Synopsis: With decades of experience as a professor and advocate for progressive change, Robert Reich discusses the possibility of a new Progressive Era in response to the current Gilded Age, echoing the reforms of over a century ago. Description: Former Labor Secretary and longtime professor Robert Reich joins Laura Flanders to discuss two bullies against U.S. democracy: concentrated wealth and corporate power. As Reich shares, growing income inequality yields corruption in our politics and economy. No one election will change everything, but that’s not a reason not to act to defeat the Trump administration — in Congress, and at the polls. Guest: Robert Reich: Former Secretary of Labor; Professor Emeritus, University of California Berkeley; Author, Coming Up Short: My Memoir of America Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters. go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Watch the special report on YouTube; PBS World Channel September 14th, and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio September 17th (check here to see if your station is airing the show) & available as a podcast.
Synopsis: Historical context for change- Reich draws parallels between the current era and the first Gilded Age, suggesting that a new Progressive Era could be on the horizon as a response to the second Gilded Age, bringing about potential reforms to economic and political systems.
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Description: The crisis we’re in was a long time coming. Now that we’re here, what do we do about it? Returning to the show, former Labor Secretary and longtime professor Robert Reich joins Laura Flanders to discuss two bullies tormenting U.S. democracy: concentrated wealth and corporate power. As Reich shares, growing income inequality yields corruption in our politics and economy. No one election will change everything, but that’s not a reason not to act, and act quickly to defeat the Trump administration — in Congress, and at the polls. Reich’s latest Substack, “Should Democrats Shut Down the Government?” presents some ideas. Reich's latest book is “Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America”. He is also the subject of “The Last Class” about his final semester teaching at UC Berkeley's Goldman School. He's the author of eighteen books, including the bestsellers, “Aftershock” and “The System: Who Rigged It and How We Fix It,” and is co-founder of Inequality Media. Online, you can find Reich’s viral video explainers and his widely-read newsletter on Substack. Join Reich and Flanders as they unpack how economic and political power intersect in American life – and catch Laura’s two cents on “democratic capitalism.”
“If the Republicans who now control Congress say, “‘We're not going to give you any role at all, and we are not even going to reassume our constitutional role as Congress,’ then I think the Democrats have no choice but to say, ‘Forget it. That's it. The only way we bring attention to this crisis is we stop and shut the whole place down.’” - Robert Reich
“More than a century ago, we had the first Gilded Age in the United States . . . We had the equivalent of billionaires, the equivalent of Elon Musk . . . Why would we not have another Progressive Era as a response to the Gilded Age? We are now in the second Gilded Age.” - Robert Reich
Guest: Robert Reich- Former Secretary of Labor; Professor Emeritus, University of California Berkeley; Author, Coming Up Short: My Memoir of America
Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
Watch the special report on YouTube; PBS World Channel September 14th, and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio September 17th (check here to see if your station is airing the show) & available as a podcast.
Full Episode Notes are located HERE.
Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
Music Credit: 'Dawn Smolders' by Bluedot Sessions, and original sound design by Jeannie Hopper
RESOURCES:
*Recommended book:
“Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, by Robert Reich - *Get the Book
(*Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores. The LF Show is an affiliate of bookshop.org and will receive a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.)
Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:
• Democracy & Capitalism: A Failed Experiment? Watch
• The Pandemic Economy- Watch / Listen
• Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor: Are We Entering “End Times Fascism”? Watch / Listen: Episode and Full Conversation
• Masha Gessen & Jason Stanley: Is it Doomsday for U.S. Democracy? Watch / Listen: Episode and Full Conversation
Related Articles and Resources:
• Documentary: The Last Class with Robert Reich
• “The Jobs Crash” by Robert Reich, Substack
• Democrats Regain Advantage in Party Affiliation, by Jeffrey M. Jones, July 31, 2025, Gallup News
• Bessent hails new ‘Trump accounts’ as ‘backdoor for privatizing Social Security, by Michael Stratford, July 30, 2025, Politico
• Co-founded by Robert Reich: Inequality Media and Inequality Media Civic Action
• Office Hours: Who is MOST responsible for this catastrophe, other than Trump? By Robert Reich, September 3, 2025, SubStack
• Schumer: Democrats ‘will force votes’ on Trump tariffs after disappointing jobs report, by Al Weaver, September 5, 2025, The Hill
Chapters ep224 - Robert Reich- [Uncut Conversation]
00:00:00 Laura Flanders Introduces Robert Reich and Hist Latest Work
00:02:10 How Widening Inequality Led to Political Disaffection and Trump
00:11:39 The Broken Social Contract and the Rise of Demagoguery
00:17:25 Robert Reich on the Loss of Democracy and Rule of Law
00:26:09 Unreliable Economic Data and the Future of Social Security
00:32:36 From Gilded Age to Progressive Era: A Historical Parallel
00:42:16 Robert Reich's Vision for a Democratic Capitalist Future
00:46:21 Robert Reich Warns Against the Dangers of Cryptocurrency
00:48:35 Reconciling Idealism, Future Paths, and Government Shutdown
LAURA FLANDERS & FRIENDS
UNCUT INTERVIEW FROM THE EPISODE:
ROBERT REICH FIGHTS DEMOCRACY'S BULLIES
While our weekly shows are edited at a time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full, uncut conversation.
