The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Friends,That Donald Trump is now hawking digital trading cards featuring images of himself as a superhero for $99 each tells you all you need to know about Trump and about NFTs.The recent implosion of Samuel Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto market offers another case in point. Months ago, FTX was huge. Now it’s a hole in the pockets of countless people who had put their money into it. (Until a few week ago, Bankman-Fried was one of the world’s richest people.) Crypto as a whole is proving to be little more than a giant zero-sum game. Like NFTs, crypto’s current value depends on whether buyers believe future buyers will be even bigger suckers. A large and growing sector of the U.S. economy produces nothing of value. Nada. Zilch. Every winner comes at the expense of a current or future loser. The only things this “zero-sum” sector produces are many of the nation’s ultra-wealthy. Money moves from one set of pockets into another — mostly upward, into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. Much of Wall Street is expanding this zero-sum economy. Derivatives, private equity, hedge funds, and funds of funds, are creating a few fabulously wealthy people who could vanish tomorrow and be barely missed for all the net value they produce. Corporate law is another part. High-paid lawyers representing one corporation battle high-paid lawyers representing another. Huge sums of money are spent on these escapades. But there are no societal gains unless you equate one corporation’s victory over another with justice.Management consulting? Advising corporations how to make more money by cutting payrolls, abandoning communities, busting unions, outsourcing abroad, and pushing more jobs into contract work doesn’t add value. Some economists dub these “efficiencies” but if the social costs inflicted on everyone else are included, it’s zero-sum. Public relations? How much value is created by convincing the public that a particular corporation or wealthy individual is nicer or worthier than we otherwise believe? Then there’s the so-called “wealth management” industry — advising rich people where to park their money and how to avoid paying taxes. More zero-sum games. In reality, the vast and growing zero-sum economy costs us dearly. It uses the time and energies of some of the nation’s best-educated people. They do it because zero-sum work pays so much compared to, say, teaching or social work or healthcare or journalism or art or science or many other things that improve peoples’ lives. You might think a rational society would heavily tax zero-sum work while subsidizing work that generate lots of social good. But you’d be wrong because the political power of the zero-sum economy generates an even bigger zero-sum game.At this moment, for example, lobbyists for big corporations and private equity are pushing Congress for a retroactive tax break that would repeal limits on how much corporations can deduct in interest payments on their debts. (The limits went into effect this year as part of the compromise that gave us Trump’s big 2017 giveaway to the rich.) If the lobbyists get their way, the revenue loss could be about $20 billion per year, or around $200 billion over 10 years. A big portion of that windfall will wind up in the pockets of private equity mavens who take over companies using piles of debt they then deduct from the companies’ income in order to minimize tax payments. These individuals already get special treatment in the tax code because they’re allowed to treat their incomes as capital gains subject to a lower tax. I just got off the phone with a staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee who told me she thought it likely that this tax break will be attached to the omnibus funding bill now working its way through the last days of this Congress. She admitted there was “no justification” for it but sighed “that’s how the game is played.”And who do you suppose pays more in taxes to make up for what these corpulent felines don’t pay? The rest of us. Zero-sum. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

My friends,As Congress ends its first post-Trump term, the biggest political question hanging over America is this: When will the GOP finally reach its anti-Trump tipping point — when a majority of Republican lawmakers disavow him?Again and again, it looks like the tipping point is near but the GOP remains under Trump’s thumb.What about last month’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago, with Ye, formerly Kanye West, the man whose fame as a rapper has been dwarfed by his antisemitic and racist declarations, along with infamous Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes?It didn’t come near tipping the scales. What about Trump’s December 3 declaration that the “Massive Fraud” of the 2020 election would allow for the Constitution to be “terminated?” Nope. Both events caused grumbling among a few Republican lawmakers but most avoided criticizing Trump (as they’ve avoided it in the past — as they avoided doing so the moment the furor over January 6 had died down) for fear of his wrath.But what’s to fear, now? Didn’t the midterms reveal how weak he is? After all, most of his endorsees flamed out, including celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Tim Michels in Wisconsin, Blake Masters in Arizona, Adam Laxalt and Kari Lake also in Arizona, and Herschel Walker in Georgia. (Walker’s campaign even asked Trump to stay away in the final weeks.)Many election-deniers hit the skids. Michigan’s legislature swung to the Democrats for the first time since the 1980s.Democrats defied almost all doomsday prophesies as well as the historic pattern of presidents losing midterms — and why? In large part because so many voters fear and loathe the former president. Nearly as many viewed the midterms as a referendum on Trump as who saw it as a referendum on Joe Biden. As Mitch McConnell explained, voters “were frightened” by the Trump-induced GOP rhetoric, “and so they pulled back."And it’s only going to get worse for Trump, right? His business has been found guilty of criminal fraud. Investigators have found more classified documents in a storage unit near Mar-a-Lago. A criminal case is pending in Georgia. The January 6 committee is likely to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department, whose special counsel is already building a criminal case against him. Several leaders of the January 6 attack have already been convicted of seditious conspiracy.Even the kingpins of the GOP, including the rightwing media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, have switched their allegiance away from him — to Florida governor Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz or another GOP hopeful.So why hasn’t the Republican Party as a whole tipped? Why aren’t almost all Republican lawmakers publicly disavowing the former sociopath-in-chief? In two words: The base.Utah’s Republican senator Mitt Romney, no friend of Trump, put it bluntly last week:“I think we’ve got, I don’t know, 12 people or more that would like to be president, that are thinking of running in 2024. If President Trump continues in his campaign, I’m not sure any one of them can make it through and beat him. He’s got such a strong base of, I don’t know, 30% or 40 % of the Republican voters, or maybe more, it’s going to be hard to knock him off as our nominee.”That’s the problem in a nutshell, folks. It’s not so much the size of Trump’s base. Even 40 percent of Republican voters is a relatively small group nationwide, especially considering that fewer than 30 percent of all voters are registered Republicans. It’s also the intensity and tenacity of their support, which gives them effective control over the Republican Party. They worship him. They won’t budge.But until they budge, most Republican lawmakers won’t budge either (Romney and Liz Cheney being notable exceptions, and we know what happened to her). The problem isn’t some highfalutin moral issue, such as Republican lawmakers putting their party over their country. It’s something far more prosaic. They want to keep their jobs.Which means the GOP continues to rot as a political party, as a governing institution, and as a moral entity. That may be good for Democrats in 2024, but in the larger sense it’s bad for us all. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student) — when we review the week’s highs and lows. Please grab a coffee and pull up a chair. Today, we consider:Kyrsten Sinema’s exit from the Democrats.Raphael Warnock’s embrace by the Democrats.Donald Trump’s latest disgrace.Heather’s and Bob’s views about the holidays. Plus much more. And please take our latest poll: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,Texas has sued the Biden administration over its order to immigration agents to prioritize undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies rather than deport all undocumented immigrants. Texas argues that federal immigration law requires the government to deport every undocumented immigrant. The Biden administration says it doesn’t have the resources to deport the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, so it must develop priorities. The controversy reminds me of something that happened thirty years ago, soon after I became secretary of labor. Child labor laws bar fourteen-year-olds from working past 7 pm on school nights. Weeks before I became secretary of labor, a vigilant Labor Department investigator discovered that the Savannah Cardinals, a Class A farm team of the Atlanta Braves, had hired 14-year-old Tommy McCoy to be their batboy. On balmy evenings extending beyond sunset, Tommy selected each player’s favorite bat and proudly delivered it to him in the batter’s box. Next morning, Tommy went to school. The investigator threatened the team with a stiff fine. The team did what it had to do: It fired little Tommy. Tommy liked being a batboy. His parents were proud of him. The team was fond of him. The fans loved him. As long as anyone could remember, every kid in Savannah had coveted the job. Tommy did well in school. But now little Tommy was out of the best kid’s job in town. Well, you can imagine the furor. It seemed as if the whole city of Savannah was up in arms. The Cardinals were about to stage a “Save Tommy’s Job Night” rally, featuring balloons, buttons, placards, and a petition signed by the fans demanding that Tommy be rehired. ABC News was doing a story on the controversy — which was how I first heard about it. ABC wanted an on-camera interview with me that same evening, explaining why Tommy had been fired. They couldn’t wait to show America the stupidity of the government (and of its new secretary of labor). What was I to do? I tried to hold ABC off. They said they were running with the story with or without my interview. I called an urgent meeting with the Labor Department’s top inspectors. I explained the situation to them, suggesting we let Tommy have his job back. They wouldn’t hear of it. “It would look like you’re caving in to public opinion,” one of the chief inspectors said. “But,” I asked, “isn’t it the public whom we’re here to serve?” They said the law was clear: Children under 14 could not work past 7 pm on school nights. “The Savannah team broke the law and it was our responsibility to enforce the it.” “But shouldn’t we have priorities?” I asked. “We have a limited number of inspectors. I can understand hitting a building contractor who’s hiring kids to lay roofing, but why go after batboys and girls?”They said child labor was a serious problem. Children were getting injured working long hours. “Exactly,” I said. “So let’s focus on the serious offenses and ignore the less serious.” They warned that if I didn’t support the Department’s investigators, the staff would become demoralized. “Good! If they become demoralized and stop enforcing the law nonsensically, so much the better,” I said. They said that if I backed down, the Labor Department would lose credibility. “We’ll lose even more credibility if we stick with this outrageous decision,” I said. They said there was nothing we could do. The law was the law. “Nonsense,” I said. “We can change the regulation to make an exception for kids at sporting events.”But we’d invite all sorts of abuses, they argued. Vendors would exploit young kids on school nights to sell peanuts and popcorn. Stadiums would hire young children to clean the locker rooms. Parking lots would use children to collect money. “So we draw the exception tighter and limit it to batboys and batgirls!” I said. I was getting nowhere. World News Tonight would broadcast the story in minutes. And then it hit me, like a fastball slamming into my think head: I was Secretary of Labor. I could decide this by myself. “Thank you,” I said, standing. “I’ve heard enough.” I turned to my assistant, “Tell the Savannah team they can keep Tommy. We’re changing the regulation to allow batboys and girls. Put out a press release right now. Call the producers for World News Tonight and tell them I’ve decided to let Tommy have his batboy job. Tell them our investigator was way off base!”“But World News Tonight is already on the air!” my assistant said. “Call them now!”I turned on the TV in the corner of my office. ABC’s anchor, Peter Jennings, was already reading the news from his monitor. Within moments, he got to the story I was dreading:The United States Department of Labor has decided that a fourteen-year-old named Tommy McCoy cannot serve as batboy for the Atlanta Braves farm team in Savannah, Georgia. The decision has provoked outrage from the fans. Here’s more from …As Jennings turned it over to ABC’s Atlanta correspondent, he appeared to be smirking. S**t. I

Hello friends,Sometimes I feel like screaming at the mainstream media for failing to alert people to crucial (although complicated) issues affecting our democracy coming from different parts of government simultaneously.Case in point: Moore vs. Harper, argued yesterday before the Supreme Court, and the Electoral Reform Act, which must be enacted before the end of this Congress because Republicans won’t touch it once they control the House.The two are intimately connected but you wouldn’t know that from the mainstream media, which is treating them as two separate stories. Let me make the connection. In Moore, North Carolina Republicans aim to restore a redistricting map drawn by the GOP-led legislature but rejected as violating the state constitution by North Carolina’s supreme court.North Carolina bases its argument on the bonkers “independent state legislature” theory, which interprets Article I Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution (authorizing state legislatures to prescribe “the times, places and manner of holding elections") to give state legislatures sole authority over elections, without interference from state courts.The theory sprang from the head of Justice William Rehnquist in 2000, who wrote (in a concurring opinion in Bush v. Gore) that “the text of the election law itself, and not just its interpretation by the courts of the States, takes on independent significance.” Since then, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch have all endorsed aspects of the theory. Notably, they didn’t disavow it in yesterday’s oral argument.Not only would the theory open the door to extreme gerrymandering, allowing one party to virtually entrench itself in a state. It could also allow state legislatures to reject the results of a presidential election.Which is where the Electoral Reform Act, now before Congress, comes in.Article II of the Constitution requires states to appoint presidential electors “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” And the Electoral Count Act of 1845 allows state legislatures to choose a new manner of appointing the state's electors if the vote for the presidency has “failed” in the state.But what does “failed” mean and who has the authority to declare a failure?This wasn’t an issue until the 2020 election, when Donald Trump exploited the Act's vagueness to claim he could overturn the will of the voters.He pushed state legislatures to appoint electors for him regardless of the popular vote. (Fortunately, they refused.) He pressured congressional Republicans to object to Joe Biden’s electors. (Trump partly succeeded, but not by enough to throw the election his way.) And he pushed Vice President Pence to illegally delay the electoral count so Trump could continue pressuring states. (Thankfully, Pence refused.)American democracy survived by a whisker. But add in a Supreme Court ruling affirming the independent state legislature theory, and what do you get if Trump (or any other anti-democracy candidate) tries the same thing again? A democratic disaster.This isn’t wild conjecture. Just weeks ago, after Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake contested her loss based on absolutely nothing, the election board in GOP-controlled Cochise County refused to certify the results.Eventually Cochise came around. But in a future presidential election, a GOP-controlled state legislature -- armed with a broad "independent state legislature" theory from Moore v. Harper -- could seize on this kind of resistance to declare a “failed” election and appoint a slate of fake electors. And neither Congress nor a Vice President could stop them. This time, democracy wouldn't survive. Which is why the Electoral Reform Act – now before Congress – is so important. It would require state legislatures to appoint presidential electors exactly as they’ve been appointed before. So if a state’s laws require that electors certify the person who has won the popular vote, a legislature can’t use the “failed” election loophole to appoint electors for anyone else. Other provisions require that governors certify the correct electors by a hard deadline before Congress counts them, and allow an aggrieved candidate to trigger expedited judicial review.Where is the Electoral Reform Act at this point?Ten Republican senators tentatively support it but Trumpsters are pressuring them to withdraw their support. With so little time remaining in the lame-duck session, the measure may be attached to the end-of-year spending bill.But how many close calls like this can a system of self-government endure? And if the media doesn’t adequately report on issues like this, how can a free people govern themselves to begin with? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Freinds,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student, years ago). Grab a cup and pull cup a chair. Today, we talk about:— Biden and the Democrat’s decision to stop railway workers from striking. — Elon Musk’s decision to allow almost every hateful, deceptive person in the world to spew poison on Twitter (except Kanye West). — House Republican’s upcoming decision over whether they’ll try to do serious things or use their two years in control of the House sowing more divisiveness. — Plus Heather reveals a special talent that you won’t believe. And please take our poll: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

