Date: 2024-09-27 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00026063
USA
40 YEARS OF ANTI-SOCIAL DECLINE
MeidasTouch-PoliticsGirl: Robert Reich utterly EXPOSES Corrupt Schemes in MUST-SEE Interview
40 YEARS OF ANTI-SOCIAL DECLINE
MeidasTouch-PoliticsGirl: Robert Reich utterly EXPOSES Corrupt Schemes in MUST-SEE Interview
Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JafTcWCHWcM
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
0:00 they want us all to give up give up hope give up the idea that we can change anything so they can take over 0:16 everything hello and welcome to the politics girl podcast I'm your host Lee mwan let's get into it there's a shift 0:23 happening in the American Consciousness right now where the idea that we all bought into that if we just work hard 0:28 enough we will make it is starting to feel like a bit of a scam this concept of pulling yourself up by your 0:34 bootstraps is beginning to feel like a cruel joke especially if you're working a minimum wage job or in the gig economy 0:40 or dealing with medical or student debt or trying to buy a house or afford child care this idea that the trials We As 0:46 Americans face the struggle so many of us have to deal with just to make ends meet is somehow the result of our own 0:52 actions or shortcomings rather than acknowledging we're actually living in an oppressive system that's been rigged 0:58 against most of us for the past 40 years is really starting to chafe this is of course not to say that people aren't 1:04 personally responsible for their actions they are but we also need to come to terms with the fact that we used to live 1:10 in a country where one person could sustain a family of four where housing was accessible where public education 1:16 was good and higher education was affordable if not free there was a time in the notso distant American past that 1:22 we had both a thriving middle class and a booming economy where people had pensions and benefits and Social 1:29 Security was something could live on rather than just one more thing for Republicans to get rid of but it's 1:34 becoming increasingly clear that starting in the 1970s and put into overdrive by the rean administration 1:40 America began what we could safely call a corporate takeover of American politics where the wealth of this 1:46 country became increasingly concentrated into fewer and fewer hands while everyone else struggled and that 1:52 struggle is now hitting a Tipping Point we clearly can't carry on like this people just do not make enough money to 1:59 live in this this country anymore people with full-time jobs can't afford a place to live people are starting their 2:05 careers drowning in debt for school they were told they had to attend people deep into their adult lives can't afford to 2:11 have children or buy real estate and getting sick is the number one cause for bankruptcy it's no wonder our suicide 2:17 rates are so high people are increasingly miserable trying to live the American dream yet as a country we 2:23 struggle to make any real change because a fair amount of politicians and justices in charge of passing an uphold 2:30 laws that could protect us from what can only be called predatory capitalism are in many cases bought and paid for by 2:37 predatory capitalists it's a snake eating its own tales with the American public in the middle getting crushed 2:44 look no further than the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson's first order of business which was to cut funding to the 2:49 IRS so the IRS could no longer afford to go after the richest tax cheats in America that was the very first thing he 2:56 focused on so we simply can't go on pretending the system isn't rigged for the people at the top while the rest of 3:02 us are getting screwed to talk about how things got so bad and what we can actually do about it I'm joined by the 3:08 illustrious Robert Reich a graduate of Dartmouth Oxford and Yale Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at UC 3:15 Berkeley and a senior fellow at the bloom Center for developing economies he's also served in three National 3:20 administrations including as Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton the author of 18 books including 3:26 bestsellers the system who rigged it and how to fix it the common good and super capitalism 3:32 Professor Reich is also the co-creator of the 2017 Netflix documentary saving capitalism and the award-winning 2013 3:40 film Inequality For All he is the co-founder of inequality media co-founder of the economic policy 3:47 Institute and the co-founding editor of the American Prospect so without further Ado please welcome my guest Professor 3:54 Economist and True Believer in the American experiment Robert Reich welcome professor Lely thank you so much for 4:01 having me on well thank you for coming I've wanted to have you on for so long I love what you guys are doing at inequality media just making these 4:08 complicated issues particularly economic issues accessible to the rest of us because I think we can recognize that 4:15 things are broken we just aren't quite sure how they got that way or what we're supposed to do next well that's what uh 4:21 that's what I and my team are really trying to do and uh you can't have an 4:26 effective democracy unless people understand what going on and the system is very complicated and there are a lot 4:32 of people who would like to keep it that way yeah I always say it's deliberately complicated it's done with 4:39 deliberation absolutely well as I was saying in the introduction it's clear 4:45 that the politics of the reers along with the whole now debunked concept of trickle down economics really launched 4:52 us into this broken system we find ourselves in now kind of solidifying in the very richest hands American politics 4:59 where those with the wealth are able to buy those with the power and pass laws to