The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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