This is Prof. Robert Reich at his best, conjuring up 50 years of perspective on these issues to frame a clear and cogent argument for fundamental reforms. I live in The Netherlands where the difference between the top salaries and the frontline wages has remained at 7x over many years because there is a fair tax system that protects the commons and cares for the least fortunate. No system is perfect, yet all the scaremongering over the years that top talent would leave is rubbish, as people want to live in a society that puts a priority on human dignity and fairness. I left the US to teach at a European University when Ronald Reagan became president and it is obvious to see from a distance the slide in the US towards inequality. I hope that more people listen to Robert's words and choose for a different path. There are many socio-economic models that show the way.
Tom Cummings, co-author, Nine Visions of Capitalism
Two things would help this issue,#1, publicly financed political campaigns like they do in Europe and Australia/New Zealand,and,#2,tax these fat cat a**holes back to the Stone Age.
I for one am very tired of our politicians working for the highest bidder and to Hell with their actual constituents.Also that corporate interests matter more than actual People.
I think President Theodore Roosevelt was pretty damn smart when he warned way back in 1910 that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy. It’s happening right before our eyes! What can we do to save our Democracy?
The key to a healthy, vigorous, economy, as both Roosevelts and Adam Smith recognized, is higher taxes on the wealthy. To believe otherwise is to have swallowed Ayn Rand's bullshit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8m8cQI4DgM.
I believe Adam Smith realized that his economic system would over-reward (if you doubt this, I give you Exhibit A, Mark Zuckerberg), so to protect the free market, and with it the worker, he advocated progressive taxation. Higher taxes on the wealthy would have three effects.
1) It would directly address the over-rewarding by making it possible to build schools and infrastructure like roads, bridges and canals.
2) This recycling of money would put money in the hands of workers, so they could buy the products produced by the factories they worked in, so everyone wins.
3) It would prevent the wealthy from developing the power necessary to buy governments and distort the market.
Sadly, we have now been led to believe that the "Free market" is actually the freedom of the wealthy to do whatever they please, whereas its true meaning is the exact opposite.
What did Reagan do to disrupt a healthy economy? Why, he followed Ayn Rand and cut taxes on the wealthy (interesting that she despised him), while also busting the unions.
The opportunities for electing people with the same egalitarianism required for Roosevelt-style fiscal policy, seems completely remote in 2023! Perhaps impossible? This seems to be a decade of obscene obfuscation of Fact, Evidence, Truth & Integrity in many Democratic governments but it’s particularly disturbing watching America unravel at such grassroots cultural & political levels. American paranoia for Socialist-Democratic policy is just so baffling.
I think it’s long past time to start making the rich and and major corporations pay their fair share. It’s also long past time to break up these large monopolies that are controlling prices and gouging consumers. It’s time for a major overhaul at the government level. Of course that would require taking the money out of politics.
where is this extreme wealth coming from? the workers, as you rightly note, robert, but it also is coming from increasing exploitation and destruction of nature herself. even as the wealthy grow ever-richer, the rest of us are driven into never-ending debt, homelessness, and despair, and the planet that is being shared with us is being destroyed whilst the uber-rich seek to escape their mess to start over on another planet and leave us to suffer for their social, financial and environmental crimes.
"It was once thought acceptable to own and trade human beings, to take the land of indigenous people by force, to put debtors in prison, and to exercise vast monopoly power." It still is, obviously.
I think it is high time people started reading Katl Marx again, with sn open mind. No need to read the parts about revolutions and stuff, jyst read how he predicted "today" a hekkuva long time ago, and got the cspitslists almost perf3ctly right.
Socialism is NOT the enemy. Minds taught to be closed are!
The sad Truth Today is that pretty much EVERYBODY is easily replaceable. For every competent employee anywhere in an organization that dies suddenly, moves too far away to continue with the job, becomes physically and/or emotionally disabled, etc., there are 10, 20, 50 others willing to step into that job. They don't even have to be enticed with promises of higher pay. Just the prospect of a stable job with adequate benefits is enough to start a feeding frenzy among the applicants. Whereas, all the wealthy need to get into their high-paying jobs is a well-placed relative or friendly peer to recommend them for the job. Actual competence is secondary to being well-connected. And the vast overwhelming majority of working stiffs are NOT well-connected.
Will and Ariel Durant, appended their 10 volume series "The History of Civilization" with a short "essay" entitled "The Lessons of History." They note that historically concentration of wealth "regularly occurs in history" and that "the concentration may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty."
We should all understand that our society cannot long endure great gaps of wealth inequality, and that there should be dignity, pride, and economic well being associated with all the various jobs that keep us together,
Love your ironclad myths, Prof. Reich. The GOP has built their facade of financial savvy on these vacuous talking points, said with confidence that deflects any conscious thought.
