Aftershock Quotes

“The problem was not that Americans spent beyond their means but that their means had not kept up with what the larger economy could and should have been able to provide them. the American economy had been growing briskly, and America's middle class naturally expected to share in that growth. But it didn't. A larger and larger portion of the economy's winnings had gone to people at the top.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“It is still possible to find people who believe that government policy did not end the Great Depression and undergird the Great Prosperity, just as it is possible to uncover people who do not believe in evolution.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“Keynes declared capitalism the best system ever devised to achieve a civilized economic society. But he recognized in it two major faults—“its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“There is no light at the end of the acquisitive tunnel. Even Adam Smith, the putative father of market economics, recognized the centrality of this deception. Writing in the eighteenth century (not in his Wealth of Nations but in his Theory of Moral Sentiments), he described the typical worker who “through the whole of his life … pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity.… It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“Wall Street is a casino in which high-stakes wagers are placed within a limited number of betting houses that keep a percentage of the wins for themselves and fob off losses on others, including taxpayers.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“Growth of Average Hourly Compensation
and Productivity, 1947–2008”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“If nothing is done to counter present trends, the major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the "establishment"--political insiders, power brokers, the heads of American business, Wall Street, and the mainstream media--and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to "take back America" from them.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“Economic bullying takes many forms but almost always preys on individuals and families that have little or no power and are at the mercy of those who do.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“Eccles also saw that “men with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game, in shaping the actions of government that enforced those rules, and in conditioning the attitude taken by people as a whole toward those rules. After I had lost faith in my business heroes, I concluded that I and everyone else had an equal right to share in the process by which economic rules are made and changed.” One of the country’s most powerful economic leaders concluded that the economic game was not being played on a level field. It was tilted in favor of those with the most wealth and power.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“for small donors to participate, but large donors continue to dominate.) Even before the Supreme Court’s grotesque 2010 decision”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future

“Being rich now means having enough money that you don’t have to encounter anyone who isn’t.”
― Robert B. Reich, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future