The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Friends,A while back, I shared with you my love of Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” — the essential American fable about the generosity and goodness of Americans toward one another, as opposed to the greedy oligarchs at the top (such as Mr. Potter) who care only about building their own wealth and power. In light of Putin’s war and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, including the United States, I’ve been thinking about another favorite of mine — Michael Kurtiz’s fabulous 1942 classic, “Casablanca.” Even now, 70 years after its release, it feels relevant and poignant.In the first six decades after World War II, the number of countries considered democratic grew. But researchers have found that, starting five or six years ago, the number of democracies in the world began to shrink, and existing democracies have become less democratic. Consider the rise of strongman rule in Hungary, the Philippines, and Russia, attacks on the courts in Poland, Hindu extremism in India, fears of a power grab in Brazil, and, of course, Trump’s continuing attempted coup. Which brings me back to Casablanca. Few movies have ever produced as many quotes — “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and “We’ll always have Paris,” and the song “As Time Goes By.” And can you think of any more enduring characters than those played by Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart? But the core of Casablanca is a defense of democracy in the face of the rising specter of fascism. One of the most moving scenes to me is the dueling anthems — when the German occupants sing “Die Wacht am Rhein,” only to be drowned out by the French refugees singing “La Marseillaise.” I’m told that the tears in the eyes of several of the French actors and singers in this scene were unplanned and unrehearsed. Remember, this was filmed in 1942.I’m curious about your take: What is it that makes this scene so powerful? 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

At 79, Joe Biden is the oldest president in American history. Concerns about his age top the list for why Democratic voters want the party to find an alternative for 2024.I don’t think this reflects an “ageist” prejudice against those who have reached such withering heights so much as an understanding that people in their late 70s and 80s wither.I speak with some authority. I’m now a spritely 76 — lightyears younger than our president. I feel fit, I swing dance and salsa, and can do 20 pushups in a row. Yet I confess to a certain loss of, shall we say, fizz.  Joe Biden could easily make it until 86, when he’d conclude his second term. After all, it’s now thought a bit disappointing if a person dies before 85. My mother passed at 86, my father two weeks before his 102nd birthday (so I’m hoping for the best, genetically speaking). Three score and ten is the number of years of life set out in the Bible. Modern technology and Big Pharma should add at least a decade and a half. Beyond this is an extra helping. “After 80, it’s gravy,” my father used to say. Joe will be on the cusp of the gravy train. Where will it end? There’s only one possibility, and that reality occurs to me with increasing frequency. I find myself reading the obituary pages with ever greater interest, curious about how long they lasted and what brought them down. I remember a New Yorker cartoon in which an older reader of the obituaries sees headlines that read only “Older Than Me” or “Younger Than Me.”Yet most of the time I forget my age. The other day, after lunch with some of my graduate students, I caught our reflection in a store window and for an instant wondered about the identity of the short old man in our midst.It’s not death that’s the worrying thing about a second Biden term. It’s the dwindling capacities that go with aging. "Bodily decrepitude," said Yeats, "is wisdom." I have accumulated somewhat more of the former than the latter, but our president seems fairly spry (why do I feel I have to add “for someone his age?”). I still have my teeth, in contrast to my grandfather whom I vividly recall storing his choppers in a glass next to his bed, and have so far steered clear of heart attack or stroke (I pray I’m not tempting fate by my stating this fact). But I’ve lived through several kidney stones and a few unexplained fits of epilepsy in my late thirties. I’ve had both hips replaced. And my hearing is crap. Even with hearing aids, I have a hard time understanding someone talking to me in a noisy restaurant. You’d think that the sheer market power of 60 million boomers losing their hearing would be enough to generate at least one chain of quiet restaurants.When I get together with old friends, our first ritual is an “organ recital” — how’s your back? knee? heart? hip? shoulder? eyesight? hearing? prostate? hemorrhoids? digestion? The recital can run (and ruin) an entire lunch. The question my friends and I jokingly (and brutishly) asked one other in college—"getting much?"