A producer at ABC recently asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed for a documentary they’re making about Bill Clinton. I agreed. Then I asked when they’re planning to show it. “After he dies,” they said.“What!? Is he dying?” I asked, shocked. “Oh, no,” they said. “It’s for the archive.”“You mean, it’s for whenever he dies, even if that’s twenty years from now?”“Exactly.”“Even if you and I are long gone by then?”“Yup.”I was relieved, but flummoxed. Was I supposed to talk about Clinton in the past tense? Should I give only the sort of glowing tribute accorded former presidents when they pass? Would it be inappropriate to say anything even slightly critical of him or his presidency? I just did the interview from my office at Berkeley. At first it all seemed weirdly morbid but after five minutes or so I forgot the weirdness and just talked. I met Bill Clinton in September 1968 on the USS United States, sailing from New York City to Southampton, England. We were 22 years old. He and I, along with thirty other young American men, had won Rhodes Scholarships to study at Oxford. (Had women been allowed to compete then, I doubt either he or I would have won.)We were heading to England by ship because that had been the tradition for newly-selected Rhodes Scholars. Six days at sea was supposed to give Scholars time to get to know one another. But on this voyage, the crossing was so stormy that most of us spent a good part of the time alone in our cabins, seasick. I stayed in my bunk and tried not to think about food. Then a loud knock on my cabin door.I staggered over to open it. There was a tall, curly-haired fellow with a big grin, holding a bowl chicken soup.“Hi, my name is Bill,” he said in a syrupy southern accent as the ship rolled and the soup sloshed. “I hear you weren’t feeling well. Thought this might help.” He handed me the bowl. (He didn’t say “I feel your pain” – that came later on his presidential campaign.)“Well, that’s awfully kind of you,” I said, taking the bowl in both my hands while trying to steady myself and not barf on him. “I’m Bob,” I stammered. “I’d invite you in, Bill, but …”“Oh, that’s okay. We’ll have time later… I’m from Arkansas.” “Well, that’s really great. I’m from a little town in New York State.” “It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he grinned. The soup was sloshing over the sides of the bowl, and I desperately needed to use the john. “Er, what’s amazing?”“Small town boys. Did you ever think you and I would be here?”“No. But sorry, I’ve got to….”“Don’t worry, I’ll be gettin’ on.” He turned and walked off, his hand on the wall of the corridor as the ship rolled.“Thanks, again,” I called after him. “Very nice of you.” I was genuinely touched. He waved as he walked away. Despite the rough seas, the journey felt restorative — an escape from a nation that seemed to be losing its mind and moral compass. Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated a few months before. Gene McCarthy’s presidential bid had gone nowhere. Democrats were about to nominate Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey. Republicans were nominating the abominable Richard Nixon. Several American cities were in flames. The Vietnam War continued unabated. My other recollection from that voyage, by the way, occurred in the ship’s stateroom, on one of my few outings from my cabin. The stateroom was almost empty except for a pale, gray, thin man sitting at a far table, smoking a cigarette. I sat down and introduced myself. He told me his name was Bobby Baker. Of all the people to be on this ship, he was the last I expected — or wanted to talk with. (If you don’t remember, Baker had been a crony of Lyndon Johnson’s. He was secretary to the Democratic Party when LBJ was Senate Majority Leader — until Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, exposed Baker’s alleged deals with organized crime and Baker was forced to resign. Kennedy’s investigation led to allegations that Johnson himself received kickbacks from military contractors. It was rotten stuff, even worse when several newspapers found evidence that Baker had also been involved in procuring women for JFK.)We exchanged a few words and then I excused myself, pointing to my stomach. He said he understood. I headed back to my cabin. That Bobby Baker had chosen to travel to England on this particular ship seemed a cruel joke — as if to say there was no real escape. Days later, after landing in Southampton and taking a bus to Oxford, Bill and I were assigned “digs” at the same Oxford college — called University College. (Legend has it that the college was founded around 866 by King Alfred. I recall a disagreement among the faculty over whether it should celebrate its 1,100th anniversary in 1966 — detractors grousing that once they began celebrating every hundred years there’d be no end to festivities.)Bill and I spent much of the the next two years talking about Vietnam, American politics (he already had his eye on becoming governor of Arkansas), food (he liked British hamburgers, which I f

Friends, Today is Giving Tuesday — a day to focus on personal charitable giving to worthy causes. But what I really want to talk about today is something quite different from charitable giving, although often confused with it: It’s called “effective altruism.” Known as EA to its practitioners, effective altruism urges people to give away a large share of their incomes. Fine as far as it goes. But EA has been going much further. One of EA’s most influential proponents is the Oxford philosopher William MacAskill, who has urged young people to seek high-paying jobs in finance (or wherever else they can make gobs of money) on ethical grounds, because they can then donate a large portion of their earnings to worthy causes. For example, by becoming a hedge-fund mogul, MacAskill says, you can donate large sums — and create far more good — than you can as a social worker.Or to take a different example, MacAskill argues that a young person concerned about the world’s poor could become a doctor in a poor country and possibly save the equivalent of 140 lives in their medical career. But if they took a job that paid them hundreds of millions of dollars, and then donated a big portion of it intelligently, they could save ten times as many lives. Sounds logical. But wait. MacAskill’s utilitarian logic leaves out the social costs associated with how a talented young person might make gobs of money in the first place. (One red flag: Elon Musk claims that MacAskill’s giving philosophy is similar to his own.)MacAskill’s logic also fails to capture the corrupting influence of hedge funds, private-equity, crypto, or other ultra-profit-driven institutions on the people within them. Even if you had charitable impulses at the start, once surrounded by money-driven zombies you might easily lose those impulses. Consider Sam Bankman-Fried — an avowed practitioner of EA — whose off-shore crypto Ponzi scheme FTX just collapsed, taking billions of dollars of customers’ savings with it. Before the collapse, Bankman-Fried was worth $24 billion and pledged to donate a large portion of it to EA causes. Last February, Bankman-Fried created the philanthropic FTX Future Fund to put his EA ideas into practice, naming William MacAskill as an adviser. Some of FTX’s funds went into sleek ads touting his dedication to “positive social change” (such as the one I’ve posted here, featuring the runway supermodel Gisele Bündchen. which appeared in The New Yorker.) “Whenever someone is willing to commit to change, I’m willing to help,” Bündchen said at the SALT Crypto conference in Nassau, Bahamas last April. “Sam is making such an important statement with this, and I’ve found that inspirational.”Inspirational? FTX spent an estimated $20 million on the ad campaign (featuring other celebrities such as Tom Brady) and bought the naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena for $135 million.Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives also showered nearly $72 million on lawmakers in both parties during the 2022 midterms — all but guaranteeing a “favorable business climate” (aka zero regulation) for his crypto exchange. Charity is important, and I hope you will be generous today, and all other days. But what if charity by the ultra-wealthy is just a cover for their greed? Shouldn’t we be concerned about how they accumulate their fortunes? And shouldn’t we worry a bit about what happens to people — even those with the best of intentions — who join institutions dedicated to making gobs of money? So-called “philanthropists” like Bankman-Fried — who shaft millions of creditors, undermine social trust, and crash our democracy with their political donations — have probably made the world worse off, their beneficence notwithstanding. On Nov. 11, the day FTX filed for bankruptcy, William MacAskill wrote in a Twitter thread: “For years, the EA community has emphasized the importance of integrity, honesty, and the respect of common-sense moral constraints. If customer funds were misused, then Sam did not listen; he must have thought he was above such considerations. A clear-thinking EA should strongly oppose ‘ends justify the means’ reasoning. But isn’t “ends justify the means reasoning” at the heart of MacAskill’s ethics, urging young people to make gobs of money as bankers or crypto moguls so they can make large charitable donations? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media (and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week. Please grab a cup and pull up a chair. Today we’re still recovering from Thanksgiving, so we thought we’d change pace a bit and talk a bit about what we’re doing in our “spare” time — what we’re reading, what we’re watching, how we’re trying to get a break. And, of course, our weekly poll. — Heather is reading: Anything by Jo Nesbø, and The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard— Bob’s recommends: Cloud Coukoo Land by Anthony Doerr, and Dirt Road Revival by Chloe Maxmin and Canyon Woodward— We also get into our favorite streaming TV shows (Bob strongly recommends “The Bear” and “The English” and Heather somewhat recommends). How our Thanksgivings really went. And Heather’s advice for living a good life. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,Thanksgiving often brings up one of the central dilemmas in my life — trying to find a better balance between work and family, and failing miserably. It’s the word “balance” that’s always thrown me. I used to assume that a better balance meant more of what you really wanted and less of what you didn’t. For me, and perhaps many of you, that metaphor doesn’t help. Sure, I’ve met lots of people who find a better balance by doing less work and having more time for family. But that’s hard to achieve economically. Working families don’t have it easy in America, and the work-family challenges are particularly daunting for women — especially women of color. Not to mention the pandemic we’ve been living through, where working people have been trying to balance childcare, virtual schooling, and precarious employment. But for some people it’s at least possible. Live cheaper, scale back, give up the rat race.I’ve even met a few people who’ve done the reverse. For them, a better balance means more work and less family. They love their job and find the world of spouse and kids harder to manage. So they’ve hired a babysitter, gratefully sent the kids off to college, or got a divorce. Now their energies are happily focused on work.I know someone who found balance by cutting back on both. She simply needed more time for herself. She had had it with a boss who kept piling it on and a family that relied on her to do everything for them. Finding her balance required setting some firm limits.All these people found a better balance between work and family by devoting additional time and energy to the one they valued more, and less to the one they valued less. But what if you’re like me and, I suspect, many others — you love your job and you love your family, and you desperately want more of both? You’re doubly blessed, in a way.But here’s the rub: There’s no way of getting work and family into better balance. You’re inevitably shortchanging one or the other. You’re never able to do enough of what you truly value because you want more of both. I used to think it was just a matter of improving my “time-management” skills. Rubbish. A family doesn’t need you just when you block out time for them. Work doesn’t present new opportunities or crises on a predictable schedule. In the end, you simply can’t do more of both. There’s no room for better “balance.” The metaphor is all wrong. You have to make a choice.I vividly remember one night toward the end of my four years as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Clinton had won reelection. My workload seemed under control for the first time in months. I planned to be home to say good night to my two boys, then young teenagers. I hadn’t been home in almost a week. But my plan wasn’t working out. Another work crisis intervened. When I phoned Sam, the younger of the two, to tell him that I might not make it in time for bed, he said that was O.K. “But will you wake me up when you come in, Dad?” he asked.I explained that it might be early in the morning and he needed his sleep. “I’d like it if you’d wake me,” he responded. “I just want to know you’re here with us.”That did it. Being secretary of labor was the best job I’d ever had. I couldn’t get enough of it. But I also couldn’t get enough of my two teenage boys, whom I knew would be gone from the nest and on their own in a precious few years. Finding a better balance? I’d been kidding myself into thinking there was one. The next day I told Clinton I’d be leaving, and explained why. He said he understood. He had the same dilemma, but couldn’t leave for another four years. Happy Thanksgiving. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, he clearly didn’t know that the key assets he was buying lay in Twitter’s 7,500 workers’ heads.On corporate balance sheets, the assets of a corporation are its factories, equipment, patents, and brand name.Workers aren’t considered assets. They appear as costs. In fact, payrolls are typically two-thirds of a corporation’s total costs. Which is why companies often cut payrolls to increase profits. The reason for this is simple. Corporations have traditionally been viewed as production systems. Assets are things that corporations own, which turn inputs — labor, raw materials, and components — into marketable products.Reduce the costs of these inputs, and — presto — each product generates more profit. Or that’s been the traditional view.Yet today, increasingly, corporations aren’t just production systems. They’re systems for directing the know-how, know-what, know-where, and know-why of the people who work within them. A large and growing part of the value of a corporation now lies in the heads of its workers — heads that know how to innovate, know what needs improvement, know where the company’s strengths and vulnerabilities are found, and know why the corporation succeeds (or doesn’t).These human assets are becoming the key assets of today’s corporations. But they can’t be owned, as are factories, equipment, patents, and brands. They must be motivated. When Musk fired half of Twitter’s workforce, then threatened to fire any remaining dissenters and demanded that the rest pledge to accept “long hours at high intensity” — leading to the resignations last week of an estimated 1,200 more Twitter employees — he began to destroy what he bought.Now he’s panicking. Last week he tried to hire back some of the people he fired. On Friday he sent emails to Twitter employees asking that “anyone who actually writes software” report in, and stating that he wanted to learn about Twitter’s “tech stack” (its software and related systems).But even if Musk gets this information, he probably won’t be able to save Twitter.Most of Twitter’s employees are now gone, which means most of its know-how to prevent outages and failures during high-traffic events is also gone, most of its know-what is necessary to maintain and enhance computing architecture is gone, most of its know-where to guard against cyberattacks is gone, and most of its know-why hate speech (and other awful stuff advertisers want to avoid) is getting through its filters and what to do about it, is also now gone. Without this knowledge and talent, Twitter is a shell — an office building, some patents, and a brand — without the capacity to improve or even sustain its service.Twitter is unlikely to fail all at once. But bugs and glitches will mount, the quality of what’s offered will deteriorate, hateful tweets will burgeon, and customers and advertisers will flee.As Richard Forno, assistant director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County told the New York Times, “it’s like putting a car on the road, hitting the accelerator, and then the driver jumps out. How far is it going to go before it crashes?”Not even Donald Trump seems particularly eager to take up Musk’s offer to have him back on the platform.Safe to say, Twitter is no longer worth the nearly $44 billion Musk paid for it. It’s now probably worth only a fraction of that sum — a fact that should be of no small concern to the bankers who lent Musk $30 billion to purchase Twitter on condition he pay $1 billion a year in interest.Two lessons here.First, corporations that regard employees only as costs to be cut rather than as assets to be nourished can make humongous mistakes. Elon Musk is Exhibit #1.Second, where corporations view employees as costs, the traditional way for employees to flex their muscle is to strike, thereby temporarily closing factories and stopping the machines.But where employees are a corporation’s key assets, workers’ greater power comes in threatening to — or actually — walking out the door. Elon Musk is Exhibit #2. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to another of my Saturday coffee klatches with Heather Lofthouse, my colleague at Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week. Grab a cup and pull up a chair. Today we talked about:— Nancy Pelosi bows out of the Speakership and Kevin McCarthy bows in. Ugh.— Donald Trump declares his candidacy for president. Double ugh. — Elon Musk is on the way to destroying Twitter. Ugh and a half. Plus a few positive developments. And please take our poll: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to another of my Saturday coffee klatches with Heather Lofthouse, my colleague at Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student). Grab a cup and pull up a chair. This week we discuss: — Why Democrats exceeded expectations in the midterm elections.— What will happen during the lame duck session?— What can we expect for the 2024 presidential race?— Why is Elon Musk warning that Twitter may go bankrupt? (Thanks to this week’s jingle composers, Corey Kaup, Deirdre Broderick, and Peter Lambert.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends, Veterans Day is a time to honor those who have fought to protect American democracy, especially those who gave their lives so that our democracy can endure. We have just emerged from midterm elections that have tested that democracy as it has not been tested since the Civil War. In large part, our democracy passed that test. We are indebted to all candidates who peacefully and responsibly conceded defeat, and to all election workers who worked so diligently (and in several states are still working) to ensure the legitimacy of the elections. The aspect of the midterm elections that gives me most hope for the future is the growing ranks of the young — as well as people of color and women — among American voters and in American politics. By 2028, Millennials & Gen Z’rs will dominate U.S. elections. This is why the GOP is pulling out all the stops to entrench Republican power. They know they don't stand a chance against a multi-racial, progressive generation of young people that will make the GOP’s backwards ideas irrelevant.They are the Republican Party’s worst nightmare.The latest data prove the point. In this weeks’ midterm elections, 27 percent of young people (ages 18 to 29) turned out — the second-highest youth voter turnout in almost three decades.These young people helped decide critical races. In a group of nine electorally competitive states for which exit poll data is available (Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), the aggregate youth voter turnout was 31%.In Michigan, the early youth vote was up 207 percent from 2018. In Pennsylvania, up 318 percent. In Wisconsin, up 360 percent.Young people were a critical force in holding back a “red wave.” They supported Democratic House candidates by 62 percent to 35 percent.According to AP VoteCast, an in-depth survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide, 61 percent of voters younger than 45 backed Democrat John Fetterman in his Pennsylvania Senate race. What accounts for these astounding numbers?Start with Trump, who continues to be deeply and justifiably despised by most young people. He wasn’t on any ballot, but he made his presence as conspicuous as he always does. Trump insisted on campaigning loudly and belligerently. Most Republican candidates joined in his big lie that he won the 2020 election.Next is the stark political reality that young people -- the first generation in America to be subject in school to active shooter drills – want action on gun violence. They also want progress on the climate crisis, presumably because they’ll be living longer with its consequences than anyone else. And they’re passionate about preserving reproductive rights.Don’t get me wrong. The growing numbers and political power of young people, as well as people of color and women, is not an argument for complacency.To the contrary, it means Republicans will now be even more determined to suppress their votes. Fighting voter suppression in all its forms -- making it easier rather than harder to vote – should continue to be among our highest priorities.We can also expect more cruel divisiveness from the Trumpian Republicans, especially if, as seems most likely, they take back control of the House. How to fight this? Not with more belligerence, which only kindles more of the same. No, we fight it with openness and civility. Third, we must continue to do everything possible to relieve the economic burdens borne by young people, women, and people of color – especially the escalating costs of housing, childcare, and higher education, and the scarcity of good jobs paying a living wage.The encouraging reality is the inevitability of these long-term demographic trends: a nation that’s younger, more female, and with more people of color -- and, largely as a result, more progressive.“History was made tonight,” tweeted Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the first Gen Z’r to be elected to Congress Tuesday night, at the ripe age of 25. “We made history for Floridians, for Gen Z, and for everyone who believes we deserve a better future.”Indeed. Anyone worried about the direction this nation is heading still has much to be worried about. But we should find some solace in the young people who are committed to redirecting it toward social justice and democracy. Wishing you a good Veterans Day*** Please consider giving your favorite young people a gift subscription to this letter This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,Apart from specific issues and candidates that motivated voters on Tuesday, two contrasting parties continue to emerge in America – one, pro-democracy; the other, anti-democracy or neofascist.The hallmarks of the neofascist party are its cruel nastiness and unwillingness to abide by election results. In other words: Trumpism. Both were on full display election night as Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake assailed the “cheaters and crooks” whom she claimed were running elections, “BS and garbage,” “incompetent people,” “propagandists,” and “fake media.”And as Rep. Andy Biggs joked that Nancy Pelosi was “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” a crude reference to the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull.Other GOP candidates and flaks hurled similar insults -- “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose,” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry,” Sen. Mark Kelly is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match,” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper,” Democrats are “lunatics.”Contrast this feculence with Tim Ryan’s graceful concession speech in the Ohio senate race (I’ve pasted the live version below).We have too much hate, we have too much anger, there’s way too much fear, there’s way too much division, and we need more love, we need more compassion, we need more concern for each other. These are the important things. We need forgiveness, we need grace, we need reconciliation. … I have the privilege to concede this race to J.D. Vance because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election you concede and you respect the will of the people. We can’t have a system where if you win it’s a legitimate election and if you lose, someone stole it. … We need good people who are going to honor the institutions of this country…. The highest title in this land is citizen, and we have an obligation to be good citizens. Or with John Fetterman’s humble remarks after the senate race in Pennsylvania was called for him — when, wiping away tears, he told cheering supporters “I'm not really sure what to say right now, my goodness. I am so humbled, thank you so much …. This campaign has always been about fighting for anyone that ever got knocked down that got back up.” Fetterman had been knocked down last May with a near-fatal stroke — which invited ridicule from Trumpists such as Trump Jr., who told a Sunday-night crowd at a rally in Miami that “if you're going to be in the United States senator, you should have basic cognitive function. It doesn't seem that unreasonable to have a working brain … We're up against a Democrat party today that doesn't believe that a United States senator should not have mush for brain."Gratuitous cruelty, derision, nastiness — they are one of a piece with authoritarianism because they feed off the same anger and fear. They also fuel the hate and paranoia that are causing Americans to distrust our electoral system and one another. And they can fuel violence. When I was a kid I was bullied by other kids because I was so short. I remember the ridicule and the cruelty. The worst of the bullying, I later learned, came from kids who were bullied at home, often by abusive parents. So many Americans feel bullied by the system today — bullied by employers, landlords, hospitals, insurance companies, debt collectors, government bureaucracies, and the like — that they’re easy prey for Trumpism. This isn’t to excuse these people, but only to explain the likely source of their rage, and how the Trumpists are channeling it. And why it’s so important to stop all forms of bullying in modern America — not only because such bullying is morally wrong but because its poison spreads throughout our society. The results of the midterm elections could have been far worse. The extreme grotesqueries of the Trumpist right were soundly defeated — Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, Maine gubernatorial candidate Paul LePage, New Hampshire Senate candidate Don Bolduc, and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels (who promised if elected that no Democrat could ever win Wisconsin again). Most election-denying candidates for secretary of state were defeated. As of Wednesday evening, Kari Lake was trailing her Democratic rival for Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, by a hair. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (the freshman MAGA Republican from Colorado) was fighting to keep her seat, But Marjorie Taylor Greene was reelected, as was Andy Biggs, and many other election-deniers. And Trump himself seems intent on launching another run on the White House (and on American democracy) within the week. Not as bad as it could have been, but deeply concerning nonetheless. We are still on the brink. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the past week over morning coffee. I’m delighted to be back. And many thanks to Michael Lahanas-Calderón for filling in for me. Today we cover:— What gives us the most hope and what worries us most about the upcoming midterm elections. — Elon Musk’s wild takeover of Twitter. — Jerome Powell’s wild takeover of the U.S. economy. And more. Please join us. And thank you to Joseph Lawson and Guy Brenner for this week’s theme songs.And take this week’s poll: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

