The Coffee Klatch with Robert Reich

Within weeks of taking office, Britain’s new Prime Minister, Liz Truss, and her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, proposed a radical new set of economic measures that echoed the trickle-down policies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — heavy on tax cuts for the rich and deregulation. Last Monday, after a backlash from investors, economists and members of his own party, Mr. Kwarteng...

Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover: — Friday’s jobs report, and why the media is getting it wrong. — Billionaire influence over the midterm elections. — Saudi’...

Gallup reports that a whopping (and record) 72 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 approve of labor unions. That’s especially remarkable given that a bare 3 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 belong to one. Despite the recent victories of Starbucks workers and noteworthy efforts by Amazon warehouse workers, the rate of union membership in America has fallen to its lo...

Conservative economists shrug their shoulders at the record accumulation of wealth at the very top of America. They claim it’s not a problem because wealth is not a zero-sum game: A huge amount at the top doesn’t necessarily reduce the wealth (or potential wealth) of anyone else. They fail to see that wealth begets power. And power is a zero-sum game. Its possession by certain people means others...

Elon Musk just revived his bid for  Twitter Inc.  at his original offering price of $44 billion — or $54.20 a share — thereby avoiding a courtroom fight. (Musk made the proposal in a  letter  to Twitter on Monday, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.) So, after six months of brainless brawling bedlam, it looks like Twitter now goes to Elon. But should this critical so...

One of my goals in this newsletter is to help you uncover the ways wealth and power shape public policy. Today, I’m going to focus on a topic that may seem wonky to you — but that’s exactly the point. Its very wonkiness disguises the power dynamic lying behind it. The issue is how we measure the economy. Start with the rate of inflation — how fast prices are rising. That number is now driving the...

Friends, Sorry to intrude on your day once again, but I can’t remain silent in the face of Trump’s tirade against Mitch McConnell. On Friday, Trump criticized McConnell for approving Democratic bills, and asked rhetorically if McConnell has done so “because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them.” Trump concluded by asserting that McConnell “has a DEATH WISH.” These a...

My friends, Make no mistake: Donald Trump is effectively on the ballot in the midterm elections, five weeks from tomorrow (voting has already begun in several states). Even if he decides not to run, he’s laying the groundwork for authoritarianism. In the upcoming midterms, 60 percent of us will have an election denier on our ballot , most of them endorsed by Trump. In the key battleground states o...

Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover: — Hurricane Ian and Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis’s demonizing of “socialism.” — The Republican Party’s traditional haran...

No Republican governor has been more vocal in his opposition to what he describes as “socialism” than Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis. “I stand against socialism,” DeSantis thundered in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. “Socialist policies have failed time and time again.” In June, DeSantis signed an education bill directing Florida’s Department of Education to develop a curriculum educating...

On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019. Over those thirty years, the share of total national weaheld by families in the top 1% increased from 27 percent to 34 percent, while families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2 percent. Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the h...

In a post here on September 8, I asked the billionaires who are bankrolling candidates who have tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election how they rationalize spending their fortunes financing insurrection. I specifically included Peter Thiel, Stephen Schwarzman, Steve Wynn, Patrick Byrne, and Ken Griffin in my question. Ken Griffin, the multi-billion-dollar CEO of the hedge fund Citadel,...

Last week, a panel of medical experts recommended for the first time that doctors screen all adult patients under 65 for anxiety disorders. The advisory group, called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, said the guidance was intended to help prevent mental health disorders from going undetected and untreated for years or even decades. It made a similar recommendation for children and teenager...

Last Wednesday, Vladimir Putin announced that Russian civilians would be drafted to bolster forces in his unpopular war in Ukraine. Almost immediately, the Kremlin faced widespread opposition, including demonstrations. On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that “citizens with higher education” would be exempt from the draft, especially those in telecommunications, information techno...

Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover: — profit-price inflation rather than wage-price inflation — Tump rallies and his embrace of QAnon — Republican candidates w...

Friends, Today’s New York Times has a story about Russia’s powerful internet regulator, Roskmnadzor, whose collection of personal data about average Russians has, in the Times’s words, “catapulted Russia, along with authoritarian countries like China and Iran, to the forefront of nations that aggressively use technology as a tool of repression.” A few weeks ago, the Times ran a story about China’s...

It makes my blood boil. Since March I’ve been screaming about the Fed’s total misreading of inflation — believing it’s being caused by workers getting wage hikes, when the real cause is powerful corporations raising prices higher than their costs. I’m not so grandiose as to think my screams would have any direct influence on the Fed. My hope was that my argument and data might be picked up by a fe...

Friends, One of the most horrific legacies of Trump is the unwillingness of Republican candidates to commit to being bound by election results. Senate candidates who have refused to commit to accepting the results are Republicans Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, and J.D. Vance in Ohio, according to news reports . Two candidates for governor have also...

I’m against trafficking of migrants. But luring unsuspecting people onto planes with lies about jobs, housing, and education awaiting them, and then depositing them onto an island off the coast of Massachusetts that’s totally unprepared to receive them, is a form of human trafficking. The people you’re talking about aren’t American citizens. They have no rights. Even if they’re not Americans, U.S....

Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch. Today I’m offline with family, so instead of our regular klatch, I’m bringing you a terrific conversation I just had with Nse Ufot , CEO of New Georgia Project (NGP). NGP is one of the most important grassroots voting-rights organizations — in one of the most important voting states. NGP is now registering over 600,000 young people and peop...

Yesterday, Donald Trump threatened that if he is indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” adding “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.” These words followed on last month’s threat by Senator Lindsey Graham that if Trump is prosecu...

A few days ago, I received an email from an associate producer at the Dr. Phil Show. They recently came across my film “ Inequality for All”  and wanted to know “if I’d be interested in joining Dr. Phil as an expert guest for an upcoming episode.” Hey, why not? The Dr. Phil Show is the number 1 rated daytime TV talk show in America. It has over 2 million viewers. I have lots to say to those viewer...

Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week, over morning coffee. Today we discuss: — The death of the Queen, what she symbolized for Britain and America, and why King Charles III may be the last of the British royals. —...

In early August, the good people of Kansas voted against a ballot measure that would have stripped from their state constitution a woman’s right to choose — and they did it by a whopping  18-point margin . Since then, and largely in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women have been registering to vote across the country in astounding numbers. Many appear to be...

I have a serious question. It’s for people who have power in America and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s Big Lie: What are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind? I don’t mean to be snide or snarky. I’m genuinely curious. I’m not interested in Trump’s answer to this question. He is too far gone — lost in the dept...