The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

We have been through at least two years of social trauma (if you include all the Trump years, almost six). They include a pandemic that has taken the lives of over a million Americans. Wildfires, floods, and other climate disasters. Police brutality. Trump’s attempted coup and continued attacks on our democracy. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The Supreme Court’s pending reversal of reproductive rights. A mass killing of Black people in Buffalo followed by a mass killing of children in Texas.Other than those directly affected, the pain has been felt most acutely by those of us who are most empathic with the suffering of others.Empathy varies from person to person. I know someone who feels others’ pain so deeply and personally that she has difficulty getting through a day without sobbing. The past several years have been a continuous nightmare for her.At the other extreme, I know someone so narcissistic that he’s unmoved by the pain of others. He often blames the victims, saying in effect they deserve what they got. Or he’ll talk about risks and odds, and attribute their plight to bad luck. Sometimes he even seems to express a kind of schadenfreude – as if their pain somehow reduces the chances he will be stricken, or their sorrow makes him feel better by comparison.Most of us fall between these extremes. We read about or see photos or videos of the suffering of others -- such as parents of the children murdered last week in Uvalde, Texas – and feel deep sadness for them. We might imagine what it would be like to be in their place, but we don’t feel their pain as if we were them. Nor do we distance ourselves so far from their pain that we are unmoved by it.Taking action to reduce the suffering of others depends both on one’s degree of empathy and one’s sense of efficacy. Should we contribute to a fund to help them? Call members of Congress to demand action on their behalf? Organize and mobilize others to join us in doing these? Perhaps even go to the scene of the suffering and help directly?  Too much social trauma can overwhelm all these responses. My friend who feels other’s pain as if it were her own has become so flooded over the past two years that she is almost immobilized. She can’t sleep. She has stopped listening to the news.Others I know say they’re experiencing a kind of numbness. They remain interested in what’s happening but have distanced themselves emotionally. They’re taking care of themselves and their loved ones as best they can, but tell themselves they have no power to affect what has befallen others, so why try?Or they are now engaging in a kind of selective “that could be me or my loved ones” empathy. They get riled up about harms to others that they imagine might harm themselves and their families in the future (such as gun violence or climate disaster) but not about harms that seem unlikely to affect them directly, such as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or (if they’re white) police brutality.My wish for you in these trying times is that you not become immobilized or numb or selectively empathic -- that you continue to respond to the suffering of others with concern and activism. In my experience, taking action – even a small effort to alleviate the suffering of others -- is one of the most important means of remaining fully human at a time when the world’s pain can otherwise be overwhelming. 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. I hope you’re having a restful and safe Memorial Day. Today, I want to ask: Can anything positive come from last week’s tragedy? Or the mass shooting ten days before, in Buffalo? Can anything positive come from the Supreme Court’s imminent decision to reverse Roe v. Wade?Making your own decision about whether to have a child, and keeping any child you do have out of harm’s way, are surely two of the most basic of all human needs. Yet both are fiercely resisted — the first by evangelical Christians, the second by the gun lobby. And Republican lawmakers are in the pockets of both. The American people are not at all evenly divided on these issues. According to nearly every poll, wide majorities (including many G.O.P. voters) support requiring universal background checks for would-be gun purchasers, and most support “red flag” laws, bans on high-capacity magazines, and bans on sales of assault weapons. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans wants to maintain access to abortions before the first trimester of pregnancy, which has been the rule since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973.   What does it matter? Nothing will happen to restrict the sale of guns, or maintain access to abortions — or will it? In the wake of last week’s massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, Congress is once again about to vote on gun control. Because of the filibuster, gun control proposals need 60 votes to pass the Senate -- requiring that 10 Republicans join the 50-person Democratic caucus to approve any legislation. Almost no one believes 10 Republican senators will come around, even after last week’s horror.  Weeks ago, after the leak of a draft opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, written by Samuel Alito and evidently joined by four other G.O.P.-appointed Justices -- which argues that no right to abortion can be found in the Constitution or read into the Fourteenth Amendment, and that, therefore, no such right exists –- Senate Democrats tried to codify a national right to abortion.  But on May 11, the Women’s Health Protection Act failed in the Senate, 49-51. That was short not only of a simple majority but, more importantly, of the super-majority of 60 votes required to overcome the inevitable filibuster. (Only the West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin crossed party lines.)Meanwhile, while steadfastly refusing all attempts to control guns and maintain access to abortion, Republican lawmakers at the federal and state levels remain opposed to government funding for child care, parental leave, sex education, and contraception, and for reproductive, maternal, neonatal and pediatric health services.It takes a great deal to awaken the slumbering giant of America. Most voters do not belong to either major political party. In the typical midterm election, fewer than half who are eligible to cast a ballot do so. In most presidential elections, slightly more than a third do so. (The 2018 midterms, 53 percent of eligible voters went to the polls.) Yet every so often the slumbering giant awakens — and with a swoop of its huge arm at the