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America was once celebrated for and defined by its large and prosperous middle class. Now, this middle class is shrinking, a new oligarchy is rising, and the country faces its greatest wealth disparity in eighty years. Why is the economic system that made America strong suddenly failing us, and how can it be fixed?
Leading political economist and bestselling author Robert B. Reich presents a paradigm-shifting, clear-eyed examination of a political and economic status quo that no longer serves the people, exposing one of the most pernicious obstructions to progress today: the enduring myth of the “free market” when, behind the curtain, it is the powerful alliances between Washington and Wall Street that control the invisible hand. Laying to rest the specious dichotomy between a free market and “big government,” Reich shows that the truly critical choice ahead is between a market organized for broad-based prosperity and one designed to deliver ever more gains to the top. Visionary and acute, Saving Capitalism illuminates the path toward restoring America’s fundamental promise of opportunity and advancement.
- Sales Rank: #12333 in Books
- Brand: Vintage Books
- Published on: 2016-05-03
- Released on: 2016-05-03
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.99" h x .60" w x 5.13" l, .81 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
- Vintage Books
Review
Praise for Robert B. Reich’s Saving Capitalism
A Publishers Weekly Business & Economics Top 10 selection for Fall 2015
"Ambitious. . . . Reich makes a very good case that widening inequality largely reflects political decisions that could have gone in very different directions. . . . Saving Capitalism is a very good guide to the state we’re in." —The New York Review of Books
“If you want to understand why income and wealth inequality are the economic, political, and moral issues of our time, you must read this book. Robert Reich is one of the best economists in modern American history. This book is a roadmap on how to rebuild the middle class and fix a rigged economy that has been propped up by a corrupt campaign finance system.” —United States Senator Bernie Sanders
“[A] sweeping treatise on inequality in America. . . . A rallying call.” —The New York Times Book Review
“One of Reich’s finest works, and is required reading for anyone who has hope that a capitalist system can indeed work for the many, and not just the few.” —Salon
“Like any good teacher, Robert Reich knows that making a simple yet crucial idea stick often takes much time and many presentations of the concept. . . . In Saving Capitalism, Reich drives home a basic fact that, if widely understood, could lift America from today’s destructive political standoff.” —Chicago Tribune
“A well-written, thought-provoking book by one of America’s leading economic thinkers and progressive champions.” —The Huffington Post
“Engrossing. . . . [Reich] is calmly articulate, not alarmist; yet a sense of urgency pulses through his unambiguous prose.” —The Argonaut (Los Angeles)
“Audacious. . . . Offers a pragmatic reform-filled path forward. . . . [Reich takes] on the very language used by the business world that perpetuates the myth that the private sector exists as magical sphere entirely unrelated to government.” —EcoWatch
“Reich has both the stature and eloquence to make a compelling case. His sharply argued critique is therefore highly recommended to all readers. . . . Insightful.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“An arresting, thought-provoking treatise on the need to reverse the trend of income inequality in the U.S. . . . Reich’s powerful final argument is that Americans need to rid themselves of the idea that it’s too late to change their economy.” —Publishers Weekly
“An accessible examination of how the ‘apparent arbitrariness and unfairness of the economy [has] undermined the public’s faith in its basic tenets’. . . . The author takes a measured view even as he argues against free market orthodoxies, [and] he arrives at some innovative reforms. . . . Reich’s overriding message is that we don’t have to put up with things as they are. It’s a useful and necessary one.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This is an important and provocative book about the erosion of America’s middle class by one of the nation’s most astute and passionate social critics. Reich provides an original and compelling analysis of how the rules governing America’s form of capitalism have contributed to growing income inequality and of how these rules have been distorted by the role of money in the U.S. political system.” —Laura D’Andrea Tyson
“Robert Reich has written a riveting guide to how our economic and political system has become so badly flawed, distorted by pervasive rent seeking and monopolies. He explains our rising inequality and our poor economic performance. Wholesale reform is needed—far beyond the usual prescriptions of raising the minimum wage and spending more money on education.” —Joseph Stiglitz
“Robert Reich sets the terms for new and more productive debates by rediscovering the political roots of the economic arrangements we too often take for granted. Everyone concerned with our economic future will need to grapple with Reich’s arguments in 2016 and beyond.” —Lawrence H. Summers
About the Author
Robert B. Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He has served in three national administrations and has written fourteen books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into twenty-two languages, and the bestsellers Supercapitalism and Locked in the Cabinet. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is co-creator of the award-winning 2013 film Inequality for All. He is also chair of the national governing board of Common Cause. He lives in Berkeley.
www.robertreich.org
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
chapter 1
The Prevailing View
It usually occurs in a small theater or a lecture hall. Someone introduces me and then introduces a person who is there to debate me. My debate opponent and I then spend five or ten minutes sparring over the chosen topic—education, poverty, income inequality, taxes, executive pay, middle-class wages, climate change, drug trafficking, whatever. It doesn’t matter. Because, with astounding regularity, the debate soon turns to whether the “free market” is better at doing something than government.
