Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 86

HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR UNCLE BOB In preparation for the...

HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR UNCLE BOB  

In preparation for the holidays, here’s a survival guide for dealing with your right-wing relatives.

The Revolt of the Anxious Class

The great American middle class has become an anxious class – and it’s in revolt. Before I...

LOOK WHO’S BUYING AMERICAN DEMOCRACYAccording to an...

LOOK WHO’S BUYING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

According to an investigation by
the New York Times, half of all the money contributed so far to Democratic and
Republican presidential candidates—$176 million—has come from just 158
families, along with the companies they own or control.

Who are these people?  They’re
almost entirely white, rich, older and male—even though America is becoming
increasingly black and brown, young, female, and with declining household
incomes.

According to the report, most
of these big contributors live in exclusive neighborhoods where they have
private security guards instead of public police officers, private health
facilities rather than public parks and pools.

Most send their kids and grand kids
to elite private schools rather than public schools. They fly in private jets
and get driven in private limousines rather than rely on public transportation.

They don’t have to worry
about whether Social Security or Medicare will be there for them in their
retirement because they’ve put away huge fortunes. They don’t have
to worry about climate change because they don’t live in flimsy homes that
might collapse in a hurricane, or where water is scarce, or food supplies
endangered.

It’s doubtful that most of these
158 are contributing to these campaigns out of the goodness of their
hearts or a sense of public responsibility. They’re largely making
investments, just the way they make other investments.

And the success of these
investments depends on whether their candidates get elected, and will
lower their taxes even further, expand tax loopholes, shred health and safety
and environmental regulations so their companies can make even more money, and
cut Social Security and Medicare and programs for the poor—and thereby allow
these 158 and others like them to secede even more from the rest of our
society.

These people are, after all, are
living in their own separate society, and they want to elect people who will
represent them, not the rest of us.

How much more evidence do we need that our system is in crisis?
How long before we make it work for all of us instead of a handful at the top?
We must not let them buy our democracy. We must get big money out of politics.
Publicly-finance political campaigns, disclose all sources of campaign funds,
and reverse “Citizens United.”

What to Do About Disloyal Corporations

Just like that, Pfizer has decided it’s
no longer American. It plans to link up with Ireland’s...

PAUL RYAN’S 7 TERRIBLE IDEASYesterday, the new Speaker of the...

PAUL RYAN’S 7 TERRIBLE IDEAS

Yesterday, the new Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, summed up his House Republican
agenda – vowing to pursue legislation that would frame a stark choice for voters
in 2016.





“Our No. 1 goal for the next year
is to put together a complete alternative to the left’s agenda,” he said. 

Despite the speech’s sweeping oratory
and careful stagecraft, Ryan clings to seven dumb ideas that are also cropping up among
Republican presidential candidates. 

Here they are, and here’s why they’re dumb:

1. Reduce the top income-tax rate to 25% from the current
39%.  A terrible idea.  It’s a huge windfall to the rich at a time
when the rich already take home a larger share of total income that at any time
since the 1920s.

2. Cut corporate taxes to 25% from the current 35%. 
Another bad idea.  A giant sop to corporations, the largest of which are
already socking away $2.1 trillion in foreign tax shelters.

3. Slash spending on domestic programs like food stamps and
education for poor districts.  What?!  Already 22% of the nation’s
children are in poverty; these cuts would only make things worse.

4. Turn Medicaid and other federal programs for the poor into
block grants for the states, and let the states decide how to allocate
them.  In other words, give Republican state legislatures and governors
slush funds to do with as they wish.

5. Turn Medicare into
vouchers that don’t keep up with increases in healthcare costs.  In effect
cutting Medicare for the elderly.  Another awful idea.

6.  Deal with rising Social Security costs by raising the retirement
age for Social Security.  Bad!  This would make Social Security even
more regressive, since the poor don’t live nearly as long as the rich.

7. Finally, let the
minimum wage continue to decline as inflation eats it away.  Wrong
again.  Low wage workers need a higher minimum wage.

These 7 ideas will harm most Americans.  Ryan is
wrong. 

Why Hate Speech by Presidential Candidates is Despicable

On Friday, a gunman killed three
at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. Later, in explaining...

WHY THE SHARING ECONOMY IS HARMING WORKERS – AND WHAT MUST...

WHY THE SHARING ECONOMY IS HARMING WORKERS – AND WHAT MUST BE DONE

In this holiday season it’s especially appropriate to acknowledge
how many Americans don’t have steady work.

The so-called “share economy” includes independent
contractors, temporary workers, the self-employed, part-timers, freelancers,
and free agents. Most file 1099s rather than W2s, for tax purposes.

It’s estimated that in five years over 40 percent of the
American labor force will be in such uncertain work; in a decade, most of us.

Already two-thirds of American workers are living paycheck to
paycheck.

This trend shifts all economic risks onto workers. A downturn in
demand, or sudden change in consumer needs, or a personal injury or sickness,
can make it impossible to pay the bills.

It eliminates labor protections such as the minimum wage, worker
safety, family and medical leave, and overtime.

And it ends employer-financed insurance – Social Security,
workers’ compensation, unemployment benefits, and employer-provided health
insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

No wonder, according to polls, almost a quarter of American
workers worry they won’t be earning enough in the future. That’s up from 15
percent a decade ago.

Such uncertainty can be hard on families, too. Children of
parents working unpredictable schedules or outside standard daytime working
hours are likely to have lower cognitive skills and more behavioral problems,
according to new research.

What to do?

Courts are overflowing with lawsuits over whether companies have
misclassified “employees” as “independent contractors,” resulting in a
profusion of criteria and definitions.


We should aim instead for simplicity: Whoever pays more than
half of someone’s income, or provides more than half their working hours should
be responsible for all the labor protections and insurance an employee is
entitled to.

In addition, to restore some certainty to people’s lives, we
need to move away from unemployment insurance and toward income insurance.

Say, for example, your monthly income dips more than 50 percent
below the average monthly income you’ve received from all the jobs you’ve taken
over the preceding five years. With income insurance, you’d automatically
receive half the difference for up to a year.

It’s possible to have a flexible economy and also provide
workers some minimal level of security.

A decent society requires no less.

Five Prerequisites for War Against ISIS

We appear to be moving ever closer toward a world war against the Islamic State. No sane person...

The Perils of Circus Politics

The next president of the United
States will confront a virulent jihadist threat, mounting effects...

What I Learned on My Red State Book Tour

I’ve just returned from three
weeks in “red” America.It was ostensibly a book tour
but I wanted to...