Friends, This week brings us to one of the core problems of widening inequality — the inevitability that concentrated income and wealth at the top comes with political power. Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game in which the rich get richer only if others become poorer, but political power
May 12, 2023·edited May 12, 2023Liked by Robert Reich
“Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game in which the rich get richer only if others become poorer, but political power is zero-sum.”
It may not be zero-sum, BUT the fact is that the parts of the United States with the weakest economies and poorest people are those with Republican governance, something that’s NOT an unintended consequence of poor economic policy but DELIBERATE, because surrounding themselves with poor and lower-middle class masses, whose limited incomes help keep a lid on the prices of basic goods and services, increases the buying power of the rich, as the cost of those goods and services will rise only as high as the majority of those who need and want them are willing and able to pay.
Your comments on cynicism resonated. I do believe a great reset is coming. I'm going to try very hard to be part of the solution back to a virtuous cycle. I remember the 70's when one regular person could work a single job and provide for their whole family. It's been a lifelong journey for me though - I'm in your documentary (EFA) holding a PATCO picket sign at seven years old! My family has watched the change in economic power year by year since the 1980's.
Thank you for never giving up and never losing your hope. You have indeed made a very big difference in my life and many others.
Thank you also for emphasizing the disproportionate amounts of time in which people of color are sitting in jail. As a defense attorney I can confirm that you are spot on as to why they plea. (For anyone interested in more about our CJ system read "Junk Science")
What a great class, so much to think about, so much work that must be done by all of us.I just hope it doesn't take a national disaster, as it did in past history, to right the boat again.
I have the impression that the biggest enemy of democracy in the US is the huge amount of donor money that is (legally) available to politicians and now apparently even people in the judiciary.It is naive to assume that this money is for free. Not having money or donors even seems to be the biggest hurdle for going into politics I often hear. However once a politician, apparently a lot of people seem to gain wealth quickly.......60 years ago I was told by my father to watch out for countries where politicians and government employees are amongst the richest people. I actually worked and lived in countries where this was the case and no surprise, corruption was all around. Another feature is that these corrupt politicians and government officials is that they seemingly were above the law. If needed laws were created to legalise the corruption. In these countries, more than 90% of the population was poor and the benefits of the corruption were only for the few and most was invested abroad. The gap between rich and poor in these countries has only grown and its people and resources are being exploited by the sponsors of politicians. Wealth and power simply go hand in hand, which makes corruption is inevitable. It is naive to assume that corruption does not occur in Western Democracies. To save democracy in US in particular, donor money has be removed from the political scene..... I guess it will be hard to find a majority of politicians who would vote for that.
It all comes down to taxation. Capitalism is a wonderful system for generating a wealthy society, socialism is not. If you doubt that I ask you to consider the German experiment: in 1945 a North-South line was drawn from the Baltic to the Swiss border. The same people lived on both sides. Same language, same history, same awful food. But in the west there was capitalism, in the east there was socialism. Fast forward 20 years and take the lid off. In the west, people were driving Mercedes and BMWs, in the east they had only the Trabant, a car so awful it let the rain in. Enough said.
With capitalism there is inequality, but there is ideally not too much between those at the top and those at the bottom. The middle class remains prosperous. BUT, if inequality becomes too great, the wealthy can afford to buy political privilege, and this enables them to further widen the gap between the wealthy and the middle class, until the middle class actually becomes impoverished. This is not a good society, and it is not a stable society. In fact, it resembles socialism. Look no further than Russia, where there are small numbers of extremely wealthy oligarchs and everyone else is a peasant.
In the US, we now have such a society. This is no longer capitalism but end-stage socialism, for what else is not paying your taxes but government welfare for the rich? Yes, the plutocrats are the new Welfare Queens.
Adam Smith foresaw this problem with his economic system, and to redress it he insisted on strong government to break up monopolies, and he also invented progressive taxation, so the rich not only pay more taxes than the less rich, but a higher PERCENTAGE of their income. This way nobody gets too wealthy, nobody gets too powerful. Now THAT is an economically good society - and we had it in America between 1948 and 1980.