—now refers not to sex but to sleep. I don’t know anyone over 75 who sleeps through the night. When he was president, Bill Clinton prided himself on getting only about four hours. But he was in his forties then. (I also recall cabinet meetings where he dozed off.) How does Biden manage?My memory for names is horrible. (I once asked Ted Kennedy how he recalled names and he advised that if a man is over 50, just ask “how’s the back?” and he'll think you know him.) I often can’t remember where I put my wallet and keys or why I’ve entered a room. And certain proper nouns have disappeared altogether. Even when rediscovered, they have a diabolical way of disappearing again. Biden’s secret service detail can worry about his wallet and he’s got a teleprompter for wayward nouns, but I’m sure he’s experiencing some diminution in the memory department. I have lost much of my enthusiasm for travel and feel, as did Philip Larkin, that I would like to visit China, but only on the condition that I could return home that night. Air Force One makes this possible under most circumstances. If not, it has a first-class bedroom and personal bathroom, so I don’t expect Biden’s trips are overly taxing. I’m told that after the age of 60, one loses half an inch of height every five years. This doesn’t appear to be a problem for Biden but it presents a challenge for me, considering that at my zenith I didn’t quite make it to five feet. If I live as long as my father did, I may vanish.Another diminution I’ve noticed is tact. A few days ago, I gave the finger to a driver who passed me recklessly. These days, giving the finger to a stranger is itself a reckless act. I’m also noticing I have less patience, perhaps because of an unconscious “use by” timer that’s now clicking away. Increasingly I wonder why I’m wasting time with this or that buffoon. I’m less tolerant of long waiting lines, automated phone menus, and Republicans. Cicero claimed "older people who are reasonable, good-tempered, and gracious bear aging well. Those who are mean-spirited and irritable will be unhappy at every stage of their lives." Easy for Cicero to say. He was forced into exile and murdered at the age of 63, his decapitated head and right hand hung up in the Forum by order of the notoriously mean-spirited and irritable Marcus Antonius. How the hell does Biden maintain tact or patience when he has to deal with Mitch McConnell? Or Joe Manchin, for crying out loud? The style sections of the papers tell us that the 70s are the new 50s. Septuagenarians are supposed to be fit and alert, exercise like mad, have rip-roaring sex, and party until dawn. Rubbish. Inevitably, things begin falling apart. My aunt, who lived far into her nineties, told me “getting old isn’t for sissies.” Toward the end she repeated that phrase every two to three minutes.Philosopher George Santayana claimed to prefer old age to all others. "Old age is, or may be as in my case, far happier than youth," he wrote. "I was never more entertained or less troubled than I am now." True for me too, in a way. Despite Trump, notwithstanding the seditiousness of the Republican Party, the ravages of climate change, near record inequality, a potential nuclear war, and a stubborn pandemic, I remain upbeat -- largely because I still spend most days with people in their twenties, whose fizz buoys my spirits. Maybe Biden does, too.But I’m feeling more and more out of it. I’m doing videos on TikTok and Snapchat, but when my students talk about Ariana Grande or Selena Gomez or Jared Leto, I don’t have clue who they’re talking about (and frankly don’t care). And I find myself using words –- “hence,” “utmost,” “therefore,” “tony,” “brilliant” — that my younger colleagues find charmingly old-fashioned. If I refer to “Rose Marie Woods” or “Jackie Robinson” or “Ed Sullivan” or “Mary Jo Kopechne,” they’re bewildered. The culture has flipped in so many ways. When I was seventeen, I could go into a drugstore and confidently ask for a package of Luckies and nervously whisper a request for condoms. Now it’s precisely the reverse. (I stopped smoking long ago.)Santayana said the reason that old people have nothing but foreboding about the future is that they cannot imagine a world that’s good without themselves in it. I don’t share that view. To the contrary, I think my generation — including Bill and Hillary, George W., Trump, Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Biden – have fucked it up royally. The world will probably be better without us.Joe, please don’t run. 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

Uber’s then-chief executive Travis Kalanick texted fellow executives that “violence guarantees success” when clashes with taxi drivers broke out in 2016 in Paris, a key market for the company. Uber leveraged the violence against its drivers to win sympathy from regulators and the public, as it also did in South Africa where Uber drivers were burned when their cars were set on fire. (This look inside Uber’s internal deliberations came from records Uber lobbyist Mark MacGann turned over to the Guardian.)I’ve been thinking about Uber’s capitalist thuggery in light of the corporations underwriting Trump’s thuggery, which includes violent groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that led the attack on the U.S. Capitol. “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” Trump former aide Steve Bannon predicted on his radio show on January 5, 2021.Trump’s thuggery continues to this day. A phone message received by White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson just before she testified before the January 6 committee warned that someone “let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal. And you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”If this sounds like a gangster threat, that’s the point.  