Robert B. Reich Quotes & Sayings

The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 - and extended for two years in 2010 - in 2011 saved the richest 1.4 million taxpayers (the top 1 percent) more money than the rest of America's 140.89 million taxpayers received in total income. — Robert B. Reich

Yet the notion that you're paid what you're "worth" is by now so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that many who earn very little assume it's their own fault. — Robert B. Reich

Indentured servitude is banned, but what about students seeking to sell shares of their future earnings in exchange for money up front to pay for their college tuitions? — Robert B. Reich

Along with individual responsibility goes some societal responsibility to enable young people and their parents to do what they need to do. Otherwise, what is a society? — Robert B. Reich

Powerlessness can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is much that is wrong with America. But it will only be made right only if we force change to occur. — Robert B. Reich

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they're treated as public nuisances and evicted. — Robert B. Reich

Keynes declared capitalism the best system ever devised to achieve a civilized economic society. But he recognized in it two major faults - its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes. — Robert B. Reich

Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society's evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them. — Robert B. Reich

Wall Street's shenanigans have convinced a large portion of America that the economic game is rigged. Yet capitalism depends on trust. Without trust, people avoid even sensible economic risks. They also begin trading in gray markets and black markets. They think that if the big guys cheat in big ways, they may as well begin cheating in small ways. And when they think the game is rigged, they're easy prey for political demagogues with fast tongues and dumb ideas. Wall — Robert B. Reich

In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts would come from low-income programs. Yet at the same time, the Republican budget would provide a substantial tax cut to the rich - who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation's total income. — Robert B. Reich

We are born, we grow up, we live our lives as best we can. If we are thoughtful we are good parents and good partners. If we are wise we strive for integrity and intimacy. If we are fortunate we discover love and joy. If we are able, we make the world a little better than we found it. That is all there is for any of us. — Robert B. Reich

It's no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners' share of the nation's total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 - the two years just preceding the biggest downturns. — Robert B. Reich

Be patient. Changes that alter the structure of power and widen opportunity require years of hard work, as those who toiled for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, or have been working for the rights of the disabled and gays, would tell you. It took thirty years of continuous fulmination for women to get the right to vote; fifty years of agitation before employers were required to bargain with unionized workers. Those who benefit from the prevailing allocation of power and wealth don't give up their privileged positions without a fight, and they usually have more resources at their disposal than the insurgents. Take satisfaction from small victories, but don't be discouraged or fall into cynicism. And don't allow yourself to burn out. I — Robert B. Reich

Few ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a "free market" existing somewhere in the universe, into which government "intrudes. — Robert B. Reich

Look back over the last hundred years and you'll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income - as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 - the nation as a whole grew faster, and median wages surged. The basic bargain ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. We created that virtuous cycle in which an ever-growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats. On the other hand, during periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion - as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day - growth slowed, median wages stagnated, and we suffered giant downturns. — Robert B. Reich

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon lent their support to such interventionist measures as Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency. Eisenhower pushed for the greatest public works project in the history of the United States - the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which linked the nation together with four-lane (and occasionally six-lane) interstate highways covering forty thousand miles. The GOP also backed large expansion of federally supported higher education. And to many Republicans at the time, a marginal income tax rate of more than 70 percent on top incomes was not repugnant. — Robert B. Reich

It is still possible to find people who believe that government policy did not end the Great Depression and undergird the Great Prosperity, just as it is possible to uncover people who do not believe in evolution. — Robert B. Reich

Angry voters are more willing to support candidates who vilify their opponents and find easy scapegoats. Talking heads have become shouting heads. Many Americans have grown cynical about our collective ability to solve our problems. And that cynicism has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as nothing gets solved. — Robert B. Reich

It is no great feat for an economy to create a large number of very-low-wage jobs. Slavery, after all, was a full employment system. — Robert B. Reich

Wall Street has blanketed America in a miasma of cynicism, and much of it is directed against Wall Street. The Street has only itself to blame. — Robert B. Reich