It’s time that America ended it’s recent history of catering to the #OverPrivileged. No more blank-check handouts to the #UpTrodden. Capitalism can be done honorably without the zero-sum mentality of the GOP which seems to have this secret mantra: “Move all the money to us!”
“The standard conservative explanation for why inequality has widened is that individuals are paid what they’re “worth” — and that a few Americans at the top are now worth extraordinary sums while most Americans are not.”
“Worker” is and has always been a pejorative term, whether in Marxist or Capitalist rhetoric: the very word implies “commodity,” one that’s infinitely interchangeable, and of which there is an inexhaustible supply. The only difference between the two is that Capitalism also needs its workers to be consumers of the products other workers make or provide, so they have to have some disposable income if only so the owners of the factories and businesses, and those who invest in those businesses, can see profit.
It’s not worth at all, but PERCEIVED worth, or value.
Ours is a society that has always rewarded talent — or, again, perceived talent — far more than actual labor. Looking at two obvious pools of perceived talent, movie stars and professional athletes, the immense salaries and profit participations they receive are based on their perceived value to movie studios and team owners (in many cases, both stars and athletes are offered huge paydays not because signing them to a contract confers a direct advantage to the employer — added box office gross for a movie, or improved performance of a team — but to merely keep them from selling their services to a competitor of the studio or team. Their value, therefore, is exclusively relative to the particular industry in which they toil; if one were to try to calculate what I call their societal value, it is more or less nil (granted, if the movies or sports vanished overnight, the world would be a somehat duller place, but we’d endure. If, however, forty percent of the world’s garbage collectors suddenly disappeared, we’d all be up to our necks in filth, vermin and disease-bearing ticks and fleas, and civilization would truly and literally collapse).
The problem doesn’t lie with the movie stars and athletes; they’d be fools not to take the money thrown at them, and they are, in total, only a few thousand, made millionaires by billionaires (something that also describes the hyena pundits paid to spew lies on Fox). But it’s those billionaires who are manipulating the very perception of wealth and what might be called the propriety of wealth. Using the media they control they skew those perceptions to their benefit and the detriment of almost everybody else.
As with many things, Oscar Wilde crafted the perfect turn of phrase, though he used it as the definition of a cynic: one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. By this definition, ours is the most cynical society in history, and it’s the billionaires who are moving heaven and earth to make sure it stays that way.
This is Prof. Robert Reich at his best, conjuring up 50 years of perspective on these issues to frame a clear and cogent argument for fundamental reforms. I live in The Netherlands where the difference between the top salaries and the frontline wages has remained at 7x over many years because there is a fair tax system that protects the commons and cares for the least fortunate. No system is perfect, yet all the scaremongering over the years that top talent would leave is rubbish, as people want to live in a society that puts a priority on human dignity and fairness. I left the US to teach at a European University when Ronald Reagan became president and it is obvious to see from a distance the slide in the US towards inequality. I hope that more people listen to Robert's words and choose for a different path. There are many socio-economic models that show the way.
Tom Cummings, co-author, Nine Visions of Capitalism
Two things would help this issue,#1, publicly financed political campaigns like they do in Europe and Australia/New Zealand,and,#2,tax these fat cat a**holes back to the Stone Age.
I for one am very tired of our politicians working for the highest bidder and to Hell with their actual constituents.Also that corporate interests matter more than actual People.
I think President Theodore Roosevelt was pretty damn smart when he warned way back in 1910 that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy. It’s happening right before our eyes! What can we do to save our Democracy?
The key to a healthy, vigorous, economy, as both Roosevelts and Adam Smith recognized, is higher taxes on the wealthy. To believe otherwise is to have swallowed Ayn Rand's bullshit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8m8cQI4DgM.
I believe Adam Smith realized that his economic system would over-reward (if you doubt this, I give you Exhibit A, Mark Zuckerberg), so to protect the free market, and with it the worker, he advocated progressive taxation. Higher taxes on the wealthy would have three effects.
1) It would directly address the over-rewarding by making it possible to build schools and infrastructure like roads, bridges and canals.
2) This recycling of money would put money in the hands of workers, so they could buy the products produced by the factories they worked in, so everyone wins.
3) It would prevent the wealthy from developing the power necessary to buy governments and distort the market.
Sadly, we have now been led to believe that the "Free market" is actually the freedom of the wealthy to do whatever they please, whereas its true meaning is the exact opposite.
What did Reagan do to disrupt a healthy economy? Why, he followed Ayn Rand and cut taxes on the wealthy (interesting that she despised him), while also busting the unions.
To hell with Reagan. Tax....the....Rich.
Bernie is right.
Superb articulation of the issue. My question is when will we collectively learn the lesson of not repeating such mistakes.
An overseas observer of American politics here.
The opportunities for electing people with the same egalitarianism required for Roosevelt-style fiscal policy, seems completely remote in 2023! Perhaps impossible? This seems to be a decade of obscene obfuscation of Fact, Evidence, Truth & Integrity in many Democratic governments but it’s particularly disturbing watching America unravel at such grassroots cultural & political levels. American paranoia for Socialist-Democratic policy is just so baffling.