During Hutchinson’s earlier depositions before the committee, her legal counsel was paid for by Trump’s “Save America PAC” (the PAC paid the legal expenses of other panel witnesses, too. When she realized “she couldn’t call her attorney to say ‘Hey, I’ve got more information’” because the attorney “was there to insulate the big guy,” according to a friend, she secured free counsel who would not inhibit her. Now, after testifying in public, Hutchinson is in hiding. Meanwhile, the “big guy” continues to stir up his mob with lies about stolen elections and secret plots — fueling a new wave of threats against committee members. Several have increased their personal security. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson, co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney, and Rep. Adam Kinzinger have security details; other members have requested them. Kinzinger, one of the panel’s two Republican members alongside Cheney, says he’s received “constant” death threats. “There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” Kinzinger told ABC. “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.” Kinzinger has announced he will not be seeking re-election. Cheney has paused participating in public events in part because of safety concerns.Does any of this remind you of Hitler’s Brown Shirts or Mussolini’s Blackshirts?At the least, it should raise questions about the wealthy individuals and corporations that continue to bankroll this thuggery – among them, billionaires Peter Thiel, Rebecca Mercer, Charles Koch, Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus, ex-casino mogul Steve Wynn, and shipping magnate Richard Uihlein.Funding is also coming from Boeing, Koch Industries, Home Depot, FedEx, General Dynamics, Toyota, AT&T, Valero Energy, Lockheed Martin, UPS, Raytheon, Marathon Petroleum, General Motors and FedEx. In April alone (the most recent month for which data is available) Fortune 500 companies and trade organizations gave more than $1.4 million to members of Congress who voted not to certify the election results. AT&T led the pack, giving $95,000 to election objectors.Toyota is even funding Trump ally Congressman Andrew Biggs, a fervent devotee of the Big Lie who refuses to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify before the committee. Six congressmen who have refused to testify have raked in more than $826,000 from corporate donors since the assault on the Capitol.Why are these wealthy individuals and corporations doing this? Presumably because they want to pay as little in taxes as possible and believe Trump and his Republicans will deliver even more tax cuts than they did before. But how is this capitalist thuggery in pursuit of profits different from Uber’s thuggery? And is it more excusable than the political thuggery it’s enabling? To state the question in historical terms, how different is their behavior from the wealthy European industrialists who quietly backed the fascists in the 1920s and 1930s? These billionaire and corporate funders are as complicit as are the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers in threatening American democracy. 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

This morning, I heard a commentator allude to “Mitch McConnell and other conservative senators.” Yesterday, a news report described the upcoming Alaska Republican primary as pitting Trump’s “conservative wing against Murkowski’s more moderate base.” I keep seeing references to the “conservative majority” on the Supreme Court.Can we get real? There is nothing conservative about these so-called “conservatives.” They don’t want to preserve or protect our governing institutions — the core idea of conservatism extending from Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater. They are radicals, intent on wrecking these institutions to impose their ideology on everyone else.The Supreme Court’s Republican appointees have all but obliterated stare decisis — the conservative principle that the Court must follow its precedents and not change or reverse them unless clearly necessary, and with near unanimity. Recent decisions reversing Roe v. Wade, elevating religious expression over the Constitution’s bar on established religion, questioning Congress’s ability to delegate rule making to the executive branch, and barring states from regulating handguns, all call into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution.Meanwhile, Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, are abusing the filibuster and undermining the legitimacy of the Senate.Throughout much of the 20th century, filibusters remained rare. But after Barack Obama moved into the Oval Office in 2009, McConnell and his Republican senate minority blocked virtually every significant piece of legislation. Between 2010 and 2020, there were