Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America
A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.
We are going to battle once again.
Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.
Regressives take the opposite positions.
Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards.
They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.
In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.
Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).
In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.
Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.
The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage.
This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.
Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they’re conservative jurists. But they’re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states’ rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.
Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.
Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.
In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.
Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America.
Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
116 Comments so far
Show AllUnlike Obama who has expanded corporate welfare at the expense of the 99%, at least Herbert Hoover (as Reich points out) "did nothing" so there were still resources available that enabled FDR to turn things around.
ray, you imply that we're more or less 'broke.' That is not true. It is a right-wing talking point, however. If we would get our shit together, spend what we need to move forward, in the long run we would be far richer.
We may not be broke in the European sense, but surely you can't believe we are not in deep financial do-do? And thats fact, not RW talking points.
Indeed. These folks refuse to face the honest truth. They still just don't get it (14 trillion), but believe you me, the day is coming that they will.
RR continues to delude himself and anyone that will listen to him. Reich's capitalist scams and the house of cards he and his buds on Wall Street and in Academia built are what brought us to where we are: More Than Broke.
OK, folks. Obviously we can not continue fighting big wars, reducing tax rates, allowing financial shenanigans which cost huge sums, and do nothing meaningful about the escalation of health care costs. However, with sane economic policies going forward, we easily have the resources to deal with this.
Now that makes complete sense. A pretty good start on a blueprint for that matter.
There are massive amounts of wealth. The problem is not a lack of wealth. The problem is that the 1% are hording the wealth to impoverish the 99%. Shared wealth generates prosperity for the 99%. Horded wealth impoverishes all but the 1%. The proof is in today's reality. The fix is in putting the wealth into the hands of the many. Multiple ways to accomplish the fix but being that the 1% control the world's governments, the fixes are not being applied.
Easy Fixes with a willing government by and for the 99%, We the People.
1. With a constitutional amendment, end corporate personhood once and for all.
2. End the Military Industrial Complex wars. The current wars have nothing to do with democracy, patriotism, or protection of We the People. They are wars of profit and empire. End them.
3. End the Bush Welfare for the Wealthy Tax Cuts
4. Tax Wall Street transactions. Main Street pays transaction taxes on all goods sold (Sales Tax), Wall Street can do the same.
5. Remove the cap on capital gains tax.
6. Reduce the inheritance tax level.
7. End all subsidies to polluters. (Oil, Gas, Coal, and Nuclear)
8. Implement Medicare for All and save billions - The most efficient and economical payer system that will reduce health care costs while providing health care for everyone from conception through death.
9. Publicize the Federal Reserve. Even thought Reich thinks that the Fed is a good idea, it isn't. (I have a problem with a blond blue eyed man with a name like Reich being involved in monetary and political policy issues. Change the spelling.) At least the Fed is not a good idea for the 99%. It works wonderfully well for the interests of the Banksters (1%), just not so well for We the People. The big problem with accomplishing this is the name Federal Reserve. Most people think it is a Federal agency. It isn't.
10. Take the revenues generated from the above and invest in our schools, infrastructure, and public resources (State National Parks and Forests, etc.).
11. Invest in renewable and green energy and become energy independent within 10 years. Our forefathers took our nation from a horse and buggy depend nation to a nation of automobiles in less than a decade and they did it without government assistance. When the 99% take control, we the people can end our usage of fossil fuels within the next decade.
When we accomplish just some of the above, our economy will not just take back stolen and then horded wealth, it will once again grow wealth and prosperity for the 99%. Don't worry about the 1%. They will be just fine. They always take care of themselves.
Hello Alani,
All good plans, but even if they can be accomplished, they will only be temporary. Every reform of capitalism, as long as you leave the control of corporations in the hands of a few capitalists, has been and always will be unstable. It's only a matter of time. The capitalists will use their wealth to buy more of the government, which will make them richer, so they can buy still more of the government, which will make them richer still. The spiral of wealth and power climbs inevitably upward until the rich control nearly all the marbles, and the game collapses for lack of purchasing power. As in 1929, and very soon again.
Aren't you tired of this cycle. The only way to stop it is to take the corporations away from the capitalists and turn them into democratic worker and community co-ops.
Unfortunately, however, Robert Reich has also not learned the lesson of the wealth - power spiral, and is also trying to construct temporary reforms. We can no longer afford this game because this time we are on the brink not only of economic collapse, but of ecological as well. We, the 99%, have got to be far more radical than we have ever been.
I wish to comment on alani's #9 point.
Mr. Reich may be blond and blue eyed. I assume that you know that Adolph was dark haired and I think of him as having brown eyes. The point is that if Adolph had to borrow money from the Fed he would have been unable to run a war. He would have been controlled by the Fed, or the Bank of England, or the Reichsbank or whatever bank.