make the country work best for them 5:06 this phenomenon of looking out for American economics over the American people was actually conceptualized prior 5:13 to the 1980s with What's called the Powell memo in 1971 would you mind 5:18 giving us a little background on Lewis Powell and his ideas that really kind of laid the foundations for Corporate 5:24 America to take over American politics Lewis Powell was a lawyer in Washington 5:30 before he was appointed the Supreme Court uh and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States a very conservative 5:36 group uh becoming more so uh during the 1970s contacted Powell and said we would 5:43 like you to write a memo for us about what business needs to do to respond to 5:49 the Growing Power of consumer people Environ medalists labor I mean all of 5:56 the voices out there that were starting to demand regulations starting to demand a 6:03 response to the excesses of American capitalism and indeed Lewis Powell wrote 6:09 a memo that said essentially business you've got to pay a lot of money you've 6:15 got to invest a lot of money in Washington in trade associations in 6:21 lobbyists in uh actually the the process of getting people elected you've got to 6:28 be much more activist and if you don't uh goodbye your profits goodbye capitalism Lewis 6:36 Powell's memo was much more complicated and lengthy than I just gave but I I gave a summary of it which I think is 6:43 quite accurate it went out to all of the CEOs of America to all of the business 6:49 groups of America and it had a huge impact because during the 6:56 1970s American Business began to exercise its muscles flexus muscles uh 7:05 by the end of the 1970s by the re Administration American Business had 7:11 established itself in Washington as the loudest voice even louder than what 7:18 that's at that point trade unions were pretty loud but even louder than trade unions much louder than 7:24 environmentalists or consumerist or uh any other group that were was trying to 7:30 be heard so Powell argued that the American economic system was basically 7:35 under attack by consumer or labor or environmental groups which as you point 7:40 out in reality was just that those groups weren't doing anything other than saying like hey there's a social contract here and corporations have a 7:48 responsibility to the consumers and their workers and the environment and not just their shareholders and that 7:54 there was a bigger picture that wasn't just corporate profit um and that needed to be acknowledged 7:59 and Powell clearly didn't agree with that bigger picture and he thought that as you're saying businesses should team 8:05 up for basically what you've written is called political combat so he sent out 8:10 this memo that you're talking about that went to all the biggest businesses to sort of tell them how to better navigate 8:17 and get themselves back up on the top and this is kind of where businesses got on board and where this new political 8:23 and corporate Synergy really got its start and this is also the time where tens of thousands of corporate lobbyists 8:29 all showed up in Washington and in state capitals around the country to make sure that they were lobbying for what was best for the corporations and not what 8:36 was best for the rest of us would that be a fair assessment yes and let me just extend that a little bitly because what 8:43 happened was the creation of an entire industry in Washington of lobbyists and 8:49 lawyers uh and public relations professionals many of them were 8:55 ex-government high government employees I mean cabinet members and and senators 9:00 and members of Congress they left their positions in the public sector and 9:06 became lobbyists and they could make so much money because again the name of the game was money uh businesses were 9:13 starting to put big big money into influencing American politics and 9:20 Washington DC I saw it went from a kind of a seedy Backwater town to a 9:27 glittering uh kind of Emerald City uh with regard to restaurants and beos and 9:33 hotels and and office towers that were the centers of K Street and uh where all 9:41 of the C-Suites and Wall Street Denis of America were represented so I would 9:48 say probably this is the timeline where corporations might have seen themselves as starting to fight back right like if 9:55 anyone especially if the government was looking at what they were doing to make money by say poisoning the environment 10:01 dumping waste into lakes uh targeting children advertising dangerous projects and they started questioning their 10:06 motives and doing that they as a group would resist so the corporations and then in the 80s in partnership with the 10:13 reigan administration itself came in and kind of started gutting the organizations that would hold them 10:19 accountable kind of defunding them or filling their leadership with kind of yes men who would Overlook corporate 10:25 malfeasance to the tune of profit which is then recycled back into the environment in which everyone was living 10:32 and eating and breathing and working in Washington uh that's right it was a revolution Lee and I think it can only 10:38 be described that way uh in the late 70s I was at the Federal Trade Commission 10:44 and I like many people were kind of surprised by this Great Wave this 10:51 tsunami of corporate money uh we were working on a bunch of rules to protect 10:57 consumers at the time and Congress essentially stopped us in our tracks 11:03 took away our appropriation closed the agency for weeks uh as a kind of 11:09 punishment but also as a way of demonstrating to the rest of Washington 11:15 the kind of power that Corporate America was exercising yeah just what they were 11:21 wielding is this around the time that the FTC stopped enforcing kind of antitrust 11:26 laws uh yes uh and that is a related story uh Robert Bourke who was a 11:33 professor at