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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
Budget
Budgets
Federal
Either
Family
Nothing
Must

More quotes by 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 I was a kid, the bigger boys would pick on me. So I got an idea that I would make alliances with older boys, like just one or two, who would be my protectors.
Robert Reich
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Social change occurs when the gap between the ideals that people hold and the reality that they see every day gets too large.
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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Most Americans are on a downward escalator. Median wage in the United States, adjusted for inflation, keeps on dropping.
Robert Reich
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It is a myth that higher taxes lead to less demand and slower growth. In the first three decades after World War II, US top tax rates on the wealthy were never below 70 percent.
Robert Reich
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We used to be so proud that our country offered far more economic opportunities than the feudal system in Great Britain, with its royal family, princesses and dukes. But social mobility in the UK is higher than in the US. Our social rift is as big as it was in the 1920s.
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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Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
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 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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The rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy then they're doing now with a large share of an economy that is barely growing at all.
Robert Reich
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We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.
Robert Reich
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True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.
Robert Reich
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The silent majority really is a liberal majority, even though the word liberal has taken a real beating over the last 20 years by radical conservatives.
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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You ask, Could we have an honest discussion about earnings insurance? I think we could, if people understood that the alternative was to build up a backlash against global capital, against free trade, against technological change.
Robert Reich
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Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.
Robert Reich
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We are now enjoying the liberation that comes with not having to be organization men and women, and that's fabulous. But there are new social consequences here of which we need to be aware, and the sale of the self and what that entails for the rest of our lives is quite sobering.
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