Robert Reich Quotes

A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

- Robert Reich

The generosity of the super-rich is sometimes proffered as evidence they're contributing as much to the nation's well-being as they did decades ago when they paid a much larger share of their earnings in taxes.

- Robert Reich

Most financiers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants are competing with other financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants in zero-sum games that take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another.

- Robert Reich

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

The curious thing is Americans don't mind individual mandates when they come in the form of payroll taxes to buy mandatory public insurance. In fact, that's the system we call Social Security and Medicare, and both are so popular politicians dare not touch them.

- Robert Reich

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

Much of what's called 'public' is increasingly a private good paid for by users - ever-higher tolls on public highways and public bridges, higher tuitions at so-called public universities, higher admission fees at public parks and public museums.

- Robert Reich

Technology is changing so fast that knowledge about specifics can quickly become obsolete. That's why so much of what technicians learn is on the job.

- Robert Reich

Walmart isn't your average mom-and-pop operation. It's the largest employer in America. As such, it's the trendsetter for millions of other employers of low-wage workers.

- Robert Reich

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

In the 1980s, corporate raiders began mounting unfriendly takeovers of companies that could deliver higher returns to their shareholders - if they abandoned their other stakeholders.

- Robert Reich

Centrism is bogus.

- Robert Reich

Yes, the rich will find ways to avoid paying more taxes, courtesy of clever accountants and tax attorneys. But this has always been the case, regardless of where the tax rate is set.

- Robert Reich

Over the long term, the only way we're going to raise wages, grow the economy, and improve American competitiveness is by investing in our people - especially their educations.

- Robert Reich

In 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis tried to form a union. The city resisted. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life.

- Robert Reich

Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.

- Robert Reich

Our young people - their capacities to think, understand, investigate, and innovate - are America's future.

- Robert Reich

Sugary drinks are blamed for increasing the rates of chronic disease and obesity in America. Yet efforts to reduce their consumption through taxes or other measures have gone nowhere. The beverage industry has spent millions defeating them.

- Robert Reich

Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven't risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.

- Robert Reich

As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care.

- Robert Reich

We need a national infrastructure bank to rebuild our crumbling highways and water and sewer systems, thereby putting additional people back to work.

- Robert Reich

Official boundaries are often hard to see. If you head north on Woodward Avenue, away from downtown Detroit, you wouldn't know exactly when you left the city and crossed over into Oakland County - except for a small sign that tells you.

- Robert Reich

Those at the top would do better with a smaller share of a booming economy that elicits a positive politics than they will do with an ever-larger share of an anemic economy that fuels the politics of anger.

- Robert Reich

Tea Partiers hate government more than they hate the national debt. They refuse to reduce that debt with tax increases, even with tax increases on the wealthy, because a tax increase doesn't reduce the size of government.

- Robert Reich

Bankruptcy laws allow companies to smoothly reorganize, but not college graduates burdened by student loans.

- Robert Reich

The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream.

- Robert Reich

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest of the Ivy League are worthy institutions, to be sure, but they're not known for educating large numbers of poor young people.

- Robert Reich

So why don't nurses do home visits to Americans with acute conditions? Hospitals aren't paid for it.

- Robert Reich

Economies are risky. Some industries rise, and others implode, like housing. Some places get richer, and others drop, like Atlantic City. Some people get new jobs that pay better, many lose their jobs or their wages.

- Robert Reich

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth.

- Robert Reich

Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.

- Robert Reich

Before the rise of the nation-state, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them.

- Robert Reich

America's real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.

- Robert Reich

Walmart is so huge that a wage boost at Walmart would ripple through the entire economy, putting more money in the pockets of low-wage workers. This would help boost the entire economy - including Walmart's own sales.

- Robert Reich

News and images move so easily across borders that attitudes and aspirations are no longer especially national. Cyber-weapons, no longer the exclusive province of national governments, can originate in a hacker's garage.

- Robert Reich

I'm all in favor of supporting fancy museums and elite schools, but face it: These aren't really charities as most people understand the term.

