The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Friends, Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this week that Republicans will not call for cuts in Social Security or Medicare as they wheel and deal over the debt ceiling. He has promised to take Social Security and Medicare cuts “ off the table .” Here are 10 reasons why you shouldn’t believe him: 1.  It’s incredibly difficult to cut federal spending without touching Social Security and Medicare. Social...

Friends, Good morning, and welcome back to another Saturday morning coffee klatch with my guest Heather Lofthouse, who runs Inequality Media Civic Action and was also my student long ago. (I recently did a back-of-the-envelope estimate on how many of my former students are out there after 42 years of teaching, and it came to 28,000!) Each Saturday we talk about the highs and lows of the previous w...

Friends, Weeks after Elon Musk’s decision to reinstate Donald Trump on Twitter, Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) yesterday announced it will allow Trump back on its platforms, too. “The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying — the good, the bad and the ugly — so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of...

Friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student). This morning we take a look at the past week, in particular: — The debt ceiling scare, and the House Republicans’ attempt to hold the full faith and credit of the U.S. hostage to their demands. — George Santos, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boeber...

Friends, My good wishes to you on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I live in California, near the coast. Since the week after Christmas, we have been pummeled by eight “atmospheric rivers,” a weather phenomenon that summons moisture into a powerful band and then unleashes intense blasts of precipitation. The stream next to my house has become a river and some of the roads I rely on are impassible...

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student). In response to our discussion last week about work and family — and our New Year’s resolutions for how to better balance them — many of you asked how we actually spend our days. So that’s the topic of today’s klatch. (We’ll return to politics, economics, an...

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student), where we usually talk about the highs and low of the prior week. But with the new year just beginning and House Republicans tied up in knots, we thought we’d make today’s klatch a bit more personal: How we and others we know are trying to both do our work a...

Friends, Welcome to the challenges of 2023. Today I want to talk about one of the first. When the 118th Congress is sworn in tomorrow, Republicans will hold very narrow control of the House — 222 seats to the Democrat’s 213. The first thing they’ll do is vote for the next Speaker (who’ll determine the agenda for the House, what bills make it to the floor, the fate of critical legislation such as s...

My friends, It has been quite a year. Some of the regressive forces undermining our democracy, polluting our planet, widening inequality, and stoking hatred have been pushed back. This is a worthy accomplishment and cause for celebration. It offers hope that the Trump years are behind us and the hard work of building a decent society can resume. But this is no time for complacency. No one should a...

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student), where we look at the highs and lows of the week. But since today is Christmas Eve we thought we’d talk about what Christmas means to us. Please grab a cup and pull up a chair. And also take our poll. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this w...

Friends, Congress is on track in the coming week to give final approval to a national military budget for the fiscal year that is expected to reach about $858 billion — or $45 billion more than President Biden had requested and 8 percent more than last year. This is its highest level of military spending (adjusted for inflation) since the peaks in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between...

Friends, That Donald Trump is now hawking digital trading cards featuring images of himself as a superhero for $99 each tells you all you need to know about Trump and about NFTs. The recent implosion of Samuel Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto market offers another case in point. Months ago, FTX was huge. Now it’s a hole in the pockets of countless people who had put their money into it. (Until a few wee...

My friends, As Congress ends its first post-Trump term, the biggest political question hanging over America is this: When will the GOP finally reach its anti-Trump tipping point — when a majority of Republican lawmakers disavow him? Again and again, it looks like the tipping point is near but the GOP remains under Trump’s thumb. What about last month’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago, with Ye, formerly Kanye...

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student) — when we review the week’s highs and lows. Please grab a coffee and pull up a chair. Today, we consider: Kyrsten Sinema’s exit from the Democrats. Raphael Warnock’s embrace by the Democrats. Donald Trump’s latest disgrace. Heather’s and Bob’s views about th...

Friends, Texas has sued the Biden administration over its order to immigration agents to prioritize undocumented immigrants convicted of felonies rather than deport all undocumented immigrants. Texas argues that federal immigration law requires the government to deport every undocumented immigrant. The Biden administration says it doesn’t have the resources to deport the country’s estimated 11 mil...

Hello friends, Sometimes I feel like screaming at the mainstream media for failing to alert people to crucial (although complicated) issues affecting our democracy coming from different parts of government simultaneously. Case in point: Moore vs. Harper, argued yesterday before the Supreme Court, and the Electoral Reform Act, which must be enacted before the end of this Congress because Republican...

Freinds, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student, years ago). Grab a cup and pull cup a chair. Today, we talk about: — Biden and the Democrat’s decision to stop railway workers from striking. — Elon Musk’s decision to allow almost every hateful, deceptive person in the world to spew poison on Twitt...

A producer at ABC recently asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed for a documentary they’re making about Bill Clinton. I agreed. Then I asked when they’re planning to show it. “After he dies,” they said. “What!? Is he dying?” I asked, shocked. “Oh, no,” they said. “It’s for the archive.” “You mean, it’s for whenever he dies, even if that’s twenty years from now?” “Exactly.” “Even if you and I a...

Friends, Today is Giving Tuesday — a day to focus on personal charitable giving to worthy causes. But what I really want to talk about today is something quite different from charitable giving, although often confused with it: It’s called “effective altruism.” Known as EA to its practitioners, effective altruism urges people to give away a large share of their incomes. Fine as far as it goes. But...

Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with Heather Lofthouse, executive director of Inequality Media (and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week. Please grab a cup and pull up a chair. Today we’re still recovering from Thanksgiving, so we thought we’d change pace a bit and talk a bit about what we’re doing in our “spare” time — what we’re reading, what we’re wat...

Friends, Thanksgiving often brings up one of the central dilemmas in my life — trying to find a better balance between work and family, and failing miserably. It’s the word “balance” that’s always thrown me. I used to assume that a better balance meant more of what you really wanted and less of what you didn’t. For me, and perhaps many of you, that metaphor doesn’t help. Sure, I’ve met lots of peo...

When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, he clearly didn’t know that the key assets he was buying lay in Twitter’s 7,500 workers’ heads. On corporate balance sheets, the assets of a corporation are its factories, equipment, patents, and brand name. Workers aren’t considered assets. They appear as costs. In fact, payrolls are typically two-thirds of a corporation’s total costs. Which is why c...

Welcome to another of my Saturday coffee klatches with Heather Lofthouse, my colleague at Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week. Grab a cup and pull up a chair. Today we talked about: — Nancy Pelosi bows out of the Speakership and Kevin McCarthy bows in. Ugh. — Donald Trump declares his candidacy for president. Double ugh. — Elon...

Welcome to another of my Saturday coffee klatches with Heather Lofthouse, my colleague at Inequality Media Civic Action (and my former student). Grab a cup and pull up a chair. This week we discuss: — Why Democrats exceeded expectations in the midterm elections. — What will happen during the lame duck session? — What can we expect for the 2024 presidential race? — Why is Elon Musk warning that Twi...

Friends, Veterans Day is a time to honor those who have fought to protect American democracy, especially those who gave their lives so that our democracy can endure. We have just emerged from midterm elections that have tested that democracy as it has not been tested since the Civil War. In large part, our democracy passed that test. We are indebted to all candidates who peacefully and responsibly...