majority in Congress and with the power Corporations have over government, he really has helped started turning America around for the better for the people.
I think your summary is accurate, but you left out the role of the Supreme court. The Citizens United decision was a huge blow to representative democracy since it helped flood our elections with "dark money." The rest is history, which has mostly been downhill. Have we reached the point of no return?
I am looking forward to next week's concluding contribution to this series. I think many of us are sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to hear some solid pathways back to a functioning democracy of the people by the people and for the people that will not perish from the earth under the current assault by the ultra-wealthy and faux populists.
All on point. You are correct. Biden hasn't painted a vision, or addressed the underlying cause of Trump's unwavering 30%, systemic wealth inequality. Left or right, we can all agree we're getting screwed. Focusing on that common ground with your radicalized family and friends (if you're talking) is essential. Additional storm clouds are on the horizon, though, with climate change which will throttle the economy, regardless. This will further endanger a lurch into fascist leadership. Terrifying times.
I was one of the small contributors to Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign for president. I also collected petition signatures to get him on the ballot here in Indiana, and made telephone calls and knocked on doors for him. His positive populism, always working and advocating for ordinary people, appealed to me. However, the Democratic Party establishment absolutely did not want him as president, and the corporate news media disparaged him as a silly old man with pie-in-the-sky notions. I suspect that Biden would not have taken the anti-plutocrat actions described if it had not been for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the congressional progressive caucus.
Republicans have managed to promote for president two charismatic individuals, an actor and a facile con artist, who have led the country down a path of greed and selfishness. We really need a younger Bernie Sanders now.
I have a somewhat different view of the situation.
A recent RAND Corporation study of wealth and income inequality in America makes it very clear that there has been a quiet, sub rosa class war in the United States waged by the American oligarchy against the average working people of America since the early 1970s. This “reverse distribution” of income and wealth upwards, really a massive $2.5 TRILLION annual theft — and THEFT is not too strong a word for it — by the American oligarchy from the average working people of America explains why so many Americans are struggling financially, flat broke, working multiple low wage, often part time jobs, are mired deeply in debt, and it explains much of the social unrest and discontent in America over the last 50 years.
In the early 1970s, the far right wing backlash and counterrevolution to the reforms of the New Deal, the post-WWII era, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Great Society began. It started with the infamous Powell Memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce of 1971 that served as a blueprint of how the American oligarchy could undermine the power that the American middle class had gained for itself and restore the primacy the oligarchy had prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The American oligarchy has followed the instructions of the Powell Memorandum closely for 50 years now, regained the power and influence it had lost, and shifted the political discourse and struggle in America dramatically to the right.
In 1973, began the Great Uncoupling of increases in American wages and salaries from increases in corporate productivity and profitability. Except for measly, grudging pay increases to cover inflation, and to be told that they were lucky they still had jobs, the average working people of America ceased to share in the tremendous wealth that their labor created for the bosses and the shareholders. Fifty years is a LONG time to go without a REAL pay increase, and it explains much of the social discontent in America in the years since.
Much of this reactionary counterrevolution occurred quietly and secretly, through profound, but stealthy economic moves that occurred in corporate executive suites and boardrooms, and in right wing scholarly studies and propaganda coming out of the work of a small, but dedicated cadre of right wing academics, and out of a network of right wing propaganda mills masquerading as “think tanks,” and most effectively and tellingly, in the huge sums of money that the American oligarchy used to first undermine moderate center-right conservative politicians in the Republican Party, then to buy off business oriented politicians in the Democratic Party and push the “party of the people” hard to the right. There is today no real, effective leftist political party in America, other than the small, vocal, but outnumbered and largely neutralized “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party.
Sad to say, but most average working people in America have been kept in the dark about what was happening, like frogs in a pot of water that was being heated slowly, but surely, until it was too late to respond effectively. Also, caught up in the day-to-day struggle to make a living, which became increasingly more difficult as the years went by, the average working people of America were simply too distracted and exhausted to pay much attention to politics and its effects on their socioeconomic standing.
Today, the American oligarchy has pretty much succeeded in defanging and neutralizing the American political process as any sort of realistic threat to their power and wealth. The pathetic and limited choice at the election polls is, sadly, between two right wing bourgeois political parties: the neoliberal corporatist Democrats and the reactionary, increasingly fascist and bat shit crazy Republicans. Any “reforms” offered to the beleaguered working people of America are generally tepid, underfunded, incremental half measures at best. More often than not, the bourgeois blowhards of Washington, DC expend a great deal of energy creating political heat, without necessarily generating much political light or real action. Political gridlock and inaction isn’t just the result — it’s pretty much the intention.
Any REAL reform here in the United States will only occur when millions of Americans take to the streets participating in mass demonstrations and general strikes that paralyze America, bring the American oligarchy to its knees, and their bourgeois politicians to the bargaining table offering the REAL reforms and meaningful government policy changes that the American people so desperately need and want.
There is a “Robert Reich imposter commenting. I have reported all so far. Beware. Do NOT follow the directions of the imposter (investments).
I wish that everyone in America could read this post. It makes so much sense and gives us a direction to go in. So much of the political, social, and environmental bad news that we hear every day just leaves people feeling hopeless, helpless, and angry. Here is the problem, how we got here, and how to get out of it.
So I looked up the year 1933.
The Great Depression.
Passage of Germany’s Enabling Act, The rise of Hitler, Reichstag fire, Dachau concentration camp completed, Gestapo created, non-nazi parties were forbidden, etc.