These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
0:23
If today's guest wasn't quite so generous, kind and funny, he could really get under one's skin.
For one thing, he is utterly clear eyed about all the chances that he and his generation had to make the US better and healthier and fairer, and how they blew all those chances one by one.
0:41
He's also under no illusions about how those very failures led to the deadly regime of cruelty, chaos and corruption that we are living in now.
He is starring in a film about the importance of public education and how he's leaving that field just as it's fighting for its life.
0:58
And he has just published a poignant book on all of this this August, which made for miserable vacation reading.
As if all of that wasn't exasperating enough, he also has the gall to publish a cheery, resistance focused Substack that assured readers recently that, presidential war mongering and a looming recession notwithstanding, rebellion is rising and the overthrow of despotism is close.
1:25
He also makes endless bad puns about his diminutive height.
I am referring, of course, to the towering social critic and economic powerhouse, former Labor Secretary and longtime professor Robert Reich.
Who knows I'm I'm kidding.
1:40
I hope Robert Reich's latest book just out is titled Coming Up Short, a memoir of My America.
The documentary about his teaching career called The Last Class is playing at cinemas across the US.
He is the Co founder of Inequality Media and hosts the weekly Cafe Clutch podcast and writes a newsletter on Sub Stack.
2:01
And as so many have mentioned already, he is a social media star with his sketches and explainers.
It is my very great pleasure to welcome back to the program Robert Reich.
Welcome.
Well, thank you, Laura.
2:16
It's nice to see you again.
You too.
So let's get the cheery stuff out of the way to begin, shall we?
No, no, we need more cheeriness stuff.
Let's make this entire discussion cheerful.
Well, we'll get back to here, but let's start there.
You know, I believe in in focusing on the positive, and that's what you did in your most recent Substack newsletter, right as I was descending into the pits of despair.
2:40
Here you are saying that as you travel around the country with your book and the film, you are finding the spirit of rebellion rising.
Really, what are you seeing?
What can you tell us to cheer us up?
Well, I'm seeing a lot of Americans even in so-called red states of people who tell me that they voted for Donald Trump, saying that they regret their votes.
3:03
They think he's the worst president in American history.
They really don't like what he's doing in terms of taking over occupying American cities and treating immigrants almost in an arbitrary and really a very negative way.
3:21
I mean, whether they are here legally or illegally, not making much of A differentiation, not providing due process to make sure that the dragnet is actually really focusing on the people who it ought to focus on.
And and many people are just are are are at wits end.
3:40
And I've been across the country, you know, Hawking, peddling my book.
And the irony, of course, is that the book Coming Up Short is about America coming up short not only because I'm very short, but America coming up short in terms of not dealing with the underlying problems that culminated with Donald Trump.
4:06
Well, that's where I want to go next because you are saying in in this recent sub stack that that Trump might be losing.
But your book, as you just pointed out, documents describes these long term trends that go way beyond fixing through a change in the occupant of the White House or a majority in Congress.
4:27
So how do you square those two things?
You call it ironic, but it's more than that.
Well, actually, Laura, you and I over the years have talked about some of these underlying trends, and particularly the twin trends of widening inequality of income and wealth and political power.
4:46
But also with that widening inequality comes more and more corruption in the form of everything from legalized bribery, you know, money that goes to people who are candidates for office and also into public affairs and armies for corporations, armies of, of corporate lawyers.
5:09
I mean, we, we were seeing and we saw even before Donald Trump a a society and an economy and a politics that was getting out of control.
We could not have stayed on the road we were on.
Sadly, it has ended at least this part of the road with Donald Trump.
5:30
I hope we are going to be learning something from this horrible experience.
Well, what do you learn from the failures that you document in the book, or maybe I should say, because there's a lot of them in there.
Which ones haunt you most?
Which do you think were the most decisive?
5:45
Welfare reform, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement.
You were in the Clinton administration in those early years.
That seems to be sort of the heart of your sense of disappointment is what happened then while you were there.
Well, I tried to fight Laura very hard, and I am proud of some things that were done.
6:04
The Family and Medical Leave Act, I think was a major milestone.
I think that I was an advisor to Obama.
I think the Affordable Care Act was very, very important.
I mean, Democrats and Democratic presidents have achieved some important milestones over the past several decades.
6:23
But I was also around when Bill Clinton deregulated Wall Street, which I think was the beginning of what we ultimately saw in 2008, a financial crisis in which the banks were bailed out but nobody else was.