Yale uh I he was one of my professors uh he wrote a book called The 11:39 Antitrust Paradox which said effectively antitrust laws should not be enforced or 11:44 at least the only purpose of antitrust is consumer welfare to keep prices down 11:51 uh there's no good in competition for the sake of competition don't worry about big corporations getting bigger 11:58 don't worry about their political power well that became part of the Creed as 12:03 well and that was pushed by the big corporations and by the time Ronald Reagan came into the White House in 12:10 January uh 1981 all of these came together all of these movements all of 12:16 this corporate money all of these corporate uh sort of premises such as 12:23 antitrust should not be enforced and let me just clarify just so I'm getting it right and so the audience understands 12:29 when we talk about antitrust that's the the the laws around allowing massive 12:35 corporations to merge and consolidate their power making them even more powerful is that is that right yes and 12:42 also laws uh having to do with limiting the power of big corporations that 12:48 didn't merge that just got too big uh in terms of their effects on the market and 12:54 I don't want to go into the weeds but this really started in 1890 the Sherman Antitrust Act starts in 1890 a public 13:02 upsurge of almost a rebellion against these giant corporations railroads and 13:10 uh and oil uh and and other corporations steel corporations that were dominating 13:15 American Business uh and then in 1914 the Federal Trade Commission act uh was 13:21 passed which gave the Federal Trade Commission Authority uh to police the 13:27 market against these giant combinations so the 1890s didn't have it wrong they could see the writing on the wall that 13:33 we see today when we have about four corporations running almost every major business and we see all of our media 13:39 conglomerates merging together and and we end up with about 10 companies that 13:45 run everything and then people think well why don't we have better pricing or why is everything so expensive or what's 13:50 going on with these eggs you're like well they can charge anything they want it's corporate greed because no one is competing with them anymore and they saw 13:57 it way back in the 1890s and it kind of carried on to today and if we don't give these government organizations teeth to 14:03 come after these companies or stop these giant mergers then it's the consumers and the environment and the workers that 14:09 are really in trouble exactly uh in fact what's interesting is that the guilded 14:14 age of the 1880s and 1890s really in many ways parallels what we are now 14:20 experiencing in a kind of second Gilded Age yeah and U the huge combinations 14:26 then are reflected uh and echoed by the huge combinations right now that do have 14:32 the power to push up prices because they don't have to worry about competition U 14:37 you know the Federal Reserve board thinks that prices have been pushed up by wages but that's not the case prices 14:46 are being pushed up more by big monopolistic corporations that have the 14:51 power to raise prices yeah if there's only four chicken companies and they all get together and say what do you think 14:57 $9 a pound and everyone's like let's do it there's nowhere else to get our chicken 15:02 exactly so these decisions uh to make our country more favorable to capitalisms Big Winners has clearly 15:09 changed our politics because now corporations have more and more money to send out the smartest and the best 15:15 lawyers to kind of drown out government attorney generals or the FTC to get the results they want it's a lot like how 15:20 the IRS can't afford to go after the biggest tax cheats because these rich guys can afford better lawyers which is 15:27 ultimately how the whole system starts to feel rigged yes and it's it doesn't 15:32 only feel rigged Lee it is rigged it is rigged and uh it it's rigged in favor of 15:39 the moneyed interests U not only in terms of laws that are passed uh that 15:45 give the wealthy and big corporations exactly what they want most of the time 15:51 uh but also uh the kinds of lawyers and uh what happens in courts because the 15:58 big Corporation and the moneyed interest in general uh can afford uh platoon of 16:03 lawyers to represent them uh whereas the government or the public in general only 16:09 can afford you know a limited number of lawyers yeah I mean it's a system that's 16:15 clearly been fixed to benefit one group over the rest of us and I think most of us can see that now because the more 16:20 benefits these people get the more tax cuts the more loopholes to break laws or skirt regulations the more opportunity 16:26 they get to place the environment at risk or to undervalue or underpay workers the more money they have to buy 16:32 politicians to keep the whole racket going and it's all very subtle I mean look at an area of law that most people 16:38 don't know much about it's called bankruptcy well the fact of the matter is that years ago if you were a normal 16:45 homeowner and you couldn't pay your mortgage or you were a uh a a person who 16:51 couldn't pay your student loan or you were somebody who who just couldn't make it uh make all the payments you needed 16:57 you could use bankruptcy to reorganize your debt today because of big 17:03 corporations mostly Wall Street Banks it is impossible for students to reorganize 17:08 their student debt and it's impossible for homeowners to reorganize their Mortgage Debt under bankruptcy and yet 17:16 uh many big corporations can use bankruptcy in ways that nobody assumed 17:22 should be part of the American system uh to get out from under for example labor 17:27 contracts yeah it's a different set of rules for a different group of people I mean I think at this point there's very 17:34 little that corporations and the Very richest want that