I do not invite this. In fact, as I’ve already said and will soon explain, I view it as a meaningless debate. Worse, it’s a distraction from what we should be debating. Intentional or not, it deflects the public’s attention from what’s really at issue.
Few ideas have more profoundly poisoned the minds of more people than the notion of a “free market” existing somewhere in the universe, into which government “intrudes.” In this view, whatever inequality or insecurity the market generates is assumed to be the natural and inevitable consequence of impersonal “market forces.” What you’re paid is simply a measure of what you’re worth in the market. If you aren’t paid enough to live on, so be it. If others rake in billions, they must be worth it. If millions of people are unemployed or their paychecks are shrinking or they have to work two or three jobs and have no idea what they’ll be earning next month or even next week, that’s unfortunate but it’s the outcome of “market forces.”
According to this view, whatever we might do to reduce inequality or economic insecurity—to make the economy work for most of us—runs the risk of distorting the market and causing it to be less efficient, or of producing unintended consequences that may end up harming us. Although market imperfections such as pollution or unsafe workplaces, or the need for public goods such as basic research or even aid to the poor, may require the government to intervene on occasion, these instances are exceptions to the general rule that the market knows best.
The prevailing view is so dominant that it is now almost taken for granted. It is taught in almost every course on introductory economics. It has found its way into everyday public discourse. One hears it expressed by politicians on both sides of the aisle.
The question typically left to debate is how much intervention is warranted. Conservatives want a smaller government and less intervention; liberals want a larger and more activist government. This has become the interminable debate, the bone of contention that splits left from right in America and in much of the rest of the capitalist world. One’s response to it typically depends on which you trust most (the least): the government or the “free market.”
But the prevailing view, as well as the debate it has spawned, is utterly false. There can be no “free market” without government. The “free market” does not exist in the wilds beyond the reach of civilization. Competition in the wild is a contest for survival in which the largest and strongest typically win. Civilization, by contrast, is defined by rules; rules create markets, and governments generate the rules. As the seventeenth-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it in his book Leviathan:
[in nature] there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
A market—any market—requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market.
The rules are neither neutral nor universal, and they are not permanent. Different societies at different times have adopted different versions. The rules partly mirror a society’s evolving norms and values but also reflect who in society has the most power to make or influence them. Yet the interminable debate over whether the “free market” is better than “government” makes it impossible for us to examine who exercises this power, how they benefit from doing so, and whether such rules need to be altered so that more people benefit from them.
The size of government is not unimportant, but the rules for how the free market functions have far greater impact on an economy and a society. Surely it is useful to debate how much government should tax and spend, regulate and subsidize. Yet these issues are at the margin of the economy, while the rules are the economy. It is impossible to have a market system without such rules and without the choices that lie behind them. As the economic historian Karl Polanyi recognized, those who argue for “less government” are really arguing for a different government—often one that favors them or their patrons. “Deregulation” of the financial sector in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, for example, could more appropriately be described as “reregulation.” It did not mean less government. It meant a different set of rules, initially allowing Wall Street to speculate on a wide assortment of risky but lucrative bets and permitting banks to push mortgages onto people who couldn’t afford them. When the bubble burst in 2008, the government issued rules to protect the assets of the largest banks, subsidize them so they would not go under, and induce them to acquire weaker banks. At the same time, the government enforced other rules that caused millions of people to lose their homes. These were followed by additional rules intended to prevent the banks from engaging in new rounds of risky behavior (although in the view of many experts, these new rules are inadequate).
The critical things to watch out for aren’t the rare big events, such as the 2008 bailout of the Street itself, but the ongoing multitude of small rule changes that continuously alter the economic game. Even a big event’s most important effects are on how the game is played differently thereafter. The bailout of Wall Street created an implicit guarantee that the government would subsidize the biggest banks if they ever got into trouble. This, as I will show, gave the biggest banks a financial advantage over smaller banks and fueled their subsequent growth and dominance over the entire financial sector, which enhanced their subsequent political power to get rules they wanted and avoid those they did not.
