The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Conservative economists shrug their shoulders at the record accumulation of wealth at the very top of America. They claim it’s not a problem because wealth is not a zero-sum game: A huge amount at the top doesn’t necessarily reduce the wealth (or potential wealth) of anyone else.They fail to see that wealth begets power. And power is a zero-sum game. Its possession by certain people means others don’t have it. Substantial power in the hands of a few people can dramatically reduce everyone else’s freedom, autonomy, and voice. Consider the current race for mayor of Los Angeles.Over the last few election cycles, a candidate for LA mayor has had to spend at least $2 million in order to have any chance of getting elected. But since launching his bid in February, Rick Caruso has spent $62 million, and almost all of it has been his own money. Over the same period, his opponent, Karen Bass, has spent $2.2 million, from donations. In other words, Caruso is outpacing Bass by about 20-to-1. Caruso’s net worth is $5.3 billion. He has never held political office. He’s been a developer of several faux-town-square luxury shopping centers. He is also a longtime Republican who has donated generously to the GOP, but switched his registration to independent in 2019, and this year registered as a Democrat — days before declaring his candidacy and just in time for the mayoral race.Karen Bass spent years organizing in South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots. She was then elected to the California legislature where she rose to become Speaker, and then elected to Congress. Former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, she was on President Biden’s shortlist as a possible vice president.So why is there even a contest here? An ultra-rich white developer of luxury malls who was a Republican until moments before the campaign is running against a woman of color who has spent her lifetime in progressive politics in one of the nation’s most progressive cities of color, achieving important victories for working people and the poor — all against the backdrop of ever more reactionary MAGA Republican Party. Yet polls show the contest dramatically narrowing. Caruso is now trailing Bass by just 3 percentage points among registered voters -- 34 percent to 31 percent — well within the margin of error. That’s down from a 12-point gap in August.What gives?The mainstream media says the contest is narrowing because of “voters’ worries about public safety and homelessness.” The story is by now a familiar rightwing trope —- even leftwing Los Angeles is moving right because crime and squalor. Just look at what happened to that liberal DA in progressive San Francisco! Rubbish. Crime and homelessness are real problems, but Bass is focusing on them just as much as is Caruso. In her ads, Bass says repeatedly, “I’m running for mayor to meet today’s challenges: crime, homelessness, and the soaring cost of housing.” Bass has put forward a plan to bring 15,000 people indoors to expand interim and permanent housing. Caruso promises tiny houses for 15,000 people and temporary “sleeping pods” for thousands more. Bass has a solid record on these issues. Caruso is a real estate developer who has never built a single unit of affordable housing. The only rational way to explain the tightness of the race is Caruso’s money. Apart from billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s three successful New York mayoral campaigns, Caruso’s spending is unrivaled in the annals of American local politics.A first-time candidate with little name recognition, Caruso has blanketed Los Angeles’s airwaves with television, digital and radio ads -- portraying himself as a successful businessman who can clean up the city. In recent weeks he has begun to attack Bass relentlessly in television and radio ads. He’s also spending heavily on door-to-door canvassing, especially in Latino and Asian-American neighborhoods whose voters were likely to have sat out the primary election and don’t typically cast general election ballots.This is all about money, folks. Caruso’s $62 million is multiples more than has ever been spent on a mayoral race in Los Angeles. Karen Bass’s $2.2 million is within the typical range, but obviously paltry by comparison. Imagine if Caruso had sunk $62 million into affordable housing. Coincidentally, $62 million happens to be the goal of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles’s new Affordable Housing Initiative, to create homes for nearly 600 unhoused people. Caruso’s humongous spending illustrates a broader challenge for progressives across the country. This year, dark-money super PACs funded by Republican billionaires and multi-millionaires (along with the occasional billionaire candidate) have spent record amounts to defeat progressive contenders inside the Democratic Party.The current challenge to American democracy is not just Trump’s Big Lie. It’s also billionaire’s big money. Campaign finance reform can occur even without a reversal of the Supreme Court’s shameful Citizens United decision, if we enact public matching funds for small donors — a reform that came close to being enacted in this Congress. (We also need full disclosure of all sources of campaign funds, another measure that came very close.)We’ve been here before, people. When a billionaire developer with no public experience buys a major public office that affects the lives of millions, democracy is for sale. Please note: Subscribers to this newsletter are keeping it going. Thank you! We also appreciate you sharing this content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