as many cloture motions as during the entire 60-year period from 1947 to 2006. Now McConnell and his Republicans are stopping almost everything in its tracks. Just 41 Senate Republicans, representing only 21 percent of the country, are blocking laws supported by the vast majority of Americans.At the same time, Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress and in the states have upended the centerpiece of American democracy, the peaceful transition of power, and undermined the legitimacy of our elections. They continue to assert without any basis in fact that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump encouraged an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and threatened the life of the Vice President. Republican state legislatures are enacting legislation to suppress votes and take over election machinery.Make no mistake: Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, most Republicans in Congress, and Trump Republican lawmakers across America are not conservative. They are radicals. They have embarked on a radical agenda of repudiating our governing institutions and taking over American democracy. It is time to stop using the term “conservative” to describe them and their agenda. And it is time it to fight back: Enlarge the size of the Supreme Court and limit the terms of justices. Abolish the filibuster and then pass laws most Americans want — protecting voting rights and reproductive rights, and controlling guns. Criminally prosecute Trump and his insurgents. These are conservative measures. They are necessary to conserve and protect our governing institutions from the radicals now bent on destroying them. Please consider a paid or gift subscription. 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 informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about the impending midterms, whether Biden should run again in 2024, Boris Johnson’s resignation, the failure of Democratic messaging, and the limits of hype in Silicon Valley. 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,Much of today’s Republican Party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some seventy years (my father liked Ike but my mother and I were for Adlai), including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this, but the Democratic Party has lost its way. How? Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left — too far from the so-called “center.” This is utter rubbish. Where’s the center between democracy and authoritarianism and why would Democrats want to be there? Others think Biden hasn’t been sufficiently angry or outraged. Please. What good would that do? And after four years of Trump, why would anyone want more anger and outrage?The biggest failure of the Democratic Party — a disease that threatens the very life of the party — has been its loss of the American working class. As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg concluded after the 2016 election, “Democrats don’t have a ‘white working-class’ problem. They have a ‘working class problem’ which progressives have been reluctant to address honestly or boldly. The fact is that Democrats have lost support with all working-class voters across the electorate.”The working class used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party. What happened? Before Trump’s election, Democrats had occupied the White House for 16 of 24 years. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during the first two years of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations. During those years, Democrats scored some important victories for working families: the Affordable Care Act, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example. I take pride in being part of a Democratic administration during that time. But I’d be lying to you if I didn’t also share my anger and frustration from those years — battles inside the White House with Wall Street Democrats and battles with corporate Democrats in Congress, all refusing to do more for the working class, all failing to see (or quietly encouraging) the rise of authoritarianism if the middle class continued to shrink. (I offer the following video clip not in the spirit of “I told you so” but as a way of sharing my frustrations and fears at the time.)The tragic reality is that even when they’ve been in charge, Democrats have not altered the vicious cycle that has shifted wealth and power to the top, rigging the economy for the affluent and undermining the working class. Clinton used his political capital to pass free trade agreements, without providing millions of blue-collar workers who consequently lost their jobs the means of getting new ones that paid at least as well. His North American Free Trade Agreement and plan for China to join the World Trade Organization undermined the wages and economic security of manufacturing workers across America, hollowing out vast swaths of the Rust Belt. Clinton also deregulated Wall Street. This indirectly led to the financial crisis of 2008 — in which Obama bailed out the biggest banks and bankers but did nothing for homeowners, many of whom owed more on their homes than their homes were worth. Obama didn’t demand as a condition for being bailed out that