Robert Reich Quotations

True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

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.

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.

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.

A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Community colleges are great bargains. They avoid the fancy amenities four-year liberal arts colleges need in order to lure the children of the middle class.

You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.

Standing up to bullies is the hallmark of a civilized society.

The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters.

Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.

One tax dodge often used by multi-national companies is to squirrel their earnings abroad in foreign subsidiaries located in countries where taxes are lower.

News and images move so easily across borders that attitudes and aspirations are no longer especially national. Cyber-weapons, no longer the exclusive province of national governments, can originate in a hacker's garage.

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.

There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.

Rather than subsidize 'American' exporters, it makes more sense to subsidize any global company - to the extent it's adding to its exports from the United States.

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.

Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven't risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.

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.

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.

Before the rise of the nation-state, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them.

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.

Evidence suggests jobs are crucial not only to economic well-being but also to self-esteem.

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.

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality fo result. Its equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference.

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.

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.

It's true that redistributing income to the needy is politically easier in a growing economy than in a stagnant one.

Over the long term, the only way we're going to raise wages, grow the economy, and improve American competitiveness is by investing in our people - especially their educations.

Money buys the most experienced teachers, less-crowded classrooms, high-quality teaching materials, and after-school programs.

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.

America is one of few advanced nations that allow direct advertising of prescription drugs.

You might say those who can't repay their student debts shouldn't have borrowed in the first place. But they had no way of knowing just how bad the jobs market would become.

Average working people need more fresh starts. Big corporations, banks, and Donald Trump need fewer.

Our young people - their capacities to think, understand, investigate, and innovate - are America's future.

There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.

As income from work has become more concentrated in America, the super rich have invested in businesses, real estate, art, and other assets. The income from these assets is now concentrating even faster than income from work.

We need a national infrastructure bank to rebuild our crumbling highways and water and sewer systems, thereby putting additional people back to work.

Bankruptcy laws allow companies to smoothly reorganize, but not college graduates burdened by student loans.

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.

By the mid-1950s, more than a third of all America workers in the private sector were unionized. And the unions demanded and received a fair slice of the American pie.

A lot of attention has been going to social values - abortion, gay rights, other divisive issues - but economic values are equally important.

If we give up on politics, we're done for. Powerlessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

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.

As digital equipment replaces the jobs of routine workers and lower-level professionals, technicians are needed to install, monitor, repair, test, and upgrade all the equipment.

Yes, the rich will find ways to avoid paying more taxes, courtesy of clever accountants and tax attorneys. But this has always been the case, regardless of where the tax rate is set.

As long as the big banks are allowed to remain big, their political leverage over Washington will remain big. And as long as their political leverage remains big, the taxpayer and economic tab for the next mess they create will be big.

Patagonia, a large apparel manufacturer based in Ventura, California, has organized itself as a 'B-corporation.' That's a for-profit company whose articles of incorporation require it to take into account the interests of workers, the community, and the environment, as well as shareholders.

If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully enforced and through penalties higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.

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.

The generosity of the super-rich is sometimes proffered as evidence they're contributing as much to the nation's well-being as they did decades ago when they paid a much larger share of their earnings in taxes.

Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

The job creators are members of America's vast middle class and the poor, whose purchases cause businesses to expand and invest.

It's not government's business what people do in their private bedrooms.

Teachers, social workers, public lawyers who bring companies to justice, government accountants who try to make sure money is spent as it should be - all need at least four years of college.

Conservatives believe the economy functions better if the rich have more money and everyone else has less. But they're wrong. It's just the opposite.

Corporations aren't people. They have no brains, no consciences, no capacity for intent or guilt.

The 'free market' is the product of laws and rules continuously emanating from legislatures, executive departments, and courts.

The Tea Party is but one manifestation of a widening perception that the game is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful.

Universities have to tame their budgets, especially for student amenities that have nothing to do with education.

America's real business leaders understand unless or until the middle class regains its footing and its faith, capitalism remains vulnerable.

As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.

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.

In reality, most of America's poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.

Increasingly, corporate nationality is whatever a corporation decides it is.

Media outlets that are exploiting Ebola because they want a sensational story and politicians using it to their own ends ought to be ashamed.

Public employees should have the right to bargain for better wages and working conditions, just like all employees do.

Those who take their money abroad in an effort to avoid paying American taxes should lose their American citizenship.

We don't have to sit by and watch our meritocracy be replaced by a permanent aristocracy, and our democracy be undermined by dynastic wealth.

What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.

You can't create a political movement out of pabulum.

Economies are risky. Some industries rise, and others implode, like housing. Some places get richer, and others drop, like Atlantic City. Some people get new jobs that pay better, many lose their jobs or their wages.

The curious thing is Americans don't mind individual mandates when they come in the form of payroll taxes to buy mandatory public insurance. In fact, that's the system we call Social Security and Medicare, and both are so popular politicians dare not touch them.

A Democratic president should propose a major permanent tax reduction on the middle class and working class. I suspect most of the public would find this attractive.

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.

Official boundaries are often hard to see. If you head north on Woodward Avenue, away from downtown Detroit, you wouldn't know exactly when you left the city and crossed over into Oakland County - except for a small sign that tells you.

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.

When I was a small boy, I was bullied more than most, mainly because I was a foot shorter than everyone else.

During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced.

In 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis tried to form a union. The city resisted. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life.

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.

Nations are becoming less relevant in a world where everyone and everything is interconnected. The connections that matter most are again becoming more personal.

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.

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.

The monied interests are doing what they do best - making money. The rest of us need to do what we can do best - use our voices, our vigor, and our votes.

The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout - an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street.

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.

When times are tough, public employees should have to make the same sacrifices as everyone else.

Drug company payments to doctors are a small part of a much larger strategy by Big Pharma to clean our pockets.

The only way to make sure no bank is too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big.

Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years, if not decades, to pay off.

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.

In truth, government has been good to Wall Street and big business.

It is hard to bite the hands that feed you, especially when you are competing for food.

It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they're going too far.

Limits should be placed on how big big banks can become.

On the Republican playing field, Republicans always win.

Only if everyone buys insurance can insurers afford to cover people with preexisting conditions or pay the costs of catastrophic diseases.

Public fear isn't something to be played with.

Public institutions are supported by all taxpayers and are available to all.