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

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

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

My friends,Make no mistake: Donald Trump is effectively on the ballot in the midterm elections, five weeks from tomorrow (voting has already begun in several states). Even if he decides not to run, he’s laying the groundwork for authoritarianism. In the upcoming midterms, 60 percent of us will have an election denier on our ballot, most of them endorsed by Trump. In the key battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates who embrace Trump’s Big Lie have won almost two-thirds of Republican nominations for offices with authority over elections.Many are running for secretaries of state — the chief elections officers in 37 states, who will be overseeing voter registration and how elections are conducted. In the 2020 presidential election, people who held these positions were the last line of defense for our fragile democracy, upholding Joe Biden’s win despite heavy pressure from proponents of Trump's Big Lie. Which is why Trump and Trump’s lieutenants, including Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, are trying to fill these positions with Big Liars.Michigan’s GOP candidate for Secretary of State is Kristina Karamo — who rose to prominence in conservative circles after falsely claiming to have witnessed election fraud as a pollster. Karamo has claimed that Trump won the 2020 election and that Antifa was behind the January 6 insurrection. Arizona’s Republican candidate for Secretary of State is Mark Finchem, a QAnon-supporting member of the Oath Keepers militia, who participated in the January 6 insurrection. He cruised to victory in the GOP primary by claiming that Trump won the 2020 election. Nevada’s GOP’s candidate for Secretary of State is Jim Marchant, who won his Republican primary by making Trump's baseless claims of election fraud a cornerstone of his campaign. He also falsely claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, and wants to eliminate it altogether (despite the fact that he has voted by mail many times over the years). In Wyoming, state representative Chuck Gray, who won last month’s GOP primary for secretary of state, faces no opponent. Gray has repeated Trump’s lies about 2020 being “rigged,” traveled to Arizona to watch a partisan review of ballots that was derided as deeply flawed and proposed additional regular election audits in Wyoming. In Alabama, state Rep. Wes Allen, the nominee for secretary of state, says he would have signed onto a 2020 Texas lawsuit to overturn Biden’s win (that case was swiftly thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court).Trump-backed candidates for governor are also on the ballot in key states where governors play a critical role in certifying votes and upholding the will of the people.Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial nominee is Doug Mastriano. If he wins, Mastriano would appoint Pennsylvania’s top election official. Mastriano was also at the Capitol on January 6, and has even been subpoenaed by the January 6 committee to testify about his involvement. Mastriano also helped lead the push to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nominee is Kari Lake — who has said she does not recognize Joe Biden as the nation’s legitimate president, and would not have certified Arizona’s 2020 election results had she been governor. Wisconsin’s Republican gubernatorial nominee is Tim Michels. Michels still questions the results of the 2020 election and refuses to say whether he will certify the state’s 2024 president election results. Right now, elections in Wisconsin are overseen by the bipartisan Wisconsin Election Commission, but if Michels wins he supports scrapping the Commission in favor of a plan that could shift oversight of the state’s elections to the state’s Republican-dominated legislature. I don’t know about you, but all these Big Liars terrify me. If any one of them wins in a state that’s likely to be a battleground in 2024, they could tip the balance in a tight presidential election to Trump. What terrifies me even more is they could tip America away from democracy to authoritarianism. Meanwhile, a third of all state attorney general races currently have an election denying Republican candidate on the ballot — including Alabama’s Steve Marshall, Idaho’s Paul Labrador, Texas’s Ken Paxton, South Carolina’s Alan Wilson, and Maryland’s Michael Peroutka. Attorneys general also have key roles in election administration — defending state voting laws and election results in court, taking legal action to prevent or address voter intimidation or election misconduct, and investigating and prosecuting illegal attempts to suppress the vote.I haven’t even talked about all the local and county election officials who are also Big Liars, and also on ballots in many states — and who could play roles in the 2024 election. How can we fight back? First: Spread the word about the Trump-GOP’s plans to capture the election process and undermine American democracy. Inform your friends and family — including young voters who often don’t turn out in large numbers — about what’s at stake in the midterms. Second: Make sure you and they vote down the entire ballot. Too many Democrats vote for federal offices but disregard state races. A recent analysis of the last three presidential elections in ten swing states showed that Democrats voted down the ballot far less than Republicans. (Democratic presidential nominees at the top of the ticket received more votes 87 percent of the time than Democratic state legislative candidates, while Republican presidential nominees received more votes just 45 percent of the time than Republican state legislative candidates.)Control of many state legislatures is often determined by a handful of races that can swing in either direction based on a relatively small number of votes. In the 2020 election, very small margins in a number of battleground races prevented Democrats from gaining control of state legislatures. Had Democratic candidates received just 4,451 more votes in the two closest races in the Arizona state House, they would have flipped the chamber. In North Carolina, had Democrats received 20,671 more votes (just 0.39 percent of the votes cast) in the ten most competitive legislative districts, they would have flipped the state House — thereby preventing Republicans from gerrymandering the state and federal maps, which Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has no ability to veto. In Michigan, just 8,611 more votes for state Democratic candidates in the four districts with the closest margins would have flipped this crucial swing state, too. Third: Familiarize yourself with state and local candidates, and share this information.You may want to get your ballot early so you have ample time. Some great organizations to help you are Sister District, The States Project, Bolts Magazine, and People’s Action. (I’m linking to them here, but feel free to leave a comment with other local resources you’ve found helpful.) ***As I said, Trump is effectively on the ballot in the midterms. Which means — regardless of whether he decides to run again for president — our democracy is on the ballot. The midterm elections in five weeks will lay the foundation for all future races. My friends, I cannot say this with more concern: Trump’s anti-democracy movement has been making astounding progress. We must stop it. Please note: Subscribers to this newsletter are keeping it going. Thank you! I also appreciate you sharing this content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