- Robert Reich

Some argue shareholder capitalism has proven more efficient. It has moved economic resources to where they're most productive, and thereby enabled the economy to grow faster.

- Robert Reich

As long as the big banks are allowed to remain big, their political leverage over Washington will remain big. And as long as their political leverage remains big, the taxpayer and economic tab for the next mess they create will be big.

- Robert Reich

A lot of attention has been going to social values - abortion, gay rights, other divisive issues - but economic values are equally important.

- Robert Reich

Evidence suggests jobs are crucial not only to economic well-being but also to self-esteem.

- Robert Reich

There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.

- Robert Reich

Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.

- Robert Reich

It's not government's business what people do in their private bedrooms.

- Robert Reich

Patagonia, a large apparel manufacturer based in Ventura, California, has organized itself as a 'B-corporation.' That's a for-profit company whose articles of incorporation require it to take into account the interests of workers, the community, and the environment, as well as shareholders.

- Robert Reich

As income from work has become more concentrated in America, the super rich have invested in businesses, real estate, art, and other assets. The income from these assets is now concentrating even faster than income from work.

- Robert Reich

The job creators are members of America's vast middle class and the poor, whose purchases cause businesses to expand and invest.

- Robert Reich

In truth, government has been good to Wall Street and big business.

- Robert Reich

Money buys the most experienced teachers, less-crowded classrooms, high-quality teaching materials, and after-school programs.

- Robert Reich

The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout - an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street.

- Robert Reich

If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully enforced and through penalties higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.

- Robert Reich

Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years, if not decades, to pay off.

- Robert Reich

During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced.

- Robert Reich

One tax dodge often used by multi-national companies is to squirrel their earnings abroad in foreign subsidiaries located in countries where taxes are lower.

- Robert Reich

Can we please agree that in the real world, corporations exist for one purpose and one purpose only - to make as much money as possible, which means cutting costs as much as possible?

- Robert Reich

When I was a small boy, I was bullied more than most, mainly because I was a foot shorter than everyone else.

- Robert Reich

What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes.

- Robert Reich

As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.

- Robert Reich

We never used to blink at taking a leadership role in the world. And we understood leadership often required something other than drones and bombs. We accepted global leadership not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because it was in our own best interest. We knew we couldn't isolate ourselves from trouble. There was no place to hide.

- Robert Reich

Average working people need more fresh starts. Big corporations, banks, and Donald Trump need fewer.

- Robert Reich

Political scientists after World War II hypothesized that even though the voices of individual Americans counted for little, most people belonged to a variety of interest groups and membership organizations - clubs, associations, political parties, unions - to which politicians were responsive.

- Robert Reich

Limits should be placed on how big big banks can become.

- Robert Reich

There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.

- Robert Reich

Even if there's no way to stop U.S. corporations from shedding their U.S. identities and becoming foreign corporations, there's no reason they should retain the privileges of U.S. citizenship.

- Robert Reich

No company can be expected to build a nuclear reactor, an oil well, a coal mine, or anything else that's one hundred percent safe under all circumstances. The costs would be prohibitive. It's unreasonable to expect corporations to totally guard against small chances of every potential accident.

- Robert Reich

Corporations aren't people. They have no brains, no consciences, no capacity for intent or guilt.

- Robert Reich

Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.

- Robert Reich

Government subsidies to elite private universities take the form of tax deductions for people who make charitable contributions to them.

- Robert Reich

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

Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.

- Robert Reich

A Democratic president should propose a major permanent tax reduction on the middle class and working class. I suspect most of the public would find this attractive.

- Robert Reich

True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

- Robert Reich

The 'free market' is the product of laws and rules continuously emanating from legislatures, executive departments, and courts.

- Robert Reich

Media outlets that are exploiting Ebola because they want a sensational story and politicians using it to their own ends ought to be ashamed.

- Robert Reich

Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.

- Robert Reich

The Tea Party is but one manifestation of a widening perception that the game is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful.

- Robert Reich

The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters.

