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More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores.
And now he shows what massive inequality has done to equal opportunity and how it has eroded upward mobility:
And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than fifty-fifty chance of becoming middle-class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class.
It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.
What should we do about this? We should not turn to protectionism or become neo-Luddites, nor should we turn to some version of government planning:
Fortunately, that’s not a future we have to accept. Because there’s another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country—a view that’s truer to our history; a vision that’s been embraced by people of both parties for more than two hundred years. It’s not a view that we should somehow turn back technology or put up walls around America. It’s not a view that says we should punish profit or success or pretend that government knows how to fix all society’s problems. It’s a view that says in America, we are greater together—when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share.
So what does that mean for restoring middle-class security in today’s economy?
It starts by making sure that everyone in America gets a fair shot at success. The truth is, we’ll never be able to compete with other countries when it comes to who’s best at letting their businesses pay the lowest wages or pollute as much as they want. That’s a race to the bottom that we can’t win—and shouldn’t want to win. Those countries don’t have a strong middle class. They don’t have our standard of living.
…The fact is, this crisis has left a deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street. And major banks that were rescued by the taxpayers have an obligation to go the extra mile in helping to close that deficit. At minimum, they should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis, and working to keep responsible homeowners in their home. We’re going to keep pushing them to provide more time for unemployed homeowners to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their house.
I wish the Obama administration had made this a condition for the banks receiving bailouts. Nonetheless, on December 6, 2011, President Obama correctly diagnosed the challenge facing America—and laid out the argument for increasing taxes on the rich, investing in the rest of us, requiring corporations and Wall Street banks that reap benefits from being in America to create good jobs for Americans, and protecting our democracy from being corrupted by money. Here, finally, was the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008.
One hopes this message will be taken to heart by Americans, and that those whom we elect to the highest offices in the land will reverse the growing inequities and game-rigging practices now undermining the American economy and American democracy.
But they cannot and will not do this on their own. We must make them.
Acknowledgments
My abiding appreciation once again goes to my assistant, Rebecca Boles, for her steadfast and cheerful help in preparing this book for publication, and to Manuel Castrillo, for his superb technical support. As with my other books, this one would not have happened but for the thoughtful guidance of my longtime editor and friend, Jon Segal, and the sage advice of my literary agent, Rafe Sagalyn. I’m also grateful to Jeff Alexander for helping guide this into paperback. I owe special thanks to my students and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, whose interest in and commitment to a better world are boundless.
ROBERT B. REICH
Beyond Outrage
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. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, and he served as an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations (which has been translated into twenty-two languages), Supercapitalism, and the best sellers The Next American Frontier, The Future of Success, Locked in the Cabinet, and, most recently, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause. His biweekly commentaries on public radio’s Marketplace are heard by nearly five million people. In 2003, Reich was awarded the prestigious Václav Havel Foundation Prize for pioneering work in economic and social thought. In 2008, Time magazine named him one of the ten most successful cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century, and The Wall Street Journal named him one of the nation’s ten most influential business thought-leaders.
www.robertreich.org
ALSO BY ROBERT B. REICH
Aftershock
Supercapitalism
Reason
I’ll Be Short
The Future of Success
Locked in the Cabinet
The Work of Nations
The Resurgent Liberal
Tales of a New America
The Next American Frontier
AS EDITOR
The Power of Public Ideas
AS CO-AUTHOR, WITH JOHN D. DONAHUE
New Deals: The Chrysler Revival and the American System
ALSO BY ROBERT B. REICH
* * *
AFTERSHOCK
The Next Economy and America’s Future
When the nation’s economy foundered in 2008, blame was directed almost universally at Wall Street bankers. But Robert B. Reich suggests another reason for the meltdown. Our real problem, he argues, lies in the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the richest Americans, while stagnant wages and rising costs have forced the middle class to go deep into debt. Reich’s thoughtful and detailed account of the American economy—and how we can fix it—is a practical, humane, and much-needed blueprint for rebuilding our society.
Economy
THE FUTURE OF SUCCESS
Working and Living in the New Economy
Americans may be earning more than ever before, but they’re paying a steep price: they’re working longer and seeing their families less, and their communities are fragmenting. With clarity and insight, Robert B. Reich delineates what success has come to mean in modern times. Although people have more choices as consumers and investors, these choices are undermining the rest of their lives. It is getting harder for them to be confident of what they will earn next year, or even next month. These trends are powerful but not irreversible, and Reich makes provocative suggestions for a more balanced society and more satisfying lives.
Business
LOCKED IN THE CABINET
In this compelling memoir, former Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich debunks and demystifies Washington as never before. He honors the much-maligned civil servants who make government work and skewers the politicians who bring it to a halt. He tells us
what he and Bill Clinton dreamed of achieving and why some of those dreams didn’t come true. Never has a presidential administration been chronicled with such wit and warmth, or its triumphs and failures assessed with such exuberant candor.
Autobiography
REASON
Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America
In the pages of Reason, Reich mounts a defense of classic liberalism that’s also a guide for rolling back twenty years of radical conservative domination of our politics and political culture. Reich shows how liberals can shift the focus of the values debate from behavior in the bedroom to malfeasance in the boardroom, and reclaim patriotism from those who equate it with preemptive war-making and the suppression of dissent.
Politics
THE RESURGENT LIBERAL
And Other Unfashionable Prophecies
In The Resurgent Liberal, one of the most tough-minded bearers of the torch of liberalism not only champions a cause but looks fairly and unblinkingly at the opposition. Robert B. Reich carefully examines the four “parables” conservatives have exploited to monopolize American politics and outlines what liberals must do to take it back.
Political Science
SUPERCAPITALISM
The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life
From one of America’s foremost economic and political thinkers comes a vital analysis of our new hypercompetitive and turbocharged global economy and the effect it is having on American democracy. With his customary wit and insight, Reich shows how widening inequality of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and corporate corruption are merely the logical results of a system in which politicians are more beholden to the influence of business lobbyists than to the voters who elected them.
Politics
THE WORK OF NATIONS
There is no longer such a thing as an American economy, says Robert B. Reich. What does it mean to be a nation when money, goods, and services know no borders? And how can our country best ensure that all citizens have a share in the new global economy? Reich defines the real challenge facing the United States in this trailblazing book. Original, readable, and vastly informed, The Work of Nations is certain to set the standard for the next generation of policy-makers.
Economics
VINTAGE BOOKS
Available wherever books are sold.
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