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

No Republican governor has been more vocal in his opposition to what he describes as “socialism” than Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis. “I stand against socialism,” DeSantis thundered in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. “Socialist policies have failed time and time again.”In June, DeSantis signed an education bill directing Florida’s Department of Education to develop a curriculum educating students on the evils of socialism (as well as communism).But how exactly does DeSantis define “socialism?”One hint came in 2013, when as a freshman congressman he claimed that a federal bailout for the New York region after Hurricane Sandy was an irresponsible boondoggle. “I sympathize with the victims,” he said. But his answer was no.The House overwhelmingly passed the bill nonetheless, providing $9.7 billion in flood insurance aid for Sandy’s victims. All 67 votes against the aid came from Republicans, including DeSantis. The Senate passed the bill too, although Florida Senator Marco Rubio also voted against the aid package.So, would DeSantis call any form of government assistance to those in need “socialism?”Apparently, DeSantis’s definition is more elastic than this. As his state confronts the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian, the fiercely anti-socialist DeSantis is asking the Biden administration for the help Floridians need — asking, in effect, for a form of social insurance that the United States government automatically provides Americans when disaster strikes. The administration has already put 1,300 federal response workers on the ground. It has pre-staged 110,000 gallons of fuel and 18,000 pounds of propane, and has readied 3.7 million meals and 3.5 million liters of water. And it has moved in generators and has 300 ambulances in the state working alongside local officials. Yesterday morning, DeSantis and Biden discussed further steps, including the issuance of a major disaster declaration that will provide Floridians with federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts. Residents of nine counties will also be eligible for individual assistance.“We all need to work together, regardless of party lines,” DeSantis told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, Wednesday night. “When people are fighting for their lives, when their whole livelihood is at stake, when they’ve lost everything — if you can’t put politics aside for that, then you’re just not going to be able to.”My point is not to accuse DeSantis of hypocrisy, but only to point out that a major disaster tends to focus the mind on why we need to “work together” rather than issue meaningless attacks on “socialism.”DeSantis’s stance against “socialism” has been the Republican Party’s harangue for a century.Long before Trump hijacked the GOP for his pathological narcissism, it stood for you’re-on-your-own social Darwinism — and steadfastly against all forms of social insurance, which it termed “socialism.”In the 1928 presidential election, Democratic candidate Al Smith, then governor of New York, put it this way:“The cry of socialism has been patented by the powerful interests that desire to put a damper on progressive legislation. Is that cry of socialism anything new? Not to a man of my experience. I have heard it raised by reactionary elements and the Republican party … for over a quarter century.”“Socialism” was the scare word used by the Liberty League in 1935 when Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed Social Security. In 1952, President Harry Truman noted that “‘Socialism’ is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last twenty years.”Socialism is what they called public power … Social Security … bank deposit insurance … free and independent labor organizations … anything that helps all the people. When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan ‘down with socialism,’ what he really means is ‘down with progress.’As a practical matter, what is the alternative to social insurance against hardship? It’s a survival-of-the-fittest society in which only the richest and most powerful endure.Social insurance is what government is for -- pooling our resources for the common good. In contrast to the Republican’s your-on-your-own social Darwinism, the Democrat’s social insurance recognizes we’re in it together. We can debate whether some forms of social insurance reduce some peoples’ incentives to take reasonable precautions against potential hazards or cause some to become overly dependent on the government or undermine personal responsibility. But there is no debate that social insurance is critically important. We are in it together. Yet America spends very little on social insurance compared to other advanced nations. Almost 30 million Americans still lack health insurance. Nearly 51 million households cannot afford basic monthly expenses including housing, food, childcare, and transportation. We are the only industrialized nation without paid family leave. Many Floridians (and, as seems likely, residents of South Carolina and adjacent states) clearly need the help of their fellow Americans to weather this monster of a hurricane. And their urgent, palpable need should remind us how often we need one another — not just in a terrible hurricane, but through many unforeseen and terrifying hardships.Because of this, we have depended an institution that pools our national resources and helps those of us in need. It’s called the federal government. 