I really don’t want to write about him any more. I’d rather not even think about him. Honestly, I’d rather forget he existed. But he looms over the 2022 elections like a sword of Damocles. Trump continues to dominate all political coverage. In many respects, he is still the center of American politics — if anything, bigger and more dangerous than he was when he left the White House. First, consider all the action in federal and state courts. Just within the last two weeks, Trump has been subpoenaed to appear before the January 6 committee, his appeal to the Supreme Court challenging the FBI’s seizure at Mar-a-Lago of secret documents he stole from the White House was rejected, his former aide Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress, a federal appeals court denied a request by Sen. Lindsey Graham to be shielded from testifying in an investigation into Trump’s interference in the 2020 election in Georgia, other aides were observed after testifying before a grand jury in the criminal investigation of Jan. 6, his name was featured in text messages read aloud at the Oath Keepers trial, and his decision to form a new company (Trump Organization II) was criticized by the New York attorney general, who is suing him. Never before in history has a former president, his aides, and supporters in Congress been as entangled in legal proceedings stretching years beyond his administration. Never have the legal maneuvers attracted more media attention. Second is the continuing speculation about whether Merrick Garland will indict him. The Jan 6 committee has done an outstanding job, but it has also helped Trump become a more historically significant. As Politico’s John Harris noted, “The usual journalistic crutch when assessing political legacies is ‘for better or worse,’ but in this case it is only for worse. Trump’s historic significance flows from how effectively he has made people doubt what was previously beyond doubt — that American democracy is on the level — and how brilliantly he has illuminated just how much this generation of Americans looks at one another with mutual contempt and mutual incomprehension.”While the Jan. 6 committee has dismantled Trump’s deceptions and denialism surrounding the 2020 election, it has also helped build Trump into something larger than he appeared two years ago — a political force too serious to forget. That’s not a bad thing; we must not allow ourselves to forget what he has done to America. But it does cast his shadow over our future in ways few former presidents have ever managed. Third is the groundwork for an undemocratic coup that Trump and his henchmen continue to lay.That groundwork is being prepared step by step. A majority of Republican candidates for office in the 2020 midterms are election deniers, including several candidates for the crucial election jobs of secretaries of state and governors. The tactics they and their supporters used in primary elections force us to brace for a range of new challenges in the upcoming midterms and in 2024, including disruptive poll watchers and workers, aggressive litigation strategies, voter and ballot challenges and vigilante searches for fraud.He will almost certainly declare his candidacy for president in 2024 within the next few months. Just as menacingly for 2024 and beyond, the Supreme Court has taken up the “independent state legislature” doctrine. If upheld, this doctrine would allow state legislatures to do exactly what Trump tried to do in December 2020 — appoint their own slates of electors, regardless of the popular vote. Finally, Twitter and Facebook are poised to allow Trump back on — to continue to spread his lies on the largest megaphones in the world. Trump is not only a sociopath. He is also a masterful conman. Social media will soon allow him to continue to spread his lies and hate. (Elon Musk has virtually guaranteed it for Twitter if, as expected, Musk takes over that platform. Facebook has signaled it will do the same.) A sociopathic conman on social media is terrifying. It is our terrible misfortune that Trump came to power and continues to infect America and the world just as the tangled weave of other crises — near-record inequality, bigotry (racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia), the climate, the pandemic — have made many Americans vulnerable to his demagoguery. I didn’t want to write about him today or even think about him. But none of us dares turn our eyes away in revulsion. Rather than ignore him, we must demand that Trump be prosecuted. Instead of pretending the poison he released into the American system is behind us, we must acknowledge that it is spreading. As opposed to dismissing him, we must deal with him and the lawmakers who are enabling him head-on — and stop him, and them, through every non-violent means possible. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. I’m off this week but have invited Heather and Michael Lahanas-Calderón (Director of Digital Strategy at Inequality Media Civic Action) to chat in my absence. Michael, a member of Gen Z, leads our work on TikTok. He and the team at IMCA have been using video across social media to break down complex issues and change the frames through which people understand the system, so viewers can see what’s at stake and mobilize towards an inclusive democracy and an economy where the gains are widely shared, including in advance of the midterms.Today they cover:* How young people process information (hint: it involves the internet).* How to fill the knowledge gaps around economics and inequality left by the mass media.* The dirty secret of social media video (most people watch with the sound off!).* What makes a video break through on crowded platforms like Instagram and TikTok.Here are a couple recent videos:* A 10-second TikTok video which uses several “trends” to depict how trickle-down economics is a hoax (the speed of which I find dizzying and Heather says makes her motion sick. Do you agree?!).* A video of CEOs crowing about raising prices on consumers to boost their profit margin; they speak for themselves on the relationship between corporate profiteering and inflation. (The Groundwork Collaborative has built a very useful website for these publicly-available quarterly corporate earnings calls.)Thank you to Deirdre Broderick / Corey Kaup and Joseph Lawson for today’s theme songs, and to all of you for listening.P.S. For those of you who have been asking about written transcripts of these coffee klatches, we will have them for you in the coming weeks. Thank you for your patience. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

The culture wars now ripping through American politics — especially noticeable in these last few weeks before the midterm elections, when Trump is trying to lay the groundwork for an authoritarian takeover — arguably began on May 8, 1970 in New York City. That day happened to be the 25th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany in World War II. It was also weeks after Richard Nixon expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia. And it was just four days after Ohio National Guardsmen shot dead four students during antiwar protests at Kent State University.I recall it vividly. On May 8, 1970, a riot broke out in New York City.Around noon, near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street in Lower Manhattan, more than 400 construction workers — steamfitters, ironworkers, plumbers, and other laborers from nearby construction sites like the emerging World Trade Center — attacked around 1,000 student demonstrators (including two of my friends) protesting the Vietnam War and the May 4 Kent State shootings. The workers carried U.S. flags and chanted “USA, All the way” and “America, love it or leave it.” They chased the students through the streets — attacking those who looked like hippies with hard hats and weapons, including tools and steel-toe boots.I heard about it when several friends from New York who were active in the anti-Vietnam War movement phoned me later that day. To characterize them as upset understates their emotions.As David Paul Kuhn reports in The Hardhat Riot, the police did little to stop the mayhem. Some even egged on the thuggery. When a group of hardhats moved menacingly toward a Wall Street plaza, a patrolman shouted: “Give ’em hell, boys. Give ’em one for me!”The workers then stormed a barely-protected City Hall where the mayor’s staff, to the hardhats’ rage, had lowered the flag in honor of the Kent State dead. They pushed their way to the top of the steps and attempted to gain entrance, chanting “Hey, hey, whatcha say? We support the USA!” Fearing the mob would break in, a person from the mayor’s staff raised the flag. It was a small precursor to the attack on the U.S. Capitol more than a half-century later. The workers ripped down the Red Cross flag that was hanging at nearby Trinity Church because they associated the flag with the anti-war protests. They stormed the newly built main Pace University building, smashing lobby windows and beating students and professors with their tools.More than 100 people were wounded. The typical victim was a 22-year-old white male college student, though one in four was female. Seven police officers were also hurt. Most of the injured required hospital treatment. Six people were arrested, but only one construction worker.My friends escaped injury but they were traumatized. I remember them describing the rioting construction workers as a “pack of animals.”The hardhat riot had immediate political consequences. Richard Nixon exploited it for political advantage. It was the first salvo in America’s culture wars. Nixon’s chief of staff H.R. Haldeman wrote in his diary: “The college demonstrators have overplayed their hands, evidence is the blue-collar group rising up against them, and [the] president can mobilize them.” Patrick Buchanan, then a Nixon aide, wrote in a memo to his boss, saying “blue-collar Americans” are “our people now.” Peter Brennan, then president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, claimed “the unions had nothing to do with” it — although just before the riot, Brennan had held a rally of construction workers to show support for Nixon’s Vietnam policies. Brennan explained that workers were “fed up” with violence and flag desecration by anti-war demonstrators.At Nixon’s invitation, Brennan then led a delegation of 22 union leaders, representing more than 300,000 tradesmen, to the White House. They presented Nixon with several hard hats and a flag pin, after which Nixon praised the “labor leaders and people from Middle America who still have character and guts and a bit of patriotism”.After the 1972 election, Nixon appointed Brennan labor secretary. Brennan did not distinguish himself in that position. He strongly opposed affirmative action. He also prevented Labor Department officials from investigating allegations of corruption in the Teamsters Union and of its president, Frank Fitzsimmons, who had helped secure labor support for Nixon’s election. The hardhat riot revealed a deep split in America’s left — in the coalition of workers and progressives that Franklin D. Roosevelt had knitted together in the 1930s, and the wished-for alliance of Blacks, liberals and blue-collar whites in the aftermath of Lyndon Johnson’s landslide 1964 re-election. The riot’s class-based and race-based tensions would worsen over the next half century, as America’s upper-middle class and wealthy began pulling away from white Americans without college degrees. The construction workers who attacked the demonstrators on May 8, 19

Sincere question: How are you doing these days? I ask because almost everyone I talk with is feeling overwhelmed. Putin’s war in Ukraine and his threats to use nuclear weapons, Trump and his henchmen’s (and henchwomen’s) ongoing threats to democracy, the upcoming midterm elections, the bizarre economy, the climate crisis and the natural disasters it’s spawning. And much more. It’s impossible to block all this out because we’re inevitably affected by it every day –from the prices we’re paying for gas and food, to neighbors and family members who repeat bonkers things they hear on Fox News, to weather that’s out of whack and sometimes menacing, to getting that new booster shot and making sure your loved ones do, too. We also feel all this indirectly, through the anxieties and stresses experienced by those we love. They’re not immune to the chaos, either. I like to think that you find my near daily messages helpful. Yes, they’re sometimes alarming or grim, but they’re written from a set of values that I think we share. I hope you receive them as if from a friend who gives you a tad more courage, assurance, and arguments about why those values are so important. In times like these we also need to take care of each other, and of ourselves. It’s about sustenance — feeding our need to laugh and play, savoring the joy of connecting with those we love, dancing to music that literally moves us. A year before my father died, shortly before his 102nd birthday, we took him to the local mall and parked him in his wheelchair just outside a drugstore for just a moment while we bought a few things. When we returned, he was out of his wheelchair, moving his body with perfect rhythm to the sound of Jimmy Dorsey’s 1930s big band, over the mall’s speakers. My father couldn’t speak and could barely see, but he had a broad grin across his face. I hadn’t even noticed the music. Today, amid all the anxiety and despair, I want to inspire you to hear the music. I guarantee it’s there. Please take some time out to be moved. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

