Robert Reich: The Class Warrior

[seasat]

This is pretty good interview with Reich. I really like this guy and try to read his blog when I get the chance. I hope that our nominee can convince him to serve in their administration. I will make it a point to pick up his new book.

The social ramifications of the wealth gap have preoccupied Reich for decades. In "Supercapitalism," a cautionary analysis of recent economic history, he argues that while free-market capitalism has ascended worldwide since the Cold War, democracy has declined. "Since the 1970s, and notwithstanding three recessions, the United States economy has soared," he writes. New products are available at increasingly lower prices, and though health care costs more today, Americans are living longer, thanks to new drugs and medical technologies. The stock market has soared without spurring inflation.

But Reich believes these benefits have come at a cost. "Capitalism has become more responsive to what we want as individual purchasers of goods," he writes, "but democracy has grown less responsive to what we want together as citizens."

The seeds for today's income gap were sown, Reich believes, during Ronald Reagan's two terms as president. That was the birth of what he calls the "rad con" or radical conservative movement, to which he attributes the loss of middle-class jobs and government-championed tax cuts that gutted education and social services.

In his view, the frayed social safety net has compromised the cornerstone of the American dream - economic mobility - which allows the success of each generation to exceed the last.

[Rick Myers]

1. Great quote from article:

But Reich believes these benefits have come at a cost. "Capitalism has become more responsive to what we want as individual purchasers of goods," he writes, "but democracy has grown less responsive to what we want together as citizens."

(snip)

K and R!!!

:kick:

[thoughtanarchist]

2. Robert Reich Rocks!!!

Catch his podcasts on NPR and his OP-ED pieces on CommonDreams.

This guy is one of the sharpest economic minds of our time.

[MessiahRp]

3. I hope whomever the Democratic nominee is, taps him to be in charge of economic policy

He seems the only economic advisor from either party that has a grasp on the American class war and the havoc it's wreaking on our nation.

Rp

[alfredo]

4. K&R

[applegrove]

5. So true. Here is a like quote from the book World on Fire by Amy Chua

To summarize, there is always an inherent instability in free market democracy. None of the Western democracies today faces this instability in its most explosive form: when the wealthy minority is also a hated, ethnic "outsider" group. Even so, every one of the Western democracies has alleviated the potential conflict between the rich few and the poor many through a host of devices, past and present, such as extensive social safety nets and redistribution, gradual expansion of the suffrage, upward mobility, and even racism. It is important to recognize, as we export free market democracy to the non-Western world, that many of these stabilizing devices do not exist in the developing world, that some of them are unsavory, and that others are, practically speaking, unreproducible. "

World on Fire by Amy Chua