A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful. — Robert B. Reich

A market - any market - requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. — Robert B. Reich

The problem is that the choice we make in the market don't fully reflect our values as citizens. We might make different choices if we understood the social consequences of our purchases or investments and if we knew all other consumers and investors would join us in forbearing from certain great deals whose social consequence were abhorrent to us. — Robert B. Reich

When Republicans recently charged the President with promoting 'class warfare,' he answered it was 'just math.' But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality.
Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not.
President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are. — Robert B. Reich

There can be no "free market" without government. The "free market" does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. Competition in the wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules. — Robert B. Reich

Regressives say small businesses would be hurt by a higher marginal tax. Don't believe this, either. Only just over 1 percent of small-business owners earn enough to be taxed at the top rate - and that's just on the portion of their incomes exceeding $379,000. The — Robert B. Reich

An Apple executive told The New York Times, "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible. — Robert B. Reich

An economy should exist for the people who inhabit it, not the other way around. The purpose of an economy is to provide everyone with opportunities to live full, happy, and productive lives. Yet when most people come to view the economic game as rigged, this most basic purpose cannot be achieved. It is impossible to live happily in a society that seems fundamentally unfair or to live well in a nation rife with anger and cynicism. — Robert B. Reich

From World War II until 1981 the top marginal income tax rate never fell below 70 percent. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican whom no one ever accused of being a socialist, the top rate was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, Americans with incomes of over $1 million (in today's dollars) paid a top marginal rate, on average, of 52 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the top tax rate on capital gains was 35 percent. But as income and wealth have accumulated at the top, so has the political power to reduce taxes. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which were extended for two years in December 2010, capped top rates at 35 percent, their lowest level in more than half a century, and reduced capital gains taxes to 15 percent. — Robert B. Reich

At the same time, most of what government does that helps them is now so deeply woven into the thread of daily life that it's no longer recognizable as government. — Robert B. Reich

The problem was not that Americans spent beyond their means but that their means had not kept up with what the larger economy could and should have been able to provide them. the American economy had been growing briskly, and America's middle class naturally expected to share in that growth. But it didn't. A larger and larger portion of the economy's winnings had gone to people at the top. — Robert B. Reich

Romney is right: free enterprise is on trial. But he's wrong about the question at issue in that trial. It's not whether America will continue to reward risk taking. It's whether an economic system can survive when those at the top get giant rewards no matter how badly they screw up while the rest of us get screwed no matter how hard we work. — Robert B. Reich

The simultaneous rise of both the working poor and non-working rich offers further evidence that earnings no longer correlate with effort. — Robert B. Reich

If nothing is done to counter present trends, the major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the "establishment"
political insiders, power brokers, the heads of American business, Wall Street, and the mainstream media
and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to "take back America" from them. — Robert B. Reich

Fewer and fewer large and medium-sized companies offer their workers full health-care coverage - 74 percent did in 1980, under 10 percent do today. As a result, health insurance premiums, co-payments, and deductibles are soaring. — Robert B. Reich

Figure out for yourself what you want to be really good at, know that you'll never really satisfy yourself that you've made it, and accept that that's okay — Robert B. Reich

The idea of a "free market" separate and distinct from government has functioned as a useful cover for those who do not want the market mechanism fully exposed. They have had the most influence over it and would rather keep it that way. The mythology is useful precisely because it hides their power. — Robert B. Reich

It turns out that what money buys has rapidly diminishing emotional returns ... As long as we're not destitute, happiness depends less on getting what we want than appreciating what we already have. — Robert B. Reich

Lehman Brothers' Repo 105 program - which temporarily moved billions of dollars of liability off the bank's books at the end of each quarter and replaced them a few days later at the start of the next quarter - was intentionally designed to hide the firm's financial weaknesses. This was a carefully crafted fraud, detailed by a court-appointed Lehman examiner. But no former Lehman executive ever faced criminal prosecution for it. Contrast this with the fact that a teenager who sells an ounce of marijuana can be put away for years. — Robert B. Reich