Should the bankers control the industrial system, of which they know little or nothing, and from which, they suck off the cream and the gravy and the riches and the benefits, to the detriment of the industrial system? The bankers kept Britain and Canada and the United States in a depression while Adolph had ended it in Germany in 1935. Yes he did evil, but the financial system kept us powerless until it was almost too late.
Keep learning!
The nation is not broke--there is plenty of money out there, but everytime we "borrow" some more, it gets sucked up to the top. The reason we the people don't have money is because the top tier has almost all of it--and they are not sharing with the likes of us. BE INDIGNANT. Get involved. They may have all the money, but we are much, much more powerful. United we are unstoppable. Change Now!
Don't worry about the debt too much. That $13 Trillion WENT SOMEWHERE to SOMEONE. Or someone kept the taxes that should have been being paid all along. Same thing. Just need to cycle it back is all. Remember, roughly the equivalent of about $100 Billion A DAY is spent on eating in the world, or about $40 TRILLION A YEAR... just on eating. But it is circulation (and creation) that prevents this from being just an unpayable debt. One can't compare this social-economy circulation to a 'household budget' ,as the frigging Republican Liars do, in order to purposely confuse people.
And anyway, very much of what is owed is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund (stolen by Dubya Bush to make his idiotic budgets look better)... in other words it is owed to another part of the government. Smoke and mirrors. The Bush/Republican Era of Misrule caused, and is causing still, most of the debt. Yet the exact-same Republican politicians are now decrying the debt that THEY themselves created with their Bush-Era policies. How forked-tongue of them.
Oh, and by the way, the Federal Reserve spent $22 Trillion just now, saving the banks... but somehow it just can't see saving the nation itself. Money is a useful fiction, but it is a game that must be well-regulated so society can function, a Social society. When it pools up in private hands, gold hoards and the like, it fails, as it has now done.
Even so, the Rich are still grabbing US government bonds like crazy, so underneath it all, the Real Money is STILL betting on America, even when loudly vocalizing about the 'debt problem'. So what's going on? The debt issue is yet another Right-Wing Grift on the People.
And when just one money manager holds $9 Trillion, and just one mine I know of holds over $1 Trillion in gold reserves, just how much do you think America is really worth? How much do you think the American people are worth? There is a political question for you.
The debt issue is a Rabid-Right-Wing propaganda game. Even the evil Dick, Cheney, said deficits don't matter... but only until his side isn't running things, then they apparently do.
And if you want to talk debt, the Private hedge funds of the world have an accumulated debt of over One QUADRILLION dollars in leverage/hedges, according to the Bank of International Settlements in Switzerland. (Another reason why hedge funds should be seized and Banned!) So, America's debt is just a red herring. Get the money back from the people who got it. And create a decent society with it as payment-in-full.
Wasn't the 20's the era of the great mafia upwardly mobile efforts? Sounds like a plan to make all these federal PRIVATIZED FOR PROFIT* prisons come to great use. I think they want to make this country back into the robber baron, mafioso, drug running, killing spree country it once was, so those people can make a bundle with their private cops and private prisons. What a shit bag of putridness, someone needs to really expose these awful people on a personal level. You know their lives aren't clean, how could they be with that sort of attitude.
For profit...Trinity Services of Florida serves garbage, literally, as food in the prisons they serve.
Heckofa good idea, Stonepig. The Center for Media and Democracy's new website ,www.alecexposed, describes how our largest corporations, with compliant state legislators from each state, write corporate-friendly/anti-democracy legislation and get it passed. The organization is pretty much led by the Koch brothers, the National Chamber of Commerce, Grover Norquist and right-wing think tanks in each state.
(www.alec.org is the web site for the American Legislative Exchange Council, the group being exposed.)
A series of articles about specific companies and legislators would be hard to put together because ALEC is very secretive (are they secretly ashamed?), but would certainly be worth the work so that ordinary people can see the names and faces of those who are in charge of transferring all of America's wealth and power to a corporate elite.
Yeah, those no good republicans. Good thing for us we have the democrats fighting tooth and nail in the opposite direction, huh?
Show me a politician who fights "tooth and nail" for the common good, and I'll show you a relatively ineffectual, marginalized figure, who will have to find solace in small victories at best.
You know, I don't really consider it fair or right for others to put words in my mouth. The more politicians who fight tooth and nail for the common good, the better. As it is, there are so few that they are of minor importance. Perhaps someday there will be more, making a noticeable impression, and that will be good. As of now, progressive politicians must compromise in order to get anywhere and that will certainly not change in the near future.
I'd say it's better not to have politicians at all. The founding fathers' idea was to have civic-minded citizens take a few years out of their life for public service.
Remember when war-profiteering was a crime?
How the mighty have fallen.
Your Dim party victories aren't just "small" they are subatomic, THAT is why the 99% is rising up against the banks that funded Oily Bomber, and BOTH in the pocket of industry political parties.
