Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 59
March 9, 2018
America’s Shkreli Problem
sentenced to seven years in prison. What if anything does Shkreli’s...
March 4, 2018
TRUMP’S BRAND IS AYN RANDDonald Trump once said
he identified...
TRUMP’S BRAND IS AYN RAND
Donald Trump once said
he identified with Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark in “The
Fountainhead,” an architect so upset that a housing project he designed
didn’t meet specifications he had it dynamited.
Others in Trump’s
circle were influenced by Rand. “Atlas Shrugged” was said to be the
favorite book of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state. Rand also had a
major influence on Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA chief. Trump’s first nominee for
Secretary of Labor, Andrew Puzder, said he spent much of his free time reading
Rand.
The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan,
required his staff to read Rand.
Uber’s founder and
former CEO, Travis Kalanick, has described himself as a Rand follower. Before he
was sacked, he applied many of her ideas to Uber’s code of values, and even
used the cover art for Rand’s book “The Fountainhead” as his Twitter
avatar.
Who is Ayn Rand and
why does she matter? Ayn Rand – best known for two highly-popular novels
still widely read today – “The Fountainhead,” published in 1943, and
“Atlas Shrugged,” in 1957 – didn’t believe there was a common good.
She wrote that selfishness is a virtue, and altruism is an evil that destroys
nations.
When Rand offered
these ideas they seemed quaint if not far-fetched. Anyone who lived through the
prior half century witnessed our interdependence, through depression and war.
After the war we used our seemingly boundless prosperity to finance all sorts of
public goods – schools and universities, a national highway system, and
healthcare for the aged and poor (Medicare and Medicaid). We rebuilt war-torn
Europe. We sought to guarantee the civil rights and voting rights of
African-Americans. We opened doors of opportunity to women. Of course there was
a common good. We were living it.
But then, starting in
the late 1970s, Rand’s views gained ground. She became the intellectual
godmother of modern-day American conservatism.
This utter selfishness, this
contempt for the public, this win-at-any-cost mentality is eroding American
life.
Without adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, we’re
living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most unscrupulous
get ahead, and where everyone must be wary in order to survive. This is not a
society. It’s not even a civilization, because there’s no civility at its core.
It’s a disaster.
In other words, we
have to understand who Ayn Rand is so we can reject her philosophy and dedicate
ourselves to rebuilding the common good.
The idea of the common
good was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S.
Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general
welfare” – not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as
possible.”
Yet today you find
growing evidence of its loss – CEOs who gouge their customers, loot their
corporations and defraud investors. Lawyers and accountants who look the other
way when corporate clients play fast and loose, who even collude with them to
skirt the law.
Wall Street bankers who defraud customers and investors. Film
producers and publicists who choose not to see that a powerful movie mogul they
depend on is sexually harassing and abusing young women.
Politicians who take
donations (really, bribes) from wealthy donors and corporations to enact laws
their patrons want, or shutter the government when they don’t get the partisan
results they seek.
And a president of the United States who lies repeatedly
about important issues, refuses to put his financial holdings into a blind
trust and then personally profits off his office, and foments racial and ethnic
conflict.
The common good consists of our shared values about what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society. A concern for the common good – keeping the common good in mind – is a moral attitude. It recognizes that we’re all in it together.
If there is no common good, there is no society.
March 3, 2018
Kushner’s Unconscionable Conflicts
turn to Jared Kushner, let me ask: Do you believe the U.S. government does the
right thing...
February 27, 2018
WHY WE NEED RISE-UP ECONOMICS, NOT TRICKLE-DOWNHow to build the...
WHY WE NEED RISE-UP ECONOMICS, NOT TRICKLE-DOWN
How to build the economy? Not through trickle-down economics. Tax cuts to the rich and big corporations don’t lead to more investment and jobs.
The only real way to build the economy is through “rise-up” economics: Investments in our people – their education and skills, their health, and the roads and bridges and public transportation that connects them.
Trickle-down doesn’t work because money is global. Corporations and the rich whose taxes are cut invest the extra money wherever around the world they can get the highest return.
Rise-up economics works because American workers are the only resources uniquely American. Their productivity is the key to our future standard of living. And that productivity depends on their education, health, and infrastructure.
Just look at the evidence.
Research shows that public investments grow the economy.
A recent study by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth found, for example, that every dollar invested in universal pre-kindergarten delivers $8.90 in benefits to society in the form of more productive adults.
Similarly, healthier children become more productive adults. Children who became eligible for Medicaid due to expansions in the 1980s and 1990s were more likely to attend college than similar children who did not become eligible.
