Quotes from Robert B. Reich

It's unfair that middle- and lower-income Americans have been paying a smaller share of federal income taxes and some pay no income tax at all. There's nothing unfair about it. Fairness requires that people who make more money pay a higher portion of their incomes in taxes than people with less money. That's called a progressive tax system, and it's been a foundation stone of America's tax code.

It's no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners' share of the nation's total income peaked twice, in 1928 and 2007—the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

What makes America's current polarization remarkable isn't the severity of our disagreements but the regressive right's unwillingness to seriously debate them. So

According to the Commerce Department, employee pay is down to the smallest share of the economy since the government began collecting wage and salary figures data in 1929. Meanwhile, corporate profits now constitute the largest share of the economy since 1929. In

Extending the Bush tax cuts will add $1.2 trillion to the nation's budget deficit in just two years.

In my experience, nothing good happens in Washington unless good people outside Washington become mobilized, organized, and energized to make it happen. Nothing worth changing in America will actually change unless you and others like you are committed to achieving that change.

The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003—and extended for two years in 2010—in 2011 saved the richest 1.4 million taxpayers (the top 1 percent) more money than the rest of America's 140,890,000 taxpayers received in total income. Leading to… The fifth dot: Government budgets are squeezed.

When large corporations have disproportionate power—not only over what's sold, but also over the rules for deciding what contracts are permissible and enforceable by law—those who are relatively powerless have no choice. The "free market" is not, in this sense, free. It offers no practical alternative.

The French government classifies books as an "essential good," along with electricity, bread, and water.

leaders need to help people overcome the four "work-avoidance mechanisms" that most of the rest of us carry around in our heads. Those mechanisms are denial that a problem exists, the desire to escape responsibility even when we recognize the problem, the tendency to scapegoat others for causing it, and—worst of all—cynicism about the possibility of ever remedying the problem.

In other words, the real reason the American economy tanked in 2008, and why we're still struggling to recover, is that the basic bargain has been broken. The big news isn't the slow return of jobs. It's the drop in pay. Most of the jobs we've gained over the last two years pay less than the jobs we've lost.

According to Commerce Department data, private sector wage gains over the last decade have even lagged behind wage gains during the decade of the Great Depression (4 percent over the last ten years, adjusted for inflation, versus 5 percent from 1929 to 1939).

The richest 5 percent of Americans spend only about half of what they earn, which isn't surprising. Being rich means you've got just about everything you want and need.

2012 the Pentagon said it wanted to buy fewer F-35 Joint Strike Fighter planes than had been planned—the single-engine fighter has been plagued by cost overruns and technical glitches—but the contractors and their friends on Capitol Hill vowed to fight the decision.

Personal responsibility is completely foreign to the highest echelons of the Street. Citigroup's stock fell 44 percent in 2011, but its CEO, Vikram Pandit, got at least $5.45 million on top of a retention bonus of $16.7 million. The stock of JPMorgan Chase fell 20 percent, but its CEO, Jamie Dimon, was awarded a package worth $22.9 million.

the sheer convenience of online political activism reduces its political potency.

The average American is unaware of this system—the patenting of drugs from nature, the renewal of patents based on insignificant changes, the aggressive marketing of prescription drugs, bans on purchases from foreign pharmacies, payments to doctors to prescribe specific drugs, and pay-for-delay—as well as the laws and administrative decisions that undergird all of it.

Socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption and often worse—such as authoritarian government officials who often have an increasing ability to interfere with both the economy and individual lives—which they frequently do to maintain power," he wrote, adding that socialism would be "a disaster for our country.

Republicans want us to believe that the central issue is the size of government, but the real issue is whom government is for.

Let America be America again," pleaded Hughes: "The land that never has been yet— / And yet must be—the land where every man is free. / The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

Republicans claim public sector workers now take home more generous pay and benefits packages than private sector workers. It's not true on the wage side if you control for level of education, but it wasn't even true on the benefits side until private sector benefits fell off a cliff.

It's scandalous that the four hundred richest Americans should pay an average of 17 percent tax on their incomes, a rate lower than that paid by many in the middle class.

First, forget politics as you've come to see it as electoral contests between Democrats and Republicans. Think power. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system and the vast majority who have little or none.

They will commit to reversing the vicious cycle even if that means living less comfortably.