they don't get um it's 17:39 how the one signature piece of legislation from the Trump years was a permanent tax cut for the ultra Rich 17:44 which added trillions of dollars to our debt and now we get people like the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson saying 17:50 we can't afford to do anything because look at our deficit look at our debt we have to cut these programs for the poor we have to cut Social Security or we 17:57 have to cut Medicare I mean he wanted to tie foreign aid to an ally to underfunding the IRS as if we don't 18:04 understand that cutting funding for a program that brings in money is the opposite of what he said he was going 18:09 for well unfortunately a lot of people don't understand that and that's and 18:14 that's exactly why it's very important for the public to kind of look under the 18:20 hood uh and see what's really going on let me also hasten to add that uh the 18:26 Republican party and the Democratic part really are different in this regard and I say this not just because I've been a 18:33 Democrat for the last U you know 300 years uh but also because uh the 18:39 Democrats really are by and large not every one of them but by and large they are trying to make democracy work uh the 18:47 Republican party not only has sold out to the corporate and moneyed interests but the Republican party is basically 18:53 selling out democracy the other point I wanted to make very quickly is that it's 18:59 important not to be cynical or at least so cynical about what's going on that 19:05 you give up because that's what the moneyed interests want they want us all to give up give up hope give up the idea 19:12 that we can change anything so they can take over everything which is why it's kind of exciting that people are sort of 19:19 starting to fight back like we're finally realizing what's up and we're not okay with it look at all the labor 19:24 union strikes that have happened in this past year with workers really standing up for what they deserve which at the 19:29 very least is not to be treated simply like a cog in someone else's machine 19:34 exactly it's a big deal I mean Labor organized Labor uh for years was sort of 19:41 thought of as a Backwater uh in the 1950s about a third of all private 19:48 sector workers were unionized that was a big big number it was it was it was big enough so that workers could actually 19:56 get higher wages not only for themselves unionized workers but but across the 20:01 board now today it's not a third today only 20:07 six% of private sector workers are unionized well it's very hard to have much power notwithstanding that you've 20:14 seen uh you know the UAW and Hollywood actors and writers and UPS uh Cave in 20:23 the teamsters you've got a lot of unions that are doing great work and many young people are getting very very involved 20:30 look at Starbucks for example uh I I think the real Union leadership today 20:36 tends to be a different generation I think people are unionizing faster than they have in decades because they're 20:42 seeing the big wins and they're also saying like look if we're up against these giant corporations what else are we supposed to do there's a really great 20:49 uh meme that is a man standing on a pile of money who's obviously a CEO and then 20:54 there is a person standing on a pile of people meeting him at his level so they says okay now let's negotiate and I 21:01 always feel like that's a great image because it's like you need the union you need the people power behind you to 21:07 actually negotiate at a level in which you are equals otherwise you're completely out of luck and that gets us 21:13 back to the Powell memo and what what Powell did because you see without 21:18 counterveiling people power uh it's just money power and with only money power 21:25 you have uh capitalism that is out of control democracy is compatible with capitalism 21:32 I believe but only if democracy is in the driver's seat and honestly I think people should know that Powell who we're 21:38 speaking about he ended up as a sitting Supreme Court Justice and he ended up using his power on the court to further 21:46 chip away at regulations that limited corporate power in politics it was Powell's legal opinions in the 70s and 21:52 80s that ultimately laid the foundation for Citizens United or the right of Corporations to claim that it's free 21:58 speech to contribute as much money as they want to political campaigns and then that led to the rise of super Pacs 22:03 and the availability and uh of the very richest to buy politicians who basically 22:08 do their bidding which ultimately makes our country even more corporate friendly and makes that tiny tiny group at the 22:15 top uh even more money which gives them even more buying power so it's a vicious circle and similar to Powell's time I 22:23 would say now we have another captured an activist Supreme Court in the bag for the very richest and the corporations so 22:30 much so that justices like Thomas and Alo have been taking gifts and trips from the very people they're supposed to 22:36 be ruling on for years and then we have this huge case coming up more V us that 22:41 seems to have been filed with the express purpose of permanently outlawing 22:46 any sort of wealth tax on billionaires in the future what are your thoughts on more V us because I don't think most 22:52 people know about it and it's such a striking case it's part of the stri 22:58 strategy uh that is being used by the moneyed interests uh and again I I think 23:04 the important Point Lee is to see that the litigation strategy in the courts the law strategy uh is parallel and part 23:12 and parcel of the strategy in Congress and in state legislator it's all about 23:20 the moneyed interests and you referred to a vicious cycle it's a vicious cycle of the money interest getting more and 23:26 more power which gives them more and more money