An Exchange with Robert Reich
By Wade Hudson
Fighting a rainstorm and competing with the Giants game, on Saturday, October 23, Robert Reich, author and professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, drew more than 100 people to a book-signing event in remote West Marin County. I drove 90 minutes to get there because I wanted to ask him a specific question.
While taking notes on his talk and following the Giants on my phone, I got to ask my question with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. After his answer, which I liked, I checked the score and learned that I'll be going to the first game of the World Series (with a $155 seat behind home plate). I took the timing of these events to be a good omen.
In his opening remarks, Reich highlighted key points from his latest book, Aftershock, and reflected on his recent book tour. What struck him most on that tour was that so many people, both left and right, are bewildered and angry. “I’m not an economic determinist,” he said. “But at least some of that anger is due to the economy.”
Thirty years ago, Reich pointed out, wages began to stagnate. But most people didn’t notice due to certain coping mechanisms they employed. First, more women entered the paid work force, until the limit was reached in the 90s. Second, workers began working longer hours, until this limit was reached. Then, families began to borrow more, until the housing bubble burst.
Now we’re in a predicament. According to Reich, ordinary Americans “don’t have enough purchasing power to get us out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.”
Still, we’ve had economic growth. “Where did all the money go?” Reich asked. “To the top,” he answered. During the late 70s, the top 1% took only 9% of the nation’s total personal income. By 2007, they took 23%.
Since 1913, only one other year, 1928, had that concentration of income. That extreme inequality contributed greatly to the Great Depression. “So it’s in the interest of the people at the top to reverse this trend,” Reich argued.
As Reich sees it, the Obama Administration learned that in a financial crisis it is necessary to pump money into the economy. But it hasn’t learned, as FDR did, that “you must reorganize the economy to widen prosperity.” FDR established the minimum wage, Social Security, a more progressive income tax, and other programs to “spread the wealth.”
“I say to the top,” Reich said, “you’ll do better with a smaller share, especially if it fosters a more positive politics rather than demagogues and the politics of resentment, which creates various scapegoats, like China, Muslims, and immigrants. Sixty-one percent of Tea Partiers say global trade is bad for America. This is isolationism. If you do not support broad-based prosperity, you’ll find yourself worse off in many ways.”
Reich concluded his opening remarks on an optimistic note: “This country has demonstrated remarkable resilience when we understand the nature of the problem.”
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Reich then introduced Peter Barnes, who led off the question-and-answer period. “I’m not convinced about the optimism. In your book, you say it will take a crisis, an even worse crisis. That’s my thinking.”
Reich replied, “No, actually what I said is that if there’s not another crisis, we’ll eventually see the light but it will take longer.” Where might that crisis come from? Austerity programs, both in our states and in other countries, “with a currency war pending.” And when people realize how much secret funding is going into political campaigns because of the Citizens United ruling, “there will be an outrage and a reckoning.”
Barnes then said Reich’s recommendations constitute a bargain with the middle class. “I’m not sure we need to restore the old bargain based on high paying manufacturing jobs,” he said. “Those days are gone. Shouldn’t the new bargain be based on something other than good high paying jobs?”
Reich responded, “Right. We can’t go back to those days. But we can supplement wages. And education adds to the value people can create over the course of the lives. This is not rocket science. It’s a matter of political will.”
Barnes then asked, “We’ve had trouble selling the idea of percolate up economics. Why?”
“The media is controlled and manipulated by people with great wealth,” Reich responded. “And the right has message discipline, with a handful of wordsmiths who shape their discourse.” The left has no similar mechanisms, partly because of our resistance to authoritarianism, he said, following with an amusing, colorful description of that resistance.
Shifting tone, Barnes asked Reich to identify his recent favorite and least favorite interviews. Reich replied that the most difficult one was “The Colbert Report.” Confronted with a “very funny” interviewer pretending to be a right-wing zealot, Reich found it “hard to keep a straight face.”
He then told the story of a MSNBC producer who kept telling him through his earpiece to be angrier. Reich refused, not wanting to reinforce the coarsening of our political discourse.
Barnes then opened the floor to the audience. The first questioner disagreed with Reich’s reluctance to target China. Reich stuck to his opposition to scapegoating.
Another questioned his emphasis on economic growth and asked, “What about simple living?” Reich said, “I distinguish between consumerism and the capacity to produce all kinds of things.”
Asked about the threat of a peak-oil crisis, he expressed his support for a carbon tax that wouldn’t be regressive because the revenue would go to wage supplements.