We changed from a country to an empire after WW2. When we were a country we needed a middle-class to build and support the country. Now that we are an empire we no longer need a middle-class. In fact the middle-class is a burden on the empire. So the middle-class will be replaced by a new mercenary class. This new class will protect the empire from attack from both inside and outside the country. It will be their patriotic duty.And they will be "good Germans" and serve the empire.
Hoa binh
Ironic that your username includes the year 1492, yet you claim that imperialism didn't occur until WWII.
We changed from a country to an empire after WW2. When we were a country we needed a middle-class to build and support the country. Now that we are an empire we no longer need a middle-class. In fact the middle-class is a burden on the empire. So the middle-class will be replaced by a new mercenary class. This new class will protect the empire from attack from both inside and outside the country. It will be their patriotic duty.And they will be "good Germans" and serve the empire.
Hoa binh
"In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built."
Seems like a rather large assumption about the basis for America's genesis and building, especially considering the repetitive need for its "fundamental reform" and subsequent regressions. Whatever America's supposed "ideals" may be, one would be inclined to conclude that the nation's regressive state is its more prevalent one, occasionally overcome to some degree by conscious and concerted effort, only to relapse repeatedly as soon as the reforming pressure's off again.
The legend of Sisyphus inevitably comes to mind.
Thank God the rock's not too big and we occasionally get it up that darn hill!
Now, if we could just find a small wedge to keep it from rolling back down again ...
We're looking! We're looking!!
The "wedge," RV, is to take the corporations entirely away from the capitalists, and turn them into worker and community co-ops. As long as we still have corporate capitalism, any reforms will roll down the hill again at increasing speed, culminating in a smash up.
There are no reforms that the capitalists cannot undo, if they are left in control of their corporations and their wealth.
Talk about regression, we've come from Hoover to Obama blankets. At least the Hoover version had some bulk, some thickness, alas, another victim of the computer age.
"Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward."
I hate this. It is not only absurd, but it is dangerous. It encourages a belief that progress is inevitable, which means that people need do nothing and progress will happen. They can just sit on their couches and "the nation" will move "forward." NO! What happens is the result of all the forces being applied, i.e., pressure, from all the actors. The "nation" can move forward, backwards, sideways or any other way, dependent on the sum of all the different forces being applied.
The idea predates MLK but he does often get credit for promoting it. I greatly admire MLK for the totality of his work, but not for this.
You may hate it, however it is historically accurate.
You apparently don't live in Texas. I do, so I have reason to doubt its accuracy (joking, sort of).
But even if it were accurate with regard to the US, that history would not determine what happens now. Empires and governments have risen and fallen throughout history and were often followed by more oppressive and inhumane successors.
My abject apologies. That was an inadvertent and incomplete posting. I got drafted to walk the Nephew to sleep and didn't realize I'd hit save.
Historically it is accurate. History is not a rule, however it is an indicator and as I said before, this time is eerily similar to the 1890's. And the same solution seems to be forming now.
If the US falls, that is the one thing everyone may be quite sure of, whoever takes our place will be far more oppressive (the US by historical measure is almost philanthropic) and far more inhumane. Every other candidate is interested in expansion of their borders and will not hesitate.
There are other opinions of course, however real history and real actions confirm mine.
Texas seems too be doing better than most these days, though I'm sure Perry has little to do with it. Looks as if Romney or Cain will be the next President.
I don't know what smoke and mirrors you have been exposed to, but Texas is not doing well, and certainly not better than most. With an average income level among states (because of oil and gas revenue), its state services are at the Mississippi level, and its underfunded school systems were just hit with devastating budget cuts. They just cut all foreign languages from my son's high school, except Spanish, which is problematic because he has a year of German and had expected that to be his foreign language.
Also, Texas is at the bottom in healthcare insurance for children and the social safety net reminds one of some pre-industrial nation that has been ravaged by colonialism. That is why the corporations are rushing in to take advantage and are offering minimum wage jobs, as a permanent underclass is developing and becoming the majority.
It pains me to say this because I have lived in Texas for most of my life, but if anything is inevitable, it is that Texas has a very bleak future.
I've heard those points, but I find it hard to compare Mississippi with a state that has a tenth of the total population. Also I found that Texas has more people under 25 than any other (I think), so figures are sometimes deceiving.
I understand that Texas spends very little on the social safety net and I believe if I understand it correctly, there is a great problem with education, even though Texas is doing better than California and a number of others.
Is Perry as big a fool as he looks in your opinion? The fact that he COULD be President is scary!!!!!!
I hope you are wrong and Texas has a better future than you are seeing now.
People will always use the canard of population size as the reason one region cannot prosper when compared to another.
It is rubbish. Canada has more people then Texas and in all those measures is well ahead of Texas .
