The Common Good

by Robert B. Reich

Starting in the late 1970s, Americans began talking less about the common good and more about self-aggrandizement. The shift is the hallmark of our era: from the “Greatest Generation” to the “Me Generation,” from “we’re all in it together” to “you’re on your own.”

Without a shared sense of responsibility to the common good, we would have to assume that everybody—including legislators, judges, regulators, and police—was acting selfishly, making and enforcing laws for their own benefit. I know it’s hard to imagine, but even a president of the United States could act like Shkreli.

When the only purpose of business is to make as much money as possible in the shortest time frame, regardless of how it’s done, the common good is easily sacrificed.

“the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

The ethos of whatever-it-takes-to-win has taken a profound toll. Much of the public no longer believes that the major institutions of America are working for the many; they are vessels for the few.

The economic secession of upper-middle-class and wealthy families is also leading America back toward racially segregated neighborhoods and classrooms.

“Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.”

Our best chance of reversing whatever-it-takes politics is through political leaders like John McCain who demand that politicians attend to the common good rather than win by undermining it—and who help educate the public about the importance of doing exactly this. This is the essence of political leadership.

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history.”