- Robert Reich

As digital equipment replaces the jobs of routine workers and lower-level professionals, technicians are needed to install, monitor, repair, test, and upgrade all the equipment.

- Robert Reich

Detroit is really a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they'd otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans.

- Robert Reich

Increasingly, corporate nationality is whatever a corporation decides it is.

- Robert Reich

By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie.

- Robert Reich

Only if everyone buys insurance can insurers afford to cover people with preexisting conditions or pay the costs of catastrophic diseases.

- Robert Reich

Not only do unemployment benefits help families who are hurting; they also put money into their pockets that they'll then spend - and their spending will keep other Americans in jobs.

- Robert Reich

More people are killed by stray bullets every day in America than have been killed by Ebola here. More are dying because of poverty and hunger.

- Robert Reich

A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.

- Robert Reich

The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage.

- Robert Reich

On the Republican playing field, Republicans always win.

- Robert Reich

Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.

- Robert Reich

You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.

- Robert Reich

Rather than subsidize 'American' exporters, it makes more sense to subsidize any global company - to the extent it's adding to its exports from the United States.

- Robert Reich

You might say those who can't repay their student debts shouldn't have borrowed in the first place. But they had no way of knowing just how bad the jobs market would become.

- Robert Reich

America spends a fortune on drugs: more per person than any other nation on earth, even though Americans are no healthier than the citizens of other advanced nations.

- Robert Reich

Public employees should have the right to bargain for better wages and working conditions, just like all employees do.

- Robert Reich

When times are tough, public employees should have to make the same sacrifices as everyone else.

- Robert Reich

In America, people with lots of money can easily avoid the consequences of bad bets and big losses by cashing out at the first sign of trouble.

- Robert Reich

Freedom is the one value conservatives place above all others, yet time and again, their ideal of freedom ignores the growing imbalance of power in our society that's eroding the freedoms of most people.

- Robert Reich

Nations are becoming less relevant in a world where everyone and everything is interconnected. The connections that matter most are again becoming more personal.

- Robert Reich

Standing up to bullies is the hallmark of a civilized society.

- Robert Reich

The only way back toward a democracy and economy that work for the majority is for most of us to get politically active once again, becoming organized and mobilized.

- Robert Reich

If we give up on politics, we're done for. Powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

- Robert Reich

It's true that redistributing income to the needy is politically easier in a growing economy than in a stagnant one.

- Robert Reich

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.

- Robert Reich

Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers and are available to all.

- Robert Reich

The monied interests are doing what they do best - making money. The rest of us need to do what we can do best - use our voices, our vigor, and our votes.

- Robert Reich

America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.

- Robert Reich

Those who take their money abroad in an effort to avoid paying American taxes should lose their American citizenship.

- Robert Reich

Universities have to tame their budgets, especially for student amenities that have nothing to do with education.

- Robert Reich

Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

- Robert Reich

It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they're going too far.

- Robert Reich

It is hard to bite the hands that feed you, especially when you are competing for food.

- Robert Reich

Conservatives believe the economy functions better if the rich have more money and everyone else has less. But they're wrong. It's just the opposite.

- Robert Reich

What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.

- Robert Reich

Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be - all need at least four years of college.

- Robert Reich

To get back to the kind of shared prosperity and upward mobility we once considered normal will require another era of fundamental reform, of both our economy and our democracy.

- Robert Reich

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.

- Robert Reich

I'm not one of those who thinks the only way to fix what's wrong with American education is to throw more money at it. We also need to do it much better.

- Robert Reich

Public fear isn't something to be played with.

- Robert Reich

Instead of worrying about who's American and who's not, here's a better idea: Create incentives for any global company to do what we'd like it to do in the United States.

- Robert Reich

Obviously, personal responsibility is important. But there's no evidence that people who are poor are less ambitious than anyone else. In fact, many work long hours at backbreaking jobs.

- Robert Reich

In reality, most of America's poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.

- Robert Reich

The only way to make sure no bank is too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big.

- Robert Reich

You can't create a political movement out of pabulum.

- Robert Reich