How We Build an Economy That Works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8Vvev2Op_M | Robert Reich
Robert Reich Sep 2, 2024 building an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and big corporations. not trickle down but bottom up.. Everything You Need to Know About the New Economy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMmH_2EYohQ | Robert Reich
Robert Reich not demand and supply but Institutions. Nuances of the skills gap issue. Markets are not free but depend on rules.. Countervailing power needed for capitalism to work...
Everything You Need to Know About the New Economy | Robert Reich
Apr 2, 2019
Robert Reich explains how the modern economy really works and what we can do to expand economic opportunity.
My Ultimate History Crash Course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFhEoeA5Yj0 | Robert Reich Feb 21, 2024
Are we in a second Gilded Age? Is Trump really a Fascist? Why are we so politically polarized? How did corporations take over our politics?
The Monopolization of America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLfO-2t1qPQ Monsanto.-adanitoo!
Comment: When I was studying economics in college (it was my major) Robert Reich was Sec. of Labor, before leaving to take up his post at Cal. (UC Berkeley)
I really regret that during the Reagan Administration, I was working on Wall St as a banker (one of the "honest ones"), yet could see that the winds of change were ramping up in speed and strength. The absence of any attention paid to the huge monopolies being formed, the breaking of unions (the Patco—air traffic controllers union was one of the first) put the nation's flight routes in danger from over-worked and tired people in the towers. And that was only the beginning. So when are the powers-that-be going to start enforcing the anti-trust laws??? Those monopolies (in a nation that idolizes "rugged individualism", no less) are harmful to the middle-class, which, as Dr. Reich reminds us, is at the core of our democratic society.
I learned everything Professor Reich said in this video, and most from his other videos, while studying political science at the university. And all that knowledge, along with many other things I learned along the way, is why I went in to college a die hard libertarian and emerged as a staunch progressive. Education provides more insight into the issues; makes you confront your biases; takes you out of your echo chamber and pops your isolated intellectual bubble.
I was stubborn for the first couple of years, but class after class kept shooting holes in the arguments and policies I once championed until I could no longer defend or support them.
It's frustrating knowing this stuff while knowing that most people have no clue about it and are often very stubborn and set in their thinking, while being reinforced in their echo chambers most of the time, and thus refuse to learn something new and challenge their views. It comes as a relief to see things like Prof. Reich's videos that make it easy for laypeople to understand.
And btw, no, college wasn't an indoctrination camp of leftists making you see their point of view. We were presented with both (or many) sides of every issue, as well as their pros and cons from critics and supporters. And I didn't get low marks on papers and assignments when I still held my libertarian mindset. As long as you can make a solid argument in a well written paper, you get good grades; regardless of your viewpoint.
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@evilfingers4302
5 years ago
Getting rid of Citizens United is an excellent start
558
@LuckyDogProductions
5 years ago
Do not forget - the cost of a HOME went up 500% from 1999 to 2006 because of BANK inflating the cost to sell CDOs, thus making everyone broke.
209
@TimBradleyFromOz
5 years ago
The first goal has to be to teach people about the corrosive influence of money in politics - something you do well!
Bravo.
21
@tomdegan6924
4 years ago
His video essays are priceless. He is a national treasure.
5
@1p6t1gms
5 years ago
I love that Whiteboard, brilliant, today's economy explained so everyone understands it immediately.
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extract of Transcript (to be corrected )
The biggest economic story of our times isn’t about supply and demand. It’s about institutions
and politics. It’s about power.
The median annual earnings of full-time wage and salaried workers in 1979, in today’s
dollars, was $43,680. The median earnings in 2018 was $45,708.
If between 1979 and 2018, the American economy almost tripled in size,
so where did the gains go? Most went to the top.
Now this is broadly known, but there is less certainty about why.
Conventional wisdom attributes the widening economic divide to globalization and technological
change -- the “inevitable” result of the invisible hand of the so-called “free market.”
Simply put, as the American economy merged with the rest of the globe, American workers
had to compete with foreign workers willing to toil for a fraction of American wages.
And as technology advanced, American workers also had to compete with software and robots
that were cheaper to employ than Americans.