ballot box puts an end to a growing disconnect between what voters want and what politicians do (or fail to do). It happened in 1932. It also happened in 2020, when about 158 million Americans voted -- 81 million for Joe Biden and 74 million for Donald Trump. (Even then, one-third of eligible voters, approximately 77 million Americans, failed to vote.) Midterm elections tend to be quieter affairs. In the 2014 midterms, only 20 percent of young people between the ages of 18 and 29 went to the polls, for example. But in the 2018 midterms, the giant stirred: 36 percent of young people voted — giving control of the House to the Democrats. The disconnection between the majority of Americans and Republican lawmakers on guns and abortion may well awaken the slumbering giant for this fall’s midterm elections.Most pundits are convinced that the Democrats are doomed to lose the House and Senate in the upcoming midterms, as well as the presidency in 2024. They point to the fact that after fifteen months in office, Biden is polling badly, at around 40 per cent But the punditocracy is ignoring guns and abortion, and failing to see the stirrings of the great slumbering giant of the American people that these two issues are provoking. (The pundits also forget that at the same point in his presidency, Ronald Reagan was polling at around 40 percent. But as inflation declined, Reagan ran for re-election against Walter Mondale and won 49 states.)If the slumbering giant does awaken — and I believe that to be more likely than not — a mobilization such as America has rarely seen will propel Democrats to even larger majorities in the House and Senate this coming November, and consign Republicans to a near permanent minority (as they already are on guns and abortion).  What do you think? 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 (the executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student), discussing this past —especially tough — week. As usual, pull up a chair and bring your morning cup. Today’s conversation touches on talking to young children about mass shootings, what we can learn from the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, Trump losing credibility in the primaries, how we confront fatalism, if we should worry about Biden’s ratings, and the fact that many people will mobilize for the midterm elections like never before given that women’s right to choose and children’s right to safety hang in the balance.Have a safe Memorial Day weekend. If you know someone who might like to listen to this conversation over coffee, please 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

I think about those 19 children who were murdered in their classroom on Tuesday, and feel the need to go back to basics — to the common good. Given the the difficulty of enacting sensible laws to reduce gun violence — which reflects in part the deepening split between Americans who believe in democracy and those who are throwing in their lot with Trump authoritarians — the question I keep coming back to is: what can we can do to rekindle a sense of common good? One of the most important initiatives would be to restart civic education in our schools. I know, I know: Public schools are under attack from the right. Political battles have left school boards, educators, and students in the crosshairs of culture warriors. Which is why, paradoxically, this might be exactly the right time to push for civic education. If you’re as old as I am, you may remember courses in civic education. They were required in most high schools during the 1950s and early 1960s. Mine weren’t terribly inspiring (my teacher in 9th grade civics was so obsessed by the “menace of communism,” as she called it, that she repeatedly showed us maps on which the U.S.S.R. and China — covering most of the land mass of Eastern Europe and Asia — were colored bright red, and she warned that the rest of the world was next). But merely having a time and place to consider the duties of citizenship was itself useful and important. Three decades later, after the Vietnam War had torn the nation apart, most high school courses in civic education were abandoned in favor of curricula emphasizing the skills necessary to “get ahead.” When I was secretary of labor, Bill Clinton and I often appeared at schools and community colleges, telling students that “what you earn depends on what you learn.” It was a catchy phrase designed to convince young people they should stay in school so they could get higher wages afterward. Today, most people view education as a personal (or family) investment in future earnings. That’s one reason so much of the cost of college is now put on students and their families, and why so many young people graduate with crippling college loans. (When education is seen as a personal investment yielding private returns, there’s no reason why anyone other than the “investor” should pay for it.) But education is not just a personal investment. It’s a public good. It builds the capacity of the nation to govern itself. At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a woman was said to have asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government the delegates had created for the people. He replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Franklin and America’s other founders knew how easily emperors and kings could mislead the public. The survival of the new republic required citizens imbued, in the language of the time, with civic virtue. “Ignorance and despotism seem made for each other,” Jefferson warned. But if the new nation could “enlighten the people generally . . . tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of day.” Some towns during the colonial era ran public grammar schools, but only for a few weeks in the winter when family farms didn’t require their children’s labor. After the Revolution, many reformers advocated free public education as a means to protect democracy. Jedediah Peck of upstate New York typified the reform movement. “In all countries where education is confined to a few people,” he warned, “we always find arbitrary governments and abject slavery.” Peck convinced the New York legislature to create a comprehensive system of public education.The person most credited with founding American public schooling, Massachusetts educator Horace Mann, directly linked public education to democracy. “A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people,” he wrote, “must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.” Mann believed it important that public schools educate all children together, “in common.” The mix of ethnicities, races, and