which gives them more and more power uh and unless the people get 23:33 together and have a counterveiling power we are just going to see more and more of this the Supreme Court today I would 23:40 say is even more reactionary than the Supreme Court of Powell's time uh you 23:47 know we have now six Supreme Court Justices uh who are not only nominated 23:55 and confirmed by Republicans but three of the six were put in by a 24:02 Republican president who lost the popular vote and was impeached twice and 24:09 is now running for reelection we won't necessarily use his name but he has four 24:14 criminal indictments against him now those three of the six conservatives on 24:21 the Supreme Court are doing whatever they can to pull this nation uh kicking 24:27 and screaming back into the what the 1940s the 1930s pre Franklin D Roosevelt 24:34 actually yeah pre- workers rights pre- women's rights pre- labor rights 24:40 sometimes I feel like they're trying to create a whole new feudal system with a new uh aristocracy when the rest of us 24:45 just work on the land or the corporations for them and we take what we get and we shouldn't be 24:51 upset well look at CEO pay I mean this is a good example of what's been going 24:57 on and it is a function of changes in the law uh in the 1960s 1970s the typical CEO of a big 25:05 company was earning 20 times the typical worker by the 1990s when I was Secretary of Labor the 25:13 typical CEO was earning 60 times what the typical worker was earning today the 25:21 typical CEO of a big company is earning 350 times what a typical worker is 25:28 earning uh now why is that is the CEO today that much more valuable uh more 25:34 that much more productive that much smarter of course not uh the the result 25:41 of I mean the reason you have these extraordinary CEO pay packages is 25:46 because the law has changed to allow those packages and you have a lot of 25:52 corporate profits going into BuyBacks stock BuyBacks that make those 25:57 pack P ages even more lucrative and it doesn't help that uh these really 26:03 extraordinarily wealthy people have been buying their friendships with the people who are making the laws and the people who are ruling on the laws you know 26:11 these friendships with say someone like uh Thomas or AO are getting to live a 26:17 good life on the backs of billionaires who will then rule on how B well 26:22 billionaires do in our society and and it's it's cases like more of a US that 26:28 concerned me because one of the few tools we have left in our toolbx which is taxes to try and do something about 26:35 this kind of ever growing inequality in our country might be ruled on in a way that we are our hands are tied because 26:42 clearly great wealth shouldn't be a tax shield and yet if you look around the country it certainly seems like it is uh 26:48 well that's very very important uh to uncore uh when we have huge amounts of 26:54 money concentrated at the top of America uh then democracy is threatened yeah uh 27:01 in the 1920s a Supreme Court Justice named Lewis brandise said something that 27:06 would be equally applicable today he said America has a choice we can either have great wealth in the hands of a few 27:14 or we can have a democracy but we can't have both so Le a wealth tax is the 27:20 natural inevitable next point if we're going to have huge concentrations of wealth and we don't want those 27:26 concentrations to undermine democracy we've got to have a wealth tax that that 27:32 that takes away some of that wealth and puts it to public purposes yeah I've 27:38 always said I we could start with an inheritance tax you know you can give your kids say $50 million but everything 27:44 after that's going to be taxed it 90% and people be like oh I don't want that you're like great then build a hospital 27:50 build a bunch of schools like help some people do something with your money your kids aren't going to be poor but they can't also keep accruing generational 27:57 wealth where they do very little I think that the rich would do very well you make your money you live off your money but it can't continue and continue and 28:03 continue because half these kids of the super uber rith they don't know what to do with themselves anyway they've got no 28:08 ambition because why would you absolutely it's problematic I mean 28:15 60% of the wealth of America 60% is in the hands of heirs Children of the 28:24 people who actually earned it y now so you you can't even justify that I mean 28:30 you can't say well those children and their children and their children uh who are the non-working Rich deserve that 28:38 money how do they deserve it yeah it's a new aristocracy you were born into it 28:44 tada and that aristocracy again it it undermines and threatens not just 28:49 democracy but the economy too because how do you keep an economy going if more 28:55 and more of the economy's wealth and income are at the top you know an economy only functions if people buy 29:01 stuff and how can people buy things if they no longer have money in their pockets so what do we do how do we help 29:09 limit the power of corporate money and this extreme wealth in our politics and our lives where's the power memo on 29:14 behalf of the people of America well this goes back to counterveiling Power 29:20 uh it goes back to unions and small businesses and young people who are getting involved in politics it goes 29:27 back to taking the rein of power back from the moneyed interests yeah and you 29:34 think that there's a way to do that right you think that there's a new road that we could be 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and 38:44 politically uh we we're not going to have much of a country left uh that we can't go on as we are going now with 38:52 more and more of the wealth and power of this country concentrated in fewer and 38:57 fewer hands yeah and that's why it's important who we elect as