It’s not just the Big Lie. Republicans are telling three other lies they hope will swing the midterms. They involve crime, inflation, and taxes. Here are the GOP’s claims, followed by the facts.1. They claim crime is rising because Democrats have been “soft” on crime.Rubbish. Rising crime rates are due to the proliferation of guns, which Republicans refuse to control.While violent crime rose 28 percent from 2019 to 2020, gun homicides rose 35 percent. States that have weakened gun laws have seen gun crime surge. Clearly, a major driver of the national increase in violence is the easy availability of guns.The violence can’t be explained by any of the Republican talking points about “soft on crime” Democrats.Lack of police funding? No. On average, all cities — whether run by Democrats or Republicans — saw an increase in police funding in 2022.Criminal justice reforms? No. Wherever bail reforms have been implemented, re-arrest rates remain stable. Data shows no connection between the policies of progressive prosecutors and changes in crime rates.In fact, crime is rising faster in Republican, Trump-supporting states. In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40 percent higher in states won by Trump than in those won by Joe Biden.Republican policies have made it easier for people to get and carry guns. Republicans are lying about the real cause of rising crime to protect some of their biggest supporters, big gun manufacturers and the NRA. 2. Republicans claim that inflation is due to Biden’s spending, and wage increases.Baloney. Biden’s spending can’t be causing our current inflation because inflation has broken out everywhere around the world, often at much higher rates than in the US. Besides, heavy spending by the US government began in 2020, before the Biden administration, in order to protect Americans and the economy from the ravages of COVID-19 — and it was necessary.Wages can’t be pushing inflation because wages have been increasing at a slower pace than prices — leaving most workers worse off. The major cause of the current inflation is the global post-pandemic shortage of all sorts of things, coupled with Putin’s war in Ukraine and China’s lockdowns.The biggest domestic culprit for America’s current inflation is big corporations that are using inflation as an excuse for raising prices above their own cost increases, resulting in the highest profit margins since 1950 — while consumers are paying through the nose.The biggest domestic cause of inflation is corporate power. Republicans are lying about this to protect their big corporate patrons.3. Republicans say Democrats voted to hire an army of IRS agents who will audit and harass the middle class.Wrong. The IRS won’t be going after the middle class. It will be going after ultra-wealthy tax cheats.The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in July, provides funding to begin to get IRS staffing back to what it was before 2010, after which Republicans cut staff by roughly 30 percent, despite increases since then in the number of Americans filing tax returns.The extra staff are needed to prevent high-end tax evasion, which is more difficult to root out (the ultra-wealthy hire squads of accountants and tax attorneys to hide their taxable incomes). It’s estimated that the richest 1 percent are hiding more than 20 percent of their earnings from the IRS.The Treasury Department and the IRS have made it clear that audit rates for households earning $400,000 or under will remain same.Republicans are lying about what the IRS will do with the new funding to protect their ultra-wealthy patrons.None of these three lies is as brazen and damaging as Trump’s Big Lie. But they’re all being used by Republican candidates in these last weeks before the midterms. Know the truth and share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair.Today we cover:— The (potentially last) January 6 committee hearing, and where do things go from here?— The new bad inflation number, and why the Fed’s rate hikes don’t seem to be working (and what Democrats should be saying about inflation).— Alex Jones has to pay almost $1 billion to the families of the victims of Sandy Hook, and what’s the likely effect?— Should we be talking about this time as “post-pandemic?” (Thank god for boosters.)Plus this week’s poll. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Want some good news? With 27 days until Election Day, polling averages suggest Democrats could retain control of the Senate and even gain a few seats there, and are within sight of keeping the House. Last week, the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster, shifted its forecast in 10 House races, seven of them in favor of Democrats. A day later, analysts at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, an election handicapper based at the University of Virginia, shifted six House seats, four favoring Democrats. "Democratic optimism grows in battle for House," read The Hill’s Mike Lillis' headline Tuesday morning. Lillis goes on to say: “With a month remaining before the midterm elections, House Democrats are in a position where few expected them to be even just a few months ago: competitive.” Meanwhile, the forecasters at FiveThirtyEight, tallying up the available evidence, put the chances that Democrats hold the Senate at seventy-one per cent.But wait. There’s reason to doubt these optimistic numbers. The debacle of 2016 election polls showing Hillary Clinton with a healthy lead, and the 2020 election polls overstating Biden’s lead over Trump, reveal a dirty little secret: Election polls overstate Democratic strength and understate Republican. There are three reasons for this bias:1. Republicans are less likely to respond to election polls. The pandemic understated Republican strength in 2020 because safety-conscious liberals were more likely to be home during lockdowns (and answer telephone calls) while conservatives went out and lived their lives. With lockdowns over, this bias may be over too. But Trump Republicans are less likely to participate in election polls in the first place. Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, found that in 2020, white Democrats were 20 percent likelier to respond to Times/Siena polls than white Republicans. Trump voters tend to be less educated, more anti-establishment, and therefore less likely to respond to polls. (In the poll Cohn is undertaking right now, only 0.4 percent of dials have yielded a completed interview.)2. Election polls over-estimate the number of people who will be voting, and non-voters are much more likely to be or lean Democrat than are regular voters. People who rarely or never vote don’t like to admit this to pollsters (they don’t want to be thought of, and don’t want to think of themselves, as non-voters). But because non-voters are far more likely to lean Democrat and tell pollsters they favor a Democratic candidate, poll results exaggerate Democratic strength at the ballot box. 3. People who respond to election pollsters don’t want to admit their preferences for Trump. The vast majority of Trump voters lack a college degree. They believe that pollsters (as educated professionals) will disapprove of their support for Trump, so they don’t admit it. This happened in 2016 and again in 2020. Trump isn’t on the midterm ballot, of course, but many Republican candidates who support him and his Big Lie are on the ballot (in fact, a majority of Republican candidates are election-deniers), so the effect is likely to be the same: understating Republican strength at the ballot box. (According to the Cato Institute’s own polling, 62 percent of Americans say they have political views they’re afraid to share. Many of them, presumably, support Trump and Trump election-deniers.) I don’t mean to discourage you. Quite the opposite. With 27 days to go, many races could go either way. My point is you shouldn’t pay attention to the polls, and not become so confident that you stop phone banking, canvassing, contributing, and doing whatever else you can. Turnout is the critical variable. We must do everything humanly possible to get out the vote. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Twitter and Instagram just removed antisemitic posts from Kanye West and temporarily banned him from their platforms. It’s the latest illustration of … um, what? How good these tech companies are at content moderation? Or how irresponsible they are for “muzzling” controversial views from the extreme right? (Defenders of West, such as Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, are incensed that he’s been banned.) Or how arbitrary these giant megaphones are in making these decisions? (What would Elon Musk do about Kanye West?)Call it the Kayne West paradox: Do the social media giants have a duty to take down noxious content or to post it? And who decides?These corporations are the largest megaphones in world history. They’re contributing to the rise of neofascism in America and around the world, inspiring mentally-disturbed young men to shoot up public schools, and spreading dangerous conspiracy theories that are dividing people into warring camps. They’re also among the richest and most powerful corporations in the world — headed by billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, and soon, very likely, Musk (who has promised to allow Trump back on Twitter). And they’re accountable to no one other than their CEOs (and, theoretically, investors).It’s this combination — huge size, extraordinary power over what’s communicated, and utter lack of accountability — that’s become unsustainable.So what’s going to happen?Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear cases involving Section 230 of Communications Decency Act of 1996, which gives social media platforms protection from liability for what’s posted on them. Plaintiffs in these cases claim that content carried by the companies (YouTube in one case, Twitter in the other) led to the deaths of family members at the hands of terrorists. Even if the Supreme Court decides Section 230 doesn’t protect the companies — thereby pushing them to be more vigilant in moderating their content — the plaintiffs in another upcoming case (NetChoice v. Paxton) argue that the First Amendment bars these companies from being more vigilant. That case hinges on a Texas law that allows Texans and the state’s attorney general to sue the social media giants for unfairly banning or censoring them, based on political ideology. Texas argues that the First Amendment rights of its residents require this. So, do the social media giants have a duty to take down controversial content or to post it? And who decides?It’s an almost impossible quandary, until you realize that these questions arise because of the huge political and social power of these companies, and their lack of accountability. In reality, they aren’t just for-profit companies. Given their size and power, their decisions have enormous consequences for that the public knows and understands — and therefore for democracy. My betting is that the Supreme Court will treat them as common carriers, like railroads or telephone lines. Common carriers can’t engage in unreasonable discrimination in who uses them, must charge just and reasonable prices, and they must provide reasonable care to the public.In a Supreme Court decision last year, plaintiffs claimed that the @realdonaldtrump Twitter account was a public forum run by the president of the United States, and Trump’s blocking of users stifled free speech. The Court dismissed the case as moot, since Trump is no longer president. But in a 12-page concurring opinion, Clarence Thomas gave a hint of what’s to come. He argued that Twitter's ban showed that the real power lay with the large social media platforms themselves, not the government officials on them, and that “the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties” was unprecedented. Thomas noted that Section 230 gives digital platforms some legal protection related to the content they distribute, but Congress “has not imposed corresponding responsibilities.” He then cited a 1914 Supreme Court ruling that making a private company a common carrier may be justified when “a business, by circumstances and its nature…rise[s] from private to be of public concern,” — leading Thomas to argue that “some digital platforms are sufficiently akin to common carriers … to be regulated in this manner.” He concluded that "[w]e will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms."Other justices have made similar remarks. If the Court decides the social media giants are "common carriers," then responsibility for content moderation would shift from these companies to a government entity like the Federal Communications Commission, which would regulate them similarly to how the Obama-era FCC sought to regulate internet service providers.But is there any reason to trust the government to do a better job of content moderation than the giants do on their own? (I hate to imagine what would happen under a Republican FCC.) So are we locked int

Within weeks of taking office, Britain’s new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, and her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, proposed a radical new set of economic measures that echoed the trickle-down policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — heavy on tax cuts for the rich and deregulation.Last Monday, after a backlash from investors, economists and members of his own party, Mr. Kwarteng reversed one of the proposals, deciding against abolishing the tax rate of 45 percent on the highest earners. But proposals for other tax cuts worth tens of billions of pounds remain intact, as the government insists it is on the right path.What’s bizarre about this latest episode of trickle-down economics — the abiding faith on the political right that tax cuts and deregulation are good for an economy — is that this gonzo economic theory continues to live on, notwithstanding its repeated failures.Ever since Reagan and Thatcher first tried them, trickle-down policies have exploded budget deficits and widened inequality. At best, they’ve temporarily increased consumer demand (the opposite of what’s needed during the high inflation that Britain, the US, and much of the world are experiencing).Reagan’s tax cuts and deregulation at the start of the 1980s were not responsible for America’s rapid growth through the late 1980s. His exorbitant spending (mostly on national defense) fueled a temporary boom that ended in a fierce recession. Trump’s 2018 tax cut never trickled down.Yet the US never restored the highest marginal tax rates before Reagan. And deregulation — especially of financial markets — continues to endanger the stability of the economy and expose workers, consumers, and the environment to unnecessary risk. The result? From 1989 to 2019, typical working families in the United States saw negligible increases in their real (inflation-adjusted) incomes and wealth.Over the same period, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans became $29 trillion richer. The national debt exploded. And Wall Street’s takeover of the economy continued.Meanwhile, and largely as a result, America has become more bitterly divided along the fissures of class and education. Donald Trump didn’t cause this. He exploited it.The situation in the UK after Thatcher has not been dramatically different. So why is trickle-down economics still with us? What explains the fatal attraction of this repeatedly failed economic theory?The easiest answer is that it satisfies politically powerful moneyed interests who want to rake in even more. Armies of lobbyists in Washington, London, and Brussels continuously demand tax cuts and “regulatory relief” for their wealthy patrons.But why has the public been repeatedly willing to go along with trickle-down economics when nothing ever trickles down? What accounts for the collective amnesia?Part of the answer is that the moneyed interests have also invested a portion of their gains in an intellectual infrastructure of economists and pundits who continue to promote this failed doctrine — along with institutions that house them, such as, in the US, the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and Club for Growth.Consider Stephen Moore, the founder and past president of the Club for Growth and a leading economist at the Heritage Foundation, whose columns appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal and is a frequent guest on Fox News.Moore helped draft and promote Trump’s trickle-down tax. In recent weeks he praised Ms. Truss for her willingness “to challenge the reigning orthodoxy by sharply cutting taxes to boost growth,” calling her package “a gutsy and sound policy decision,” that “will bring jobs, capital and businesses back to the U.K.”Moore and others like him are happy to disregard the history of trickle-down’s abject failures. They simply repeat the same set of promises made decades ago when Reagan and Thatcher set out to convince the public that trickle-down would work splendidly.The public has so much else on its mind, and is so confused by the cacophony, that it doesn’t remember — until immediately after the next trickle-down failure. But perhaps the main reason for the public’s amnesia is that Democrats in the US and Labor in the UK have failed to offer what should be the obvious alternative: A bottom-up economics that invests in the education and health of the public, and the infrastructure connecting them. This is the only true path to higher productivity and widely-shared prosperity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair.Today we cover:— Friday’s jobs report, and why the media is getting it wrong.— Billionaire influence over the midterm elections.— Saudi’s stabbing America in the back on oil.— Why we need a monthly report on corporate profits.— Why Heather likes to walk her dog while listening to Chopin and Beyoncé.— My laptop’s keyboard, which is getting worn out (see below). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Gallup reports that a whopping (and record) 72 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 approve of labor unions. That’s especially remarkable given that a bare 3 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 belong to one. Despite the recent victories of Starbucks workers and noteworthy efforts by Amazon warehouse workers, the rate of union membership in America has fallen to its lowest in seventy years: now a bare 6 percent of private-sector employees.Republicans hate unions. Democrats won’t abolish the filibuster, so lack the votes to strengthen unions. (With any luck, that will change in the next Congress.)Yet there’s a direct and unambiguous relationship between the rate of union membership and the share of total income going to the top 10 percent, as this graph makes clear: The fortunes of American unions and workers are starting to look up nonetheless— and that’s mainly because of a person you probably never heard of, in the most important job you probably didn’t know existed.Her name is Jennifer Abruzzo. A year ago she was confirmed on a party-line vote to be general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).The NLRB hears cases, makes rulings, and sets binding precedents about what does and doesn’t constitute a violation of America’s labor laws.Its general counsel is the agency’s chief prosecutor, directing roughly 500 attorneys across the nation in 26 regional offices.Which gives Abruzzo a huge say over how the private sector in America may or may not treat workers.Installing Jennifer Abruzzo as the NLRB’s general counsel may be the single most important initiative the Biden administration has taken for working people so far — and least known. Abruzzo is no newcomer to the agency. She spent 23 of her 58 years as an attorney there, starting as a field attorney in Miami and rising to deputy general counsel during the Obama administration. But she has taken her new job by storm, instructing her 500 attorneys to make it far more costly for employers to illegally fire workers for trying to form unions. It’s about time. American companies have been charged with violating federal law in over 40 percent of all union election campaigns. But until Abruzzo came on the job, the worst that could happen to them was the equivalent of a weak slap on the wrist. Starbucks, for example, has illegally fired dozens of employees for trying to organize a union. Abruzzo has responded with complaints accusing Starbucks of 81 illegal labor practices — including those firings, plus spying on workers and closing stores in retaliation for unionizing. (The Starbucks workers’ union also wants her to file a complaint against the company for giving raises and improved benefits to baristas at non-union stores but not to workers at stores that have already unionized. Hopefully, she will; it’s also blatantly illegal.)Apple has been telling workers at its retail stores that joining a union could result in fewer promotions and inflexible hours. The National Labor Relations Board just issued a complaint against Apple over accusations that it interrogated its retail workers about their union support and prevented pro-labor flyers in a store break room.Rather than give employers such as Starbucks and Apple mere slaps on wrists, Abruzzo is seeking to increase worker power overall, in seven important ways: * Getting workers who have been illegally fired back into their jobs right away, while their organizing campaigns are still ongoing. She is getting courts to compel this (by injunction) by arguing that waiting for the legal process to unfold will be too late. * Getting back pay for these workers that covers financial losses as well as lost wages — including their withdrawals from savings and retirement funds, loans, and credit card fees. And she wants employers to compensate unions for expenses incurred in fighting their illegal behavior.* Making it illegal for employers to require that workers attend “captive audience” meetings to hear management’s case against unionizing. (The union seeking to organize Amazon’s warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, has alleged that Amazon is doing just this.)* Making employers recognize a union once a majority of workers sign cards saying they want one (thereby returning to a 1949 NLRB rule). “We should not be allowing those employers to delay recognition so that they can coerce these workers to think differently or choose differently,” she says. * Making it illegal for employers to misclassify workers as independent contractors — which the Board can remedy by finding that the workers are employees and thus eligible to unionize. (On March 17th, NLRB attorneys filed a complaint against a port trucking company at the Los Angeles harbor for illegally misclassifying drivers. If upheld, the firm will have to compensate the drivers for lost wages and expenses and provide a union access to the drivers for an organizing campaign.)* Allowing graduate students and college athletes to u