social classes in the same schools would help children learn the habits and attitudes of citizenship. The goal extended through higher education as well. Charles W. Eliot, who became president of Harvard in 1869, believed “the best solution to the problem of national order lay in the education of individuals to the ideals of service, stewardship, and cooperation.”If the common good is ever to be restored in America, education must ground people in responsible citizenship. This requires that schools focus not just on building personal skills but also on inculcating civic obligations. I see such a curriculum as having six elements: 1. For starters, every child should gain an understanding of our political system, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. They must understand the meaning and importance of the rule of law and why no one should be above it. After all, people who want to become naturalized citizens have to pass a civics test covering the organization of the U.S. government and American history. Children born in America should know no less. 2. Every child must also understand the difference between how our system should work and how it actually works, and why we all have an obligation to seek to bridge that gap. They need to see how the economy is organized, how its rules are made, and what groups and interests have the most influence in making those rules. And they must grasp the meaning and importance of justice — of equal political rights and equal economic opportunity, and how these two goals are related. 3. They must learn to be open to new thoughts and ideas, and practice tolerance toward different beliefs, ethnicities, races, and religions. Such an education must equip young people to communicate with others who do not share their views. It should teach them how to listen — opening their minds to the possibility that their own views and preconceptions may be wrong, and discovering why people with opposing views believe what they do.4. They must be able to find the truth. A civic education should train people to think critically, be skeptical (but not cynical) about what they hear and read, find reliable sources of information, apply basic logic and analysis, and know enough about history and the physical world to differentiate fact from fiction. It should enable them to separate facts and logic from values and beliefs. 5. Such an education must encourage civic virtue. It should explain and illustrate the profound differences between doing whatever it takes to win, and acting for the common good; between getting as much as one can get for oneself, and giving back to society; between seeking personal celebrity, wealth, or power, and helping build a better society for all. And why the latter choices are morally necessary.6. Finally, civic virtue must be practiced. Two years of required public service would give young people an opportunity to learn civic responsibility by serving the common good directly. It should be a duty of citizenship. These lessons require learning by doing. Young people need to develop what Tocqueville called the “habits of the heart” by taking on responsibilities in their communities — working in homeless shelters and soup kitchens, tutoring, mentoring, coaching kids’ sports teams, helping the elderly and infirm. Young people must move out of their bubbles of class, race, religion, and ideology, and go to places and engage in activities where people look different from themselves, and have different beliefs and outlooks from their own. This is how we once regarded military service. From the start of World War II until January 1973, nearly every young man in America faced the prospect of being drafted into the army. True, many children of the rich found means to stay out of harm’s way, but the draft at least spread responsibility and heightened the public’s sensitivity to the human costs of war. Richard Nixon officially ended the draft and created a paid military mainly to take the wind out of the sails of the antiwar movement (and he succeeded). Since then, the United States has had what’s called an “all-volunteer” army— but it’s been “volunteer” only in the sense that young people have taken these jobs because they were among the best they could get. Today’s military has fewer young people from rich families than the population as a whole, more Southerners and a higher percentage of Black Americans. Two years in the armed services or in some other service to the nation would help instill in all young people a sense of their obligations to society, regardless of their family’s wealth or status. It would allow young Americans to connect with other Americans who differ from them by race, social class, and politics. (Not incidentally, it might also remind many upper-income Americans of the personal costs and risks of American foreign policy.) Public service could take many forms in addition to military service. The Peace Corps could be revived and expanded. Projects like “Teach for America” could be enlarged and extended to other service professions, like “Social Work for America.” Nonprofits could offer a range of public service work. All such recruits would be paid a modest stipend, at least living expenses plus interest payments on any student loans. That would be less than the current pay of “all-volunteer” army recruits.We owe to one another our time and energies to improve our communities and our nation, and to protect and strengthen our democracy. There’s no guarantee that civic education will heal our wounds or make us more able to enact sensible measures the nation needs — such as reducing gun violence, as well as slowing and reversing climate change, and protecting the right to vote — but I can think of no better way to get to where we need to be. What do you think? 