the banks refrain from foreclosing on underwater homeowners. Nor did Obama demand an overhaul of the banking system. Instead, he allowed Wall Street to water down attempts at re-regulation. Both Clinton and Obama stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the working class. They failed to reform labor laws to allow workers to form unions with a simple up-or-down majority vote, or even to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated labor protections. Biden has supported labor law reform but hasn’t fought for it, leaving the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act to die inside the ill-fated Build Back Better Act. At the same time, Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust enforcement to ossify, enabling large corporations to grow far larger and major industries to become more concentrated. Biden is trying to revive antitrust enforcement but hasn’t made it a centerpiece of his administration. Both Clinton and Obama depended on big money from corporations and the wealthy. Both turned their backs on campaign finance reform. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general election campaigns, and he never followed up on his re-election promise to pursue a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United vs FEC, the 2010 Supreme Court opinion opening the floodgates to big money in politics. Throughout these years, Democrats drank from the same campaign funding trough as the Republicans – big corporations, Wall Street, and the very wealthy. “Business has to deal with us whether they like it or not, because we’re the majority,” crowed Democratic representative Tony Coelho, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 1980s when Democrats assumed they’d continue to run the House for years. Coelho’s Democrats soon achieved a rough parity with Republicans in contributions from corporate and Wall Street campaign coffers, but the deal proved a Faustian bargain. Democrats became financially dependent on big corporations and the Street.By the 2016 election, the richest 100th of 1 percent of Americans – 24,949 extraordinarily wealthy people – accounted for a record-breaking 40 percent of all campaign contributions. That same year, corporations flooded the presidential, Senate and House elections with $3.4 billion in donations. Labor unions no longer provided any countervailing power, contributing only $213 million – one union dollar for every 16 corporate dollars. **Joe Biden has tried to regain the trust of the working class, but Democratic lawmakers (most obviously and conspicuously, Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) have blocked measures that would have lowered the costs of childcare, eldercare, prescription drugs, healthcare, and education. They’ve blocked raising the minimum wage and paid family leave. They’ve blocked labor law reforms. Yet neither Manchin nor Sinema nor any other Democrat who has failed to support Biden’s agenda has suffered any consequences. Why does Manchin still hold leadership positions in the Senate? Why is Manchin’s West Virginia benefitting from the discretionary funds doled out by the administration? Why hasn’t Biden done more to rally the working class and build a coalition to grab back power from the emerging oligarchy? Presumably for the same reasons Clinton and Obama didn’t: The Democratic Party still prioritizes the votes of the “suburban swing voter” – so-called “soccer moms” in the 1990s and affluent politically independent professionals in the 2000s – who supposedly determine electoral outcomes. And, as noted, the party depends on big money for its campaigns. Hence, it has turned it back on the working class. The most powerful force in American politics today is anti-establishment fury at a rigged system. There is no longer a left or right. There is no longer a moderate “center.” The real choice is either Republican authoritarian populism (see here, here, and here) or Democratic progressive populism. Democrats cannot defeat authoritarian populism without an agenda of radical democratic reform — an anti-establishment movement. Democrats must stand squarely on the side of democracy against oligarchy. They must form a unified coalition of people of all races, genders, and classes to unrig the system. Trumpism is not the cause of our divided nation. It is the symptom of a rigged system that was already dividing us. Please consider a paid or gift subscription to help sustain this work. 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 link is tightening between America’s move toward theocracy and its slide toward autocracy.It is important to understand these connections. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, its expanded reading of the Second Amendment, and its eagerness to elevate religious freedom over the Constitution’s guarantee against established religion come from the same cloth as Republican state legislative attacks on democracy, the GOP’s fealty to Trump’s Big Lie, and white supremacy.At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Nashville last month, speakers explicitly embraced the theology of “Dominionism” -- the idea that “right-thinking” Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society. Trump’s keynote at the conference made the connections explicit. He warned that the “radical Left” is “trying to destroy organized religion” and “trying to shred our Constitution,” and continued: “The greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside, as powerful as they may be. The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from within. And you know the people I’m talking about.” Other speakers labeled Democrats “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” and charged that Democrats were engaged in “a war against the truth.