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 Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019. Over those thirty years, the share of total national weaheld by families in the top 1% increased from 27 percent to 34 percent, while families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2 percent. Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American. How do they justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths. All are utter rubbish. 1. The first is trickle-down economics. They (and their apologists) claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs.Really? For over forty years, as wealth at the top has soared, almost nothing has trickled down. Adjusted for inflation, the median wage today is barely higher than it was four decades ago. Trump provided a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, promising it would generate $4,000 increased income for everyone else. Did you receive it? In reality, the super-wealthy don’t create jobs or raise wages. Jobs are created when average working people earn enough money to buy all the goods and services they produce, forcing companies to hire more people and pay them higher wages. 2.  The second myth is the “free market.” The ultra-rich claim they’re being rewarded by the impersonal market for creating and doing what people are willing to pay them for. The wages of other Americans have stagnated, they say, because most Americans are worth less in the market now that new technologies and globalization have made their jobs redundant.Baloney. Even if they’re being rewarded, there’s no reason why the “free market’ would reward vast multiples of what the rich were rewarded decades ago. The market can induce great feats of invention and entrepreneurialism with lures of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — not billions. And as to the rest of us succumbing to labor-replacing globalization and labor-saving technologies, no other advanced nation has nearly the degree of inequality found in the United States, yet all these nations have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change. In reality, the ultra-wealthy have rigged the so-called “free market” in America for their own benefit. Billionaires’ campaign contributions have soared from a relatively modest $31 million in the 2010 elections to $1.2 billion in the most recent presidential cycle — a nearly 40-fold increase. What have they got for their money? Tax cuts, freedom to bash unions and monopolize markets, and government bailouts. Their pockets have been further lined by privatization and deregulation.3.  The third myth is that they’re superior human beings — rugged individuals who “did it on their own” and therefore deserve their billions. Bupkis. Six of the 10 wealthiest Americans alive today are heirs to fortunes passed on to them by wealthy ancestors. Others had the advantages that come with wealthy parents. Jeff Bezos’ garage-based start was funded by a quarter-million dollar investment from his parents. Bill Gates’s mother used her business connections to help land a software deal with IBM that made Microsoft.Elon Musk came from a family that reportedly owned shares of an emerald mine in Southern Africa. (By the way, when I mentioned this in a recent video, Elon went nuts — tweeting that “You [sic] both an idiot and a liar.” Hmmm. Did I touch a nerve, Elon?)Don’t fall for these three myths. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. The so-called “free market” has been distorted by huge campaign contributions from the ultra-rich. Don’t lionize the ultra-rich as superior “self-made” human beings who deserve their billions. They were lucky and had connections. In reality, there’s no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. It’s distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people. The last time America faced anything comparable was at the start of the 20th century. In 1910, former President Theodore Roosevelt warned that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy. Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was enacted in 1916, and the capital gains tax in 1922. Since that time, both have eroded. As the rich have accumulated greater wealth, they have also amassed more political power — and have used that political power to reduce their taxes.Years later, Franklin D. Roosevelt saw the 1929 crash not only as a financial crisis but as an occasion to renegotiate the relationship between capitalism and democracy. Accepting renomination in 1936, he spoke of the need to redeem American democracy from the despotism of concentrated economic power. “Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities,” he said, an “industrial dictatorship” now “reached out for control over Government itself. … [T]he political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor—other people's lives… Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it.”FDR gave workers the power to organize into labor unions, the 40-hour workweek (with time-and-a-half for overtime), Social Security, unemployment insurance, and workers’ compensation for injuries. He raised taxes on the top. But since then, these reforms have also eroded.The two Roosevelts understood something about the American economy and the ultra-rich that has now reemerged, even more extreme and more dangerous. We must understand it, too — and act. **By the way, here’s the new video that put Musk into a lather: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe

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

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