Robert Reich

President Barack Obama applauds after introducing outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during a Farewell Tribute for Panetta at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Va. In his State of the Union address, President Obama must acknowledge that most Americans are not experiencing a recovery, Reich writes. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP/File)

State of the Union address: Why Obama should focus on the economy

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 02.11.13

If you’re sitting in the well of the House when a president gives a State of the Union address (as I’ve had the privilege of doing five times), the hardest part is on the knees. You’re required to stand and applaud every applause line, which means, if you’re in the cabinet or an elected official of the president’s party, an extraordinary amount of standing and sitting.

 But for a president himself, the State of the Union provides a unique opportunity to focus the entire nation’s attention on the central issue you want the nation to help you take action on.

 President Obama has been focusing his (and therefore America’s) attention on immigration, guns, and the environment. All are important. But in my view none of these should be the central theme of his address Tuesday evening.

 His focus should be on the joblessness, falling real wages, economic insecurity, and widening inequality that continue to dog the nation. These are the overriding concerns of most Americans. All will grow worse if the deficit hawks, austerity mavens, trickle-down charlatans, and government-haters who have commanded center stage for too long continue to get their way.  ( Continue… )

A man looks over employment opportunities at a jobs center in San Francisco, Calif. The national discussion should be about should be how to bring back good jobs and economic growth, Reich writes. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters/File)

Jobs and growth over deficit reduction

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 02.07.13

Can we just keep things in perspective? On Tuesday, the President asked Republicans to join him in finding more spending cuts and revenues before the next fiscal cliff whacks the economy at the end of the month.

Yet that same day, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal budget deficit will drop to 5.3 percent of the nation’s total output by the end of this year. 

This is roughly half what the deficit was relative to the size of the economy in 2009. It’s about the same share of the economy as it was when Bill Clinton became president in 1992. The deficit wasn’t a problem then, and it’s not an immediate problem now. 

Yes, the deficit becomes larger later in the decade. But that’s mainly due to the last-ditch fiscal cliff deal in December.   ( Continue… )

The Statue of Liberty peeks through thick morning fog in New York City. The greatness of our nation lies in our overriding tendency to enlarge and fulfill the promise of immigration and US citizenship, Reich writes. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters/File)

Immigration, corporations, and the real debate over US citizenship

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 02.06.13

Sometimes we have a national conversation without realizing it. We talk about different aspects of the same larger issue without connecting the dots.

That’s what’s happening now with regard to the meaning of American citizenship and the basic rights that come with it. 

On one side are those who think of citizenship as a matter of exclusion and privilege — of protecting the nation by keeping out those who are undesirable, and putting strict limits on who is allowed to exercise the full rights of citizenship. 

On the other are those who think of citizenship inclusively — as an ongoing process of helping people become full participants in America.  ( Continue… )

US Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York discusses House Speaker John Boehner's Plan B on fiscal reform at the Capitol in Washington this past December. A century ago, progressives instituted a national income tax with the idea that those who made more would pay a higher rate than those who made less. (Gary Cameron/Reuters/File)

National income tax: a century of progressive taxes. More ahead?

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 02.04.13

Exactly a century ago, on February 3, 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, authorizing a federal income tax. Congress turned it into a graduated tax, based on “capacity to pay.”

It was among the signal victories of the progressive movement — the first constitutional amendment in 40 years (the first 10 had been included in the Bill of Rights, the 11th and 12th in 1789 and 1804, and three others in consequence of the Civil War), reflecting a great political transformation in America. 
The 1880s and 1890s had been the Gilded Age, the time of robber barons, when a small number controlled almost all the nation’s wealth as well as our democracy, when poverty had risen to record levels, and when it looked as though the country was destined to become a moneyed aristocracy.

But almost without warning, progressives reversed the tide. Teddy Roosevelt became president in 1901, pledging to break up the giant trusts and end the reign of the “malefactors of great wealth.” Laws were enacted protecting the public from impure foods and drugs, and from corrupt legislators.  ( Continue… )

Perspective job seekers talk with employers during a job fair in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Close to 20 million Americans remain unemployed or underemployed, Reich writes. (Tony Dejak/AP/File)

Jobs report: why the recovery has stalled

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 02.01.13

We are in the most anemic recovery in modern history, yet our political leaders in Washington aren’t doing squat about it.