6:42
A lot of, you know, millions of homeowners lost their homes and millions of people lost their savings and jobs.
I also was there at the beginning when NAFTA and Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization were also being pushed by the Clinton administration.
7:03
And I think that particularly China's accession to the World Trade Organization resulted in a tidal wave of imports, inexpensive from China.
Now, obviously we all benefited from the fact that they were inexpensive, but the costs and losses were focused on a lot of the working class in America who lost their jobs again and never really recovered.
7:32
I, I spent many, many years both as labor secretary and then after that going to the Midwest, what we used to call the Rust Belt to the South, places where a lot of factories and communities used to be that depended on major factories and talk to people and, and listen to what they had to say.
7:55
By 2015, Laura, I kept on hearing people say to me in these communities, all of America, what we really want is somebody who's going to shake things up because the whole system is rigged against us.
We are very attracted to two people.
8:13
And I said, who are you attracted to?
Because, you know, in 2015, the leading Democrat was Hillary Clinton, the leading Republican was Jeb Bush.
And they said back to me, well, we're most attracted to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
And I remember when people started to say that to me and these meetings I had all across America, I, I, I said, how can you even say those two names, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the same sentence?
8:43
They, they are so different.
But to many Americans, at least in 2015, ten years ago, it they, they represented people who were outside politics, people who were authentic.
Little did they know with the case of Donald Trump, people who would represent them, people who would in effect, stop the bullying that they felt and be their bullies when it came to the powers that they thought were bullying them, well, the rest is history.
9:16
Well, before we go forward into this moment, I want to go back to that NAFTA moment for a second because there were people, I mean, Ross Perot was one who was saying this.
You're going to hear a sucking sound of all US of U.S. jobs going around the world.
9:31
But the globalists, Clinton being one, and you were with a pack of them.
We're saying, no, no, this is going to raise all boats both we're going to enforce Labor Standards and environmental protections around the world.
This is going to be, you know, a step forward towards global integration.
9:47
And therefore peace didn't happen.
Why?
And as somebody who was outside complaining even then, I do wonder what we could have also done differently, outside critics, people outside of the administration, because they were trade unions and many who were raising their voices.
10:06
I think in retrospect, the underlying problem is that the United States did not have a reemployment system that would, if people lost their jobs due to anything, trade or fundamental changes in the economy, help them get new jobs that paid at least as well as the jobs they lost.
10:28
That would include retraining, job placement, job search assistance, and also insurance to make up the difference in terms of the old job and the new job that they could get.
But we didn't have that.
10:44
And as a result, parade became a real problem for many Americans, particularly those who didn't have college educations, particularly those who were in the Midwest or the South, in places where they depended for their futures on factories and on manufacturing and on unions.
11:09
And of course, not only did manufacturing start disappearing, but unions started disappearing as well.
And we could talk about that.
That is another story in the book, but it's a piece of the puzzle.
And So what are the lessons for those of us outside?
11:26
I mean, as somebody who was inside, are there things that people or organizations could have done to better help you in your critique or the other dissidents perhaps who were inside the administration?
Well, I think it's a matter of understanding that economies do change, but we have to bring everybody along.
11:48
You can't simply say with a, with a kind of neo liberal wand, well, let's just let's just open things up to trade and to privatization and to deregulation and to all those wonderful ideas.
12:05
I say wonderful, ironically, that neoliberals had in the 1980s, nineteen 90s and then through the early decades of the 20th century without understanding fundamentally that people do need some help along.
12:22
And it's not a matter of giving them handouts.
It's a matter of helping them move in an economy that is in constant motion, helping them and their children do better if they are playing by the rules, if they're working hard.
You know, Laura, we used to have an unwritten contract in this country, kind of a social contract, that if you did work hard, if you play by the rules, if you were good parents, if you tried very hard, you would not only do better during the course of your working life, but your children would do better than you.
12:57
And that is what has come apart, particularly for people without college degrees, particularly for families without college degrees, particularly in particular areas of the country that have been overlooked in terms of the new economy.
13:15
And so many people have become so disaffected and angry and felt looked down upon by these winds of change.
And the United States didn't do anything.
We didn't.
13:30
We didn't really help the people who are being left behind become part of the future.
That's the error.
That's the fundamental error.
That's I think the kind of problem that invited a Donald Trump invited a demagogue.
13:49
Because when you have that many people who are disaffected and and feel oppressed by a system, then when somebody comes along who is saying, well, I'm not part of that system, I'm going to be your voice.
I'm going to be your representative, I'm going to be there for you.
14:06
That's called a strong man.
That's not part of democracy.
That's part of autocracy.
That's part of neo fascism.
But it is interesting that the very populations who were in many ways hit worst by the economy and are being hit worse now still, I'm thinking especially African Americans, women, black women in particular, have stuck with Democrats.
14:34
Not everybody got disaffected with the Democratic Party.
So how do you account for that?