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, the Game Workers Alliance (a union of quality assurance workers at Activism subsidiary studio Raven Software) won their vote to form a union. This may not seem like such a big deal, but it is. The games industry is large and growing. Quality assurance testers do the grunt work of rooting out bugs and potential problems in the weeks and months before games are released publicly. These jobs are typically among the lowest in the game industry, with demanding workloads finding and cataloging issues within a project’s timeframe. That these workers are unionizing marks a major turning point in worker organizing of the new economy. Meanwhile, Starbucks Workers United has now unionized more than 80 Starbucks stores across the United States, and filed over 100 cases of unfair labor practices against the Seattle-based coffee giant. Howard Schultz, who returned to head the company in April, has a union busting record that goes back to the origins of the company, and is vowing to stop the drive toward unionization. But he can’t stop it. Workers at a Trader Joe’s branch in Hadley, Massachusetts have begun organizing at the upscale supermarket chain. It would be the first unionized Trader Joe’s store out of more than 530 locations in the US. “We organized ourselves. With the same instinctive teamwork we use every day to break pallets, work the load, bag groceries, and care for our customers, we joined together to look out for each other and improve our workplace together,” workers wrote in an announcement letter to Trader Joe’s CEO, Dan Bane.Workers at Amazon warehouses continue to organize, against fierce anti-union headwinds coming from Jeff Bezos and other Amazon executives. Unions are coming to the new economy of grunt jobs in high-end corporations. Between October 1, 2021 and March 30, 2022, the National Labor Relations Board recorded a 57 percent increase in workers filing for the petitions to allow union elections. What’s going on?1. Part of the reason for the upsurge is the so-called “labor shortage” which — as I’ve stressed — is actually a shortage of jobs paying living wages. At least for now, workers have bargaining leverage to demand better pay. 2. Another part is related to the pandemic and its psychological effect on many workers who have begun asking themselves why they’ve settled for lousy jobs and often unsafe working conditions, especially when corporations are scoring record profits and CEOs of big firms are taking home record multiples of the typical workers’ wages. More than at any other time in the last three decades, workers are telling employers “you can take this job and shove it.” 3. A third part of the revival of unions relates to America’s retreat from globalization. Four decades ago, when corporations began to move (or threaten to move) their operations offshore to hire lower-wage workers, American blue-collar workers lost their bargaining clout. Unions went into retreat. But starting with Trump and continuing with Biden — along with global supply bottlenecks that are now convincing corporations to bring suppliers home — outsourcing is in sharp decline. (Yesterday, Biden announced an agreement that he hopes represents the future of trade policy, known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which focuses on increased cooperation in areas like clean energy and internet policy rather than opening markets.)4. A fourth reason: More college graduates are now in blue-collar jobs, many leading unionizing efforts. 5. A fifth reason is a new appreciation of the importance of power in driving wages, and the fraudulence of the economic idea that “you’re paid what you’re worth.”The old economic mainstay that people are paid what they are “worth” is finally revealing itself to be an ideology grounded in nothing but power. Let me pause here to spend a bit of time on this one, because it’s important. According to this old mythology, minimum wage workers aren’t “worth” more than the $7.25 an hour federal minimum many now receive. If they were worth more, they’d earn more. Any attempt to force employers to pay them more will only kill jobs. According to this same ideology, CEOs of big companies are “worth” their giant compensation packages, now averaging 350 times pay of the typical American worker. They must be worth it or they wouldn’t be paid so much. Any attempt to limit their pay is fruitless because their pay will only take some other form. Fifty years ago, General Motors was the largest employer in America. The typical GM worker then received over $35 an hour (in today’s dollars) — which came to over $70,000 a year (in today’s dollars). By contrast, America’s largest employers are now Walmart (whose typical worker earns about $15 an hour, or $30,000 a year for a full-time employee) and Amazon ($17 an hour, or $35,000 a year).Does this mean GM employees a half-century ago were “worth” more than twice what today’s Walmart and Amazon employees are worth? Hardly. Those GM workers weren’t better educated or more productive than Walmart or Amazon workers are today. Fifty years ago, most GM workers hadn’t graduated from high school, and they worked on slow-moving assembly lines. Most of today’s Walmart and Amazon workers have graduated from high school; many have attended one or two years of college. And they’re surrounded by digital gadgets – mobile inventory controls, warehouse search engines, instant checkout devices – that make them enormously productive. The real difference is GM workers a half-century ago had a strong union behind them that summoned the collective bargaining power of all autoworkers, enabling them to command a substantial share of company revenues for its members. And because more than a third of workers across America then belonged to a labor union, the bargains unions struck with employers raised the wages and benefits of non-unionized workers as well. (Non-union firms knew they’d be unionized if they didn’t come close to matching the union contracts.)Most of today’s Walmart and Amazon workers don’t have a union to negotiate a better deal. They’re on their own. And because only 6 percent of America’s private-sector workers today are unionized, non-union employers across America don’t have to match union contracts. This puts unionized firms at a competitive disadvantage. The result has been a race to the bottom. By the same token, today’s CEOs don’t rake in a record 350 times the pay of average workers because they’re “worth” 350 times the pay of average workers. CEOs are getting these giant pay packages (and top executives just behind them raking in almost as much) because they appoint the compensation committees on their boards that decide executive pay. Their boards also want investors to see that their company pays their CEO more than the average CEO at their major competitors, showing that their CEO is worth more. It’s the Lake Wobegon effect, where all CEO pay is above average. The result has been a CEO race to the top. If you still believe people are paid what they’re “worth,” take a gander at Wall Street. Last year’s average bonus was up 20 percent over the year before, to more than $257,500 — the largest average Wall Street bonus since the 2008 financial crisis. (Remember, we’re talking bonuses, above and beyond salaries.)Are Wall Street bankers really “worth” it? Not if you figure in the hidden subsidy flowing to the big Wall Street banks that ever since the bailout of 2008 have been considered