So, according to this conventional view, the only realistic way to raise the wages of most
Americans is to give them more and better education and job training, so they can become
more competitive. They can thereby overcome the so-called “skills gap” that keeps
them from taking the jobs of the future – jobs and opportunities generated by new technologies.
The conventional story isn’t completely wrong, and education and training are important.
But the conventional view leaves out some of the largest and most important changes,
and therefore overlooks the most important solutions.
To understand what really happened, it’s critical to understand that there is no “free
market” in nature. The term “free market” suggests outcomes are objectively fair and
that any “intervention” in the free market is somehow “unnatural.” But in reality,
markets cannot exist without people constructing them. Markets depend on rules, and rules come
out of legislatures, executive agencies, and courts. The biggest political change over
the last four decades is the overwhelming dominance of big money in politics – influencing
what those rules are to be.
Now, go back to the first three decades after World War II -- a period that coupled the
greatest economic expansion the world has ever seen with the creation of the largest
middle class the world has ever witnessed. The great economic thinker John Kenneth Galbraith
asked at the time: Why is capitalism working so well for so many?
His answer was as surprising as it was obvious: American capitalism contained hidden pools
of what he called “countervailing power” that offset the power of large corporations,
Wall Street, and the wealthy: labor unions, state and local banks, farm cooperatives,
and small retail chains, for example. All of these sources of countervailing power had
been fostered by the New Deal. They balanced the American economic system.
But since the late 1970s, these sources of countervailing power have been decimated,
leading to an unbalanced system and producing widening economic inequality and stagnating
wages. The result has become a vicious cycle in which big money – emanating from big
corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy -- determine the rules of the economic game,
and those rules generate more money at the top.
Consider, for example, the ever-expanding tax cuts or loopholes for large corporations,
the financial sector, and the wealthy. Contrast them with increases in payroll taxes for average workers.
Or look at the bank and corporate bailouts but little or no help for homeowners caught
in the downdraft of the Great Recession.
Finally, look at the increasing barriers to labor unions, such as the proliferation of
so-called “right-to-work” laws and the simultaneous erosion of antitrust and the
emergence of large concentrations of corporate power.
The public knows the game is rigged, which is why almost all the political energy is
now anti-establishment. This is a big reason why Trump won the 2016 election.
Authoritarian populists through history have used anger and directed it
at racial and ethnic minorities and foreigners.
It’s also a big reason why the only alternative to authoritarian populism is progressive populism
-- countervailing the moneyed interests with a democracy that reorganizes the market to
benefit the many rather than a small group at the top.
How do we build a new countervailing power and move toward a new progressive economics?
First, we need to talk about economics in terms of political power
1. The choice isn’t between a free market and government. The question is who has the
power to organize the market, and for whom.
2. Stagnant wages, job insecurity, widening inequality, and mounting wealth at the top
are the result of political choices. The system is rigged and must be un-rigged.
3. Conventional economics posits that the most important goals are efficiency and economic
growth. But policies can be “efficient” by making the rich even wealthier as long
as no one else is worse off -- and that won’t remedy what’s happened. Economic growth
is meaningless if the gains from growth keep going to the top and nothing trickles down.
4. Stop assuming that all that’s needed is better education and job training.
Sure, Americans need access to better schools and skills, but the basic problem isn’t simply
a “skills gap.” It’s a market that’s organized to push more income and wealth toward
the top, rather than distribute it broadly.
5. Stop aiming to “redistribute” from richer to poorer after the market has distributed income.
Instead, change the organization of the market so that a fair pre-distribution
occurs inside it.
6. Stop thinking that the goal is only to create more jobs. America’s real jobs crisis
is a scarcity of good jobs.
7. The American economy cannot generate widespread prosperity without a large and growing middle
class whose spending fuels the economy.
Second, to get this done, build a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, coalition of the middle class,
working class, and poor.
Don’t let the moneyed interests divide and conquer along racial and gender lines. Racism
and sexism are very real issues within our economic system, and they are often exploited
to keep us from realizing the power we can have when we stand together. All are disempowered
by the moneyed interests, and all have a stake in rebuilding countervailing power.
Third, offer a compelling set of ideas about what should be done with countervailing power.