In fact, apart from the Fed – which continues to hold interest rates down in the quixotic hope that banks will begin lending again to average people – the government is heading in exactly the wrong direction: raising taxes on the middle class, and cutting spending.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that American employers added only 157,000 jobs in January. That’s fewer than they added in December (196,000 jobs, as revised by the Bureau of Labor Statistics). The overall unemployment rate remains stuck at 7.9 percent, just about where it’s been since September.

The share of people of working age either who are working or looking for jobs also remains dismal – close to a 30-year low. (Yes, older boomers are retiring, but the major cause for this near-record low is simply the lack of jobs.)  ( Continue… )

A couple descend an escalator while shopping at an H&M store in Atlanta. When consumers are this glum, austerity economics is particularly dangerous, Reich writes. (David Goldman/AP/File)

Why consumers are so glum

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 01.30.13

The Conference Board reported Tuesday that the preliminary January figure for consumer confidence in the United States fell to its lowest level in more than a year.

The last time consumers were this bummed out was October 2011, when there was widespread talk of a double-dip recession.

But this time business news is buoyant. The stock market is bullish. The housing market seems to have rebounded a bit.

So why are consumers so glum?

Because they’re deeply worried about their jobs and their incomes – as they have every right to be.  ( Continue… )

President Barack Obama boards Air Force One Tuesday, in Andrews Air Force Base, Md., en route to Las Vegas to give a speech about immigration. Not even the very wealthy can continue to succeed without a broader-based prosperity, Reich writes, echoing sentiments expressed by the president in his second Inaugural address. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Society is not a zero-sum game

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 01.29.13

As President Obama said in his inaugural address last week, America “cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Yet that continues to be the direction we’re heading in.

 A newly-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.

In other words, we’re back to the widening inequality we had before the debt bubble burst in 2008 and the economy crashed. 

But the President is exactly right. Not even the very wealthy can continue to succeed without a broader-based prosperity. That’s because 70 percent of economic activity in America is consumer spending. If the bottom 90 percent of Americans are becoming poorer, they’re less able to spend. Without their spending, the economy can’t get out of first gear.  ( Continue… )

President Barack Obama speaks during a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday. If Obama remains as clear and combative as he has been since Election Day, his second term may be noted for finally unraveling Reagan Republicanism. (Susan Walsh/AP)

How Obama is unraveling Reagan Republicanism

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 01.25.13

Soon after President Obama’s second inaugural address, John Boehner said the White House would try “to annihilate the Republican Party” and “shove us into the dustbin of history.”

Actually, the GOP is doing a pretty good job annihilating itself. As Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal put it, Republicans need to “stop being the stupid party.”

The GOP crackup was probably inevitable.  Inconsistencies and tensions within the GOP have been growing for years – ever since Ronald Reagan put together the coalition that became the modern Republican Party.

All President Obama has done is finally found ways to exploit these inconsistencies.

Republican libertarians have never got along with social conservatives, who want to impose their own morality on everyone else.  ( Continue… )

Wheeling, W.V., is one of many towns hurt by a decline in manufacturing jobs. Most Americans have not been living beyond their means, Reich writes. The problem is their means haven’t been keeping up with the growth of the economy. (Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor/File )

The rich, not the poor, must make sacrifices

By Robert Reich, Guest blogger / 01.25.13

Brace yourself. In coming weeks you’ll hear there’s no serious alternative to cutting Social Security and Medicare, raising taxes on middle class, and decimating what’s left of the federal government’s discretionary spending on everything from education and job training to highways and basic research.

“We” must make these sacrifices, it will be said, in order to deal with our mushrooming budget deficit and cumulative debt. 

But most of the people who are making this argument are very wealthy or are sponsored by the very wealthy: Wall Street moguls like Pete Peterson and his “End the Debt” brigade, the Business Roundtable, well-appointed think tanks and policy centers along the Potomac, members of the Simpson-Bowles commission. 

These regressive sentiments are packaged in a mythology that Americans have been living beyond our means: We’ve been unwilling to pay for what we want government to do for us, and we are now reaching the day of reckoning.   ( Continue… )