Investments in infrastructure – highways, bridges, and public transportation – also grow the economy. It’s been estimated that every $1 invested in infrastructure generates at least $1.60 in benefits to society. Some research puts the return much higher.
In the three decades following World War II, we made huge investments in education, health, and infrastructure. The result was rising median incomes.
Since then, public investments have lagged, and median incomes have stagnated.
Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’s tax cuts on the top didn’t raise incomes, and neither will Donald Trump’s.
Trickle-down economics is a hoax. But it’s a convenient hoax designed to enrich the moneyed interests. Rise-up economics is the real deal. But we must fight for it.
February 26, 2018
The Moral Movement Against Violence
and get 10 percent off on your next Fed Ex shipment!Okay, the National
Rifle...
February 22, 2018
Why the Common Good Disappeared (And How We Get it Back)In 1963...
Why the Common Good Disappeared (And How We Get it Back)
In 1963 over 70
percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing all or most of
the time; nowadays only 16 percent do.
There has been a similar decline in
trust for corporations. In the late 1970s, 32 percent trusted big business, by
2016, only 18 percent did.
Trust in banks has dropped from 60 percent to 27
percent. Trust in newspapers, from 51 percent to 20 percent. Public trust
has also plummeted for nonprofits, universities, charities, and religious
institutions.
Why this distrust? As
economic inequality has widened, the moneyed interests have spent more and more
of their ever-expanding wealth to alter the rules of the game to their own
advantage.
Too many leaders in business and politics have been willing to do anything to make more money or to gain more power – regardless of the consequences for our society.
We see this everywhere – in the new tax giveaway to big corporations, in gun manufacturer’s use of the NRA to block gun controls, in the Koch Brother’s push to roll back environmental regulations, in Donald Trump’s profiting off his presidency.
No wonder much of the
public no longer believes that America’s major institutions are working
for the many. Increasingly, they have become vessels for the few.
The question is whether we can restore the common good. Can the system be made to work for the good
of all?
Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. The era we are living
in offers too many illustrations of greed, narcissism, and hatefulness. But I
don’t believe it hopeless.
Almost every day
I witness or hear of the compassion of ordinary Americans – like the thousands who helped people displaced by the wildfires in California and floods in Louisiana; like the two men in Seattle who gave their lives trying to protect a young Muslim woman from a hate-filled assault; like the coach who lost his life in Parkland, Florida, trying to shield students from a gunman; like the teenagers who are demanding that Florida legislators take action on guns.
The challenge is to turn all this into a new public spiritedness extending
to the highest reaches in the land – a public morality that strengthens our
democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the major
institutions of America.
We have never been a
perfect union; our finest moments have been when we sought to become more
perfect than we had been. We can help restore the common good by striving for
it and showing others it’s worth the effort.
I started my career a
half-century ago in the Senate office of Robert F. Kennedy, when the
common good was well understood, and I’ve watched it unravel over the last
half-century.
Resurrecting it may take another half century, or more. But as
the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be
achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.“
February 19, 2018
The 3 Choices When it Comes to TrumpFirst, you can complain....
The 3 Choices When it Comes to Trump
First, you can complain. Yell. Bang on the dinner table. Tell
your family and friends the man is a dangerous fool. Explode every time you
read something about him. Swear every time you see him on TV. Go ballistic when
you listen to him or about him on the radio.
Complaining may feel good, but it
won’t help.
Your second choice: You can bury your head in the sand. Pretend
he’s not there. Stop reading the news. Turn off the TV and radio. No longer
visit political Internet sites. When family or friends bring up his name,
change the subject.
Burying your head in the sand may also feel good, but
it certainly won’t help, either.
You have a third choice. You can get active, and make it harder
for Trump to damage America. This coming November 6, 34 senate seats, all 435
seats in the House of Representatives, and 36 governorships will be up for
election or re-election.
Support primary candidates who will resist Trump. Mobilize to
get out the vote. Organize so that November 6 becomes a total repudiation
of Donald Trump and all he stands for.
Start right now. Find an Indivisible group near you.
Go Indivisible.org and become part of the solution. If you’re already in a
blue state and want to reach out to purple or red parts of the country,
visit swingleft.org or sisterdistrict.com.
Democracy is fragile, it requires all of us to protect it.
February 17, 2018
The Meaning of America
and his followers refer to “America,” what do they mean?Some
see a country of white...
February 8, 2018
Trump’s Big Buyback Bamboozle
that corporations will use his giant new tax cut to make new investments and raise...
February 4, 2018
Trump’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election, or even if Trump...
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