The “free market” is a myth that prevents us from examining these rule changes and asking whom they serve. The myth is therefore highly useful to those who do not wish such an examination to be undertaken. It is no accident that those with disproportionate influence over these rules, who are the largest beneficiaries of how the rules have been designed and adapted, are also among the most vehement supporters of the “free market” and the most ardent advocates of the relative superiority of the market over government. But the debate itself also serves their goal of distracting the public from the underlying realities of how the rules are generated and changed, their own power over this process, and the extent to which they gain from the results. In other words, not only do these “free market” advocates want the public to agree with them about the superiority of the market but also about the central importance of this interminable debate.
They are helped by the fact that the underlying rules are well hidden in an economy where so much of what is owned and traded is becoming intangible and complex. Rules governing intellectual property, for example, are harder to see than the rules of an older economy in which property took the tangible forms of land, factories, and machinery. Likewise, monopolies and market power were clearer in the days of giant railroads and oil trusts than they are now, when a Google, Apple, Facebook, or Comcast can gain dominance over a network, platform, or communications system. At the same time, contracts were simpler to parse when buyers and sellers were on more or less equal footing and could easily know or discover what the other party was promising. That was before the advent of complex mortgages, consumer agreements, franchise systems, and employment contracts, all of whose terms are now largely dictated by one party. Similarly, financial obligations were clearer when banking was simpler and the savings of some were loaned to others who wanted to buy homes or start businesses. In today’s world of elaborate financial instruments, by contrast, it is sometimes difficult to tell who owes what to whom, or when, or why.
Before we can understand the consequences of all of this for modern capitalism, it is first necessary to address basic questions about how government has organized and reorganized the market, what interests have had the most influence on this process, and who has gained and who has lost as a result. To do so, we must examine the market mechanism in some detail.
2
The Five Building Blocks of Capitalism
In order to have a “free market,” decisions must be made about
•property: what can be owned
•monopoly: what degree of market power is permissible
•contract: what can be bought and sold, and on what terms
•bankruptcy: what happens when purchasers can’t pay up
•enforcement: how to make sure no one cheats on any of these rules
You might think such decisions obvious. Ownership, for ex- ample, is simply a matter of what you’ve created or bought or invented, what’s yours.
Think again. What about slaves? The human genome? A nuclear bomb? A recipe? Most contemporary societies have decided you can’t own these things. You can own land, a car, mobile devices, a home, and all the things that go into a home. But the most important form of property is now intellectual property—new designs, ideas, and inventions. What exactly counts as intellectual property, and how long can you own it?
Decisions also underlie what degree of market power is permissible—how large and economically potent a company or small group of firms can become, or to what extent dominance over a standard platform or search engine unduly constrains competition.
Similarly, you may think buying and selling is simply a matter of agreeing on a price—just supply and demand. But most societies have decided against buying and selling sex, babies, and votes. Most don’t allow the sale of dangerous drugs, unsafe foods, or deceptive Ponzi schemes. Similarly, most civilized societies do not allow or enforce contracts that are coerced or that are based on fraud. But what exactly does “coercion” mean? Or even “fraud”?
Other decisions govern unpaid debts: Big corporations can use bankruptcy to rid themselves of burdensome pension obligations to their employees, for example, while homeowners cannot use bankruptcy to reduce burdensome mortgages, and former students cannot use it to reduce burdensome student debts.
And we rely on decisions about how all these rules are enforced—the priorities of police, inspectors, and prosecutors; who can participate in government rule making; who has standing to sue; and the outcomes of judicial proceedings.
Many of these decisions are far from obvious and some of them change over time, either because social values change (think of slavery), technologies change (patents on novel arrangements of molecules), or the people with power to influence these decisions change (not just public officials, but the people who got them into their positions).
These decisions don’t “intrude” on the free market. They constitute the free market. Without them there is no market.
What guides these decisions? What do the people who make the rules seek to achieve? The rules can be designed to maximize efficiency (given the current distribution of income and wealth in society), or growth (depending on who benefits from that growth and what a society is willing to sacrifice to achieve it, such as fouling the environment), or fairness (depending on prevailing norms about what constitutes a fair and decent society); or they can be designed to maximized the profits of large corporations and big banks, and the wealth of those already very wealthy.