well you know I understand that President Biden was 39:04 actually a pleasant surprise to you he's always been seen as a Centrist and his plans and policies have been far more 39:10 Progressive than a lot of people especially people that follow the economy ever thought they'd be so voting for someone like him that gives us an 39:17 opening to make real change is yeah absolutely Lee I was surprised I mean I 39:22 was in Bill Clinton's cabinet yeah uh I was considered to be the leftmost person 39:30 in the cabinet uh and then I advised uh 39:35 Barack Obama I thought Clinton and Obama were good but they were kind of centrists I never expected that Joe 39:42 Biden would be to the left of Clinton and Obama but he is uh not only in terms 39:49 of labor unions walking the picket lines and supporting the most activist 39:54 pro-union National Labor relation board we've had uh but also attacking 39:59 monopolies going after some of the biggest monopolies in America ........ Google and 40:06 uh I mean Amazon and and and others uh and at the same time uh passing a huge 40:13 infrastructure Bill a huge environmental bill that promotes wind and solar energy 40:20 uh and at the same time creating a lot of manufacturing jobs I mean this is with almost no Congressional support 40:28 because remember Republicans had half the Senate and they barely now they 40:35 control the house uh but even when Biden was passing all this legislation it was by a very very thin margin so he 40:43 deserves a huge amount of credit yeah I think he does too I think he doesn't get anywhere near the credit he needs but we 40:50 also you know clearly need some form of campaign Finance reform I mean most people are very tired of corporate money 40:56 in politics they see that it doesn't serve us and I think we should vote with that in mind that we will put 41:01 politicians into power that will Levy the power of Corporations and big money in politics because I think getting dark 41:07 money out of politics repealing Citizens United putting in ethics rules maybe even term limits for Supreme Court 41:13 Justices are things that people would like to see that would actually start making real change in the country again 41:19 and get us to a place where it was felt more fair again I could not agree with you more I think uh you know every time 41:27 I speak or I hear others speak uh politically in front of crowds that are Republican or independent or Democrat 41:34 and you say let's get big money out of politics there is a roar of approval 41:39 yeah that's it's it's a cons you know people really don't want big money into politics they they want uh Citizens 41:47 United that Supreme Court case that first opened the gates to big money they 41:52 want that reversed uh they want some controls on the amount of influence big 41:58 money can have and that goes back to taxes as well most people would support a wealth tax on Big Money uh many people 42:06 don't even realize that in the 1950s the highest income tax rate was 42:13 92% on great incomes great wealth 92% I mean you couldn't possibly get that passed 42:20 today uh because well again the conventional wisdom is that high taxes 42:27 inhibit economic growth not the case no that's when America was quote unquote 42:32 great uh well you know uh it was in many respects I mean I I don't want to be 42:38 poly Anish about it because women and a lot of black people a lot of Latino not 42:43 socially great economically great no but but but even socially we were at least recognizing we began to recognize in the 42:51 1960s and I live through this uh the shortcomings of this country and the 42:56 Civil Rights Act the Voting Rights Act efforts to create more opportunities for women uh all of that was part of the 43:03 public agenda it's no longer sadly part of the public agenda as it was yeah and 43:11 you think that the ongoing dysfunction in the house the Republican house that's being run right now all the chaos we're 43:17 seeing uh you know prior to Mike Johnson being elected speaker now that Mike Johnson's been elected speaker you don't 43:23 think this is just some random they can't organize themselves M SES thing you think it's part of a manufactured plot right 43:28 to as you said earlier to increase cynicism right the cynicism we feel for the government in general to get us to 43:35 check out to get us to go g it's all too much I can't deal with it it's like a conscious tactic that they're using to 43:40 exhaust all of us in hopes that we won't be paying attention and we won't keep doing this and we won't ask for more you 43:46 think that's true I do uh sadly tragically I do I think uh Republicans 43:52 particularly in Washington they would like the government to be so dysfunctional that people throw up their 43:58 hands and say well democracy doesn't work maybe we need a strong man maybe we 44:04 need an authoritarian oh who's around the corner Donald Trump yeah well you 44:10 see how this plays into that Trump Republican strategy and that's also I mean when you come back to when you hear 44:16 about Russia every time it's like Russia likes nothing more than to show America doesn't work if you say like look 44:21 democracy doesn't work everyone's corrupt even their leaders are corrupt their democracy doesn't work no one actually votes it's all rigged don't 44:28 bother trying to have that kind of a country that's not even existing in America anymore I think that it serves 44:33 all the same purpose I I I think that you're right uh and the danger is that 44:39 people as we talked about before become so cynical in the United States young people particularly that they don't 44:45 bother to vote they they say the you know the system is just inherently corrupt uh capitalism doesn't work and 44:53 therefore we were not going to participate in the in democracy well uh that is I want to emphasize a 45:02 self-fulfilling prophecy if people fall for that