Conservative economists shrug their shoulders at the record accumulation of wealth at the very top of America. They claim it’s not a problem because wealth is not a zero-sum game: A huge amount at the top doesn’t necessarily reduce the wealth (or potential wealth) of anyone else.They fail to see that wealth begets power. And power is a zero-sum game. Its possession by certain people means others don’t have it. Substantial power in the hands of a few people can dramatically reduce everyone else’s freedom, autonomy, and voice. Consider the current race for mayor of Los Angeles.Over the last few election cycles, a candidate for LA mayor has had to spend at least $2 million in order to have any chance of getting elected. But since launching his bid in February, Rick Caruso has spent $62 million, and almost all of it has been his own money. Over the same period, his opponent, Karen Bass, has spent $2.2 million, from donations. In other words, Caruso is outpacing Bass by about 20-to-1. Caruso’s net worth is $5.3 billion. He has never held political office. He’s been a developer of several faux-town-square luxury shopping centers. He is also a longtime Republican who has donated generously to the GOP, but switched his registration to independent in 2019, and this year registered as a Democrat — days before declaring his candidacy and just in time for the mayoral race.Karen Bass spent years organizing in South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots. She was then elected to the California legislature where she rose to become Speaker, and then elected to Congress. Former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, she was on President Biden’s shortlist as a possible vice president.So why is there even a contest here? An ultra-rich white developer of luxury malls who was a Republican until moments before the campaign is running against a woman of color who has spent her lifetime in progressive politics in one of the nation’s most progressive cities of color, achieving important victories for working people and the poor — all against the backdrop of ever more reactionary MAGA Republican Party. Yet polls show the contest dramatically narrowing. Caruso is now trailing Bass by just 3 percentage points among registered voters -- 34 percent to 31 percent — well within the margin of error. That’s down from a 12-point gap in August.What gives?The mainstream media says the contest is narrowing because of “voters’ worries about public safety and homelessness.” The story is by now a familiar rightwing trope —- even leftwing Los Angeles is moving right because crime and squalor. Just look at what happened to that liberal DA in progressive San Francisco! Rubbish. Crime and homelessness are real problems, but Bass is focusing on them just as much as is Caruso. In her ads, Bass says repeatedly, “I’m running for mayor to meet today’s challenges: crime, homelessness, and the soaring cost of housing.” Bass has put forward a plan to bring 15,000 people indoors to expand interim and permanent housing. Caruso promises tiny houses for 15,000 people and temporary “sleeping pods” for thousands more. Bass has a solid record on these issues. Caruso is a real estate developer who has never built a single unit of affordable housing. The only rational way to explain the tightness of the race is Caruso’s money. Apart from billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s three successful New York mayoral campaigns, Caruso’s spending is unrivaled in the annals of American local politics.A first-time candidate with little name recognition, Caruso has blanketed Los Angeles’s airwaves with television, digital and radio ads -- portraying himself as a successful businessman who can clean up the city. In recent weeks he has begun to attack Bass relentlessly in television and radio ads. He’s also spending heavily on door-to-door canvassing, especially in Latino and Asian-American neighborhoods whose voters were likely to have sat out the primary election and don’t typically cast general election ballots.This is all about money, folks. Caruso’s $62 million is multiples more than has ever been spent on a mayoral race in Los Angeles. Karen Bass’s $2.2 million is within the typical range, but obviously paltry by comparison. Imagine if Caruso had sunk $62 million into affordable housing. Coincidentally, $62 million happens to be the goal of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles’s new Affordable Housing Initiative, to create homes for nearly 600 unhoused people. Caruso’s humongous spending illustrates a broader challenge for progressives across the country. This year, dark-money super PACs funded by Republican billionaires and multi-millionaires (along with the occasional billionaire candidate) have spent record amounts to defeat progressive contenders inside the Democratic Party.The current challenge to American democracy is not just Trump’s Big Lie. It’s also billionaire’s big money. Campaign finance reform can occur even without a reversal of the Supreme Court’s shameful Citizens Unit

Elon Musk just revived his bid for Twitter Inc. at his original offering price of $44 billion — or $54.20 a share — thereby avoiding a courtroom fight. (Musk made the proposal in a letter to Twitter on Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.)So, after six months of brainless brawling bedlam, it looks like Twitter now goes to Elon.But should this critical social platform go to someone with the attention span of a fruit fly and the impetuousness of Donald Trump, just because he’s finally now willing to pay what he bid for it?That depends on whether buying Twitter just a simple market transaction, like buying soap. Or has Twitter come to have a set of social roles and purposes that make it more like a public space such as Times Square, or a public utility — where the question of who owns it looms large? I no longer have any idea what Elon wants to do with Twitter. He has talked loosely about “free speech” but, of course, the First Amendment applies to government — not to a billionaire’s folly. He’s said Donald Trump should be allowed back on, but exactly why? So Trump can have a more efficient means for continuing his attempted coup?Today he tweeted that buying Twitter is an “accelerant to creating X.” What’s X? It’s “the everything app.” Earth to Elon: Can you be a tad more specific? Through the entire on-again-off-again melodrama, Elon has behaved like a one-man version of the Three Stooges. After expressing interest in a seat on the board, he rejected it. “I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time.” Then he said he’d “make an offer to take Twitter private” because “fake users will make the numbers look so terrible” that it should be a private company. Then he made a bid, but didn’t even begin due diligence until a month after announcing it. Then he got cold feet because he feared fake users made the numbers look too good. Then he said he didn’t care about the economics of the deal. And then had “no plan” for how to finance or manage it. And then he tried to back out. And was sued. And now …He made it up as he went along. As did his inner circle of billionaires. Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, messaged Elon that he was in for “a billion … or whatever you recommend.” What about … um … business strategy? Analysis? Thought?Marc Andreessen, a top Silicon Valley venture investor, assured Elon that $250 million is available “with no additional work required.” Blank check? Jason Calacanis, an angel investor and entrepreneur, told Elon, “You have my sword,” an apparent reference to the movie The Lord of the Rings.Antonio Gracias, another investor and a former member of the Tesla board of directors, told Elon that free speech is “a principle we need to defend with our lives or we are lost to the darkness.” What? Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer — headquartered in Berlin — urged Elon to buy Twitter and then have Axel Springer run it (“Would be a real contribution to democracy” and “fun.”) We’re now in Never-Never Land, folks. One texter, identified only as TJ, exhorted Elon to “buy Twitter and delete it” and “please do something to fight woke-ism.”So my Office Hours question this week: Does the public have a legitimate interest in who buys Twitter? Is this social media platform more like a bar of soap or a public square? And, based on your answer, is there anything that the government — representing the rest of us — can or should do about Elon’s bid?Please note: Subscribers to this newsletter are keeping it going. Thank you! We also appreciate you sharing this content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

One of my goals in this newsletter is to help you uncover the ways wealth and power shape public policy. Today, I’m going to focus on a topic that may seem wonky to you — but that’s exactly the point. Its very wonkiness disguises the power dynamic lying behind it. The issue is how we measure the economy. Start with the rate of inflation — how fast prices are rising. That number is now driving the Federal Reserve, our central bank, to raise interest rates — which in turn is causing mortgage and bank loans to soar, the dollar to reach new heights against foreign currencies, and the stock market to plunge. It is also likely to drive us into a recession. That number is issued every month, from two places. Midway through the month, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics announces the consumer price index. Near the end of each month, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis releases the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index. The two measurements are done slightly differently, but the important point is they’re released every month, like clockwork. Meanwhile, on the first Friday of each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us how many new jobs have been produced in the previous month and what’s happened to wages. (Economists and business columnists are already bracing for this Friday’s report, covering September’s jobs and wages.)There you have it: Prices, jobs, and wages. These are the three variables we learn about repeatedly because they are announced each month. The media repeat them, analyze them, frame stories around them. The three variables are used by policymakers at the Fed and in Congress and the White House. They’re viewed as the core criteria for how the economy is doing. In short, these three variables drive the national economic conversation. But what about corporate profits? There’s no monthly report on them. Without a regular monthly report on profits, it’s been easy for the media and much of the economic establishment to ignore them — and ignore the record upsurge in corporate profits that occurred over the last two years (in a moment, I’ll tell you how we know about that). Every month we hear about inflation resulting from wages pushing up prices, but we don’t hear about record-high profits pushing up prices. Why is there no report on profits? That answer is found in history — and in power. As historian Eli Cook recounts, the first bureau of labor statistics in the United States was established on June 23, 1869 by the Massachusetts state legislature. It was supposed to collect data on jobs, wages, prices, and profits in that state. But when the new bureau sent out a prepared questionnaire to business owners seeking information on their profits, not a single one was returned. The bureau then tried to estimate profits by publishing a report on the amount of money deposited by wealthy Bostonians in local savings banks. Boston elites went nuts. “Astonished at the audacity” of this “unspeakably mischievous” report, they made sure the bureau chiefs were fired in 1873. The bureau chiefs were replaced by Carroll Wright, who soon went to Washington to head up a new federal agency then called the Bureau of Labor (eventually the Bureau of Labor Statistics) — and did so for the next twenty years. Wright devoted his life to comparing wage rates to cost-of-living indices as a way to measure what were then novel concepts such as “price levels” and “standards of living.” Presumably, to avoid the minefield his predecessors in Massachusetts ran into, Wright never investigated profit rates. And to this day, we know far less about profits than we do about prices, jobs, and wages. As Cook points out, profits continue to be a neglected topic in economics. No Nobel Prize in Economics has ever been given to the study of profits, presumably because we know so little about them. Economists classify publications into many categories (the Journal of Economic Literature’s J3 code stands for “wages, compensation and labor costs”) but no category exists for profits. The last time The American Economic Review published an article with the word “profits” in the title was in 2014 (it was about the Japanese textile industry at the turn of the 20th century). Carroll Wright’s Bureau of Labor Statistics is still going strong — one of the crown jewels of the federal government. But there is no comparable Bureau of Capital Statistics with the power to gather profit data from corporations. (The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis does publish quarterly estimates of corporate profits but those estimates are based on samples of shareholder reports, IRS filings, and corporate income statements. They’re guesswork at best because corporations notoriously shift some profits to nations with lower tax rates, depreciate assets like crazy, low-ball profits when reporting to the IRS and exaggerate them when communicating with Wall Street, and use every accounting gimmick imaginable.)So the only

Friends, Sorry to intrude on your day once again, but I can’t remain silent in the face of Trump’s tirade against Mitch McConnell. On Friday, Trump criticized McConnell for approving Democratic bills, and asked rhetorically if McConnell has done so “because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them.” Trump concluded by asserting that McConnell “has a DEATH WISH.” These are ugly and dangerous words even by Trump’s own rock-bottom standard of indecency. They could be interpreted by some Trump followers as a direct provocation to violence against McConnell. (Recall that some took his angry rhetoric about former Vice President Mike Pence seriously on Jan. 6.)Trump added racial bigotry to his words, suggesting that McConnell “seek help and advice from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” (For Trump, Elaine Chao’s real offense was resigning as transportation secretary after Trump’s disgraceful behavior on Jan. 6.) These are hardly Trump’s first provocations to violence but their cumulative effect is mounting. As the New York Times noted this weekend, members of Congress in both parties are experiencing a surge in threats and confrontations as violent speech has morphed into in-person intimidation and physical altercation. In the months since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — which brought lawmakers and the vice president within feet of rioters threatening their lives — Republicans and Democrats have faced stalking, armed visits to their homes, vandalism and assaults.In the five years after Trump was elected in 2016, following a campaign featuring a remarkable level of violent language, the number of recorded threats against members of Congress soared more than tenfold, to 9,625 last year, according to figures from the Capitol Police. In just the first quarter of 2022 (the latest for which figures are available), the Capitol Police opened 1,820 cases. The pace is likely to surge in the coming weeks as midterm elections approach.In 2018, I had a conversation with a retired Republican member of Congress who told me it was dangerous for him or any other prominent person in his state to say anything critical of Trump. I asked him what he meant by “dangerous.” He explained that lawmakers who criticized Trump were receiving death threats. That was before the Big Lie, and before the attack on the Capitol. The pattern is clear. Decency erodes if indecency is not condemned. Silence in the face of dangerous provocation invites ever more dangerous provocation. Intimidation by credible threats of violence invites further threats and, eventually, real violence. Students of history will note the similarities between what we have been witnessing in recent years and events in Germany in the 1930s, leading to the atrocities of Adolf Hitler. Everyone in public life — including leading Democrats, Joe Biden, and Republican leaders, including Mitch McConnell — must condemn Trump’s invitations to violence and bigotry. And they must also demand that Trump be held criminally accountable for his attempted coup, his instigation of the assault on the Capitol, and his theft of top-secret government documents. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