Because if your rationale holds that the that the disaffected look for demagogues, you would have thought they would have been the first to flee towards a a populist of right or left.
14:51
Well, there is obviously a core Democratic constituency, and that's fine.
But the constituency that was working class, that was the old Democratic constituency, there was this constituency that Franklin D Roosevelt nurtured and developed in the 1930s and 40s.
15:12
That Democratic constituency has almost disappeared.
The working class of America is no longer a Democratic constituency by and large.
It is mostly now and increasingly becoming a Republican constituency.
15:28
In fact, the tables have turned.
When I was growing up in the 1950s, people who had college degrees tended to be Republican, and people without college degrees tended to be Democrats.
They were working class, but by the time the 1970s and 80s came around, there was a great reversal.
15:48
People with college degrees tended to be Democrats, and the working class tended to be Republican.
I I think in political terms, the problem is that the Republicans offered the working class of America a set of reasons why they were being put down and left behind that were wrong, that were made-up.
16:16
They had to do with immigrants and minority people, black people.
They had to do with deep state, as Donald Trump is now characterizing it, bureaucrats, socialists, so-called communists.
16:33
I mean, this was the group of boogey boogeyman that that in fact were being used.
But the Democrats failed to point to the real problems.
And those are the political power, increasing political power of the large corporations and very wealthy individuals to change the market, to benefit themselves, to shift the rules of the game in ways that would advance their own interests, their own monetary interests, but would be very harmful to everybody else.
17:25
So you have this shaving off, especially of the white parts of the working class into this kind of zone of easily being easily manipulated.
While you have this huge, if you want to hear the sucking sound, it's of money and assets and wealth sucking up to the the richest 1%.
17:43
Today we find ourselves well where we find ourselves with a deflector in chief as our president of all the crises and concerning developments on the horizon right now, where are you most focused, Robert?
18:00
Where, where, which development frightens you most?
Is it the the jobs crash as you've called it?
Is it the environment?
Is it the the ICE abductions, cops and troops on the streets?
The courts which?
Well.
What?
18:16
Where should we be watching?
There are so many places to look.
I mean, Steve Bannon, who's an advisor to Donald Trump, has been advising him for years to, to flood the zone as which is basically means overwhelming Democrats and progressives and liberals and, and everybody else, just even average people with so much news and so many things that are irritating or amazing or exasperating or outraging that it's very difficult to even grasp what is going on.
18:52
But from my standpoint, the most really, I, I think worrisome things are #1 the loss of democracy, the loss of our rule of law.
And with that, everything from due process to the safety that we should feel as individuals in what had been the world's leading democracy, that there is not going to be recrimination against us if we criticize the president, That we can not worry that there is going to be maybe police who will be grabbing us off the street and and disappearing us because we have brown skin or speak with an an accent.
19:37
I mean, these are fundamentals.
And I grew up in a house when I was, when I was a young boy, we know, in the shadow of of Hitler and Nazi Germany and as a Jewish child and with my parents extremely kind of, well, they, they were, they were.
20:04
They, they, they had, they had seen what they never realized during World War 2.
Most people in this country didn't know the depths of the Holocaust, but my I remember my parents in the 50s just overwhelmed in terms of their, their, their, their feelings of fear and, and just disgust that this went on.
20:31
You tell a great story, or powerfully memorable story in the book about moving house and what you thought was a welcoming committee coming to your door.
Yes, well, when I was only, you know, three or four years old, so this is recounted to me by my parents, But when we moved into this community in northern New York State, we were met by a group of older men who came to our door.
21:00
My mother thought they were a welcoming committee, but they were not a welcoming committee.
She invited them in.
They did not want to sit down.
She asked, you know, she said, please sit down.
No, they wouldn't.
My father said, what is this about?
And they said, Mr. and Missus Reish, we want you to know that this is a Christian community and we don't feel that you will be happy here.
21:24
You will not be comfortable here.
Now, you know, that was all my father needed to hear.
I mean, he, he basically threw them out of the house and then decided in his very determined way, we would never ever move from the but that kind of that kind of discrimination, that kind of anger and belligerence, that small mindedness.
21:57
Well, Laura, in many ways we're still living with it.
And that kind of courage, I guess what I took from that story was your family's courage standing their ground.
And I think it's that that I, for one, I'm looking for and seeing to some extent out there, one place that some are looking for courage today is the courts.
22:17
Some seem even in the Democratic Party to be kind of content to, to to let the courts address the crisis that we're in.
The Roberts Court now.
You had an opportunity to consider the Chief Justice ship of John Roberts and actually testified about his fitness or lack thereof for that position.
22:37
What can you tell us about John Roberts and what do you say to those who who think, well, they'll leave it in his hands, it'll all work itself out?
Well, I don't think it's going to work itself out.
And we now have a, a, a six person majority on the 9 member Supreme Court that is basically willing to give Donald Trump much of what he wants.