too big to fail. People who park their savings in these banks accept a lower interest rate on deposits or loans than they require from America’s smaller banks. That’s because smaller banks are riskier places to park money. Unlike the big banks, the smaller ones won’t be bailed out if they get into trouble. This hidden subsidy gives Wall Street banks a competitive advantage over the smaller banks, which means Wall Street makes more money. And as their profits grow, the big banks keep getting bigger. How large is this hidden subsidy? Researchers have calculated that it’s about eight tenths of a percentage point. This may not sound like much but multiply it by the total amount of money parked in the ten biggest Wall Street banks and you get a huge amount – well over $83 billion a year. That hidden subsidy going to Wall Street banks because they're too big to fail is almost twice what Wall Street paid out in bonuses (a total of $45 billion). Do the math. Without the subsidy, no bonus pool. By the way, the lion’s share of that subsidy goes to the top five banks – JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo. and Goldman Sachs — which just about equals these banks’ typical annual profits. In other words, take away the subsidy and not only does the bonus pool disappear, but so do the profits.  The reason Wall Street bankers got fat paychecks plus $45 billion in bonuses last year wasn’t because they work so much harder or are so much cleverer or more insightful than most other Americans. They cleaned up because they happen to work in institutions – big Wall Street banks – that hold a privileged place in the American political economy. And why, exactly, do these institutions continue to have such privileges? Why hasn’t Congress used the antitrust laws to cut them down to size so they’re not too big to fail, or at least taxed away their hidden subsidy (which, after all, results from their taxpayer-financed bailout)? Could it be because Wall Street also accounts for a large proportion of campaign donations to major candidates for Congress and the presidency of both parties? America’s low-wage workers don’t have privileged positions. They work hard – many holding down two or more jobs. They can’t afford to make major campaign contributions, and they have zero political clout. Unions built the American middle class. Their demise almost exactly tracks the demise of America’s middle class and the growing share of total income going to the richest 10 percent. This graph makes this clear: The “paid-what-your-worth” mythology ignores power, which means it ignores the single most important reason why hourly workers today are earning so little while corporate top brass are earning so much. For years, this ideology has lured the unsuspecting into thinking nothing should be done to change what people are paid because, they assumed, nothing could be done. That’s finally changing. The revival of union activism across America suggests that workers are getting the message: If they want higher wages and better working conditions, they need the power to get them. To have power, they need a union. What do you think? 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 richest person in America tweeted last week that Democrats have “become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”Hello? Democrats are the party of division and hate? What planet has Elon been living on? Meanwhile, the second-richest person in America (Jeff Bezos) tweeted that the Democrats’ proposed tax hikes on the rich will not tame inflation and their proposed spending would worsen it (he’s wrong, and I’ll explain why in another post).In addition to last week’s billionaire tweetstorm, it was reported that Oracle’s Larry Ellison (#7 on Forbes’ list of richest Americans) in November 2020 joined Sean Hannity, Lindsay Graham, and Trump’s attorney to discuss strategies for contesting the presidential election results.Oh, and Ellison has dumped some $25 million into a Super PAC supporting South Carolina Republican senator Tim Scott, a Trump endorsee. As I noted last week, another billionaire, Peter Thiel, has donated at least as much to Trump-endorsed Republicans in senate primaries.Not to mention Trump-diehards Charles Koch (#16 on the Forbes list), Rupert Murdoch (#31), and Carl Icahn (#43).This is the same crew, not incidentally, that’s been fighting unions and flooding Congress and statehouses with cash to support Trump election deniers, prevent tax hikes on themselves, and kill off Biden’s and the Democrats’ agenda (more on this in a moment).  This billionaire bombardment gives Biden and the Democrats an opportunity to tell America whose side they’re on and whose side they’re not on — in effect, to declare class war on the class warriors. Will they take it?Not in over a century has so much of the nation’s wealth been concentrated at the very top — in the richest one-tenth of one percent of the richest one-tenth of one percent. Not in seventy years have corporations been as flush with cash, notwithstanding the stock market’s recent selloff. Not since the 1890s have CEOs raked in as much pay relative to average workers. Not since the creation of the income tax have the super-rich paid as low a rate as they do now relative to tax rate paid by most other Americans.Isn’t it time for Biden and the Democrats to tell this to America? Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game in which more at the top necessarily means less below, but wealth is tied to power — and power is a zero-sum game.Many of America’s wealthiest and most powerful are now gathering for their annual gabfest in Davos, Switzerland, just as the annual get-together of America’s right (CPAC) is coming to a close in Budapest, Hungary. The two conferences are beginning to converge. Although the CEOs and hedge fund managers at Davos profess to worry about America’s record inequality and tout “corporate social responsibility,” their own corporate political action committees are doing everything possible to squelch tax increases on them, and to prevent additional spending on health care, child care, and other needs of average working people. Meanwhile, not even the Republicans’ billionaire backers can disguise the total absence of a Republican agenda to help average working people.The reason Democrats haven’t been able to get their agenda through the Senate and raise taxes on billionaires or on big corporations to pay for it — or even repeal the Trump tax cuts that went mostly to the top — is because Democrats have only 48 senate votes (all fifty Senate Republicans are against these measures, and the other two senate Democrats are