Then along came that horse's ass Ronald Reagan, who cut taxes on the rich and attacked government, thereby violating Adam Smith. The result is what we have today, with the rich paying less taxes than their secretaries, and a government owned by lobbyists. We have homelessness, we have gun violence, we have drug addiction on a massive scale, we have medications that cost 5 or 10 times what Europeans pay, we have 70 million Americans without health insurance. And all because of the Grand Old Party.
The CNN spectacle in New Hampshire was nauseating in that it just confirmed how stupid the electorate can be. But I refuse to believe this audience is typical of the average voter.
There is only ONE way out of this morass, and that is to reverse Reagan. We need much stronger government made possible by much higher taxes on the wealthy. Biden is taking little steps in this direction, and hopefully he will continue by calling McCarthy's bluff on this ridiculous pseudo-concept known as the debt ceiling.
But it will take much more. The DNC has to grow a pair in 2024 and staunchly advocate for massive tax increases on the wealthy (including a wealth tax), gun control, and universal healthcare. As even Trump would say, Whaddyagottalose??
Consistency is one of life's driving needs, knowing, for example, that when we get out of bed in the morning that gravity will hold us to the floor and we do not float off into the sky.
Consistency taken to an extreme is addiction, to power, money, sex, drugs.
Psychologically unstable people with sociopathic or psychotic abnormalities need more and more self-affirming consistency just to exist from day to day.
Sex and drug addiction have recovery approaches.
What would an addiction recovery programme for power and money look like? Why does a billionaire need another billion? How could a power/money addiction programme be implemented?
The Pied Piper of America who the billionaires have in their pocket!
Trump’s Town Hall in New Hampshire in front of a crowd of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents quickly turned into a Trump disinformation rally. The audience laughed at his attacks on E. Jean Carroll and cheered his never ending lies. Journalist Kaitlan Collins tried but could not counter his stream of lies. At the end the audience gave him a standing ovation!
Maybe now people will believe just how totally brainwashed the Republicans really are!
The phrase "pied piper" has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.
For an in-depth look at how Trump became the Pied Piper and President listen to the following podcast:
Robert, you've latched on to your next career path now that your professorship is behind you. You must become shall we affectionately call you, "TruthBarker!" Expose the lies spread by the Elite class. Their sole purpose of creating divisions within the Masses. To hide themselves and to build their troughs around their fortresses. So, us peons won't recognize they've taken ownership of the Republican Party to control our government from within. To provide further benefits to themselves and to hide their misdeeds from the public. We need you to be our "Purveyor of Justice!"
Thank you for this lecture, most notably the Brandeis admonition and your thought whether America will reset. Senators Warren and Sanders have just endorsed Biden who asserts he "deserves" "fated" a second term. IMHO Reagan Clinton neoliberals unable to connect with America writ large. If Garland allows Trump to run, maybe we deserve "Evil". If not, maybe Liz Cheney would be a more ethical choice even with disgraceful women's health care views. Your thoughts? Heartbroken unable to live in America. Sincerely, Phil willclimatecollapse.org Again, thank you.
We are adding huge numbers of very poor people to our US population. Many will be working here illegally below minimum wage rates, make zero contributions to payroll taxes. How are we ever going to make headway on reducing inequality which is not only a problem at the top but also at the bottom.
I hear the same mantra over and over again that our problems are at the top. Too many wealthy people and their wealth is growing. What about the bottom? What about the massive problem we are experiencing on our border? What about the problems with drugs, mental illness and homelessness which we are experiencing daily in our streets? What about our schools and the huge drop in achievement levels? What about the many young men who no longer go to college?
There are so many questions which never get touched. May be I am missing something.
“Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game in which the rich get richer only if others become poorer, but political power is zero-sum.”