22:59
We don't know that they they're give him everything.
But John Roberts authored that opinion just eight months ago that said, in effect, that Donald Trump is not responsible for anything he does during his official duties as president.
23:19
That, that is, he should be given a pass legally, he cannot be prosecuted for anything he does as part of his official duties.
Now that in and of itself kind of is an attack on the rule of law, as I always understood it.
23:38
The court also has two of the old holdovers, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who don't really believe that the Constitution is a, is a document that that evolves over time.
23:54
They they, they call themselves originalists, whatever that means, but it really means that they can impute their own values into the Constitution.
And that's quickly what they did with regard to women's ability to have an abortion, for example.
24:10
They decided no, although the Supreme Court had decided it one way in 1973, making sure that women did have a right over their own to do with their own bodies as they saw fit.
They changed that.
That's new.
Supreme Court simply overrode that precedent.
24:30
I don't have much confidence in the Supreme Court.
But you were skeptical of John Roberts back in 2005?
I was, I testified against his becoming Chief Justice because I looked at his record as as a lawyer, as somebody who had been in government, and he seemed to me to be not respectful of the fundamental rights and also the needs of most people.
24:58
I mean, look, basically we're talking about power.
I mean, this entire discussion we've had so far is about power.
One of the themes in my book is bullying, that if if you let the people with power just do whatever they want to do, if there are no constraints on them, they will brutalize people who have less power.
25:24
And whether we're talking about men versus women or employers versus employees or or white people versus black people or whatever dimension of society we're talking about, that potential of for bullying and brutalization is almost always there.
25:43
The Supreme Court that I argued before in the 1970s was a court that respected that notion.
It understood that one of its fundamental responsibilities was to interpret the Constitution in ways that would protect the vulnerable.
26:05
This new court, current court, the John Roberts Court, does it just the opposite.
All right, so the court won't save us and we can talk in a minute about where the Democrats will save us.
The power that we're seeing used by this administration is partly a power to bully and intimidate information gatherers and information distributors, whether that's the media or data collectors.
26:29
We just saw numbers coming out of the Labor Department around jobs.
Is any of the data that we're receiving really reliable these days, given the the, the the comments Donald Trump has made and the fact that the last person to be crunching the numbers of the Labor Department was summarily fired and now there's a January 6th apologist in that position?
26:54
Is that, are the numbers secure?
Are the numbers reliable?
And if the administrations aren't, where do we go for facts?
Well, frankly, Laura, we don't know yet.
The last report we got just last week's, last Friday's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I think was not tampered with because it was a pretty awful report.
27:14
I mean, it, it did not shed a very positive light on the Trump administration.
It showed that only 22,000 net new jobs were created during the month of August, which is very tiny relative to I mean if if you have just normal job creation, you would expect given the size of the population and population growth in around 180,000.
27:42
But to get 22,000 and then to have the previous months job figures revised on the basis of new information downward, even in June you had a actually a negative 17,000 jobs.
27:57
You've lost 17,000 jobs in June.
I mean, this is this is not likely to be influenced by Donald Trump, at least not yet.
I can't give you that reassurance in the future, do you?
Have any idea what the president is talking about?
Beautiful, monstrous palaces of genius?
28:15
What he said on the night before those numbers were released?
Because it makes your head spin.
I don't.
I very rarely do.
I, I mean he, he uses phrases and and and and and and and language in ways that sometimes if the press really were paying attention, they would start questioning not only his judgment but also his sanity.
28:40
So what are we looking at?
So if we have some questions about labored data, we have questions about a lot of other things, too.
One of them is, where are the third rails in this moment that we're in?
It seems like we have blown through many of them, landed on many of them, whether it's raiding Medicaid or talking in concerning ways about Social Security.
29:00
The Treasury Secretary, Scott Beson, said recently that these vouchers, these kid coupons, are perhaps a backdoor way to privatize Social Security.
Is Social Security, in your view, safe at this moment?
No, Social Security.
29:16
I used to be a trustee of the Social Security Trust Fund.
Social Security is not going to run out of money.
I mean, that's just a, a myth, but it is going to be under some stress.
And the problem with Social Security is that the cap on the proportion of your income subject to Social Security taxes has not risen in accordance with how much of the total income of America has gone to the top.
29:48
In other words, the if you, if you simply understood how unequal our income has become, you would raise the cap on income subject to Social Security quite considerably.
And maybe, you know, starting at $250,000 a year income all the way up to Elon Musk.
30:09
Why not?
Well, exactly why not?
That's what a system should be if we're equitable.
So the problem with Social Security is not that the Social Security trust fund is going to run out of money per SE.
The problem is that it's not now based on a realistic assessment of the inequality that is now built into our labor market that needs to be fixed.
30:36
But I do worry that this administration is going to attack Social Security.
Elon Musk.
Now that we're talking about Elon Musk, where I was, he and his doge did begin to attack the Social Security Administration.