major beneficiaries of campaign donations from corporations and the rich).Isn’t it time for Biden and the Democrats tell this to the American people, and offer them a clear choice in the upcoming midterms and beyond?Billionaires are mounting a class war. Republican lawmakers are mounting a culture war to deflect attention from it.On October 31, 1936, in New York’s Madison Square Garden, Franklin D. Roosevelt, facing a bruising re-election bid, defined the stakes much as they are today. He explained that America was in a struggle against “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering” and that a wealthy elite “had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs.”He continued: “We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”Then FDR said, in words similar to what Joe Biden and Democrats should be using against the billionaires and bigots who are now arrayed against them:Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.Isn’t it time Biden and the Democrats came out clearly against the billionaires abusing their wealth and power by suppressing the wages of average working people and flooding our democracy with their money? And against the culture warriors who are covering up for them? Isn’t it time for Biden and the Democrats to explain why they haven’t been able to get their agenda through Congress? Biden and the Democrats should tell Americans which side they are on — and ask America to choose sides. ***PS: ICYMI, here’s a clip from my appearance on “The Simpsons” last night, where I had a chance to explain the reasons for America’s staggering inequality in 8 seconds. (I probably got more across to more people in those 8 seconds than in all the books I’ve written and all the classes I’ve taught, combined.) 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 (my former student and executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action), exploring the lows and few highs of the week. As usual, pull up a chair and bring your morning cup.Today our conversation touches on the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) being held in Budapest, why Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have it out for President Biden and the Dems, what Doug Mastriano’s Pennsylvania primary win could mean for the 2024 election, what’s happening with the stock market (which, as we know, is not the economy), and why I’m hopeful about the state of worker power, the increasing diversity of America, and a new progressive era. We close with a plug for something I still can’t quite believe is happening. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that The Simpsons wanted to tackle the topic of economic inequality this season. And I was really surprised when they asked me to sing about it with Hugh Jackman for the season finale. You’re welcome to tune in to the episode tomorrow, Sunday, May 22 at 8 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT / 7 p.m. CT on Fox. I also plan to post the main musical number — a duet about the demise of the middle class — here on Substack in the coming days. If you somebody who might enjoy a conversation over coffee, please share. 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

Decades ago, America’s wealthy backed a Republican establishment that believed in fiscal conservatism, anti-communism, and constitutional democracy. But today’s billionaire class is pushing a radically anti-democratic agenda for America — backing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, calling for restrictions on voting, and even questioning the value of democracy.Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech financier who is among those leading the charge, writes “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”Thiel is using his fortune to squelch democracy. He donated $15 million to the successful Republican Ohio senatorial primary campaign of J.D. Vance, who alleges that the 2020 election was stolen and that Biden’s immigration policy has meant “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” And Thiel has donated at least $10 million to the Arizona Republican primary race of Blake Masters, who also claims Trump won the 2020 election and admires Lee Kuan Yew, the authoritarian founder of modern Singapore.The former generation of wealthy conservatives backed candidates like Barry Goldwater, who wanted to conserve American institutions. Thiel and his fellow billionaires in the anti-democracy movement don’t want to conserve much of anything — at least not anything that occurred after the 1920s, including Social Security, civil rights, and even women’s right to vote. As Thiel wrote:The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.Rubbish. If “capitalist democracy” is becoming an oxymoron, it’s not because of public assistance or because women got the right to vote. It’s because billionaire capitalists like Thiel are drowning democracy in giant campaign donations to authoritarian candidates who repeat Trump’s big lie. Not incidentally, the 1920s marked the last gasp of the Gilded Age, when America’s rich ripped off so much of the nation’s wealth that the rest had to go deep into debt both to maintain their standard of living and to maintain overall demand for the goods and services the nation produced. When that debt bubble burst in 1929, we got the Great Depression.It was also the decade when Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler emerged to create the worst threats to freedom and democracy the modern world had ever witnessed.If freedom is not compatible with democracy, what is it compatible with?  On Tuesday night, Doug Mastriano, a January 6 insurrectionist and Trump-backed Big Lie conspiracy theorist, won the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania (the fourth largest state in the country, and the biggest state that flipped from 2016 to 2020). Mastriano was directly involved in a scheme to overturn the 2020 election by sending an “alternate” slate of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College — despite the fact that Trump lost Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes. If Mastriano wins in November, he will appoint Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, who will oversee the 2024 election results in one of the most important battleground states in the country.Meanwhile, the major annual event of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — the premier convening organization of the American political right — starts today in Budapest. That’s no accident. The Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party have become a prominent source of inspiration for America’s anti-democracy movement. Stephen Bannon, Trump’s former adviser, describes Orban’s agenda as that of a “Trump before Trump.”Orban has used his opposition to immigration, LGBTQ rights, abortion, and religions other than Christianity as cover for his move toward autocracy — rigging Hungary’s election laws so his party stays in power, capturing independent agencies, controlling the judiciary, and muzzling the press. He remains on such good terms with Vladimir Putin that he’s refused to agree to Europe’s proposed embargo of Russian oil. Tucker Carlson — Fox News’s progenitor of white replacement theory — will be speaking at CPAC and broadcasting his show from Budapest. Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows will also be speaking (although he refuses to speak to the House committee investigating the January 6 assault on American democracy).If America and the world should have learned anything from the first Gilded Age and the fascism that began growing like a cancer in the 1920s, it’s that gross inequalities of income and wealth fuel gross inequalities of political power — which in turn lead to strongmen who destroy both democracy and freedom.Peter Thiel may define freedom as the capacity to amass extraordinary wealth without paying taxes on it, but most of us define it as living under the rule of law with rights against arbitrary authority and a voice in what’s decided.If we want to guard what’s left of our freedom, we’ll need to meet today’s anti-democracy movement with a bold pro-democracy movement that protects the institutions of self-government both from authoritarian strongmen like Trump and his wannabes, and from big money like Peter Thiel’s. Seeing the system for what it is will empower you to join with others to change it for the better. Please share today’s post. 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,In 2017, Donald Trump repeatedly lied that between 3 and 5 million unauthorized immigrants had voted for Hillary Clinton. In the last few weeks, Trump has resurrected his lie during campaign rallies for the Republican primary candidates he has endorsed — whipping up fears of “open borders and horrible elections,” and calling for stricter voter ID laws and proof of citizenship at the ballot box.Trump endorsees have been amplifying the lie. J.D. Vance, the Trump-backed winner of last week’s Ohio Republican Senate primary, claimed that President Biden’s immigration policy has resulted in “more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”In fact, voter fraud is exceptionally rare, and claims that widespread numbers of undocumented immigrants are voting have been repeatedly discredited.There is a problem of foreigners influencing American elections, however — a problem that has nothing to do with immigrants or fraudulent voting. The problem is foreign money flowing into U.S. campaigns.Some of the flow is illegal. Last October, Lev Parnas, a Florida businessman who helped Rudy Giuliani’s effort to dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine, was convicted of funneling a Russian entrepreneur’s money to U.S. politicians.The real scandal is how much foreign money flows into U.S. elections legally.The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the gates. It allows foreigners to influence U.S. elections through their investments in politically active American corporations. The (then) five-justice conservative majority said that when it comes to political speech, the identity of the speaker is irrelevant, and that more speech is always better. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens argued that the logic of the Court’s ruling would allow foreign spending on American elections, threatening American interests. Stevens was right. If the identity of the speaker doesn’t matter and more speech is always better, what’s to stop foreign spending on U.S. elections?Non-Americans whose money is now flowing into American campaigns — mostly into those of Republican candidates — include Russian oligarchs, the Saudi royal family, European financiers, Chinese corporate conglomerates, and many other people and organizations that owe their allegiance to powers other than the United States.  This growing problem emerges from three realities:First, foreign investors now own a whopping 40 percent of the shares of American corporations. That’s up from just 5 percent in 1982.Second, American corporations are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence elections — not counting their separate corporate political action committees or personal donations by executives and employees. Much of this spending is through dark money channels that opened after the Citizens United decision.Third, by law, corporate directors and managers are accountable to their shareholders, including foreign shareholders — not to America. As the then-CEO of U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp. unabashedly stated, “I’m not a U.S. company and I don’t make decisions based on what’s good for the U.S.”The second and third of these points pose substantial threats to American democracy on their own. Add in the first, and you’ve got a sieve through which non-Americans — whose interests don’t necessarily correspond to the interests of the United States — assert growing influence over American politics.Follow the money. In recent years, Russian billionaire oligarchs have owned significant amounts of Facebook, Twitter, and Airbnb. Saudi Arabia owns about 10 percent of U.S.-based Uber and has a seat on its board. Many of America’s largest corporations with substantial foreign ownership (including AT&T, Comcast, and Citigroup) have contributed millions of dollars to the Republican Attorney Generals Association, which in turn bankrolled the pro-Trump rally on the morning of the January 6 insurrection.  What to do about this? The Center for American Progress has a sensible proposal: It recommends that no U.S. corporation with 5 percent or more of its stock under foreign ownership or 1 percent or more controlled by a single foreign owner be allowed to spend money to sway the outcomes of U.S. elections or ballot measures. Corporate governance experts and regulators agree that these thresholds capture the level of ownership necessary to influence corporate decision-making.Okay, but how to get this proposal enacted, when big American-based corporations with significant foreign investment have so much influence over Congress?Democrats should make this an issue in the run-up to the 2022 midterms. While Republicans rail against the utterly fake danger to the United States of undocumented immigrants voting in American elections, Democrats should rail against the real danger to American democracy of foreign money affecting American elections through foreign investments in American corporations.What do you think? 