My friends,Make no mistake: Donald Trump is effectively on the ballot in the midterm elections, five weeks from tomorrow (voting has already begun in several states). Even if he decides not to run, he’s laying the groundwork for authoritarianism. In the upcoming midterms, 60 percent of us will have an election denier on our ballot, most of them endorsed by Trump. In the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates who embrace Trump’s Big Lie have won almost two-thirds of Republican nominations for offices with authority over elections.Many are running for secretaries of state — the chief elections officers in 37 states, who will be overseeing voter registration and how elections are conducted. In the 2020 presidential election, people who held these positions were the last line of defense for our fragile democracy, upholding Joe Biden’s win despite heavy pressure from proponents of Trump's Big Lie. Which is why Trump and Trump’s lieutenants, including Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, are trying to fill these positions with Big Liars.Michigan’s GOP candidate for Secretary of State is Kristina Karamo — who rose to prominence in conservative circles after falsely claiming to have witnessed election fraud as a pollster. Karamo has claimed that Trump won the 2020 election and that Antifa was behind the January 6 insurrection. Arizona’s Republican candidate for Secretary of State is Mark Finchem, a QAnon-supporting member of the Oath Keepers militia, who participated in the January 6 insurrection. He cruised to victory in the GOP primary by claiming that Trump won the 2020 election. Nevada’s GOP’s candidate for Secretary of State is Jim Marchant, who won his Republican primary by making Trump's baseless claims of election fraud a cornerstone of his campaign. He also falsely claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, and wants to eliminate it altogether (despite the fact that he has voted by mail many times over the years). In Wyoming, state representative Chuck Gray, who won last month’s GOP primary for secretary of state, faces no opponent. Gray has repeated Trump’s lies about 2020 being “rigged,” traveled to Arizona to watch a partisan review of ballots that was derided as deeply flawed and proposed additional regular election audits in Wyoming. In Alabama, state Rep. Wes Allen, the nominee for secretary of state, says he would have signed onto a 2020 Texas lawsuit to overturn Biden’s win (that case was swiftly thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court).Trump-backed candidates for governor are also on the ballot in key states where governors play a critical role in certifying votes and upholding the will of the people.Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial nominee is Doug Mastriano. If he wins, Mastriano would appoint Pennsylvania’s top election official. Mastriano was also at the Capitol on January 6, and has even been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee to testify about his involvement. Mastriano also helped lead the push to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nominee is Kari Lake — who has said she does not recognize Joe Biden as the nation’s legitimate president, and would not have certified Arizona’s 2020 election results had she been governor. Wisconsin’s Republican gubernatorial nominee is Tim Michels. Michels still questions the results of the 2020 election and refuses to say whether he will certify the state’s 2024 president election results. Right now, elections in Wisconsin are overseen by the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission, but if Michels wins he supports scrapping the Commission in favor of a plan that could shift oversight of the state’s elections to the state’s Republican-dominated legislature. I don’t know about you, but all these Big Liars terrify me. If any one of them wins in a state that’s likely to be a battleground in 2024, they could tip the balance in a tight presidential election to Trump. What terrifies me even more is they could tip America away from democracy to authoritarianism. Meanwhile, a third of all state attorney general races currently have an election denying Republican candidate on the ballot — including Alabama’s Steve Marshall, Idaho’s Paul Labrador, Texas’s Ken Paxton, South Carolina’s Alan Wilson, and Maryland’s Michael Peroutka. Attorneys general also have key roles in election administration — defending state voting laws and election results in court, taking legal action to prevent or address voter intimidation or election misconduct, and investigating and prosecuting illegal attempts to suppress the vote.I haven’t even talked about all the local and county election officials who are also Big Liars, and also on ballots in many states — and who could play roles in the 2024 election. How can we fight back? First: Spread the word about the Trump-GOP’s plans to capture the election process and undermine American democracy. Inform your friends and family — including

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair.Today we cover:— Hurricane Ian and Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis’s demonizing of “socialism.”— The Republican Party’s traditional harangue about federal spending (except when their states are under water).— The “Disclose Act” — requiring the sources of big-money donors to be revealed — that was stopped in the Senate and received almost no media coverage.— Ginni Thomas’s upcoming testimony before the January 6 committee. — The importance of “down-ballot” voting.Our thanks to Sylvia Brestel and Michael Hoppe for their great theme songs. And our weekly poll: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

No Republican governor has been more vocal in his opposition to what he describes as “socialism” than Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis. “I stand against socialism,” DeSantis thundered in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. “Socialist policies have failed time and time again.”In June, DeSantis signed an education bill directing Florida’s Department of Education to develop a curriculum educating students on the evils of socialism (as well as communism).But how exactly does DeSantis define “socialism?”One hint came in 2013, when as a freshman congressman he claimed that a federal bailout for the New York region after Hurricane Sandy was an irresponsible boondoggle. “I sympathize with the victims,” he said. But his answer was no.The House overwhelmingly passed the bill nonetheless, providing $9.7 billion in flood insurance aid for Sandy’s victims. All 67 votes against the aid came from Republicans, including DeSantis. The Senate passed the bill too, although Florida Senator Marco Rubio also voted against the aid package.So, would DeSantis call any form of government assistance to those in need “socialism?”Apparently, DeSantis’s definition is more elastic than this. As his state confronts the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian, the fiercely anti-socialist DeSantis is asking the Biden administration for the help Floridians need — asking, in effect, for a form of social insurance that the United States government automatically provides Americans when disaster strikes. The administration has already put 1,300 federal response workers on the ground. It has pre-staged 110,000 gallons of fuel and 18,000 pounds of propane, and has readied 3.7 million meals and 3.5 million liters of water. And it has moved in generators and has 300 ambulances in the state working alongside local officials. Yesterday morning, DeSantis and Biden discussed further steps, including the issuance of a major disaster declaration that will provide Floridians with federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts. Residents of nine counties will also be eligible for individual assistance.“We all need to work together, regardless of party lines,” DeSantis told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Wednesday night. “When people are fighting for their lives, when their whole livelihood is at stake, when they’ve lost everything — if you can’t put politics aside for that, then you’re just not going to be able to.”My point is not to accuse DeSantis of hypocrisy, but only to point out that a major disaster tends to focus the mind on why we need to “work together” rather than issue meaningless attacks on “socialism.”DeSantis’s stance against “socialism” has been the Republican Party’s harangue for a century.Long before Trump hijacked the GOP for his pathological narcissism, it stood for you’re-on-your-own social Darwinism — and steadfastly against all forms of social insurance, which it termed “socialism.”In the 1928 presidential election, Democratic candidate Al Smith, then governor of New York, put it this way:“The cry of socialism has been patented by the powerful interests that desire to put a damper on progressive legislation. Is that cry of socialism anything new? Not to a man of my experience. I have heard it raised by reactionary elements and the Republican party … for over a quarter century.”“Socialism” was the scare word used by the Liberty League in 1935 when Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed Social Security. In 1952, President Harry Truman noted that “‘Socialism’ is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last twenty years.”Socialism is what they called public power … Social Security … bank deposit insurance … free and independent labor organizations … anything that helps all the people. When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan ‘down with socialism,’ what he really means is ‘down with progress.’As a practical matter, what is the alternative to social insurance against hardship? It’s a survival-of-the-fittest society in which only the richest and most powerful endure.Social insurance is what government is for -- pooling our resources for the common good. In contrast to the Republican’s your-on-your-own social Darwinism, the Democrat’s social insurance recognizes we’re in it together. We can debate whether some forms of social insurance reduce some peoples’ incentives to take reasonable precautions against potential hazards or cause some to become overly dependent on the government or undermine personal responsibility. But there is no debate that social insurance is critically important. We are in it together. Yet America spends very little on social insurance compared to other advanced nations. Almost 30 million Americans still lack health insurance. Nearly 51 million households cannot afford basic monthly expenses including housing, food, childcare, and transportation. We are the only industrialized nation without paid family leave. Many Floridians (and, as seems likely, residents of South Carolina

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019. Over those thirty years, the share of total national weaheld by families in the top 1% increased from 27 percent to 34 percent, while families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2 percent. Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American. How do they justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths. All are utter rubbish. 1. The first is trickle-down economics. They (and their apologists) claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs.Really? For over forty years, as wealth at the top has soared, almost nothing has trickled down. Adjusted for inflation, the median wage today is barely higher than it was four decades ago. Trump provided a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, promising it would generate $4,000 increased income for everyone else. Did you receive it? In reality, the super-wealthy don’t create jobs or raise wages. Jobs are created when average working people earn enough money to buy all the goods and services they produce, forcing companies to hire more people and pay them higher wages. 2. The second myth is the “free market.” The ultra-rich claim they’re being rewarded by the impersonal market for creating and doing what people are willing to pay them for. The wages of other Americans have stagnated, they say, because most Americans are worth less in the market now that new technologies and globalization have made their jobs redundant.Baloney. Even if they’re being rewarded, there’s no reason why the “free market’ would reward vast multiples of what the rich were rewarded decades ago. The market can induce great feats of invention and entrepreneurialism with lures of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — not billions. And as to the rest of us succumbing to labor-replacing globalization and labor-saving technologies, no other advanced nation has nearly the degree of inequality found in the United States, yet all these nations have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change. In reality, the ultra-wealthy have rigged the so-called “free market” in America for their own benefit. Billionaires’ campaign contributions have soared from a relatively modest $31 million in the 2010 elections to $1.2 billion in the most recent presidential cycle — a nearly 40-fold increase. What have they got for their money? Tax cuts, freedom to bash unions and monopolize markets, and government bailouts. Their pockets have been further lined by privatization and deregulation.3. The third myth is that they’re superior human beings — rugged individuals who “did it on their own” and therefore deserve their billions. Bupkis. Six of the 10 wealthiest Americans alive today are heirs to fortunes passed on to them by wealthy ancestors. Others had the advantages that come with wealthy parents. Jeff Bezos’ garage-based start was funded by a quarter-million dollar investment from his parents. Bill Gates’s mother used her business connections to help land a software deal with IBM that made Microsoft.Elon Musk came from a family that reportedly owned shares of an emerald mine in Southern Africa. (By the way, when I mentioned this in a recent video, Elon went nuts — tweeting that “You [sic] both an idiot and a liar.” Hmmm. Did I touch a nerve, Elon?)Don’t fall for these three myths. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. The so-called “free market” has been distorted by huge campaign contributions from the ultra-rich. Don’t lionize the ultra-rich as superior “self-made” human beings who deserve their billions. They were lucky and had connections. In reality, there’s no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. It’s distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people. The last time America faced anything comparable was at the start of the 20th century. In 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt warned 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. Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was enacted in 1916, and the capital gains tax in 1922. Since that time, both have eroded. As the rich have accumulated greater wealth, they have also amassed more political power — and have used that political power to reduce their taxes.Years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the 1929 crash not only as a financial crisis but as an occasion to renegotiate the relationship between capitalism and democracy. Accepting renomination in 1936, he spoke of the need to redeem American democracy from the despotism of concentrated economic power. “Through new uses of corporations, ba

In a post here on September 8, I asked the billionaires who are bankrolling candidates who have tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election how they rationalize spending their fortunes financing insurrection.I specifically included Peter Thiel, Stephen Schwarzman, Steve Wynn, Patrick Byrne, and Ken Griffin in my question.Ken Griffin, the multi-billion-dollar CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, is the only one to respond so far — yesterday, in a tart letter to the Guardian (where I had subsequently published my post). His arguments: (1) His campaign contributions are “principled” because he “proudly” spends his money to support politicians whose ideas “will secure a better future for America” – and he “encourages others to do the same,” and (2) the Democratic party has given generous support to Maga Republican candidates to defeat moderate Republican candidates, which is “hypocritical and cynical.”This is a bit like the captain of the Titanic criticizing the iceberg.Mr. Griffin, when you say your campaign contributions are “principled,” what principle are you referring to?You’ve poured millions into the campaigns of people who refused to certify the 2020 election -- including Florida Senator Rick Scott, and Reps. Mike Bost of Illinois, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Devin Nunes and Darrell Issa from California and Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma.What makes you think these people will “secure a better future for America” when they wouldn’t certify an election, based on nothing other than their political party’s preference?You were the only donor to a $3.5 million group backing defeated Rep. Rodney Davis in his GOP primary. Davis refused to participate in the January 6 committee because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had rejected two of his most extreme Republican colleagues.On what “principle” was Davis worth $3.5 million from you?Please don’t claim that “others can do the same” as you when it comes to flooding American politics with money.You’re worth $29.8 billion.You’re the single biggest spender in Republican politics. Last year, you pumped more than $28 million into the GOP, and you’re expected to multiply that number leading into November’s midterms.I don’t approve of the Democratic party giving financial support to extreme Maga Republican candidates, but that’s irrelevant to my point.I’m talking about billionaires like you, who continue to finance Trump’s insurrection.You’re part of this. You still haven’t justified why you’re spending your fortune this way. Please get back to me as soon as you can. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Last week, a panel of medical experts recommended for the first time that doctors screen all adult patients under 65 for anxiety disorders. The advisory group, called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, said the guidance was intended to help prevent mental health disorders from going undetected and untreated for years or even decades. It made a similar recommendation for children and teenagers earlier this year.Appointed by an arm of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the panel has been preparing the guidance since before the pandemic. Its recommendation highlights the extraordinary stress levels that have plagued the United States in recent years. Lori Pbert, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, who serves on the task force, calls mental health disorders “a crisis in this country.”What’s the answer to this extraordinary rise in stress, anxiety, and depression?Some say we need more psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists. America is “short on mental health resources on all levels,” says Dr. Jeffrey Staab, a psychiatrist and chair of the department of psychiatry and psychology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. But … wait. Maybe what people feel are valid descriptions of personal experience rather than symptoms of mental illness. Maybe we need to stop thinking about anxiety and depression as “disorders” and start regarding them as rational responses to a society that’s become ever more gruesomely disordered.Who has not feared illness and loss of loved ones from Covid-19? Who isn’t concerned by the soaring costs of living and the growing insecurity of jobs and incomes? Who isn’t terrified by Trump’s and his followers’ attacks on democracy? Who doesn’t worry about mass shootings at their children’s or grandchildren’s schools? Who isn’t affected by the climate crisis? Add in increasingly brutal racism; attacks on Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Jews; mounting misogyny and anti-abortion laws; homophobia and transphobia; and the growing coarseness and ugliness of what we see and read in social media — and you’d be nuts if you weren’t stressed.Studies show that women have nearly double the risk of depression as men. Black people also have higher stress levels — from 2014 to 2019, the suicide rate among Black Americans increased by 30 percent. Are women and Black people suffering from a “disorder,” or are they responding to reality? Or both? White men without college degrees are particularly vulnerable to “deaths of despair” from suicide, overdoses, and alcoholic liver diseases, with contributions from the cardiovascular effects of rising obesity, according to the American Council on Science and Health. Are they suffering from a “disorder,” or are they responding to a fundamental change in American society? Or both?In their book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton argue that “the deaths of despair among whites would not have happened, or would not have been so severe, without the destruction of the white working class….” Part of the problem, they say, is that the less educated are often underpaid and disrespected, “and may feel that the system is rigged against them.”Even if we had far more mental health professionals, what would they do against these formidable foes? Prescribe more pills? If anything, Americans are already overprescribed. I’m not arguing against better access to mental health care. In fact, quite the opposite. Increased staffing and improved access to care are very much needed. (Right now over 2,000 mental health therapists, psychologists, and social workers in California are entering their second month of an open-ended strike to make Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest nonprofit HMO, to improve access to care for its patients. The outcome will have nationwide ramifications for determining whether laws that guarantee parity for mental health care will, in practice, help patients access care that meet their needs.)But in addition to providing more and better access to mental health care, we must also try to make our society healthier… … So that the next pandemic doesn’t kill a larger percentage of Americans than in any other advanced nation.… So that Americans have more job security and stronger safety nets, rather than the least economic security of any advanced nation.… So income and wealth aren’t the most unequal of any other advanced nation.… So our democracy survives Trumpism and big money.… So guns and assault weapons are difficult to buy, rather than easier to get than in any other advanced nation.… So we take a leading role in ending the climate crisis.… And we do everything possible to overcome racism, homophobia, and misogyny. These goals are terribly difficult to achieve, of course. But without seeking to achieve them — without making their achievement central to what we must do as a people — no number of psychiatrists, psychologists, a

Last Wednesday, Vladimir Putin announced that Russian civilians would be drafted to bolster forces in his unpopular war in Ukraine. Almost immediately, the Kremlin faced widespread opposition, including demonstrations. On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that “citizens with higher education” would be exempt from the draft, especially those in telecommunications, information technology, banking and “systematically important” media companies.When I heard this news I flashed back to 1968. Tens of thousands of us then graduating from college were subject to being drafted and very possibly going to Vietnam. College students were deferred but local draft boards decided whether to continue deferments for graduate school. Many of us were not only afraid of being killed, but also thought the war insane and unjust. We demonstrated against it. Some burnt our draft cards. We did not want to be complicit in the immoral war. But what to do? Draft resistance meant going to prison or to Canada. The handful of us who had been awarded Rhodes Scholarships for study at Oxford negotiated with our draft boards. Bill Clinton got his extended deferment by signing a letter of intent to join the Reserve Officers Training Corps after Oxford. On December 3 of our second year there — after Bill drew a sufficiently high draft-lottery number to ensure he wouldn’t be drafted — he wrote a letter to Colonel Eugene Holmes, the head of ROTC at the University of Arkansas, essentially withdrawing from the program. Because Bill’s decision and letter would become controversial twenty-three years later when he ran for President, I’m reproducing the relevant portion here. (I can’t help but wonder whether it expresses the sentiments of young Russians now facing Putin’s draft.)Dear Colonel Holmes, First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind and decent to me …. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years (the society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all finished anyway).When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way left in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and resistance. … After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program in itself and all I seemed to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I began to think I had deceived you, not by lies - there were none - but by failing to tell you all the things I'm writing now. I doubt that I had the mental coherence to articulate them then. At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1-D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of self-regard and self-confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally on September 12th, I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board … stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it on me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the Army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of this second year of my Rhodes scholarship.And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you to understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves still loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is disservice, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal. Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Colonel Jones for me. Merry Christmas.Sincerely, Bill Clinton ***As for me, I had read the Selective Service’s physical requirements for being drafted, which clearly set the minimum height at five feet. So, at 4 foot 11 inches, I assumed I wouldn’t make the grade. Just before setting sail f

