The Immense Value of Robert Reich — Writing Understandably about Stomp-Down Capitalism’s Obvious Wrongs

© 2015 Peter Free

 

28 April 2015

 

 

It is difficult to be clear, brief and persuasive at the same time

 

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich does this regularly. He reassuringly reminds readers that they are not crazy, when they think there is something wrong with the United States’ plutocrat-rewarding, worker-stomping economic system:

 

 

As I travel around America, I’m struck by how utterly powerless most people feel.

 

The companies we work for, the businesses we buy from, and the political system we participate in all seem to have grown less accountable. I hear it over and over: They don’t care; our voices don’t count. 

 

A large part of the reason is we have fewer choices than we used to have. In almost every area of our lives, it’s now take it or leave it.

 

Companies are treating workers as disposable cogs because most working people have no choice. They need work and must take what they can get.

 

Consumers, meanwhile, are feeling mistreated and taken for granted because they, too, have less choice.

 

Finally, as voters we feel no one is listening because politicians, too, face less and less competition. Over 85 percent of congressional districts are considered “safe” for their incumbents in the upcoming 2016 election; only 3 percent are toss-ups.

 

[A] growing sense of powerlessness in all aspects of our lives – as workers, consumers, and voters – is convincing most people the system is working only for those at the top.

 

© 2015 Robert Reich, Why So Many Americans Feel So Powerless, RobertReich.org (26 April 2015) (extracts)

 

Reich goes on the prove his points with examples.

 

 

The moral? — If you cannot relate to the above quotation, you are either not thinking with perception — or you are one of the tiny fraction of people floating happily on a pile of power-granting lucre

 

It is as if we have returned to the blantant laissez faire extortion of the 1890s. See, for example, Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit (Simon & Schuster, 2014).

 

Like the most admirable journalists of that era, Robert Reich regularly reminds us that our culture is gravely ill. That takes persistence and a sense of humanitarian mission — qualities that are in short supply, when it comes to trying to rectify our rotting society.