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Those who analogize the federal budget to a family's budget must know nothing about either.

Robert Reich

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Robert Reich
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: June 24
Economist
Former United States Secretary Of Labor
Political Scientist
Politician
University Teacher
Scranton
Pennsylvania
Robert Bernard Reich
Federal
Either
Family
Nothing
Must
Budget
Budgets

More quotes by Robert Reich

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The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.
Robert Reich
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If you give up on politics, you're giving up on democracy. And if you give up on democracy, you're basically saying to the moneyed interests, the powerful people and institutions of society, take it all. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then we give up. Then we are 100 percent plutocracy.
Robert Reich
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The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn't technology or globalization. It's the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market.
Robert Reich
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The federal budget deficit isn't the nation's major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn't be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both.
Robert Reich
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Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.
Robert Reich
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America's real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.
Robert Reich
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When the President decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from congress.
Robert Reich
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If you ever want to get a sense of your own personal failure, look at yourself trying to get across a point that nobody is listening to and the situation gets worse and worse.
Robert Reich
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One thing I've learned from 35 years in the classroom is that people learn best when they are laughing, when they are emotionally hit, that it's both the brain and the heart.
Robert Reich
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The presidency is probably the loneliest office in America. Regardless of your friends, regardless of how good your marriage is, regardless of anything, you are alone there at the top.
Robert Reich
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The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant. ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress.
Robert Reich
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The poverty line understates the true amount of poverty because it measures it as three times the breadbasket that a family needs, but it doesn't consider all the other things that are inflating far, far faster than food prices.
Robert Reich
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Bill Clinton was a very, very good speaker. But like many people who are great speakers and great thinkers and have a lot of energy and ambition, he talked too much.
Robert Reich
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I think that it's difficult to talk about large questions of economics or social policy without understanding the building blocks of society. And those building blocks are organizations, the people who run them, and the people who work in them.
Robert Reich
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The intellectual equipment needed for the job of the future is an ability to define problems, quickly assimilate relevant data, conceptualize and reorganize the information, make deductive and inductive leaps with it, ask hard questions about it, discuss findings with colleagues, work collaboratively to find solutions and then convince others.
Robert Reich
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When corporations get special handouts from the government, subsidies and tax breaks, it costs you. It means you have to pay more in taxes to make up for these hidden expenses, and government has less money for good schools and roads, Medicare and national defense and everything else you need.
Robert Reich
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The only sure way to stop excessive risk taking on Wall Street so you don't risk losing your job, or your savings or your home, is to put an end to the excessive economic and political power of Wall Street by busting up the big banks.
Robert Reich
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Well-trained and dedicated employees are the only sustainable source of competitive strength.
Robert Reich
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Corporations are not people, despite what the Supreme Court says, and they don't need or deserve handouts.
Robert Reich
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If you're going to be a great guide to what's great for consumers, and, indirectly, for investors, you've got to be very careful about who you contract with and what you're offering.
Robert Reich