30:53
It and that was that was sort of in many ways a test run because Social Security had been the third rail of American politics.
If they could attack the Social Security Administration without too much public uproar, then they might be able to do something that every Republican president has been trying to do since since the the start of of Social Security, or certainly every Republican has been trying to do since 1935.
31:26
And that is get rid of Social Security.
It has a huge, huge following.
People love Social Security.
It is one of the most important and favorable programs that the federal government has ever come up with.
31:44
But that's why Republicans would like to attack it.
And believe me, they will try.
Hi lovely listeners.
Laura Flanders and friends is, as we say, the place where the people who say it can't be done take a backseat to the people who are doing it.
32:01
Our guests are doing it now.
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32:19
That's lauraflanders.org/donate.
And a reminder to hit that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts.
And thank you.
Now back to our full Unka conversation.
What do you think is stopping all of this being felt more keenly among the people that you've that you're seeing among the people who voted for Donald Trump and the and the country at large?
32:48
I mean, a recession was predicted if the Trump tariffs went through and the attacks on immigrants went through.
It hasn't happened yet.
What's holding it at Bay and it and if we're just sort of resting on a a little bubble of AI technology, how dangerous is that?
33:08
I think we are, we are resting on very thin ice, whether it's a bubble or whatever metaphor you want to use, Laura, I think that the the data to the extent that we can trust it and I think we can trust it so far are showing not only the job growth has stalled, for all intents and purposes, there is no job growth.
33:29
The reason I believe there's no job growth is that no sane employer is going to invest in additional capacity at a point in time when you can't predict anything.
You don't know what Donald Trump is going to do tomorrow with tariffs or with with taxes or with anything else.
33:47
And he has, he has centralized so much authority, so much power in the Oval Office that his wins, his capricious and arbitrary decisions are, are are are totally unpredictable.
34:03
So you're not going to see investment at the same time we are seeing inflation because those tariffs are essentially import taxes.
And those import taxes are being paid right now by companies, American companies.
34:20
They're importing goods from around the world and they are beginning to set prices for customers.
We are already seeing in food, in agriculture, in commodities, a huge increase in food prices.
34:36
People know this.
This is not something that Donald Trump can talk his way out of or or hide from Americans.
This is something that everybody experiences and will experience more and more of.
So it's ironic to say this is good news.
34:52
It's not good news.
I don't want a bad economy for anybody but it in narrow political news or political views.
It is good news because it's puts it puts the administration into a bind.
And it makes it more likely that in the midterm elections of 2026, the Democrats will take back one or both chambers of Congress.
35:18
All right.
So I spent some of this summer as I was reading your book with a bunch of wonderful people, many of them long time activists in the Democratic Party.
I'm not that I'm more of an independent.
I've been a critic for as long as as as well.
We've talked with each other One morning, the day that Donald Trump deployed the, you know, National Guard, federalized National Guard to DCI think I had just finished your book.
35:42
I was literally in tears.
I was like nothing as my friends tried to tell me that the midterms would save us.
I'm hearing the clock ticking on the increasing concentration of wealth that our economy has unleashed, and I'm not seeing any change to the underlying conditions that produced this result.
36:03
So I guess I'm asking you.
It's like midterms maybe.
Great, nice.
But this is a steamroller that you've described and that many have described.
That won't stop it, will it?
If it doesn't, I don't know what will.
36:21
That is, if we if we accept the premise that we have to have a democratic system that relies on a constitution and the rule of law.
The next opportunity that most Americans have for changing the dynamic in Washington is to take over both houses of Congress, both chambers, and make it far more difficult for Donald Trump to do what he's doing now.
36:49
Is that going to stop the steamroller?
Is that going to stop the direction of authoritarianism?
Is that going to save us from this neo fascism?
Maybe not.
It could slow it down.
But ultimately, we have, as American citizens, many more responsibilities than just voting in the midterm elections.
37:15
We as individuals and as citizens can and should do much, much more.
We well, we can get into this, this take another hour, but but you know, democracy is not a spectator sport.
37:33
Well, let's get into a little bit of it.
I mean, you were there at a moment where you felt that you could advance the progress that had been made in the middle of the 20th century by civil rights movements and trade unions and environmentalists and feminists, and it wasn't possible.
37:49
Money and power and the relationship between the two just squashed your aspirations.
Not all of them, but most of them, as you've said.
What would have made the difference then and what could make the difference now?
Because the wealth, as you've written in your graphs that are so striking in your lessons to your students, the the arc is just the, the, the line has just gotten more steep.
38:13
The wealth we're talking about is just greater.
Elon Musk, who you mentioned, just cut a deal with the board of Tesla that would make him a trillionaire in a few years, the world's first.
What stops this?
What stops this is public outrage.
You know, a century, more than a century ago, we had the first Gilded Age in the United States that bears remarkable similarity to what we're going through now.