then we don't have any hope at 45:08 all yeah I always say not paying attention to politics doesn't mean politics doesn't affect you it means you 45:13 can't affect it and that's the game we've not paid attention for so long that it allowed the wrong people to take 45:20 over and the last thing we have to do now is to check out again exactly uh you 45:25 know there are a lot of mythologies surrounding the economy uh one of the 45:31 most distressing to me is that we have something called the free market uh that 45:37 you must not interfere with that you create all kinds of inefficiencies if you interfere with the free market uh 45:44 without people acknowledging or understanding that the market is a human 45:50 creation it's created and enforced and maintained by government 45:56 and when you have so much power and wealth at the top that's what that power 46:02 and wealth does it changes the rules of the market to help power and wealth yeah 46:09 it's like when the government bailed out the auto companies or the government bailed out the big Banks or the 46:14 government sent PPP loans to specific corporations I always think about the pandemic when Saab died in Europe 46:22 because it just couldn't make it that doesn't happen here because we do have welfare we just happen to have welfare 46:27 for giant corporations and we'll hold them up even if the free market has decided they can't make it socialism for 46:34 the rich absolutely harsh capitalism the harshest form of capitalism of all 46:39 advanced countries for everybody else yeah so what are your thoughts on this uh horrifyingly high stakes election we 46:46 have coming up I mean despite everything that's going on it really does look like Donald Trump is going to be the nominee 46:52 for the Republican party and despite the fact that it makes no sense when you look at him and President Biden on paper 46:58 from everything from their accomplishments to their felony charges it looks like the race between the two of them is going to be way too close for 47:04 comfort with the fate of our country literally coming down to a handful of Voters and a handful of States so what 47:11 can you leave us with or tell people with as we move into this next election year Well number one and most important 47:18 thing is to be politically active uh if you want to hold on to our democracy if 47:23 you don't want authoritarianism or Neo faschism you have got to be out there 47:28 knocking on doors uh organizing mobilizing energizing people uh for 47:36 democracy uh now it sounds a little hokey but that's really what it boils down to uh secondly you need to pay 47:44 attention uh people kind of uh you know they they fall for stereotypes Donald 47:50 Trump looks like he's tough and strong because he you know he Huffs and he 47:55 Puffs and he blows the houses down uh but Joe Biden in his own way if you 48:02 listen to what he says look at what he does uh in a in a much quieter way he is 48:08 far more effective when the Press Compares Biden and says oh he's too old 48:14 and says about Trump well he's his problem is all of the criminal indictments what the Press is doing is 48:21 creating a false equivalence why not look at Trump age he's only three years 48:27 younger than Biden and acknowledge that he's unhinged a lot of what comes out of 48:33 his mouth uh is something that you might be worried about in terms of particularly somebody who's very old and 48:39 not quite with it uh I think there ought to be more coverage of Donald Trump's uh 48:45 well uh his age in terms of how it affects his his brain yeah we just had 48:51 an episode about Ai and uh how it might take over the nuclear programs or War 48:56 Machine and you have to make sure that the people in charge of these giant programs with this giant money 49:02 especially in a country like America with such a huge War Machine you put someone sane in charge you know you put 49:08 someone competent in charge Joe Biden might be a senior When Donald Trump was a freshman in high school but he's much 49:15 more stayed much more wise much more competent and he's a much more caring person by General nature who thinks of 49:20 other people and not just how it best served himself I mean I think you and I have been on the same page for a really 49:26 long time that we're incredibly clear that if the Democrats lose in 2024 we're not just losing the presidency we are 49:32 losing American democracy that we cannot pretend that someone like Donald Trump is not a fascist type dictator who just 49:38 wants to consolidate the entire power of the American government around himself and turn us into some kind of Christian 49:45 nationalist Hungarian style autocracy and the Republican Party specifically 49:50 state representatives and the Republican house seem sort of all in on helping him do that and we need to get really 49:55 conscious if this is the route we want to take because I think most people if you really laid it out for them they 50:01 would not want to do that I agree uh the fact that you have a presidential 50:07 candidate who was involved in an Insurrection uh in fact one Court in 50:12 Colorado just a week and a half ago said that he was in fact an insurrectionist 50:18 you have a president who basically said he was not going to be bound by the results of the 20 uh 20 the election uh and 50:27 he and he said Not only am I not bound by them but uh I don't even I don't even 50:33 have any facts to justify what I'm about to say but he said I was the election 50:40 was stolen from me what kind of a why should that person be running again you 50:46 know the 14th Amendment section three says if you were involved in an 50:51 Insurrection and if you once swore an oath to protect the constitution then 50:56 you should not be allowed to run for public office once again because you 51:02 can't be trusted hello hello that's onethird of Congress too by the 51:07 way yes I mean