I think it’s long past time to start making the rich and and major corporations pay their fair share. It’s also long past time to break up these large monopolies that are controlling prices and gouging consumers. It’s time for a major overhaul at the government level. Of course that would require taking the money out of politics.
where is this extreme wealth coming from? the workers, as you rightly note, robert, but it also is coming from increasing exploitation and destruction of nature herself. even as the wealthy grow ever-richer, the rest of us are driven into never-ending debt, homelessness, and despair, and the planet that is being shared with us is being destroyed whilst the uber-rich seek to escape their mess to start over on another planet and leave us to suffer for their social, financial and environmental crimes.
Hold on to your whatever’s, it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.
This two-hour documentary ‘Age of Easy Money’ on PBS is an excellent complement to Professor Bob’s insights.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/
"It was once thought acceptable to own and trade human beings, to take the land of indigenous people by force, to put debtors in prison, and to exercise vast monopoly power." It still is, obviously.
Now, how do we get these facts in front of all those glassy eyed FOX viewers?
I think it is high time people started reading Katl Marx again, with sn open mind. No need to read the parts about revolutions and stuff, jyst read how he predicted "today" a hekkuva long time ago, and got the cspitslists almost perf3ctly right.
Socialism is NOT the enemy. Minds taught to be closed are!
The sad Truth Today is that pretty much EVERYBODY is easily replaceable. For every competent employee anywhere in an organization that dies suddenly, moves too far away to continue with the job, becomes physically and/or emotionally disabled, etc., there are 10, 20, 50 others willing to step into that job. They don't even have to be enticed with promises of higher pay. Just the prospect of a stable job with adequate benefits is enough to start a feeding frenzy among the applicants. Whereas, all the wealthy need to get into their high-paying jobs is a well-placed relative or friendly peer to recommend them for the job. Actual competence is secondary to being well-connected. And the vast overwhelming majority of working stiffs are NOT well-connected.
Will and Ariel Durant, appended their 10 volume series "The History of Civilization" with a short "essay" entitled "The Lessons of History." They note that historically concentration of wealth "regularly occurs in history" and that "the concentration may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty."
We should all understand that our society cannot long endure great gaps of wealth inequality, and that there should be dignity, pride, and economic well being associated with all the various jobs that keep us together,
Love your ironclad myths, Prof. Reich. The GOP has built their facade of financial savvy on these vacuous talking points, said with confidence that deflects any conscious thought.
It’s time that America ended it’s recent history of catering to the #OverPrivileged. No more blank-check handouts to the #UpTrodden. Capitalism can be done honorably without the zero-sum mentality of the GOP which seems to have this secret mantra: “Move all the money to us!”
“The standard conservative explanation for why inequality has widened is that individuals are paid what they’re “worth” — and that a few Americans at the top are now worth extraordinary sums while most Americans are not.”
“Worker” is and has always been a pejorative term, whether in Marxist or Capitalist rhetoric: the very word implies “commodity,” one that’s infinitely interchangeable, and of which there is an inexhaustible supply. The only difference between the two is that Capitalism also needs its workers to be consumers of the products other workers make or provide, so they have to have some disposable income if only so the owners of the factories and businesses, and those who invest in those businesses, can see profit.
It’s not worth at all, but PERCEIVED worth, or value.
Ours is a society that has always rewarded talent — or, again, perceived talent — far more than actual labor. Looking at two obvious pools of perceived talent, movie stars and professional athletes, the immense salaries and profit participations they receive are based on their perceived value to movie studios and team owners (in many cases, both stars and athletes are offered huge paydays not because signing them to a contract confers a direct advantage to the employer — added box office gross for a movie, or improved performance of a team — but to merely keep them from selling their services to a competitor of the studio or team. Their value, therefore, is exclusively relative to the particular industry in which they toil; if one were to try to calculate what I call their societal value, it is more or less nil (granted, if the movies or sports vanished overnight, the world would be a somehat duller place, but we’d endure. If, however, forty percent of the world’s garbage collectors suddenly disappeared, we’d all be up to our necks in filth, vermin and disease-bearing ticks and fleas, and civilization would truly and literally collapse).
The problem doesn’t lie with the movie stars and athletes; they’d be fools not to take the money thrown at them, and they are, in total, only a few thousand, made millionaires by billionaires (something that also describes the hyena pundits paid to spew lies on Fox). But it’s those billionaires who are manipulating the very perception of wealth and what might be called the propriety of wealth. Using the media they control they skew those perceptions to their benefit and the detriment of almost everybody else.
As with many things, Oscar Wilde crafted the perfect turn of phrase, though he used it as the definition of a cynic: one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. By this definition, ours is the most cynical society in history, and it’s the billionaires who are moving heaven and earth to make sure it stays that way.