If a democracy is working as it should, elected officials, agency heads, and judges will be making the rules roughly in accordance with the values of most citizens. As philosopher John Rawls has suggested, a fair choice of rule would reflect the views of the typical citizen who did not know how he or she would be affected by its application. Accordingly, the “free market” would generate outcomes that improved the well-being of the vast majority.
But if a democracy is failing (or never functioned to begin with), the rules might instead enhance the wealth of a comparative few at the top while keeping almost everyone else relatively poor and economically insecure. Those with sufficient power and resources would have enough influence over politicians, regulatory heads, and judges to ensure that the “free market” worked mostly on their behalf.
This is not corruption as commonly understood. In the United States, those with power and resources rarely directly bribe public officials in order to receive specific and visible favors, such as advantageous government contracts. Instead, they make campaign contributions and occasionally hold out the promise of lucrative jobs at the end of government careers. And the most valuable things they get in exchange are market rules that seem to apply to everyone and appear to be neutral, but that systematically and disproportionately benefit them. To state the matter another way, it is not the unique and perceptible government “intrusions” into the market that have the greatest effect on who wins and who loses; it is the way government organizes the market.
Power and influence are hidden inside the processes through which market rules are made, and the resulting economic gains and losses are disguised as the “natural” outcomes of “impersonal market forces.” Yet as long as we remain obsessed by the debate over the relative merits of the “free market” and “government,” we have little hope of seeing through the camouflage.
Before examining each of the five building blocks of capitalism separately, it is useful to see how political power shapes all of them and why market freedom cannot be understood apart from how such power is exercised, and by whom.
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252 of 263 people found the following review helpful.
Please read
By Dienne
I have been recommending this book far and wide to anyone and everyone who will listen. Not necessarily because I agree with everything in the book, but because of Reich’s simple, laymen explanation of the building blocks of the “free” market – property, monopoly, contract, bankruptcy and enforcement – and how those elements are, in fact, determined by the government. As Reich himself says repeatedly throughout the book, it’s not a conflict between “government” on one hand and the “free market” on the other hand. The government, through laws, regulations and judicial proceedings, actually creates the market. It’s not even a matter of the size of the government – “big government” vs. “small government”. It’s a matter of who controls the government and in whose interests these laws, regulations and judicial proceedings work – the majority of the people/society as a whole? Or a rich and influential few? Furthermore, Reich destroys the notion that those rich and influential few deserve the power and wealth that they control because they have “earned it”.
After an introductory chapter, Reich spends the first five chapters explaining each of the building blocks of the market and how those can be manipulated to either protect and support the majority of the people or to promote the interests of the powerful few. What types of things can be owned and how is that ownership allocated? Tangible goods may be obvious but what about intangible things like intellectual property, large platforms like the internet or cable, or even labor? Furthermore, what share of any particular market is it okay for any individual or corporation to own? What kinds of contracts can be made, especially in situations in which the parties to a contract may not have equal power? When a party to a contract cannot fulfill it, what protection does such party have? What rights does the creditor have? And when these issues end up in court, how are they decided?
In the period after World War II until the 1970s or so, Reich demonstrates how these building blocks were used to protect jobs, health, the environment and the rights and interests of ordinary Americans. But since the 1980s and the rise of “supply sided economics”, and especially since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision earlier this decade, large corporations and powerful individuals have used their influence to encourage elected officials to create laws and policies that favor the interests of the powerful. For instance, he describes at length the patent process and how Big Pharma and others have lobbied to extend patents nearly indefinitely, and how Big Pharma has even paid generic drug companies to delay releasing generic drugs even after the patent has finally expired, which forces Americans to pay very high prices for drugs available much cheaper elsewhere (and Big Pharma has lobbied to restrict Americans from buying such cheaper drugs from foreign pharmacies over the internet). As another example, customers and employees are often forced to sign contracts mandating that disputes be arbitrated by an arbitrator of the company’s choosing (which said arbitrator is most likely to favor the company that is paying them over the customer or employee). Reich gives dozens of other examples of how the “free” market is rigged against ordinary Americans and it’s done intentionally by powerful individuals and corporations exerting their influence on the government in order to create the market in their favor. He demonstrates how these rules and policies redistribute wealth upward as the market works. Talk of “redistribution” of wealth through taxes (generally thought to be “socialist” is a non-starter because the wealth is already redistributed before the fact.