It may not be zero-sum, BUT the fact is that the parts of the United States with the weakest economies and poorest people are those with Republican governance, something that’s NOT an unintended consequence of poor economic policy but DELIBERATE, because surrounding themselves with poor and lower-middle class masses, whose limited incomes help keep a lid on the prices of basic goods and services, increases the buying power of the rich, as the cost of those goods and services will rise only as high as the majority of those who need and want them are willing and able to pay.
Thank you for leaving these classes up, Professor.
Your comments on cynicism resonated. I do believe a great reset is coming. I'm going to try very hard to be part of the solution back to a virtuous cycle. I remember the 70's when one regular person could work a single job and provide for their whole family. It's been a lifelong journey for me though - I'm in your documentary (EFA) holding a PATCO picket sign at seven years old! My family has watched the change in economic power year by year since the 1980's.
Thank you for never giving up and never losing your hope. You have indeed made a very big difference in my life and many others.
Thank you also for emphasizing the disproportionate amounts of time in which people of color are sitting in jail. As a defense attorney I can confirm that you are spot on as to why they plea. (For anyone interested in more about our CJ system read "Junk Science")
What a great class, so much to think about, so much work that must be done by all of us.I just hope it doesn't take a national disaster, as it did in past history, to right the boat again.
I have the impression that the biggest enemy of democracy in the US is the huge amount of donor money that is (legally) available to politicians and now apparently even people in the judiciary.It is naive to assume that this money is for free. Not having money or donors even seems to be the biggest hurdle for going into politics I often hear. However once a politician, apparently a lot of people seem to gain wealth quickly.......60 years ago I was told by my father to watch out for countries where politicians and government employees are amongst the richest people. I actually worked and lived in countries where this was the case and no surprise, corruption was all around. Another feature is that these corrupt politicians and government officials is that they seemingly were above the law. If needed laws were created to legalise the corruption. In these countries, more than 90% of the population was poor and the benefits of the corruption were only for the few and most was invested abroad. The gap between rich and poor in these countries has only grown and its people and resources are being exploited by the sponsors of politicians. Wealth and power simply go hand in hand, which makes corruption is inevitable. It is naive to assume that corruption does not occur in Western Democracies. To save democracy in US in particular, donor money has be removed from the political scene..... I guess it will be hard to find a majority of politicians who would vote for that.
Great class! Thank You Mr. Reich
It all comes down to taxation. Capitalism is a wonderful system for generating a wealthy society, socialism is not. If you doubt that I ask you to consider the German experiment: in 1945 a North-South line was drawn from the Baltic to the Swiss border. The same people lived on both sides. Same language, same history, same awful food. But in the west there was capitalism, in the east there was socialism. Fast forward 20 years and take the lid off. In the west, people were driving Mercedes and BMWs, in the east they had only the Trabant, a car so awful it let the rain in. Enough said.
With capitalism there is inequality, but there is ideally not too much between those at the top and those at the bottom. The middle class remains prosperous. BUT, if inequality becomes too great, the wealthy can afford to buy political privilege, and this enables them to further widen the gap between the wealthy and the middle class, until the middle class actually becomes impoverished. This is not a good society, and it is not a stable society. In fact, it resembles socialism. Look no further than Russia, where there are small numbers of extremely wealthy oligarchs and everyone else is a peasant.
In the US, we now have such a society. This is no longer capitalism but end-stage socialism, for what else is not paying your taxes but government welfare for the rich? Yes, the plutocrats are the new Welfare Queens.
Adam Smith foresaw this problem with his economic system, and to redress it he insisted on strong government to break up monopolies, and he also invented progressive taxation, so the rich not only pay more taxes than the less rich, but a higher PERCENTAGE of their income. This way nobody gets too wealthy, nobody gets too powerful. Now THAT is an economically good society - and we had it in America between 1948 and 1980.