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In a comment on this past Saturday’s post, Paula OH said: “It’s a very tough time. We need a hope machine! Anyone know how to build one?”My answer to Paula is a resounding: “yes!” And in a moment I’ll give Paula and you some hammers, nails, and solar panels to build one.First, though, I want to validate your discouragement. We expected COVID to be gone by now. We thought the minimum wage would be raised by now, that bold measures to slow climate change would be enacted by now, that pharmaceuticals would be cheaper and childcare widely available by now. We never thought we’d be back in a Cold War with Russia, that racist “replacement” theory would lead to a massacre by a crazed gunman, that Trump would be back stirring up nationalist racism, that a single Democratic senator named Joe Manchin would destroy a progressive agenda most Americans favor, that inflation would rip through the economy, or that Roe v. Wade would be repealed. And now we face the serious possibility that the next Congress will be under the control of crazy right-wingers. Don’t kick yourself for feeling lousy. You have every right to feel that way. But let me say something else as clearly as I can. I’ve been at this fight a very long time, and right now I find lots of reasons for hope. Ten, to be exact. (Here’s where the hammers, nails, and solar panels for Paula’s hope machine come in.)1. First, unions are stronger today — and more workers want to join a union — than at any time in the last four decades. Between October 1, 2021 and March 30, 2022, the National Labor Relations Board recorded a 57 percent increase in workers filing for the petitions to allow union elections. That’s a good thing. Unions give workers a voice. They lead to higher wages and better working conditions. 2. A second reason for hope: Many issues now on table — with serious odds of being enacted within the next five or six years — would have seemed leftwing fantasies a decade ago. We haven’t achieved them yet, but most Americans have come around to supporting them. A majority is in favor of Medicare for All. There’s also a surge of support for Universal Basic Income. Also for free public higher education. And for a wealth tax on billionaires. 3. The more America sees of Trump, the more most people are reminded of how disastrous he was for the nation and why we need stable and thoughtful individuals in positions of power. If Trump gets back on Twitter, his divisive and racist drivel will be harmful, of course. But it will also pull many Democrats, Independents and young people back into the fight against Trumpist racist nationalism. Ditto for all the Trump wannabes who have been advancing in Republican primaries. 4. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is a horror show — but it’s also another reminder to most people of why we need a Democrat in the Oval Office and a Democratic senate. The imminent reversal of Roe is galvanizing a new and even stronger wave of activism.5. The young people I teach and work with are some of the most committed, talented, and progressive people I’ve ever had the privilege of teaching and working with. I’m not talking only about Berkeley, or even the coasts. I’m finding such young people across America. Many are entering politics. AOC is the leading edge of a generational wave that is transforming American politics for the common good. 6. Speaking of waves: Tucker Carlson may bemoan it, and his older and whiter Fox News viewers may hate it, but the demographic forces now reshaping America cannot and will not be reversed. We’re a more diverse society than ever before. This diversity will be a huge strength in the future. And it will be an additional bulwark against racist nationalism. 7. The myth of the decline of the West and the rise of the East — propounded by China and Russia — is proving itself bankrupt. Putin’s war on Ukraine is showing the world that totalitarian systems can’t even execute a war efficiently. Because dissent is stifled, accurate information doesn’t get back to headquarters. Because oligarchs have ravaged government funds, weapons systems don’t work. Because hierarchies are rigid and education in short supply, armies lack the training they need. Putin’s war is also revealing how fragile the Russian economy is, as is any economy whose strength turns on raw materials. 8. But the pandemic has revealed the unnecessary harshness of American capitalism. The horror of COVID has built public support for paid family leave, universal childcare, and universal access to healthcare. The pandemic has also shown us how essential our “essential” workers really are — fueling measures to raise state minimum wages (even if the federal minimum lags behind). 9. At the local and community level, the pandemic has shown most Americans just how kind we can be to one another, how much we depend on each other, and — as Tocqueville noted almost 180 years ago — how rich this nation continues to be in grass-roots voluntary efforts for the common good. Take a day off from the grim national and international news to walk around your town, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. 10. Finally, let me remind you this is a long game. Fifty years ago, a person could be imprisoned for being gay, there was virtually no Black middle class, women were second-class citizens, no women headed large corporations or sat on the Supreme Court. Fifty years ago, tens of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese were dying in a purposeless war, the Democratic Party was under thumb of big city bosses, Los Angeles was buried under smog, we suffered a crime wave far larger (in proportion to our population) than anything seen today, poverty was deeper, and Richard Nixon was unleashing his “plumbers” to break into the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The struggle never ends. It is hard because it has to be hard — because the fight is about overcoming fundamental imbalances of power, and those with power will not give it up without a fight. Martin Luther King Jr., was almost correct when he reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” He would have been more accurate had he also reminded us that there are bumps and potholes in that arc, some of which send us into temporary tailspins. What do you think? Where do you find hope these days? This is a public episode. 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