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida predicted “the backlash is coming. Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.” Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina (the state’s first Black lieutenant governor and a virulent critic of so-called “critical race theory”) said he expected “a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referencing a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, Robinson added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”The connections between these strands of rightwing ideology are growing clearer and louder — theocratic Christianity, gun violence, the subjugation of women through forced birth, and strongman authoritarianism. Christian nationalism now taking over the Republican Party envisions vigilante justice -- “good guys with guns,” neighbors eavesdropping on neighbors, and action to stop what they call “abortion trafficking” — women crossing state lines to access legal abortions. Widespread access to guns is essential to keep everyone under control, suppress protests, and fuel fear. To call this a “culture” war is to understate its true meaning and potential danger. Those of us who still believe in separating church and state, guarding reproductive rights, ensuring racial equality, ending gun violence, and protecting democracy must understand that much of the Republican Party now stands for the exact opposite of these values.The funders and kingmakers of the Republican Party see all this for what it is: an effort to hold on to power in the face of massive demographic shifts: toward women (who now constitute 60 percent of all university enrollees, and therefore the future power structure) and people of color, and away from formal religion. Over the longer term, the Republican Party is doomed. In the meantime, with a rightwing majority on the Supreme Court, legislative majorities in states determined to suppress votes and dominate election machinery, an authoritarian strongman president waiting in the wings, and an ideology of Christian nationalism, the GOP will do what it can to hold on. 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

On Saturday, President Biden demanded on Twitter that Big Oil “bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product.” This prompted Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, to call Biden’s statement either “straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.”That’s rich. Bezos of all people should know that a major reason prices are rising is hugely profitable corporations like his Amazon have been using inflation as cover to raise price even further. Last year, corporate profits overall reached a 70-year high. In the fourth quarter, Amazon's profit nearly doubled — and it announced it would raise the price of its popular Prime membership.Yes, corporations are facing rising costs for everything from materials to labor. But they’re raising their prices even higher than those costs. In a new paper, researchers Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani of the Roosevelt Institute find that markups — the difference between what corporations pay for labor and materials and the prices they charge their customers — have been rising dramatically. They find the same when they compare corporate costs with their sales. Corporations have been raising their prices because they have market power to do so (two-thirds of all American industries have become more concentrated over the last four decades). And their customers believe the price hikes are justified because the corporations have higher costs. Let’s be clear. The corporate price hikes have come on top of a worldwide surge in pent-up demand following the worst of the pandemic, global shortages of goods and services seeking to meet that demand, China’s lockdowns, and Putin’s war in Ukraine (which has put upward pressure on energy and food prices). But the corporate price hikes often exceed these higher costs. As gas prices at the pump reach their highest point in 14 years, Big Oil is enjoying a gusher. In the first quarter of 2022, Chevron’s profits more than quadrupled from the year before. ExxonMobil’s profits more than doubled. In the past month alone, even though the price of crude oil has fallen approximately $15 a barrel, prices at gas pumps have barely dropped.Big corporations aren’t pouring these windfall profits back into production. Instead, they’ve embarked on the largest program of stock buybacks in history. ExxonMobil alone plans to buy back $30 billion of stock this year (up from the $10 billion it announced earlier). If it hadn’t been for the buybacks, the stock market would look even worse.The