Then along came that horse's ass Ronald Reagan, who cut taxes on the rich and attacked government, thereby violating Adam Smith. The result is what we have today, with the rich paying less taxes than their secretaries, and a government owned by lobbyists. We have homelessness, we have gun violence, we have drug addiction on a massive scale, we have medications that cost 5 or 10 times what Europeans pay, we have 70 million Americans without health insurance. And all because of the Grand Old Party.
The CNN spectacle in New Hampshire was nauseating in that it just confirmed how stupid the electorate can be. But I refuse to believe this audience is typical of the average voter.
There is only ONE way out of this morass, and that is to reverse Reagan. We need much stronger government made possible by much higher taxes on the wealthy. Biden is taking little steps in this direction, and hopefully he will continue by calling McCarthy's bluff on this ridiculous pseudo-concept known as the debt ceiling.
But it will take much more. The DNC has to grow a pair in 2024 and staunchly advocate for massive tax increases on the wealthy (including a wealth tax), gun control, and universal healthcare. As even Trump would say, Whaddyagottalose??
Dear Robert
You are amazing. Thank you for sharing these lectures. So enlightening.
You are a national treasure.
Rick Gilbert
If this country's social ignorance was converted to coin we would have no national debt.
Consistency is one of life's driving needs, knowing, for example, that when we get out of bed in the morning that gravity will hold us to the floor and we do not float off into the sky.
Consistency taken to an extreme is addiction, to power, money, sex, drugs.
Psychologically unstable people with sociopathic or psychotic abnormalities need more and more self-affirming consistency just to exist from day to day.
Sex and drug addiction have recovery approaches.
What would an addiction recovery programme for power and money look like? Why does a billionaire need another billion? How could a power/money addiction programme be implemented?
The Pied Piper of America who the billionaires have in their pocket!
Trump’s Town Hall in New Hampshire in front of a crowd of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents quickly turned into a Trump disinformation rally. The audience laughed at his attacks on E. Jean Carroll and cheered his never ending lies. Journalist Kaitlan Collins tried but could not counter his stream of lies. At the end the audience gave him a standing ovation!
Maybe now people will believe just how totally brainwashed the Republicans really are!
The phrase "pied piper" has become a metaphor for a person who attracts a following through charisma or false promises.
For an in-depth look at how Trump became the Pied Piper and President listen to the following podcast:
LONG SHADOW
Rise of the American Far Right
Robert, you've latched on to your next career path now that your professorship is behind you. You must become shall we affectionately call you, "TruthBarker!" Expose the lies spread by the Elite class. Their sole purpose of creating divisions within the Masses. To hide themselves and to build their troughs around their fortresses. So, us peons won't recognize they've taken ownership of the Republican Party to control our government from within. To provide further benefits to themselves and to hide their misdeeds from the public. We need you to be our "Purveyor of Justice!"
Thank you for this lecture, most notably the Brandeis admonition and your thought whether America will reset. Senators Warren and Sanders have just endorsed Biden who asserts he "deserves" "fated" a second term. IMHO Reagan Clinton neoliberals unable to connect with America writ large. If Garland allows Trump to run, maybe we deserve "Evil". If not, maybe Liz Cheney would be a more ethical choice even with disgraceful women's health care views. Your thoughts? Heartbroken unable to live in America. Sincerely, Phil willclimatecollapse.org Again, thank you.
Thanks for this.
We are adding huge numbers of very poor people to our US population. Many will be working here illegally below minimum wage rates, make zero contributions to payroll taxes. How are we ever going to make headway on reducing inequality which is not only a problem at the top but also at the bottom.
I hear the same mantra over and over again that our problems are at the top. Too many wealthy people and their wealth is growing. What about the bottom? What about the massive problem we are experiencing on our border? What about the problems with drugs, mental illness and homelessness which we are experiencing daily in our streets? What about our schools and the huge drop in achievement levels? What about the many young men who no longer go to college?
There are so many questions which never get touched. May be I am missing something.
👏