they should all hit the road according to the 14th Amendment all 51:13 of the election deniers out there yeah absolutely how can they be reelected 51:18 when they deny something that has no basis in fact even Trump's attorney 51:25 general said that he lost the election his own people are flipping on him now saying that they've always known you 51:32 know his own Chief of Staff his own team of lawyers they're the ones saying we knew all the LA we just we lied because 51:39 it served us well shame on all of them shame on all of them I mean even with all this 51:45 going on you don't feel despondent do you oh heavens no uh you know I was 51:51 thinking just uh this morning A friend of mine brought it up uh about 51:56 1968 now Lee this may have been before your time a little bit it was I'm a 75 52:03 baby but in 1968 uh I was a senior in college uh the Vietnam War was 52:10 escalating Lyndon Johnson was sending tens of thousands of Americans into 52:15 Vietnam to be slaughtered and to slaughter Vietnamese uh it was a complete and utter catastrophe uh and I 52:24 was active in the ANW War movement uh and then in the midst of all of this Eugene McCarthy decided to run great um 52:32 and then Martin Luther King was assassinated uh and Bobby Kennedy decided to run and that's great and then 52:39 he was assassinated uh and and then the Democrats lost the presidency to none 52:45 other than Richard Nixon I mean think of 1968 as the bottom we are still not as 52:53 bad off as we were in 1968 well I'm glad to hear that I 52:59 thought you put it really well when you reminded us that it can be difficult to find Hope in cynical times but we have 53:05 to remember that the small actions and the small victories that we have they always lead to bigger ones and when we 53:12 have a bunch of small actions and small victories that's when the improbable becomes possible that we can't give up 53:18 we have to keep fighting you know so whether it's the election or the economy you posted on Instagram if we allow 53:24 ourselves to fall into fatalism and wallow in disappointment or become to resign to what is rather than what 53:31 should be that's when we lose the game that the greatest enemy of positive social change is cynicism about what can 53:38 be changed and what you're saying is look at 1968 look at how much we changed since then and look at what we could 53:46 still do in the future and I think you've said it beautifully that we have a moral duty to do everything we can 53:52 non-violently of course to ensure that our democracy surviv and you're still positive and I agree 53:58 with you that if we work together we really can set ourselves on a far greater path absolutely Lee uh and you 54:06 look at the young people today and how activist many of them are uh in unions and in politics uh 54:13 AOC uh so many other uh very very impressive young politicians uh you look 54:19 at the degree to which women uh are taking lead leadership roles 54:27 60% of University students today are women uh and that means we are 54:32 changing our leadership in this country in terms of what leadership looks like 54:38 uh black people and Latino people are gaining ground in all kinds of 54:44 leadership roles I I had lunch a couple of days ago with uh a wonderful 54:51 politician from Tennessee who was kicked out uh basically of the Tennessee 54:57 legislature and he is not going to allow that to continue he is leading a charge 55:04 a kind of a mission uh to improve what's what's happening in our democracy in 55:11 state legislator and so uh you know there's there's much to be positive 55:17 about yeah there certainly is well I want to thank you for joining us today Robert uh thank you for your time for 55:23 your intellect for your optimism we can all use an infusion of that right now um before you go tell people how 55:29 they can follow your work I know you just started an amazing 10p part series on your terrific substack which everyone 55:34 should by the way go and read about the contradictions between the common good and American capitalism I'm going to be 55:40 following that what else and how else can we follow you uh well uh inequality media uh which is a group that uh I 55:48 co-founded is a fabulous team of talented people uh putting out uh videos 55:57 uh every week uh that are reaching uh very very large numbers I mean millions and millions of people and affecting how 56:05 people understand the world changing people's attitudes because once they get 56:10 the information and once they get it in ways that they can actually assimilate uh it's amazing that people's values are 56:18 as Progressive as they really are so inequality media Civic action I would 56:23 say support it look for our videos uh on YouTube uh a very important source of 56:30 information absolutely because once the wool is Off Your Eyes it just does not go back on thank you so much thank you 56:38 Lee so that was Professor Robert Reich reminding us that we can have the wealth in the hands of the select few or we can 56:45 have democracy but we can't have both that we're at a moment in time where we must reimagine the way we do things and 56:52 take the Reigns back from the lobbyists and the corporations and the ultra wealthy to find a way to make America 56:58 work for us all being cynical won't help shutting down won't help in fact the 57:04 idea that we'll check out because it all feels too hard is part of the strategy and we can't fall into it I want to 57:10 thank Bob for joining us today and you for caring enough about democracy to be here now go check out inequality media 57:16 and see what else you can learn the world can be a better place it just starts with our knowing it until next 57:23 week pgf the politics girl podcast is written and performed by me Lee mcgallen in 57:30 partnership with the Midas media Network and produced and edited by happy warrior entertainment All rights 57:35 reserved