38:40
In that first Gilded Age, we had the equivalent of billionaires, the equivalent of Elon Musk.
They were called at that time, robber barons.
They ruled American industry.
They were monopolists.
38:56
They made sure that workers were paid very, very little.
They corrupted politics.
Some of them sent their lackeys to put sacks of money on the desks of pliant legislators.
39:12
I mean, the the first Gilded Age starting in about 1890, ending maybe the first decade of the 20th century, was a model in a way for what we are now going through.
39:28
But the good news is that the public would not stand it.
The public rose up.
There was a huge outcry, a huge response, negative response to the first Gilded Age.
We had what historians call the Progressive Era.
39:45
Following upon that, Gilded Age and the Progressive Era was an era of great reform, starting with antitrust, anti monopoly law, laws that restricted what corporations could do.
Laws that limited what corporations could do with regard to selling food and, and medicines and and pure and, and and everything else that the public was was beginning to feel and understand was a result of concentrated economic power and great wealth at the center.
40:21
We also instituted an income tax and, and several wealth taxes.
This was a remarkable, A remarkable era, Laura.
Now, if you get that kind of response to the first Gilded Age, a, a, a Progressive Era, why would we not have another Progressive Era as a response to the Gilded Age?
40:49
We are now in the Second Gilded Age.
I I think we will.
My point is that we could not have stayed on the road we are on in terms of inequality and also corruption.
41:06
Way before Trump.
We were on that road.
I saw it.
I, I, I, I lived it.
I, I did what I could to stop it.
But Donald Trump again, is the consequence, the culmination of four decades of being on this road.
41:25
And yes, it's terrible and yes, it's he's an authoritarian and a neo fascist, I would call him.
But I think that we needed maybe to go through this in order to appreciate what we were taking for granted before this in terms of democracy, rule of law, due process, an economy that was working for all rather than for a few.
42:16
You call what you see as a potential future a democratic capitalism.
What are you?
What are the sort of, what are the parameters of that?
What?
What's the thumbnail sketch of that in your view?
Well, it's really quite simple.
42:33
It's, it's a capitalism that is working for everyone, that adheres to the social contract I mentioned before in which if people work hard and they play by the rules and they really do what they can for their children and for their communities, they will be rewarded.
42:51
They will be rewarded with a part of the prosperity that is is is is endemic to a society that is working well.
So you have companies that have profit sharing.
43:07
You have programs that provide people with universal healthcare.
You have childcare and elder care assistance for people in terms of families that are desperate and and do need that kind of help.
43:26
You have a very progressive tax system that helps pay for all of the things that people need.
So the Elon Musks of the world, the trillionaires end up having to support some of these social benefits.
43:44
And some of the social benefits are in the form of infrastructure and basic research and education.
You know that that we must rely on in terms of developing an economy that is truly a, a, a, a good economy, a good economy that's working for everyone.
44:07
Do you see Democrats out there who are accepting, who are advancing that agenda, and if so, who?
And what do you think of their chances?
Some of them are.
I mean, they are the legacies of Bernie Sanders.
44:24
AOC would be one good example, Mandani in New York other one.
There are progressives, good progressives around the country, but rather than tar them with one particular name or one particular brand, I would say that the essential reality here is that we are now in a a brutal, bullying, authoritarian regime.
44:57
And it is absolutely essential that we move from this to a progressive regime, which would be one in which not only are we once again a democracy, but we are an economic democracy that more and more of our institutions respond to the needs of average working people.
45:22
And we're now the opposite of that.
And, and everything that's coming out of Washington is the opposite of that right now.
I will say that coming out of the financial crash of 2008, as people started to be talking about recovery in around 2011, this program started focusing on exactly those economic alternatives that you're talking about that would be more inclusive, more democratically, decided more broadly and widely and deeply rooted, more advantageous to communities, building community while thinking about the future environmentally and generation wise.
45:57
They've struggled.
They've struggled, although you can find great reporting on them in our archives, they struggle still and they struggle in part through lack of coverage, lack of attention and and and lack of high level powerful endorsement.
Now, I do think those examples are out there waiting to be advanced.
46:16
It's almost like seeds have been sown.
Examples are out there just waiting to be harvested and bloomed.
But these are tough times.
People are afraid.
And what we're seeing instead is a lot of people falling for the crypto idea.
And while we're at it, what is crypto?
46:32
Why do people fall for it and what are the dangers there as you see them?
Well, it's a very dangerous phenomenon because it's crypto is essentially nothing.
I mean, it, it, it, it is analogous to making a fetish out of roses.
46:52
You know I.
Prefer that.
Well, it might be nicer, but you see it it it, it is inevitably going to leave people holding the bag.
It's like any scheme that depends upon people assuming that more and more people will buy in.
47:13
I mean, it's a Ponzi scheme basically, right?
Essentially A Ponzi scheme.
