Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 102

Why The Three Biggest Economic Lessons Were Forgotten

Why has America forgotten the three most important economic lessons we learned in the thirty years...

Why the Lousy Jobs Report Boosted Wall Street

The stock market surged yesterday after the lousy jobs report. The Dow soared 160 points Friday,...

THE WAR ON THE POOR AND MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES Most Americans...

THE WAR ON THE POOR AND MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILIES

Most Americans are on a downward escalator. Median household pay is dropping, adjusted for inflation. A smaller share of working-age Americans are in jobs than at any time in the last three decades.

Only 113,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in January, on top of a paltry 75,000 in December.

We need a new WPA to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, a higher minimum wage, strong unions, investments in education, and extended unemployment benefits for those who still can’t find a job. When 95% of the economic gains go to the top 1%, the middle class and poor don’t have the purchasing power to keep it going.

Yet too many still believe in trickle-down economics — that the wealthy are the job creators, and tax cuts for big corporations and the rich will boost the economy. The real job creators are the vast middle class and the poor — when they have enough money in their pockets. That’s the only way out of the vicious cycle we’re now in.

Why Widening Inequality is Hobbling Equal Opportunity

Is it to be inequality or equal opportunity? 
Under a headline “Obama Moves to the Right in a...

Why There's No Outcry

People ask me all the time why we don’t have a revolution in America, or at least a major wave...

David Brooks' Utter Ignorance About Inequality

Occasionally David Brooks, who personifies the oxymoron “conservative thinker” better than anyone I...

Fear is Why Workers in Red States Vote Against Their Economic Self-Interest

Last week’s massive spill of the toxic chemical MCHM into West Virginia’s Elk River...

Today's Lousy Jobs Report and the Scourge of Inequality

The U.S. economy created a measly 74,000 new jobs in December, and a smaller percentage of...

Why The Republican's Old Divide-and-Conquer Strategy -- Setting Working Class Against the Poor -- Is Backfiring

For almost forty years Republicans have pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy intended to convince...

The Year of the Great Redistribution

One of the worst epithets that can be leveled at a politician these days is to call him a...