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Cynicism is the largest obstacle to social change. Cynicism is dangerous because people throw up their hands and say, Well it's not possible. Why should I even try?

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
Change
Largest
Wells
Cynicism
Well
Obstacles
Even
Throw
Trying
Dangerous
People
Possible
Social
Hands
Obstacle

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Most Americans stopped looking at what was happening through a variety of coping mechanisms - starting with women entering paid work and then everyone working longer hours and using their homes for raising equity and generating more money through debt. The typical household basically staved off the day of reckoning.
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You`ve got to just follow the money [in Washington]. You see it. There`s no countervailing power.
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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.
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I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.
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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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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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Yale Law School was the kind of place you went if you felt you needed to go to law school, maybe, for your resume, but you really didn't want to practice law. You wanted to do public policy, or maybe go into politics.
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Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
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You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
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We already have an annual wealth tax on homes, the major asset of the middle class. It's called the property tax. Why not a small annual tax on the value of stocks and bonds, the major assets of the wealthy?
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On the Republican playing field, Republicans always win.
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I have found over the years that the most important way of getting people to relax is self-deprecating humor.
Robert Reich
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I, from the luxury of my laptop computer, can summon extraordinary bargains on everything I want, and I can also move my savings anywhere. This ability to choose more broadly and to switch more easily is the central fact of modern economic life.
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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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Corporations are not people, despite what the Supreme Court says, and they don't need or deserve handouts.
Robert Reich
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I started in the law and the study of law, when it precedes the study of economics, gives you a set of foundation principles about how human beings interact. Economics is very useful, and I studied economics in graduate school. But without understanding the social and organizational context of economics, it becomes a theory without any groundwork.
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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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There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.
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Education is not the only answer and it's certainly not the immediate solution. At best, it's a necessary, but not sufficient response to widening inequality.
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Disney is no longer just Mickey Mouse Disney is family entertainment. And we're seeing more and more brands change into something that is far greater and broader than individual products and services.
Robert Reich