Reich goes on to explore and explode the myth of “meritocracy” – the idea that we all “earn” what we “deserve” in the market. Reich points out that that is obviously true in a tautological sense. We get what we get because we can’t get more. But from the working poor to the non-working rich, he demonstrates the fallacies that lie behind such thinking. He looks at how, in the past, the value of labor itself has often been considered to provide a stake in the final output and income of the company itself. After all, no goods or services would be provided without the people who do the work. But over the last few decades, only those providing the capital are viewed as stakeholders, so labor, consumers, and society as a whole loses out.
For these reasons I recommend the book to every American to get a clear understanding of the distortion of the “free market” propaganda. But that’s not to say that the book doesn’t have its flaws. For one thing, Reich relies rather heavily on the passive voice. While he does make it clear that these laws and policies have been implemented intentionally at the behest of the powerful few, he denies that these powerful few have any moral culpability. They are just acting on their own self-interest, the same as you and I. I’m sorry, but no. My taking a job, for instance, in which I know that other candidates lost out because I succeeded, is not at all the same as, for instance, repealing the laws that protected commercial banking funds from risky investment and speculation so that big bankers can gamble with federally-protected savings accounts. Most of us consider the needs of other people as we go about doing the best to provide for ourselves and our families. Most of us don’t feel the need to reduce food stamps and take money out of poor people’s mouths just so that we could make another couple million. In fact, there’s a reason why most of us are not multi-millionaires or billionaires – we’re simply not ruthless enough.
Secondly (and relatedly) Reich doesn’t talk nearly enough about the mechanisms of this influence. He talks a lot about “lobbying”, but he really doesn’t explore what that word means. When I was in high school civics, we learned that lobbying is simply talking or writing to your elected official to try to convince him or her of your point of view and get his/her vote in your favor. But if that’s all it is, why do companies suddenly have so much more influence that ordinary citizens, especially considering how many more of us there are? So the guy from Monsanto is just that much more persuasive than Farmer Joe from Kansas? Or is there something more behind Monsanto’s persuasiveness that Farmer Joe doesn’t have access to? Sure, Monsanto can afford to hire people to do nothing but talk to Congressmen, while Farmer Joe is busy planting, tilling and harvesting his fields. Reich does talk about campaign contributions and promises of lucrative jobs post-government service, but he really needs to go into much more depth.
He could also stand to talk in depth about the media. The major media, including print and broadcast services, are almost entirely owned by six media corporations. Reich does cover this a tiny bit in his section on monopoly, but the implications are staggering. In addition to the money pouring into politician’s campaign coffers, citizens are hampered by a lack of information. There is almost a complete media black-out on certain aspects of how the government is run, unless one spends one’s time scouring blogs and alternate media. The media also control the range of “acceptable” opinions – anything outside that range is the lunatic fringe. For example, should we invade XYZ Muslim country with boots on the ground, or should we contain the situation with drones and special ops? Not getting involved at all is crazy talk. Should we bail out the banks or not? Bailing out the people and letting the banks fail is crazy talk.
Reich’s final chapters address his solutions for the ills he lays out in the majority of the book. Most such solutions are simply repealing the bad laws and policies that have been enacted as he’s explained earlier in the book. Get rid of Citizen’s United. Outlaw the revolving door between government service and the corporate world. Reduce patent lengths. Outlaw pay-for-delay. Etc. Reich seems to believe that such moves are completely possible. I’d like to believe him. With an informed and energetic citizenry, I think he would be right. But one of the most impressive aspects of the neoliberal takeover has been the containment of the populace. We as a nation are either so busy making ends meet or so distracted by games and gadgets, that we’ve willingly allowed a corporate coup under our very noses. More and more people are waking up and realizing what’s happening, but at the same time we have less and less voice. Our survival will depend upon not getting sidetracked by the liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican narrative and coming together as citizens of a nation that are all in it together, whether we want to be or not. But the same people who control our government and the media (and, more and more, education) benefit from these false fights and will stir them up as long as they can. I’m not sure I have faith in the American people to see past the propaganda.
I will say again that I salute Reich for writing such a clear and cogent explanation of the fallacies of the “government vs. free market” debate. Again, every American should read this book. My criticisms are just my wishing that he’d taken his arguments just a bit further, and such criticisms are, perhaps, just a bit unfair – like criticizing the receiver who returned a kick-off for ninety yards, but didn’t quite make it the last couple yards for a touchdown. Reich’s voice is especially important now as we head into the primaries for the 2016 elections. Reich does list a few criticisms of the Bill Clinton administration in which he served and what he wishes would have been done differently. I hope he’ll loudly raise those same criticisms as Hillary campaigns for the Democratic nomination.