Fed’s efforts to slow the economy will not remedy these causes of inflation. Hiking interest rates to reduce inflation is like trying to reduce someone’s fever by putting them in a freezer — it doesn’t deal with the cause and may be quite harmful. Rate hikes increase the costs of borrowing to individuals and consumers, which causes them to cut back on purchases of everything. This, in turn, causes the economy to slow — resulting in higher unemployment. How much higher? Lawrence Summers, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, says containing inflation will require five years of 6 percent unemployment, or two years of unemployment at 7.5 percent or one year at 10 percent. The harm inflicted by this alleged cure would be worse than the disease. The first fired (and last hired back) are typically the lowest-skilled and lowest paid. Other than Fed rate hikes, four moves could help — and the Biden administration should embark on them immediately and loudly:1. Vigorous antitrust enforcement that reduces the pricing power of big corporations. (Even the threat of such enforcement will make them more reluctant to raise prices.)2. A windfall profits tax that takes away a portion of their recent profits and redistributes them to consumers (as the Conservative government in Britain is doing on Big Oil).3. A ban on stock buybacks. Before 1982, the Securities and Exchange Commission viewed buybacks as illegal stock manipulation, and didn’t allow them. The SEC should return to its former position. 4. Publicity. The government should reveal the names of highly profitable corporations that are flagrantly raising prices (not just Big Oil, but a host of other companies ranging from Tyson Foods to Starbucks). This would have an immediate effect. Corporations pay fortunes to burnish their brands.Mr. President, don’t just tweet that Big Oil should reduce its prices. Initiate an antitrust lawsuit against the major oil companies, threaten a windfall profits tax on them, get your SEC to ban stock buybacks, and name the names of big corporations that are unnecessarily raising prices — not just Exxon-Mobil and Chevron but also Tyson Foods, Starbucks, and Amazon. Thanks for subscribing. To sustain this effort, please consider a paid or gift subscription. 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 no patience for all the handwringing by Democratic lawmakers in Washington over the Supreme Court’s regressive decisions on abortion and the climate. “This MAGA, regressive, extremist Supreme Court is intent on setting America back decades, if not centuries,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last Thursday after the Court dumped its final opinions for the term. Well, yes. So what are you going to do about it, Chuck? Last I looked Democrats were still in control of the Senate and House and the presidency. Which means Democrats still have the power to effectively overrule the Supreme Court on reproductive rights and the environment. They must now pass a national abortion rights act which will preempt state laws banning abortions, and a Clean Power Plan that will eliminate the Supreme Court’s argument that Congress never authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to do this.These moves are not only crucial to the nation. They’re also critical for Democrats facing midterm elections four months from now. Reproductive rights and the environment are hugely galvanizing issues for Democrats and Independents.Some Democrats I talk to expect to lose control over both houses of Congress in the midterms, regardless. Rubbish. Defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Midterm elections are all about turnout. Young people and college-educated voters made all the difference in the last midterms in 2018 — giving Democrats control of the House by a wide margin. While young people usually don’t pay much attention to midterm elections, a record 36 percent of them voted in 2018, in contrast to 20 percent in 2014.Turnout of college-educated voters — another critical voting constituency to the Democratic Party, and also a majority of Independents who vote in midterms — also spiked in the 2018 midterms. True, Trump was a driving force for both groups in 2018. But it’s not as if Trump has disappeared. His attempted coup continues to this day. Nor would the Supreme Court’s extraordinary rightward lurch on reproductive rights and the environment have occurred but for Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees. It’s also true that Democrats have to cope with a filibuster in the Senate. But they need only fifty votes (plus the Vice President) to carve out exceptions to the filibuster for reproductive rights and for environment. Carve-outs from the filibuster are not uncommon. There have been some 160 of them, including one for confirming Supreme Court nominees (courtesy of Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans). If Republicans regain control of the Senate, you can bet they’ll carve out exceptions to the filibuster for whatever they want to do. They may abolish the filibuster altogether. But can Senate Democrats even muster 50 votes for such carve-outs? Joe Manchin and Kyrstin Sinema have signaled before they they won’t go along. Even if Manchin and Sinema were reluctant to agree to such carve-outs before, the situation has changed dramatically now that the Supreme Court has reversed Roe and stopped the Clean Power Plan. If reproductive rights are going to be preserved and the planet protected, Democrats must unite, and Manchin and Sinema must join them. If they won’t, let the nation see. Don’t let Republicans off the hook here, either. Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski is up for reelection this fall. She talks a good game about reproductive rights and about the environment. Last February, she and Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins introduced the Reproductive Choice Act, to prevent women’s reproductive choices from being weakened or eliminated. And she co-authored with Joe Manchin an oped in the Washington Post about the importance of ending climate change. Hell, Utah’s Mitt Romney just published a piece in the Atlantic entitled “America is in denial,” warning about climate catastrophe. Okay, Mitt: Unless you’re in total denial that the Supreme Court just gutted the Clean Power Plan, you have to join with Democrats to carve out an exception to the filibuster for the environment and then vote for the Plan. It’s time for Democratic lawmakers and anyone else who cares about reproductive rights and the environment to act. Now. At least hold votes and put lawmakers from both chambers on record. Paint a clear contrast ahead of the November midterms. Give voters a reason to turn out. Please consider a paid or gift subscription to help sustain this work. 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

On this Fourth of July, it's worth pondering the true meaning of American patriotism. It is not the meaning propounded by the “America First” crowd, who define it as securing our borders. For most of its existence America has been open to people from the rest of the world fleeing tyranny and violence. Nor is the meaning of patriotism found in the ravings of those who want America to be a white Christian nation. America's moral mission has been to widen inclusion -- providing equal rights to women, Black people, Native American, Latinx, LGBTQ, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, agnostic. True patriots don't fuel racist, religious, or ethnic divisions. Patriots aren't homophobic or sexist. Patriots seek to confirm and strengthen and celebrate the "we" in "we the people of the United States."Nor are patriots blind to social injustices. They don’t ban books or prevent teaching about the sins of our past. They combine a loving devotion to America with a demand for justice.This land is your land, this land is my land, sang Woody Guthrie.Langston Hughes pleaded:Let America be America again,The land that never has been yet—And yet must be—the land where every man is free.The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—.Nor is the meaning of patriotism is found in symbolic displays of loyalty like standing for the national anthem and waving the American flag. Patriotism’s true meaning lies in taking a fair share of the burdens of keeping the nation going — sacrificing for the common good. Paying taxes in full rather than lobbying for lower taxes or seeking tax loopholes or squirreling away money abroad. Refraining from political contributions that corrupt our politics. Blowing the whistle on abuses of power even at the risk of losing one's job. Volunteering time and energy to improving the community and country.Real patriotism involves strengthening our democracy—defending the right to vote and ensuring more Americans are heard. Not claiming without evidence that millions of people voted fraudulently. Not pushing for laws that make it harder for people to vote based on this Big Lie. Not running for office on the Big Lie.True patriots don’t put loyalty to their political party above their love of America. True patriots don’t support an attempted coup. They expose it — even when it was enabled by people they once worked for or engineered by a president who headed their own party.When serving in public office, true patriots don’t try to hold on to power after voters have chosen not to reelect them. They don’t make money off their offices. When serving as judges, they recuse themselves from cases where they may appear to have a conflict of interest. When serving in the Senate, they don’t use the filibuster to stop all legislation they disagree with. When serving in state legislatures, they don’t try to suppress the votes of people unlikely to support them. When serving on the Supreme Court, they don’t disregard precedent to impose their own ideology.Patriots understand that when they serve the public, one of their major responsibilities is to maintain and build public trust in the offices and institutions they occupy.  America is in trouble. But that’s not because too many foreigners are crossing our borders, or we’re losing our whiteness or our dominant religion, or we’re not standing for the national anthem or celebrating our history. We’re not in trouble because of voter fraud. We’re in trouble because we are losing the true understanding of what patriotism requires from all of us. 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