An environmentalist argued that we should treat the economy as a subsystem of nature. Reich responded by describing the roots of economics in moral philosophy.
Referring to the report that two Supreme Court justices participated in a seminar funded by the Koch brothers that may have focused on crafting campaign messages, a questioner asked about the significance of that event. Reich said he found it hard to believe that Supreme Court justices would be so blatantly political but if they were, it would be grounds for impeachment. And he said the Citizens United decision was as bad as Dred Scott and Gore vs. the U.S.
Another audience member said, “I’m one of those mad people. I thought we could make progress but I only see small progress, so I’m disenchanted with the Democrats.” Reich replied, “I don’t want to be a defender of the Democratic Party, but I do want to speak about against cynicism. I know there are limits to what any President can do without a highly energized, well-organized citizenry. What really appalls me is the failure of progressives to mobilize, like when Clinton decided to support welfare reform.”
Reich then described how it was widely known that Clinton had not decided whether to veto welfare reform when one day Reich went to a meeting and urged Clinton to oppose it. As Reich left the White House, he hoped to see a demonstration on the issue outside the White House. “But no one was protesting,” he said. “Not one placard. It’s that failure that I find most frightening.” Clinton later signed the legislation.
The last questioner referred to a New Yorker article on the Koch brothers and asked, “Given the media concentration, how can we get our democracy back?” Reich offered an upbeat response. “It’s not that bleak because most people under 30 get their evening news from Stewart and Colbert. We used to be dependent on yellow journalism and bribery was even worse. Then we had the Progressive Era, which included support from some elites who knew that otherwise there would be a backlash.”
“The choice is whether to concede to a politics of fear,” Reich concluded. “The long-term thrust of our history is an expansion of opportunity and the franchise. That will be the long-term trajectory of the future.”
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Early in the discussion period, I asked, “Given your interest in building political will and establishing message discipline, do you think it might help if the economic justice movement focused on a proposal to tax the top 1% to fund a federal revenue sharing program to enable local governments to hire workers to help meet pressing social and environmental needs?”
I then elaborated, “The top 1% currently pay only 23% of their income in income taxes. If they paid 26% it would generate about $50 billion annually for a revenue sharing program. And giving local governments unconditional grants would avoid complaints about ‘big government.’”
Reich responded, “Revenue sharing is a great idea. Other taxes are possible too, like a tax on financial transactions.” He then presented a list of tax ideas and concluded, “Your idea is good, and I can add on to it, but no good idea can compete with an Orwellian idea that is repeated over and over.”
After the public forum, when he signed my copy of his book, I asked him if he might meet with some community-based leaders to discuss the idea of how to push for a revival of revenue sharing. He replied, “I don’t know. Write me at [email address].”
Several weeks ago, I raised the subject of developing a nonviolent action arm for the economic justice movement with Rev. Dorsey Blake, head of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. He responded positively and said he’d be willing to host a meeting at his church.
Then, after doing some research about the General Revenue Sharing program that operated successfully from 1972 to 1986, I wrote Jakada Imani, Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center, and asked him, “Might you be willing to organize and convene an exploratory meeting to consider developing a national economic-justice movement rooted in the principles of Martin Luther King? An initial focus might be on taxing the super-rich to revive the federal revenue-sharing program.” Jakada responded, “I think this is super interesting and would love to talk to you more about it (in November).”
Greatly encouraged by these responses, I wanted to confirm the viability of a new federal revenue-sharing program with Reich. I figured if there were any serious glitches with the notion, he would likely point them out. His response reassured me.
His comments about the “appalling” and “most frightening” lack of a “highly energized, well-organized” progressive movement also struck me. Leaving the hall, it dawned on me that the fragmented, impotent nature of the progressive movement had been on full display that night in Point Reyes. The discussion was largely about policy, rather than how to build a movement.
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Nonviolent action focused on economic justice could help coalesce and strengthen the progressive movement. At this point, taxing the top 1% to fund revenue sharing seems to be the best initial focus. It’s clear, concise, and politically viable.
My plan is to continue to develop these ideas into an action plan, solicit broad feedback to help refine them, and seek to identify individuals who, like myself, would be willing to act if and when a strong, inclusive leadership group forms to guide the project, whatever its initial focus.
My hope is that Robert Reich will be involved in this effort.
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NOTES:
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5) For background on revenue sharing:
End of Federal Revenue Sharing Creating Financial Crises in Many Cities, Lindsey Gruson, The New York Times, 1/31/87
“General Revenue Sharing: Background and Analysis,” Steven Maguire, Congressional Research Service (2009)
