“We “bowl alone,” as sociologist Robert Putnam has put it. Yet this fails to account for a monumental shift in whom we join and for what. We still join together, but now we join for services too expensive to purchase alone—child care, the schools our children attend, recreational facilities, and security...” PovertyInequalityCommon Good Book:The Common Good Source: The Common Good
“We are born, we grow up, we live our lives as best we can. If we are thoughtful we are good parents and good partners. If we are wise we strive for integrity and intimacy. If we are fortunate we discover love and joy. If we are able, we make the world a little better than we found it. That is all there is for any of us.” LoveLifePurposeRelationshipsGoodnessParentingMeaning Author:Robert B. Reich
“When Republicans recently charged the President with promoting 'class warfare,' he answered it was 'just math.' But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality. Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not. President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are.” PoliticsUnited StatesSocietyMoralityEconomicsMathematicsLiberalismConservatismClass WarfareBarack ObamaRepublican Party United States Author:Robert B. Reich
“It turns out that what money buys has rapidly diminishing emotional returns ... As long as we're not destitute, happiness depends less on getting what we want than appreciating what we already have.” HappinessAftershock Author:Robert B. Reich
“If nothing is done to counter present trends, the major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the "establishment"--political insiders, power brokers, the heads of American business, Wall Street, and the mainstream media--and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to "take back America" from them.” American PoliticsAnti EstablishmentPolitics As Usual Book:Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future Source: Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future
“Indentured servitude is banned, but what about students seeking to sell shares of their future earnings in exchange for money up front to pay for their college tuitions?” CapitalismSocialismIncome InequalityBernie SandersStudent Loan Debt Author:Robert B. Reich
“Tyrants view educated citizens as their greatest enemy.” EducationCitizensTyrantsEnemiesEducated People Author:Robert B. Reich
“Americans have clung to the meritocratic tautology that individuals are paid what they’re worth in the market, without examining changes in the legal and political institutions that define the market. This tautology is easily confused with a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid. Yet this claim is meaningful only if the system’s legal and political institutions are morally just. It has lured us into thinking nothing can or should be done to alter what people are paid because the market has decreed it. By this logic, the oligarchy is natural and inevitable.” PhilosophyPoliticsEconomicsSystemsWage Labor Book:The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Source: The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It