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover:— profit-price inflation rather than wage-price inflation— Tump rallies and his embrace of QAnon— Republican candidates who refuse to commit to be bound by election results— Nse Ufot and the power of hope through on-the-ground organizingPlus two theme songs! And, of course, our weekly poll: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Friends,Today’s New York Times has a story about Russia’s powerful internet regulator, Roskmnadzor, whose collection of personal data about average Russians has, in the Times’s words, “catapulted Russia, along with authoritarian countries like China and Iran, to the forefront of nations that aggressively use technology as a tool of repression.”A few weeks ago, the Times ran a story about China’s collection of personal data on its citizens through phone-tracking devices, voice prints, one of the largest DNA databases in the world, facial recognition technology, and more than half of the world’s nearly one billion surveillance cameras.This is important and useful reporting. But pardon me if I ask an impertinent question: Why aren’t we hearing more about corporate surveillance of employees in the United States? Or about corporate surveillance of Americans in general? Or how this corporate surveillance is being used by the US and state governments? Even if Russia’s and China’s surveillance states are far more dangerously intrusive than America’s surveillance capitalism, shouldn’t we know more about how the same or very similar technologies are being utilized here? Since I was secretary of labor, I’ve seen American companies load up on monitoring software — to watch what workers are doing every minute of the day. Workers are now subject to trackers, scores, and continuous surveillance of their hands, eyes, faces, and bodies. And increasingly, they’re paid only for the minutes (or seconds) when the systems detect they’re actively working.Kroger cashiers, UPS drivers, and millions of others are monitored by the minute. Amazon measures seconds. J.P. Morgan — the largest bank in the United States — tracks how its workers spend time, from making phone calls to composing emails. At UnitedHealth Group, low keyboard activity can affect compensation and sap bonuses. In Amazon warehouses, some workers don’t get enough time to go to the bathrooms. ESW Capital, a Texas-based business software company, tracks workers in 10-minute intervals during which — at some moment that workers can’t anticipate — cameras take snapshots of their faces and screens. “Digital productivity monitoring” — isn’t that an innocent-sounding phrase? — is spreading even to white-collar jobs requiring graduate degrees. Radiologists get scoreboards showing “inactivity” time and comparing productivity to their colleagues’. Doctors and nurses describe increasing electronic surveillance over workdays. Even lawyers are being closely monitored.Firms selling all this monitoring technology gush with testimonials from supervisors describing newfound powers of “near X-ray vision” into what workers are doing other than working: watching porn, playing video games, using bots to mimic typing, two-timing. Dystopia now!Russia’s and China’s growing surveillance systems seem more dangerous and intrusive than America’s increasing surveillance of our workers because the information Russia and China collect can stifle dissent. But are the surveillance systems really that far apart? Big corporations that gather loads of data on exactly what their workers do all day (and sometimes into the night) — including in their purview the growing ranks of remote or gig workers — can stifle workers’ efforts to form labor unions or show any disgruntlement at all. Russia’s and China’s surveillance of their inhabitants and America’s surveillance of our workers are starting to overlap because the technologies are starting to overlap. A technology company in eastern China even designs “smart” cushions for office chairs that record when workers are absent from their desks. How long before we see smart cushions in American offices?And more and more, we’re being surveilled without knowing it. Delta Air Lines boasts that its Atlanta airport’s Terminal F is the “first biometric terminal” in the United States where passengers can use facial recognition technology “from curb to gate.” The Financial Times reports that a Microsoft facial recognition training database of 10 million images drawn from the internet without anyone’s knowledge is utilized by agencies that include the United States and Chinese military.A new joint report from the Associated Press and Electronic Frontier Foundation highlights a major surveillance tool, known as “Fog Reveal,” now being used by dozens of local law enforcement agencies across the United States to collect personal data without a warrant. The tool makes use of advertising data — including location, timestamp, and a unique advertising ID tied to individual devices — to construct a searchable database that enables law enforcement to either track an individual device or see which devices passed through a certain area. Where does this end? A few years back, Mark Zuckerberg predicted that “Facebook will know every book, film, and song you ever consumed, and its predictive models will tell you what bar to go to when you arrive at a strange city, where the bartender

It makes my blood boil. Since March I’ve been screaming about the Fed’s total misreading of inflation — believing it’s being caused by workers getting wage hikes, when the real cause is powerful corporations raising prices higher than their costs. I’m not so grandiose as to think my screams would have any direct influence on the Fed. My hope was that my argument and data might be picked up by a few voices in the media, which would lead some Democrats in Congress to pick up on it, and that maybe they’d put some pressure on the Fed — such as asking Fed chief Jerome Powell to respond to those arguments when he next testifies. It’s not happened yet. Yesterday Powell and the Fed raised interest rates again — another three-quarters of a percent — bringing the official rate from near zero in March to over 3 percent now. Insane. Well, now I get a chance to tell Congress why this is insane. The House Oversight Committee’s subcommittee on economic and consumer policy holds a hearing this morning and has asked me to testify. (Thankfully, they’re allowing me to do it remotely from my home here in California, although the timing isn’t ideal — the hearing starts 9 am Eastern Time, which is 6 am here — and because I’m the lead-off witness they want me to check in remotely at 5:45 am. I’ll have to drink plenty of coffee.)When you testify before Congress, you get 5 minutes to summarize your views. You submit your detailed testimony, which is read by the committee’s staff, who then give members of Congress questions to ask you based on the submitted testimony (the Democratic staff’s questions are usually quite different from Republican staff’s). Those questions, hopefully, allow you to get into the details. My aim is to state as clearly as possible that the underlying problem is not wage-price inflation. It’s profit-price inflation. And the Fed’s continuing rate hikes will hurt average workers by slowing the economy — making it harder for workers to get wage increases and causing many to lose their jobs. I’m going to suggest that Congress consider ways to control inflation that limit corporate profits rather than jobs and wages — such as a windfall profits tax, tougher antitrust enforcement, and even temporary price controls. Will Congress do any of this? Here again, I’m not so full of myself as to think I can sway a single member of Congress, let alone Congress as a whole. But in my experience, policy ideas that are useful and timely often find their way into politics — eventually displacing old ones that are no longer useful and may be damaging. At least that’s my hope with “profit-price” inflation replacing the anachronistic “wage-price” inflation.I’m going to add my testimony to this post right after I testify this morning — and fill you in on what happened. ***The hearing was just adjourned. The good news is that the Democrats on the committee got it. They understood that big corporations raising their prices in excess of their costs — to score record profits — is a major reason for the inflation we’re now experiencing. And workers are paying for those record profits in two ways — real wage losses (wage gains have been more than offset by price increases, making most workers worse off) and by the higher prices themselves (the result of corporations increasing their profit margins). I was particularly impressed by the chairman of the subcommittee, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (from the 8th district of Illinois), who understood the issues and expressed them cogently, and by Cori Bush (from the 1st district of Missouri), who asked terrific questions. Katie Porter did a fabulous job breaking the issue down. There was less discussion of remedies than I’d hoped — only passing reference to tougher antitrust enforcement and no real discussion of a windfall profits tax — and no criticism of the Fed (other than in my remarks and testimony). Not surprisingly, the Republicans on the committee were obstreperous and wildly partisan. All they did was try to blame inflation on the American Rescue Plan, Biden, and the Democrats. They repeatedly quoted Larry Summers’s misleading claim that pandemic spending fueled inflation (even at one point asking me if I served with him in the Clinton administration, without giving me the chance to rebut him). They asked the Republican witness, Tyler Goodspeed (briefly chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors), to confirm their rhetorical questions but didn’t ask me a thing. Like much of the rest of our governing processes, congressional hearings have degenerated into partisan posturing and name-calling. I experienced this starting in 1995 when Newt Gingrich became Speaker. For those of you who might be interested, here’s the testimony I submitted this morning:***Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee,My name is Robert Reich. I’m the Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley.Last week’s consumer price index rep

Friends,One of the most horrific legacies of Trump is the unwillingness of Republican candidates to commit to being bound by election results. Senate candidates who have refused to commit to accepting the results are Republicans Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, and J.D. Vance in Ohio, according to news reports. Two candidates for governor have also refused to be bound: Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for the governor of Michigan, and Geoff Diehl, the Republican nominee for governor of Massachusetts.It’s one thing to reserve the right to call for recounts if elections are close and irregularities are evident and to appeal the results through the courts. But that was not Trump’s circumstance in the 2020 presidential election. Recounts were taken but showed the same results; Trump’s appeals through the courts were rejected. And that’s not what these Republican candidates are asserting now, in Trump’s shameful wake. But tell me: If these Republican candidates are not bound by the election results, what are they bound to? These candidates are in effect issuing open invitations to their supporters to contest electoral losses in the streets.American democracy is based on our commitments to be bound by the outcomes of elections. These are commitments we make to democracy over any specific outcomes we may want. The peaceful transition of power depends on these commitments.Before Trump, these commitments were assumed. And at least since the Civil War they have been honored. When losing candidates congratulate winners and deliver gracious concession speeches, they demonstrate their commitment to democracy over the electoral victory they sought.And that demonstration is itself a means of reasserting and reestablishing civility. It sends an unambiguous message to all the candidate’s supporters that the process can be trusted.Think of Al Gore’s concession speech to George W. Bush in 2000, after five weeks of a bitterly contested election and just one day after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Bush: “I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of the country …. Neither he nor I anticipated this long and difficult road. Certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy. Now the Supreme Court has spoken. Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it. … And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.”Gore made the same moral choice made by his predecessors who lost elections, and for the same reason: The democratic process (even one that included the judgements of Supreme Court justices) was more important than winning a specific election. This all changed in September 2020 when Trump refused to commit to be bound to the results of the upcoming 2020 presidential election.“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” he said when asked whether he’d commit to a peaceful transition of power. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster,” Trump added, presumably referring to mail-in ballots -- which he baselessly claimed would lead to voter fraud.This is when his poison began seeping directly into the bedrock of American democracy.That poison spread deeper and faster after he lost the election, when he refused to concede – claiming, again without any basis in fact, that it had been “stolen” from him.The poison came to the surface on January 6, 2021, when a group of his supporters – wielding weapons of war – invaded the U.S. Capitol and threatened the lives of members of Congress. Five people were killed. The same poison has now spread to senatorial and gubernatorial candidates who refuse to commit to November’s election results. The commitment to be bound by the results of an election is the most important commitment in a democracy. It is also the most important qualification for public office. It is the equivalent of an oath to uphold the Constitution.Candidates who refuse to commit to being bound by the results of elections should be presumed disqualified to hold public office. ***[Exactly one year ago today I began my daily communications with you. Thank you again for your support, your interest, and your thoughtful comments. The road ahead is filled with potholes, such as election deniers and candidates who won’t commit to being bound by election results. But if we make the journey toward a stronger democracy together, we have a better chance of achieving it.] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

I’m against trafficking of migrants. But luring unsuspecting people onto planes with lies about jobs, housing, and education awaiting them, and then depositing them onto an island off the coast of Massachusetts that’s totally unprepared to receive them, is a form of human trafficking.The people you’re talking about aren’t American citizens. They have no rights. Even if they’re not Americans, U.S. law prohibits kidnapping people and moving them across state lines.I didn’t kidnap them. They’re here illegally! You don’t know that. Under our laws, these people are entitled to a hearing on whether they’re here legally — just like all the Cuban asylum seekers who for years have arrived in South Florida fleeing communism. What I’m doing is appropriate and legal! I’m paying for part of it with funds from last year’s American Rescue Plan. That money was for the COVID-19 health crisis. It isn’t a slush fund for whatever political stunt you dream up.I’m also using every penny of the $12 million Florida budgeted to relocate migrants. I have a responsibility to the people of Florida to send migrants out of the state! If you’re responsible for Floridians, why are you picking up people in Texas and transporting them to Massachusetts?Many of the people who cross the southern border into Texas end up in Florida. But the law gives federal officials the responsibility for handling immigration, not you.You don’t know the Constitution. Article 10 gives powers not delegated to the federal government to the States.No Governor, you don’t know the Constitution. Article 1 gives Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states. Neither you nor the state of Florida has the authority to off-load people you don’t want onto other states. I’m not the only governor doing this! I know. On Thursday Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent two surprise buses of migrants to Washington, D.C., where they were dropped off near the residence of Vice President Harris carrying all they have in clear plastic trash bags.And we red-state governors are going to do a lot more! So Republican governors can’t be bothered with pesky things like laws or the Constitution?The U.S. immigration and asylum systems are totally broken! Then why don’t you support fixing them instead of using immigrants as political fodder? Ask Republicans in Congress to stop blocking federal legislation creating paths to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants and to expedite asylum seekers and other legal immigrants.You don’t understand politics. You have to play hardball. You don’t understand morality or decency. You’re treating immigrants as if they’re political pawns rather than people. They’re no less people than was your maternal great-great-grandfather Salvatore Storti, who immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1904, or your great-great-grandmother Luigia Colucci, who joined Salvatore in the United States in 1917.Keep them out of this. And you’re treating the citizens of blue states as political hostages rather than fellow Americans. But they are no less American than the millions of retirees from blue states who have migrated to Florida, and their children and grandchildren who still live in blue states. We’re all in this together. No we’re not. And you’re acting as if governing is a child’s game rather than a pursuit of the common good. But it’s not a game. Our common good has depended on the sacrifices of generations of American service men and women, first responders, teachers, social workers, and public leaders who dedicated their lives to this nation. I don’t have to listen to your speeches. Look, I get it: Coping with immigration is difficult. It requires hard thought and hard work. You betcha. But you’re giving it neither. Interview over!I’m told you have presidential ambitions, Governor. If so, you might start acting like a statesman rather than doing stunts that make you a cynical clown. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch. Today I’m offline with family, so instead of our regular klatch, I’m bringing you a terrific conversation I just had with Nse Ufot, CEO of New Georgia Project (NGP). NGP is one of the most important grassroots voting-rights organizations — in one of the most important voting states. NGP is now registering over 600,000 young people and people of color to vote in all 159 of Georgia’s counties. Nse describes the organization as a “tech startup inside a civil rights and voting rights organization” to build the power of working people in Georgia. I’m so pleased to be able to share with you this inspiring discussion about the on-the-ground fight for democracy. We cover:* Who has power in our system — and the need to cultivate new voter power through grass-roots organizing. * How to train organizers — by teaching them how to listen (because potential voters “have twice as many ears as they do mouths.”)* How to motivate non-registered voters to step up — by asking people to discuss what they need.* How to keep people coming to the polls — even though those with power will continue to put up obstacles.* How to get people the information they need — in a voting system that’s barely changed in a century. * And what will happen in 2024 and beyond — and why Nse, as an optimist, is “ready to cancel the apocalypse.” (I agree!)My thanks to Nse and all of her colleagues and volunteers at the New Georgia Project. Thanks also to Kevin McCormick who composed the tune we use as today’s coffee klatch theme song.Heather Lofthouse and I will be back next week. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