Exactly.
More and more people will buy in.
You buy in on the expectation that more people will be, will will be following you.
But eventually all Ponzi schemes come to an end.
47:31
Somebody is left holding the bag.
And I can assure you that the people who got in early, you know, like Donald Trump and his family, are not going to be left holding the bag.
They're going to get out before the Ponzi scheme completely unravels.
47:48
The other problem with crypto in particular is that it uses up huge amounts of energy and huge amounts of water.
It is a vehicle for some of the most nefarious kinds of transactions, whether you're talking about money laundering or, you know, the, the the OR criminal basically criminal activities around the world.
48:15
They are using crypto to hide their criminal transactions.
So there is no redeeming social value to crypto, except again, it can make make people very rich on the on the basis of other people following them into that quagmire.
48:35
Some people in particular.
So to close, I adore hearing you and talking to you because of your optimism, your confidence in your belief in the American people.
And then I think to myself, but what about American history?
48:52
So my question is, you know, how do you square your heartfelt confidence that Americans are not bullies, are against cruelty or for fairness?
With our history as a nation of with colonial roots and genocidal roots and an experience of slavery, maybe we've got it wrong, you and I, that the bullies have a home here.
49:22
I think the bullies do have a home here, Laura.
I think they have a home in every country.
I I think human nature has a side of it that is abominable.
It is bullying, cruel, sadistic.
49:38
But my experience of my America and I.
The subtitle of my book Coming Up Short is a memoir of my America and my America began in 1946.
49:54
It was a post war America.
My America is an America that came out of depression and war with a great deal of confidence in itself.
And although in the 19 late forties, 1950s and 1960s, I was aware of the shortcomings that the black people did not have, all of the rights and all of the opportunities that white people did, and women did not have the rights and opportunities that men did.
50:24
We were absolutely determined.
And I say we we really as a country, we were determined to change that, to mend that.
And that idealism is still here.
It is still very much bedrock America.
50:42
We want a more perfect union.
We want a society that works for everyone.
We want a society that is fundamentally fair.
And, you know, just ending this book tour, I've been all over the country talking to people in many red states.
51:00
And I, I hear people saying to me in various ways and in various forms, they're saying we love America.
And we also love an America that is fair, that is an America that treats people well, an America that understands that the best of our history is a history that reaches out to make opportunities for people equal opportunity.
51:33
We are not bigoted.
We are not small minded.
We are actually a huge America.
Walt Whitman, the broad shoulder America.
That's the America that is still there.
We don't hear it, we don't see it.
51:50
The media doesn't write about it, but it's there.
The question I ask all of our guests at the end of these conversations is about the future.
And I'm going to ask you, you've, you've written a memoir.
Looking back now, looking forward, Look forward 2550, I don't know, 100 years.
52:07
What do you think is the story the future will tell of this moment?
Well, I think that we are at a a point in time where the future could go one of two very, very different ways.
52:26
I think that there's a great deal of social learning going on right now.
People tell me I didn't understand until recently what democracy really meant.
I didn't understand what the rule of law or due process or anything that we should have understood really meant until now.
52:50
And I think that the positive vision I have of the future is that a newly appreciated America that newly appreciates so many of the things that have been left to us, the legacy that has been left to us of democracy, of social justice, that America will rise up, will be the America that my grandchildren live in.
53:20
Now there is in this history game that we're now playing, always a dark undercurrent, and I don't want to be a Pollyanna.
There is the possibility that we give up our democracy and give up on equality and give up on social justice and become really a more and more of an oligarchy, a white male oligarchy in which white male Christian nationalism comes to dominate America.
54:02
I don't think that's going to happen.
But certainly if you just took a a picture of what Washington is right now and what Donald Trump has done and who he is put into positions of leadership, you might come to that conclusion.
54:18
I refuse.
And I refuse with you.
So.
So last question, which is just a newsy one.
We're only weeks away from the government running out of money, the last congressional appropriations having expired.
Do you support the Democratic, the Democrats in the Congress shutting down the government rather than going along with another budget with the for this administration?
54:41
I support the Democrats making a very simple demand that they be included in the formation of policy and also that Congress begins to revive its oversight role and its responsibility under the Constitution.
55:01
If the answer is no, if the Republicans who now control Congress say we're not going to give you any role at all, and we are not even going to reassume our constitutional role as Congress, then I think the Democrats have no choice but to say forget it.
55:19
That's it.
The only way we bring attention to this crisis is we stop and shut the whole place down.
Robert Reich, thank you so very much.
Clearly you are not giving up teaching.
You are continuing in all your new guises and we appreciate all of the work that you've done and that you continue to do Thank you.
55:39
Thank you, Laura.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the full conversation with Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, University of California, Berkeley Professor Emeritus and author.
These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
55:58
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Go to patreon.com/laura Flanders and Friends That's also where you'll find our episode notes For more information on this conversation.
56:13
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