Fast forward. Today we’re looking at a would be President who kept a book about Hitler and his speeches next to his bed.
Looking at 1933, could we just avoid repeating everything except what FDR said and did?
Unlike Reich, mainstream Democrats have failed to recognize the anti-establishment sentiment that took over 3/4 of the electorate by 2016. Even Republicans got it, although with a reckless & dangerous faux populist in Trump.
The ideas Reich lays out under what progressive populism would look like are exactly what we need & what Democrats should run on if they want to really help the American people & if they want to win. Thank-you for delineating the things we need to stand for & do to bring back a thriving middle class & strong democracy!
First, thank you for citing John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the best mid 20th century voices for sound economic policy and an economist that makes the science both accessible and entertaining.
I find it ironic that Republican candidates/incumbents love saying small business is the backbone of our economic society all the while supporting the deregulation and support of mega businesses that will ensure small businesses’ inability to compete on a level playing field.
The progressive populism as espoused by the lifetime work of Bernie Sanders and the unfulfilled Build Back Better program advocated by Biden, and favored by a majority of US residents, was smashed by opposition outside of and within the Democratic Party. The oligarchy’s control of both major parties is devastating to our democratic aspirations and to a majority of the people. The ultimate distraction is the continued push for world dominance through arms production and sales and the continuous wars. The corruption of Congress, and the highest Court of the Land, along with a constant pervasive and persuasive propaganda machine and mass financial inequities have resulted in a confused and desperate populace, ready to return to power a wannabe dictator. And half the voters no longer participate in elections, tired of the choices put before them, picking the lesser of two evils. Meanwhile our Government is at a standstill on many critical matters, especially on quickly addressing the evolving devastations of
global warming.
Is there any visionary leader who can possibly turn the tide? Maybe. Look for the person who is the most discredited and defiled by organized politics and the big corporations, who is unconventional and black balled by the two party system and powers that be. No it is not Bernie this time.
Every candidate has faults. I would gladly overlook a few if that person was staunchly in favor of fighting against the vast power of the military industrial complex and the corporate takeover of our government.
Hard to dispute the concept but who’s going to deliver it? Is Biden capable or even willing to take up the struggle - and if not him, then who?
Four years of Trump (or any other republican) will only see the prize moved much farther away...
Come on USA, the world need you!
Thank you so much Robert Reich for clearly and explicitly laying out the facts and numbers that have been blank spaces in my mind. Evere since we lost a second term of Jimmy Carter as President, I have been disillusioned by politics and it's control over our lives. Politics that have become increasingly controlled by money and that money is funneled away from the "common good" .
The "common good" is what could bring about a better America and the 🌍
Americans don't want to do what they need to do. Not by a long shot. Real, charismatic leadership can blow through this but Biden doesn't have it. If the party as a whole had it things might work out but it's not there. Even I think of abortion and transsexuals when I think of Democrats, a catastrophic failure of messaging. I never liked Clinton. I thought we should get a Yankee president once a generation or so. Obama was my guy. Imagine my disappointment, though I thought I understood why he failed. That we were well into the hostage crisis by then, the result of the Rummy/Cheney/Buchanan faction under Reagan and then the troll invasion under Gingrich. These are our Huns.
We were a shotgun wedding, North and South, and the South has had a gun to America's head ever since. Leave us alone in our racist shithole or we'll blow it all up. Then came desegregation. We fucked with the wrong racists because, by this time, the racism was institutionalized and mostly unconscious. To say it was entrenched fails to get it. This was denial unto death on a mass scale. The stuff of the anti-vaccine fanatics who got Corona and died still uttering Fox nonsense like some nut with a suicide vest counting virgins as his head spins through space. That level of insanity isn't alien to us at all. It's running the country in the form of Trump. We're one big Kochist, laissez-faire fûhrerbunker.
What to do.
Firstly, recognize a society built on energy subsidies isn't a model for anything. Europeans loosed on a continent of unexploited natural resources, we have now run out of continents to plunder. Wait, we can string this out for a while on Mideast oil. Anybody's oil. Anything but grow up and live like adults. Meanwhile, the rich people are convinced they can become so rich they're immune to the inevitable crash. But they need brownshirts. Enforcers. Those racist southerners should work. Rednecks should work. Throw them a bone. Delegate throwing them bones to professional bone throwers. Go fixate on making money and reducing the country to rubble.
So it can't fight back. Set timer for 30 years. You're inconceivably rich. Really inconceivably. The country and certainly the social contract are increasingly a ruin. Success! Uh, oh. Remember those rednecks? They've grown into a movement and, the uppity idiots, now want to run things. This is a little scary. So, here we are, Hatfields on one side, McCoys on the other, and the old slaveholders circling the wagons around their virtual encampments and -- no shit -- building bunkers. Do we see how insane this is? We need a complete reinvention or we're toast. Hold on, the boomers might make it through before the thing falls apart. So, fuck it. Elect Bluto president again. But remember the Cadillac. You're stupid enough to loan the frat boys the Cadillac?
And it gets demolished? That's on you. That's on us. Who would be stupid enough to entrust something you care about to the absolute worst people ever? We would.
Brilliant, Robert. A brilliant analysis of the history of our economy. Finally, you’re naming names associated with the greedy deeds of politicians. I’ve noticed a lack of that in your previous blogs - especially the traitorous Democrats who sold us for 30 pieces of silver. You finally give due credit to the greatest politician in modern times. Bernie Sanders. He’s a saint! Please continue to point him out to constituents so they can tell the difference between the lies and truths spoken by the others.