Beyond Outrage Quotes

“Be patient. Changes that alter the structure of power and widen opportunity require years of hard work, as those who toiled for the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, or have been working for the rights of the disabled and gays, would tell you. It took thirty years of continuous fulmination for women to get the right to vote; fifty years of agitation before employers were required to bargain with unionized workers. Those who benefit from the prevailing allocation of power and wealth don’t give up their privileged positions without a fight, and they usually have more resources at their disposal than the insurgents. Take satisfaction from small victories, but don’t be discouraged or fall into cynicism. And don’t allow yourself to burn out. I”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage: What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix them

“It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007—the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003—and extended for two years in 2010—in 2011 saved the richest 1.4 million taxpayers (the top 1 percent) more money than the rest of America’s 140.89 million taxpayers received in total income.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“we still haven’t learned the essential lesson of the two big economic crashes of the last seventy-five years: when the economy becomes too lopsided—disproportionately benefiting corporate owners and top executives vis-à-vis average workers—it tips over.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“Angry voters are more willing to support candidates who vilify their opponents and find easy scapegoats. Talking heads have become shouting heads. Many Americans have grown cynical about our collective ability to solve our problems. And that cynicism has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as nothing gets solved.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“For three decades almost all the gains from economic growth have gone to the top. In the 1960s and 1970s, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans got 9–10 percent of our total income. By 2007, just before the Great Recession, that share had more than doubled, to 23.5 percent. Over the same period the wealthiest one-tenth of 1 percent tripled its share. We haven’t experienced this degree of concentrated wealth since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“So many Americans are angry and frustrated these days—vulnerable to loss of job and health care and home, without a shred of economic security—they’re easy prey for demagogues offering big lies. Yet the only antidote for big lies is big truth—told relentlessly and powerfully. You must be armed with it.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“At the same time, most of what government does that helps them is now so deeply woven into the thread of daily life that it’s no longer recognizable as government.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income—as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977—the nation as a whole grew faster, and median wages surged. The basic bargain ensured that the pay of American workers coincided with their output. In effect, the vast middle class received an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth. We created that virtuous cycle in which an ever-growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats. On the other hand, during periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion—as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day—growth slowed, median wages stagnated, and we suffered giant downturns.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“Fewer and fewer large and medium-sized companies offer their workers full health-care coverage—74 percent did in 1980, under 10 percent do today. As a result, health insurance premiums, co-payments, and deductibles are soaring.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“With declining state and local spending, total public spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research has dropped from 12 percent of GDP in the 1970s to less than 3 percent in 2011.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“The rich don’t create jobs. Jobs are created when the vast majority of Americans buy enough to make companies add capacity and hire more workers. But that won’t happen unless the vast majority has enough money to do the buying.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“There’s no problem with borrowing from the future in order to finance investments in the future.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“Get out of your ideological bubble. If most of the people you talk with agree with you, you’re wasting your time. You need to engage with people who may disagree or who haven’t thought hard about the issues. Reach across to independents, even to Republicans and self-styled Tea Partiers. Find people who are willing to listen to the facts and are open to arguments and ideas, regardless of the label they apply to themselves. We need them.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“Their aim is to divide and conquer: pit unionized workers against nonunionized, public sector workers against nonpublic, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the middle class against the poor.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon lent their support to such interventionist measures as Medicare and the Environmental Protection Agency. Eisenhower pushed for the greatest public works project in the history of the United States—the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act, which linked the nation together with four-lane (and occasionally six-lane) interstate highways covering forty thousand miles. The GOP also backed large expansion of federally supported higher education. And to many Republicans at the time, a marginal income tax rate of more than 70 percent on top incomes was not repugnant.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“In 1934, when the economy began emerging from the bottom of the Great Depression, it grew 7.7 percent. The next year it grew more than 8 percent. In 1936 it grew a whopping 14.1 percent.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“From World War II until 1981 the top marginal income tax rate never fell below 70 percent. Under President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican whom no one ever accused of being a socialist, the top rate was 91 percent. Even after all deductions and credits, Americans with incomes of over $1 million (in today’s dollars) paid a top marginal rate, on average, of 52 percent. As recently as the late 1980s, the top tax rate on capital gains was 35 percent. But as income and wealth have accumulated at the top, so has the political power to reduce taxes. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which were extended for two years in December 2010, capped top rates at 35 percent, their lowest level in more than half a century, and reduced capital gains taxes to 15 percent.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage

“An economy should exist for the people who inhabit it, not the other way around. The purpose of an economy is to provide everyone with opportunities to live full, happy, and productive lives. Yet when most people come to view the economic game as rigged, this most basic purpose cannot be achieved. It is impossible to live happily in a society that seems fundamentally unfair or to live well in a nation rife with anger and cynicism.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“An Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts would come from low-income programs. Yet at the same time, the Republican budget would provide a substantial tax cut to the rich—who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation’s total income.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“Yet neither the regressives’ stop-at-nothing tactics nor their social Darwinist message would have gained much traction were it not for the stunning failure of Democrats to make the case for a strong and effective government that responds to the needs of average people.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“During the same period the typical middle-class taxpayer went from paying 15 percent of income in taxes to 16 percent.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“In the half century spanning 1958 to 2008, the average effective tax rate of the richest 1 percent of Americans—including all deductions and tax credits—dropped from 51 percent to 26 percent.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“Republicans want us to believe that the central issue is the size of government, but the real issue is whom government is for.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003—and extended for two years in 2010—in 2011 saved the richest 1.4 million taxpayers (the top 1 percent) more money than the rest of America’s 140,890,000 taxpayers received in total income. Leading to… The fifth dot: Government budgets are squeezed.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“In my experience, nothing good happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington become mobilized, organized, and energized to make it happen. Nothing worth changing in America will actually change unless you and others like you are committed to achieving that change.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and its companion, the Clayton Act of 1914, were designed not only to improve economic efficiency by reducing the market power of economic giants like the railroads and oil companies but also to prevent companies from becoming so large that their political power would undermine democracy. Trustbusters during the first decades of the twentieth century tamed American industry and arguably saved capitalism from its own excesses.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“the only antidote for big lies is big truth—told relentlessly and powerfully. You must be armed with it.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“Millionaires and billionaires aren’t making huge donations to politicians out of generosity. Corporations aren’t spending hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbyists and political campaigns because they love America.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it