Yesterday, Donald Trump threatened that if he is indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” adding “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”These words followed on last month’s threat by Senator Lindsey Graham that if Trump is prosecuted, there would be “riots in the street.” Trump appeared to endorse Graham’s threat, sharing a video link on his Truth Social platform.Trump’s latest threat requires four responses:1. Trump is daring the Justice Department to prosecute him, in effect asserting he is above the law. He is not above the law. The Justice Department is methodically and carefully sifting through evidence and presenting it to a grand jury. Neither the Department nor the grand jury should be intimidated by Trump’s latest threat.2. Trump’s rhetoric is dangerous. We have already seen the consequences of what happens when Trump invites a mob to the streets. Five people died on January 6, 2021. Many more – including members of Congress and the former Vice President – could have been killed on that day. Since the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s incendiary words have fueled death threats to numerous federal officials, judges, and lawmakers. All Americans should condemn Trump’s latest threat and incitement to violence. 3. We are dealing with a sociopathic narcissist who wants nothing more than to divide the nation over himself. This is not a matter of left versus right, liberal versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican. It is a question of the Constitution and the rule of law versus authoritarianism and tyranny. If Trump prevails — if he intimidates law-enforcement officials from doing their jobs over his attempted coup or his theft from the White House of secret documents — we lose our democracy. The media must stop covering this as if there are two sides to this story. There are not. 4. The time has come for Republican lawmakers, candidates, and rightwing media owners and personalities to show some backbone and vigorously repudiate Trump. Their failure to do so before now has created a monster that threatens to consume this country. It is up to them to tell their constituents, followers, readers and viewers that there is no place in America for Trump’s threats to law enforcement and his incitements to violence. Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Lindsey Graham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Rupert Murdoch, and others must say it loudly and clearly: We repudiate Trump and his threats. No person is above the law. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

A few days ago, I received an email from an associate producer at the Dr. Phil Show. They recently came across my film “Inequality for All” and wanted to know “if I’d be interested in joining Dr. Phil as an expert guest for an upcoming episode.” Hey, why not? The Dr. Phil Show is the number 1 rated daytime TV talk show in America. It has over 2 million viewers. I have lots to say to those viewers about the perils of widening inequality. Then I read the rest of the email. “For this conversation we will be asking questions like do college admissions enroll minorities over prospective Caucasian students? Are Caucasian teachers and professors being laid off to ‘make up for past discriminations’ against minority educators, as seen in Minneapolis?” These were the only questions included in the email. In other words, it will be a show about favoritism to Black people over white people. What’s going on here? The Dr. Phil Show isn’t on Fox News. It’s carried by CBS. Phil McGraw himself isn’t a rabid right-winger. At least not that I know of. (He did appear on Fox News soon after the start of the pandemic to argue against temporarily closing down the economy — claiming that the likelihood of dying from COVID was no greater than likelihood of dying in a car accident or drowning in a swimming pool. By that time 3,000 people had died of the infection. Two years later, it had taken the lives of 1 million.)But the point I want to make isn’t solely about Dr. Phil. It’s about the people who produce popular TV talk shows. They decide two hugely important things: (1) the topics to be discussed, and (2) how those topics are framed.These two decisions determine what issues the the public focuses on (out of an almost infinite number bubbling up each day) and what’s debatable about them (out of an almost infinite number of possibilities). And these two determinations in turn fuel public emotions — ranging from anger, indignation, and outrage, to hope, pride, and confidence. They affect our daily conversations. They shape our politics. They divide or connect Americans. They help set the national agenda. Take the recent contract agreement between the Minneapolis teachers union and the Minneapolis school district — the issue Dr. Phil’s associate producer wants me to talk about. That contract says that if school budgets must be cut, white teachers will be laid off before those from “underrepresented” populations, regardless of seniority. If school budgets then expand, “underrepresented” teachers will be reinstated before white teachers, regardless of seniority.MAGA outlets, blogs, and social media sites have gone nuts over this. Racial preferences for Black people have become a hot-button issue, especially among struggling working-class whites. Viewed this way, this issue lends itself to the rightwing argument that “coastal elites” have rigged the economic game against white working people in favor of “less-deserving” people of color. Naturally, this infuriates a lot of working-class whites.Presumably, this is the debate Dr. Phil’s producer has in mind. But it’s the wrong issue and the wrong debate. Go a bit deeper and you’ll see why. The goal of the Minneapolis school board is to remedy continuing effects of past discrimination, by supporting “the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups” [emphasis added]. This is a particularly important goal in Minnesota’s schools, where 5.6 percent of licensed teachers identify as a teacher of color or American Indian, compared to 30 percent of students.Research shows having teachers of color in the classroom has a positive impact on students — not just students of color but also on white students — including improved test scores and higher graduation rates.But in a last-in-first-out seniority system, teachers of color are more likely to be laid off when budgets are cut. That’s because they’ve entered the profession more recently, so have less seniority.In the Minneapolis public schools, fewer teachers of color are tenured than white teachers. State law requires that teachers be on probation until completing three consecutive years of work.So the new Minneapolis contract is serving a particularly important public purpose in a system where seniority and tenure would otherwise discriminate against people of color. The contract is leveling the playing field and helping insure that more teachers of color are in classrooms. But do you think for a moment that I’d be able to explain all this on the Dr. Phil Show? Not a chance. I’ve been doing television interviews for forty years. I’d be lucky if I got out two sentences before another guest, representing the “other side” of the issue, jumped down my throat, charging “racism!” So what are millions of daytime TV viewers likely to learn from this discussion about whether “Caucasian teachers” are “being laid off to ‘make up for past discriminations’ against minority educators, as seen in Minneapolis?” That government is favoring Bl

Hello friends,Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week, over morning coffee. Today we discuss:— The death of the Queen, what she symbolized for Britain and America, and why King Charles III may be the last of the British royals.— Judge Eileen Cannon — the Trump appointee whose decision this week to appoint a “special master” to look over the top-secret documents Trump stole from the United States and review for executive privilege makes absolutely no logical sense. — The midterm elections coming closer, and why the Supreme Court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade may be an even bigger motivator of voters than Trump Republicans’ attacks on democracy.— My pick for the season’s best TV series.— Why Californians have been willing to voluntarily reduce electricity consumption during this heat wave. And today’s poll: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

In early August, the good people of Kansas voted against a ballot measure that would have stripped from their state constitution a woman’s right to choose — and they did it by a whopping 18-point margin. Since then, and largely in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women have been registering to vote across the country in astounding numbers. Many appear to be supporting Democratic candidates even in states such as Kansas, where Democrats have almost become an endangered species. One hundred years ago this week, the writer and political philosopher Walter Lippmann published Public Opinion, his account of how democracy actually functions. Lippmann claimed that the public doesn’t form opinions rationally. Opinions emerge from particular events (say, a Supreme Court decision) that galvanize the public’s “irrational” sentiments. Lippmann didn’t trust those sentiments. He was concerned how easily they could be manipulated. “As a result of psychological research, coupled with the modern means of communication, the practice of democracy has turned a corner. A revolution is taking place, infinitely more significant than any shifting of economic power.” (He wrote these words years before the Nazi’s and Soviets chillingly and effectively used propaganda to distort public opinion.)To deal with this danger, Lippmann proposed the creation of a "specialized class" of professionals to collect and analyze data and then present their conclusions to society's decision makers. The decision makers would in turn use the "art of persuasion" to convince the public what was good for them. Not exactly a democratic vision. Lippmann’s proposal may have found its way into graduate schools of public policy, many founded in the late 1960s. They are worthy and important institutions. (I have taught at three outstanding ones — Harvard, Brandeis, and Berkeley.) Yet they do not as a rule emphasize democracy over analysis. Even today, some of my students regard public policy-making as a matter of finding the “right” answers to public problems and then doing end-runs around politics to implement them. I’ve done my best to disabuse them. Yet how can democracies avoid what Lippmann feared — the manipulation of public sentiment? Five years after Lippmann wrote Public Opinion, another political philosopher published a criticism of Lippmann’s ideas and offered a far more optimistic view of democracy. His name was John Dewey. His book was The Public and its Problems. Dewey centered his hopes for democracy on education. Public sentiments are not to be feared, he argued, if schools give people the skills they need to engage in discussion and deliberation — the ability to separate facts from opinions, to communicate effectively, and then come to their own judgments. The Dobbs decision was leaked May 2. It was formally released June 24. Since then, something dramatic has happened — even in the reddest of Republican states. It seems that people — especially those who bear children — have deliberated with one another and come to a judgment. We saw the outcome of that judgment in Kansas, in early August. We won’t know about any larger consequences for another two months. But John Dewey may have been right. This messy, unpredictable, passionate, and sometimes mean-spirited process called democracy could just be working. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

I have a serious question. It’s for people who have power in America and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s Big Lie: What are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind?I don’t mean to be snide or snarky. I’m genuinely curious. I’m not interested in Trump’s answer to this question. He is too far gone — lost in the depths of his own pathological ego. I’m also not asking the millions of Trump followers, Fox News viewers, and rightwing social media fans who have been fed the Big Lie nonstop for almost two years. Two-thirds of registered Republicans now believe it. No, I am asking my question to people with power in our society — people who presumably know the truth. If you hold public office and still deny the outcome of the 2020 election, how are you explaining this to yourself? Are you telling yourself that despite the overwhelming evidence that Biden won and the lack of evidence of fraud, you still genuinely doubt the outcome? But you must know that sixty federal courts have found no basis in Trump’s claim, nor have any state so-called “audits,” and that even Trump’s own Attorney General found the claim baseless. Or are you telling yourself that it will soon be over — that Trump will fade, that the Big Lie will disappear, that your party and America will soon move on? But you must know you’re wrong. The Big Lie is growing. It has metastasized into a cancer that’s dividing the nation and devouring our democracy. Or are you telling yourself that you have no real choice but to support the lie if you want to keep or obtain political power? But is power so intoxicating to you — so important as an end in itself — that you’ll do anything for it? Where will you draw the line? If Trump is reelected and imposes martial law? If he or another Republican president forbids public criticism of his administration? If he calls for violence against those who oppose him?And what do you tell yourself about the measures your party is taking based on the Big Lie: suppression of votes, takeovers of election machinery, assertions that state legislatures can overturn voter preferences in the certification process, rejection of the January 6 committee’s findings?You have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. How do you defend yourself in your own mind? I’m asking you, Kevin McCarthy. And you, Lindsey Graham. And you, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson. And others.And I’m asking those of you with significant power in the GOP who have remained silent in the face of all this – such as you, Mitch McConnell, and you, Mitt Romney: How do you justify your silence?And I ask those of you now running for office who are denying the 2020 election results and pushing other aspects of Republican authoritarianism – such as you, JD Vance, and Blake Masters, Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Doug Mastriano, and Kari Lake: What are you telling yourself in private? How are you excusing yourself? Why are you even running? And I ask the billionaires and CEOs who are bankrolling these people: How do you rationalize spending millions, even tens of millions, helping them get or remain elected? I’m asking you, Peter Thiel, and you, Stephen Schwarzman, and Ken Griffin and Steve Wynn and Mike Lindell and Patrick Byrne and others: Is this really the way you want to spend your fortune? Is this your legacy to the nation?And I ask all the people making money off this rot – the TV hosts and producers and media moguls who are raking it in while poisoning the minds of America with bald face lies – what are you telling yourself in private? I’m asking you, Rupert Murdoch, and you, Tucker Carlson, and you, Sean Hannity, and you, Laura Ingraham: How are you defending yourself to yourself? I don’t expect any of you to answer me. This is a question for you to answer to yourself, alone and in private. But before you do, may I have a confidential word? Whether you’re a politician supporting the Big Lie, a billionaire backer of it, or a broadcaster who’s pushing it, it is not too late for you to get off the road you are on. Yet if you continue to promote or enable this lie, you are undermining our democracy and the norms of our society. The crisis you have helped create is worsening. You bear part of the responsibility for what comes next. Know this: When the history of this trying time is written, future generations of Americans will judge your actions and your silences harshly.They will recall your cowardice and your self-justifications. They will remember your lust for power and your moral blindness. They will recollect your unwitting ignorance or your witting failure to come to democracy’s defense in this perilous time. Generations to come will sit in judgment about what you have wrought. And if the democratic experiment called America continues to unravel because of what you did or failed to do, you will live in infamy. This is a public episode. If you'd li

Today marks the start of the school year for many public schools. Which makes me think of Alice Camp. (I wrote about her some months ago. Many of you have asked me to repost what I wrote — and add a bit more about her and about our teachers. So here goes.)I arrived in Mrs. Camp’s third-grade classroom in Lewisboro Elementary School, in South Salem, New York, as an extremely short, shy, insecure 8-year-old who was often bullied and mocked on the bus and made to feel like a loser on the playground and had no particular interest in school.But she saw in me something I didn’t see. She fed me books, projects, ideas. She challenged me and praised me. She made me feel special. Her slightly whacky sense of humor connected with mine. Her curiosity fueled mine (she didn’t mind if I stayed in at recess and barraged her with questions). Her enjoyment of literature made it okay for me to love books.She made me understand that I wasn’t a freak, that I might even be talented, that the drawings and writings I did (up until then alone at my small desk in my bedroom) were okay — perhaps even good. And there was no reason for me to be so sad and ashamed, so fearful, so alone in the world.I think of Mrs. Camp when I see America’s teachers blamed these days for almost everything imaginable — yelled at by parents over masks, reprimanded by school boards about books they assign or let their students read, vilified by politicians for teaching about America’s history of racism, even told to arm themselves against the possibility that their classrooms will be invaded by murderous young men with semi-automatics.That’s wrong.Instead of berating our teachers, we should honor them. Instead of imposing ludicrous demands on them we should free them to teach and inspire. Instead of demeaning them we should express our gratitude to them — every day.And we should pay them twice as much as they’re now earning, or three times.Did you know that 94 percent of America’s teachers have had to dip into their own pockets to buy school supplies? This, at a time when the average Wall Street employee bonus for 2021 hit $257,500.Why in hell should investment bankers get paid fortunes for moving money from one set of pockets to another, when our teachers can barely afford to live on what they make? Bankers watch over our financial capital. Teachers watch over our human capital — and therefore our future.I don’t think there’s a “teacher shortage.” I think there’s a shortage of teaching jobs that treat educators with the dignity — and give them the pay — they deserve.I never saw Alice Camp again after third grade ended for me that June of 1954. I never had a chance to thank her (although I do remember sitting cross-legged on the floor at the end-of-year school assembly, quietly crying about leaving her and trying desperately not to show it).She passed away long ago.I had the great fortune to have other wonderful teachers over the rest of my years of public elementary and high school, and then in college and graduate school. I don’t recall thanking any of them, either. Most are gone by now. But I think of them often. And I am forever in their debt.I suppose one way I’ve managed to pay back a small portion of that debt is to teach — which I’ve done for most of the last forty years. I love teaching. I love my students. I can’t imagine a more rewarding or noble profession.When I expressed my appreciation of America’s teachers last June, and of Alice Camp in particular, I received lots of emails thanking me. Among them was a lovely letter from one of Mrs. Camp’s sons. He wrote:I want to thank you for your moving tribute to my mother, Alice Camp. It brought tears to my eyes because you so completely nailed who she was. She loved teaching. She spent endless hours at home after school working on projects and lesson plans and so on. To the point of exhaustion it seemed. For she did all the "single mom," work, too.She was deeply interested in her "kids" and not just the best and brightest such as you but equally the troubled, the disadvantaged, the ones who struggled. My mother was all about justice and fairness. … I could go on, but let me again on behalf of myself, my brother and sister (and my kids, because they all know the story, too) thank you for your loving words about Alice. She was my hero. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe