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The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
'Understanding what is happening in our country is critical if we want to fix it and Robert Reich is an exceptional teacher.' - Senator Bernie SandersMillions of Americans have lost confidence in their political and economic system. After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake. In The System Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy. Addressing himself Jamie Dimon, the powerful banker and chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Reich exposes how those at the top, be they Democrats or Republicans, propagate myths about meritocracy, national competitiveness, corporate social responsibility, and the 'free market' to distract most Americans from their own accumulation of extraordinary wealth, and their power over the system. Instead of answering the call to civic duty, they have chosen to uphold self-serving policies that line their own pockets and benefit their bottom line. Reich's objective is not to foster cynicism, but rather to demystify the system so that American voters might instill fundamental change and demand that democracy works for the majority once again.
215 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 24, 2020
955 people are currently reading
10528 people want to read
About the author
Robert B. Reich
58 books1,283 followersRobert Bernard Reich is an American politician, academic, and political commentator. He served as Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997. Reich is a former Harvard University professor and the former Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. He is currently a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. Mr. Reich is also on the board of directors of Tutor.com. He is a trustee of the Economists for Peace and Security. He is an occasional political commentator, notably on Hardball with Chris Matthews, This Week with George Stephanopoulos and CNBC's Kudlow & Company.
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April 4, 2020
As a country, we focus obsessively on the conflict between the political left and right, but what good is this doing us when politicians from both sides embrace the same oligarchic ideology? This is the question explored by Robert B. Reich in his latest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It.
Reich shows how the current political-economic system in the United States is infused with incentives for bad behavior. This starts with large corporations, whose executives are forced to maximize short-term profits for shareholders at all costs (to prevent hostile takeovers and to secure their own jobs and salaries). This is typically accomplished by shifting costs from shareholders onto other stakeholders, for example by laying off workers, moving operations overseas, or polluting the environment—all behaviors we should fully expect based on current incentives.
In essence, here’s what we’ve done: we’ve created massive legal entities (corporations) with a single-minded objective to maximize profits and then released them out into the world with few regulations and little oversight. Should we then be surprised to find that this has left a trail of devastation in its wake (layoffs, worker disillusionment, climate change, growing inequality, public health issues, financial crises, etc.)?
But we’ve done even more than this: we’ve also given those same amoral profit-maximizing monstrosities the power to infuse massive amounts of funds into the political process to buy candidates and engage in self-interested political lobbying, with the goal of further reducing regulations and taxes and further increasing their own power. Since the only goal of corporate management is the enhancement of profit, we can surmise that corporations are making these political contributions as investments, and not as political expressions of their genuine interest to promote the common good. As Reich wrote:
“When JPMorgan and other big corporations donated to the Republican Party in the 2016 elections in anticipation of a giant tax cut if Republicans won, their donations were also investments, and they paid off big...GE contributed $20 million and will get back $16 billion in tax savings. Chevron donated $13 million and received $9 billion. Not even a sizzling economy can deliver anything close to the returns on political investments.”
Politicians are likewise incentivized to bend to the will of corporations for campaign contributions and also for lucrative positions in those very firms once they leave Washington. And so big business has, in this way, infiltrated Washington and initiated a vicious cycle of concentrated wealth and power. This has resulted in America’s own unique brand of socialism: upward redistribution from the poor and middle class to the rich.
How else to explain the fact that the government bailed out the largest banks from reckless and idiodic decisions but did not likewise provide relief for homeowners and students struggling with mortgages and college debt? (Students still cannot eliminate student debt even through bankruptcy proceedings.) And how to explain the fact that, over the last four decades, corporate taxes have been slashed and yet middle-class wages have remained stagnant while top incomes have soared? As Reich wrote:
“Between 1999 and 2018, the United States economy grew 48 percent, but the typical household’s income did not grow at all, and the bottom half of America ended up with less wealth than it had before the financial crisis. The richest 1 percent, however, ended up twice as much wealth as it had before the financial crisis, and the richest 0.1 percent, with three times as much.”
So much for trickle-down economics.
Here’s what any rational reading of the numbers tells us has happened: the money corporations have saved from reduced taxes has gone to the wealthy at the expense of tax revenue that could have funded public goods that everyone would have benefited from (healthcare, education, infrastructure, basic research). This is a simple case of upward redistribution and socialism for the rich—and harsh capitalism for everyone else.
The reader might object that it is corporations that provide our products, services, and standards of living, but, as Reich points out, innovation is not stifled by progressive taxation. Reich correctly points out that Jeff Bezos, for example, would be equally motivated to innovate for 50 million dollars rather than 100 billion. Wealth taxes would ensure that the funds that would otherwise accumulate at the top make their way down for the benefit of everyone else.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the public is easily conned into believing that policies which benefit the wealthy will actually benefit themselves. An entire ideology of market fundamentalism (the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings) and “trickle-down” economics has been fabricated and widely disseminated just for that purpose. It runs so deep that even apparently liberally-minded democrats—like the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon—believe it. But, as in Dimon’s case, this is probably just an instance of self-delusion. As Reich demonstrates throughout the book, what Dimon says and how he behaves are two entirely different things. For example, Dimon claims that he’s a “Patriot before a CEO” and identifies as a Democrat concerned for the common good, but then publicly supports Trump’s corporate tax cuts (i.e., gifts to the wealthy).
In regard to Trump’s tax cuts, these did not stop large corporations from continuing to maximize the bottom line at the expense of employees, by the way. For example, Walmart, in 2019, despite saving $2 billion courtesy of Trump’s tax cuts, laid off 570 workers while spending $20 billion buying back stock to enrich wealthy investors and boost executive pay.
The bottom line is that income inequality is growing, the middle class is shrinking, and executive pay is skyrocketing, and claiming that this can all be blamed on immigrants is beyond stupid. So how do we really solve the problem and restore democracy from corporate capture? As Reich points out, the solutions already exist: universal healthcare and education, more funding for basic research and infrastructure, and steeper progressive income and wealth taxes to pay for it all—not to mention overturning Citizens United and broader campaign finance reform.
The question is, if the solutions exist, why do we consistently fail to implement them? The reason is, simply put, that the American oligarchy spends endless sums of money convincing us that the outcomes of the market—which it has rigged in its favor—are natural and inevitable, just as European monarchs used to tell its subjects that their vast amounts of wealth were decreed by God.
The only path forward is through the solidarity of the working class and its ability to resist the divide-and-conquer rhetoric of the oligarchy (currently led by Trump), who wants us fighting each other instead of them. As Reich wrote:
“Ultimately, these trends in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority, whose incomes have stagnated and whose wealth has failed to increase, join together to demand fundamental change. The most important political competition over the next decades will not be between the right and left or between Republicans and Democrats. It will be between a majority of Americans who have been losing ground and an economic elite that refuses to recognize or respond to the majority’s growing distress.”
Reich shows how the current political-economic system in the United States is infused with incentives for bad behavior. This starts with large corporations, whose executives are forced to maximize short-term profits for shareholders at all costs (to prevent hostile takeovers and to secure their own jobs and salaries). This is typically accomplished by shifting costs from shareholders onto other stakeholders, for example by laying off workers, moving operations overseas, or polluting the environment—all behaviors we should fully expect based on current incentives.
In essence, here’s what we’ve done: we’ve created massive legal entities (corporations) with a single-minded objective to maximize profits and then released them out into the world with few regulations and little oversight. Should we then be surprised to find that this has left a trail of devastation in its wake (layoffs, worker disillusionment, climate change, growing inequality, public health issues, financial crises, etc.)?
But we’ve done even more than this: we’ve also given those same amoral profit-maximizing monstrosities the power to infuse massive amounts of funds into the political process to buy candidates and engage in self-interested political lobbying, with the goal of further reducing regulations and taxes and further increasing their own power. Since the only goal of corporate management is the enhancement of profit, we can surmise that corporations are making these political contributions as investments, and not as political expressions of their genuine interest to promote the common good. As Reich wrote:
“When JPMorgan and other big corporations donated to the Republican Party in the 2016 elections in anticipation of a giant tax cut if Republicans won, their donations were also investments, and they paid off big...GE contributed $20 million and will get back $16 billion in tax savings. Chevron donated $13 million and received $9 billion. Not even a sizzling economy can deliver anything close to the returns on political investments.”
Politicians are likewise incentivized to bend to the will of corporations for campaign contributions and also for lucrative positions in those very firms once they leave Washington. And so big business has, in this way, infiltrated Washington and initiated a vicious cycle of concentrated wealth and power. This has resulted in America’s own unique brand of socialism: upward redistribution from the poor and middle class to the rich.
