Robert Reich Quotes

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

“Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.”

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

“Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.”

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

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

— Robert Reich

“America has become the most unequal society among advanced countries, and rich people are now free to spend as much money on political campaigns as they wish.”

— Robert Reich

“It is a myth that higher taxes lead to less demand and slower growth. In the first three decades after World War II, US top tax rates on the wealthy were never below 70 percent.”

— Robert Reich

“One thing I've learned from 35 years in the classroom is that people learn best when they are laughing, when they are emotionally hit, that it's both the brain and the heart.”

— Robert Reich

“I'm 40 years old. What I have seen my whole life is widening income inequality.”

— Robert Reich

“When I was a kid, the bigger boys would pick on me. So I got an idea that I would make alliances with older boys, like just one or two, who would be my protectors.”

— Robert Reich

“If you ever want to get a sense of your own personal failure, look at yourself trying to get across a point that nobody is listening to and the situation gets worse and worse.”

— Robert Reich

“The Trans Pacific Partnership (and fast-track authority to whisk it through Congress without debate) is fast approaching. If you haven't seen our video about it, please watch. If you have, please share. And mobilize and organize friends and colleagues to call their senators and representatives to tell them to vote against this reprehensible deal.”

— Robert Reich

I mean, you hear the word 'globalization' over and over and over again. Globalization, globalization, globalization. Rarely has a word gone so directly from obscurity to meaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence.

— Robert Reich

As to the meaning of "corporate social responsibility," Friedman and I would agree: If a certain action improves the corporation's bottom line, there's no point in labeling it "socially responsible." It's just good business.

— Robert Reich

“I think re-engineering or restructuring or downsizing or rightsizing or whatever you want to call it, it's basically firing, has gone way too far. Employees, as I've talked to them across the country, feel that they are not respected, they are not valued, they are worried about their jobs. They simply feel that the company is no longer loyal to them. Why should they be loyal to the company, they ask me. Why should I go the extra mile? Why should I care?”

— Robert Reich

“Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you're not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You're basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich.”

— Robert Reich

“When corporations get special handouts from the government, subsidies and tax breaks, it costs you. It means you have to pay more in taxes to make up for these hidden expenses, and government has less money for good schools and roads, Medicare and national defense and everything else you need.”

— Robert Reich

“Regardless of how you interpret the facts, you have to come to the conclusion that inequality is widening in the US and in almost every other country.”

— Robert Reich

There are party leaders, big corporation, Wall Street. There are very wealthy individuals who kind of represent where the Democratic Party, the official Democratic Party was and to some extent still is.

— Robert Reich

“In Washington, it's dog eat dog. In academia, it's exactly the opposite.”

— Robert Reich

“The fastest growing occupation in the private sector is security guards. The fastest growing occupation in the public sector is prison guards. (1992)”

— Robert Reich

“The Democratic Party is DEAD.”

— Robert Reich

“Corporations don't create jobs, customers do. So when all the economic gains go to the top, as they're doing now, the vast majority of Americans don't have enough purchasing power to buy the things corporations want to sell - which means businesses stop creating enough jobs.”

— Robert Reich

“Bill Clinton was a very, very good speaker. But like many people who are great speakers and great thinkers and have a lot of energy and ambition, he talked too much.”

— Robert Reich

“The world of politics is divided between people who are introverts - who lose a little bit of energy out of each interaction they have so that by the time the day ends, after 1,000 interactions, they're exhausted - and people like Bill Clinton who are extroverted - who get a little bit of energy from each interaction.”

— Robert Reich