It is not population size. It is policy and how the wealth distributed.
Now both a Norway and a Texas are rich in Oil. While Texas has a larger population then does Norway, they also have(had) much more oil. Texas also has a much greater landmass then does Norway.
Yet the people of Norway are far better off then those in Texas and Norway sits on a pool of "Capital" of some 500 billion and counting that they are preserving for future generations. Texas is going broke.
This is a difference in POLICY and priorities and not due to "Population Size". All that Oil that Texas drilled in the past century went to line the pockets of a few at the expense of the many while all that Oil Norway drills is being invested in the future of the peoples of Norway.
"Texas drilled in the past century went to line the pockets of a few at the expense of the many while all that Oil Norway drills is being invested in the future of the peoples of Norway."
That is the problem in a nutshell--America is not investing in its future, but robbing and plundering to see its way through. We, as a nation are stealing from future Americans--we are stealing their wealth, leaving them in debt. We are stealing their livelihoods, shipping jobs abroad. We are stealing their health, polluting our own backyard. It is important that the youth of America realize this and stop it now. CHANGE NOW! We cannot wait. It's time for Truth, America. And the truth ain't pretty.
I usually "prounounce" it on the basis of history. History is the record of what happened before this moment.
At the risk of seeming ."foolishly presumptuous & pompous", to believe "what would take our place would have to be an individual power, rather than a coalition of states, or a supra-national organization" leads me to conclude you may not have studied this enough and since we are speaking of history, it certainly indicfates that there is always one,deciding power, never a coalition.
And the idea of a "supra-national organization" organization replacing us (a world government?) is just hilarious. If there was a time since Wilson started that quest that the possibility is more remote, in fact going the other way, I don't know when it would be.
I find it hard to comment on an argument that has no beginning, no middle and no end.
So lets just agree, I MUST be a bad ole reactionary and ignore facts and what I actually said. I like happy campers.
"Empires..followed by more oppressive...successors." Seems about right.
A partial quote from Martin van Creveld (Israeli military historian):
"...during previous periods when empires fell apart and feudal structures emerged..."
Power may corrupt but it also abhors a vacuum.
Prior defeats of fascism are also "historically accurate", but that outcome involved a considerable effort in "blood, toil, tears and sweat" such that no similar or inevitable result can or should be taken for granted this time round.
kivals, you are ignoring the last words of the paragraph: "...sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action." This has happened over and over. Matewan, women's vote, civil rights, women's lib, gay/lesbian rights, ... Today's 99% battles will need the staying power of past movements in order to make any difference. We will not reach nirvana, but I hope it is a strong first step.
That's good if it does turn into action, but saying the action is inevitable is not helpful. As it encourages complacency among those who should be spurred to action, it delays that tipping point.
Also, it bothers me that the statement sounds quasi-religious, as I see some sort of subtle implication that "The Big Guy in the Sky will make sure that there is 'progress' towards a more just society." I find that really irritating.
Right, kivals. This "great arc of American history" is closely related to the "political pendulum inevitably swings" bullshit that the MSM occasionally trots out for our edification, implying that any swing of the pendulum to the left is only a temporary phenomenon that will endure until the population regains its sanity and once again embraces rapacious capitalism.
Well they may be in for a surprise. If OWS fulfills its expectations and enough of the population becomes aware of the exploitation, the pendulum might just swing to the left and permanently stick there, thus trashing their "pendulum swings" analogy.
AGAIN, Robert Reich shows us that he is a manipulating fraud.
He stands there, pointing his finger at the republican assholes who are throwing the gasoline on the fire, while his mutual masturbating democrats are providing them with the gasoline.
What a jerk.
yeah, who gives a f*** , progressives and repigs are both war pigs, wholly owned and engaged BY CHOICE in war profiteering. Please, RR...the WHOLE TRUTH!
"hiro8"
Your comment seems confused.
If you mean to say that the democrats are "progressives", you are delusional.
The democrats and the republicans are corporate sponsored and corrupt.
The democrats only pretend to be progressive through their words in order to prevent real progress.
I've watched progressives try to work within the Democratic Party for 30 years, and could see no other culmination than the likes of Barry Obama, who talks the talk while walking in an entirely different direction. Progressive Democrats, it's time to admit you've been duped. Come over to the Light. The 99% is beyond party and politics. Think big, then think bigger. History is in the making. Occupy Earth.
The battle is not - and never was - between "forces" of progress and of regression.
The battle is between management and Labor, between the haves and the have-nots, between the working class and the ruling class.
Correct. And when America wakes up to this, real solutions can be found. Until then, nothing is possible but more of the same.
Kivals and Greg R seem to have their finger on the key. "If" this all turns into political action or not.
Well, at least we agree that is the key! Who knows going forward we may agree on many things.