Robert Reich
The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.Collection: Equality
Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.Collection: Medical
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.Collection: Faith
True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.Collection: Memorial
Those at the top would do better with a smaller share of a booming economy that elicits a positive politics than they will do with an ever-larger share of an anemic economy that fuels the politics of anger.Collection: Anger
Technology is changing so fast that knowledge about specifics can quickly become obsolete. That's why so much of what technicians learn is on the job.Collection: Knowledge
We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.Collection: Business
There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.Collection: Business
We never used to blink at taking a leadership role in the world. And we understood leadership often required something other than drones and bombs. We accepted global leadership not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because it was in our own best interest. We knew we couldn't isolate ourselves from trouble. There was no place to hide.Collection: Leadership
The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters.Collection: Politics
Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.
Sugary drinks are blamed for increasing the rates of chronic disease and obesity in America. Yet efforts to reduce their consumption through taxes or other measures have gone nowhere. The beverage industry has spent millions defeating them.
What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the rest of the Ivy League are worthy institutions, to be sure, but they're not known for educating large numbers of poor young people.
Walmart is so huge that a wage boost at Walmart would ripple through the entire economy, putting more money in the pockets of low-wage workers. This would help boost the entire economy - including Walmart's own sales.
Bankruptcy laws allow companies to smoothly reorganize, but not college graduates burdened by student loans.
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.
Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.
Government subsidies to elite private universities take the form of tax deductions for people who make charitable contributions to them.
Standing up to bullies is the hallmark of a civilized society.
It's true that redistributing income to the needy is politically easier in a growing economy than in a stagnant one.
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.
Detroit is really a model for how wealthier and whiter Americans escape the costs of public goods they'd otherwise share with poorer and darker Americans.
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.
A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.
Most financiers, corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants are competing with other financiers, lawyers, lobbyists, and management consultants in zero-sum games that take money out of one set of pockets and put it into another.
Not only do unemployment benefits help families who are hurting; they also put money into their pockets that they'll then spend - and their spending will keep other Americans in jobs.
The silent majority really is a liberal majority, even though the word liberal has taken a real beating over the last 20 years by radical conservatives.
To get back to the kind of shared prosperity and upward mobility we once considered normal will require another era of fundamental reform, of both our economy and our democracy.
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.
America spends a fortune on drugs: more per person than any other nation on earth, even though Americans are no healthier than the citizens of other advanced nations.
I'm all in favor of supporting fancy museums and elite schools, but face it: These aren't really charities as most people understand the term.
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.
Public fear isn't something to be played with.
It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they're going too far.
Centrism is bogus.
Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
You can't create a political movement out of pabulum.
You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
It's not government's business what people do in their private bedrooms.
There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.
Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven't risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.
Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.
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.
A lot of attention has been going to social values - abortion, gay rights, other divisive issues - but economic values are equally important.
I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.
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.
Media outlets that are exploiting Ebola because they want a sensational story and politicians using it to their own ends ought to be ashamed.
Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.
America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.