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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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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
Free
Technological
Change
Capital
Think
Discussion
Thinking
Global
People
Trade
Earnings
Build
Backlash
Understood
Insurance
Honest
Alternative

More quotes by Robert Reich

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We're now moving toward a radically different economy. You absolutely can't have a distribution oligopoly. The new oligopolies - and I think there will be new oligopolies - will be oligopolies of trustworthiness. Microsoft, Amazon, Schwab, and other brands will dominate psychic space, not shelf space.
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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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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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 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?
Robert Reich
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You`ve got to just follow the money [in Washington]. You see it. There`s no countervailing power.
Robert Reich
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And now we're suffering the logical culmination of all this: the largest group of government-hati ng, racist, homophobic, misogynistic know-nothing, climate-change denying, evolution-denyi ng, science-denying , anti-immigrant House Republicans in history, bent on taking America back to the 19th century.
Robert Reich
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I was there in Washington in the `90s. It was pretty bad then. It`s much worse now [in 2015]. And that vicious cycle is you`ve got again big corporations, executives, Wall Street, very wealthy individuals in both parties who are calling the shots.
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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You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
Robert Reich
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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.
Robert Reich
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I knew Hillary Clinton from undergraduate days and was enormously impressed with her. She was a terrific energy and enthusiasm, and a great organizer. And I knew that she was going to have a political future.
Robert Reich
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On the Republican playing field, Republicans always win.
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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We reform the system. We save capitalism from its own excesses.
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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You can't create a political movement out of pabulum.
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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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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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.
Robert Reich