118 of 125 people found the following review helpful.
Reich is always worth reading, even if you don't agree with his prescriptions.
By Narut Ujnat
I have read a few books by Robert Reich and generally enjoyed them. His book "Locked in the Cabinet" is probably one of the greatest expositions on serving as a secretary (in his case in Secretary of Labor during the first Clinton term) and dealing with a government bureaucracy as exists. Moreover, his book The Work of Nations was also a very interesting book about how the economy was changing on the 1990's. And, a lot of his descriptions have turned out to be accurate. Of course, I also read a book he wrote on the 1980's about how Japan was going to rule the world. That book was a product of it's time and was pretty incorrect in many ways.
In that context, I was offered the chance to read through and review an advance copy of the book. If you have an interest in economic issues that is aimed for the general lay-reader, this is a valuable and interesting read. Reich's critique is aimed at showing how the American landscape is changing in ways perceptive people realize or perhaps don't realize. This includes the real implosion of the middle class, the rise of tremendous economic inequality and the changing American economy.
In addition, Reich discusses the financial system as benefiting the investment class and the idea of the rigged game. Finally, Reich offers ideas on how to counteract this system that he believes is failing the bulk of Americans, such is raising the minimum wage.
Now, personally I would agree with many of Reich's descriptions and I enjoyed the narrative. But, I largely disagree with his prescriptions on addressing these issues. But, I think if you disagree with Reich (and he is often skewered), this is still a worthwhile book. It isn't 800 pages (a very manageable 200 + pages) and I still was challenged and learned things.
Overall, this is a valuable read and a good critique of what certainly is affecting the economy and how a large segment of Americans are suffering.
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Cogent and compelling
By Mal Warwick
If you’ve ever been exposed to Robert Reich’s “Wealth and Poverty” course at UC Berkeley, perhaps through the film Inequality for All, or heard him speak in public, you know that there are few people alive today who are his equal in the ability to explain complex economic and social issues so cogently and compellingly. And few indeed are as funny as he is, either: the man could make a go of a career with a standup act.
capitalismHowever, there’s not a lot of humor in Saving Capitalism, Reich’s fifteenth book. In this brilliant long essay, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor takes on the economic issues of the day from a perspective that rarely comes to light in public discourse: he rejects the widespread assumption that a “free market” exists independent of government.
“A market — any market — requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game,” Reich writes. The size of government, the preoccupation of the American Right for the past four decades, is a distraction from the reality that big corporations and the country’s wealthiest people have steadily rigged the rules that structure the economy — through lobbying, massive political contributions, and the courts. Society’s biggest challenge today, inequality in wealth and income, was the inevitable result of the steady shift of power to the “1%” from the rest of us, as Occupy Wall Street so famously pointed out. “The critical debate for the future is not about the size of government,” Reich adds; “it is about whom government is for.” This is a view of American society from 30,000 feet.
Reich cites a study by two scholars who set out to gauge “the relative influence . . . of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups, and average citizens.” The study concluded, “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” In other words, everything you ever feared about the influence of the 1% is true.
As Reich explains in a particularly enlightening chapter, “The Decline of Countervailing Power,” the principal reason why Wall Street, the corporations, and the superrich have managed to enrich themselves at the expense of the middle class and the working poor is that the counterweight to what we call the 1% today has steadily withered away since the 1970s. Reich refers to the “interest groups and membership organizations — clubs, associations, political parties, and trade unions — to which politicians were [once] responsive.”
The most potent of these factors was, of course, the labor movement. Following World War II, labor stood toe-to-toe with Big Business when it came to employees’ wages and working conditions and wielded huge influence in Washington. As we’re so painfully aware, that is far from the case today — but the decline of organized labor didn’t happen by accident. It was engineered beginning in the early 1970s by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and their Republican allies, working from the top down through the courts, the Congress, and state governments across the country. Reich doesn’t tell this story, perhaps because it’s so well known.
Saving Capitalism should be required reading for every American who wishes to understand the way our society works today. Unfortunately, though the book has already begun to climb on the bestseller lists, we can be sure that will never happen in an era when a megalomaniacal reality TV star is topping the polls in the Republican presidential primary competition.
Robert B. Reich served three presidents — Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton — in the course of a long and distinguished career in academia and government. Currently he is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
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