How else to explain the fact that the government bailed out the largest banks from reckless and idiodic decisions but did not likewise provide relief for homeowners and students struggling with mortgages and college debt? (Students still cannot eliminate student debt even through bankruptcy proceedings.) And how to explain the fact that, over the last four decades, corporate taxes have been slashed and yet middle-class wages have remained stagnant while top incomes have soared? As Reich wrote:
“Between 1999 and 2018, the United States economy grew 48 percent, but the typical household’s income did not grow at all, and the bottom half of America ended up with less wealth than it had before the financial crisis. The richest 1 percent, however, ended up twice as much wealth as it had before the financial crisis, and the richest 0.1 percent, with three times as much.”
So much for trickle-down economics.
Here’s what any rational reading of the numbers tells us has happened: the money corporations have saved from reduced taxes has gone to the wealthy at the expense of tax revenue that could have funded public goods that everyone would have benefited from (healthcare, education, infrastructure, basic research). This is a simple case of upward redistribution and socialism for the rich—and harsh capitalism for everyone else.
The reader might object that it is corporations that provide our products, services, and standards of living, but, as Reich points out, innovation is not stifled by progressive taxation. Reich correctly points out that Jeff Bezos, for example, would be equally motivated to innovate for 50 million dollars rather than 100 billion. Wealth taxes would ensure that the funds that would otherwise accumulate at the top make their way down for the benefit of everyone else.
Of course, it doesn’t help that the public is easily conned into believing that policies which benefit the wealthy will actually benefit themselves. An entire ideology of market fundamentalism (the modern equivalent of the divine right of kings) and “trickle-down” economics has been fabricated and widely disseminated just for that purpose. It runs so deep that even apparently liberally-minded democrats—like the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon—believe it. But, as in Dimon’s case, this is probably just an instance of self-delusion. As Reich demonstrates throughout the book, what Dimon says and how he behaves are two entirely different things. For example, Dimon claims that he’s a “Patriot before a CEO” and identifies as a Democrat concerned for the common good, but then publicly supports Trump’s corporate tax cuts (i.e., gifts to the wealthy).
In regard to Trump’s tax cuts, these did not stop large corporations from continuing to maximize the bottom line at the expense of employees, by the way. For example, Walmart, in 2019, despite saving $2 billion courtesy of Trump’s tax cuts, laid off 570 workers while spending $20 billion buying back stock to enrich wealthy investors and boost executive pay.
The bottom line is that income inequality is growing, the middle class is shrinking, and executive pay is skyrocketing, and claiming that this can all be blamed on immigrants is beyond stupid. So how do we really solve the problem and restore democracy from corporate capture? As Reich points out, the solutions already exist: universal healthcare and education, more funding for basic research and infrastructure, and steeper progressive income and wealth taxes to pay for it all—not to mention overturning Citizens United and broader campaign finance reform.
The question is, if the solutions exist, why do we consistently fail to implement them? The reason is, simply put, that the American oligarchy spends endless sums of money convincing us that the outcomes of the market—which it has rigged in its favor—are natural and inevitable, just as European monarchs used to tell its subjects that their vast amounts of wealth were decreed by God.
The only path forward is through the solidarity of the working class and its ability to resist the divide-and-conquer rhetoric of the oligarchy (currently led by Trump), who wants us fighting each other instead of them. As Reich wrote:
“Ultimately, these trends in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority, whose incomes have stagnated and whose wealth has failed to increase, join together to demand fundamental change. The most important political competition over the next decades will not be between the right and left or between Republicans and Democrats. It will be between a majority of Americans who have been losing ground and an economic elite that refuses to recognize or respond to the majority’s growing distress.”
April 7, 2020
I was annoyed early on in this book because it felt like a regurgitation of all the things you'd already know if you've been paying attention, but then I got it. He is making a wholistic case for reform. It's a tight book and just about the right length to explain the problem and offer solutions.
January 16, 2025
"The road to oligarchy has been paved by a relatively small number of hugely wealthy people with outsized influence over the rules of the game."
August 4, 2020
Excellent book all caring Americans should read. This is the latest in Robert Reich's series of books about the truth and how we have all been duped. He resolutely documents and explains his arguments which include the fallacy of party politics, capitalism, and "left vs. right". We all have a role in repairing the situation into which we have all been captive to the power of money and the oligarchy, the real enemy of the people and fair governance. Parts of this book were very despairing, due to its blaring truth. We have leaders like Mr. Reich and those he applauds in the book. We just need to listen and unite based upon the real facts rather than those we are diverted to focus upon.
April 8, 2020
Everyone who follows politics in the United States, certainly every Democrat, is aware that the American system is rigged. In their presidential campaigns, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have made sure of that. Warren is especially articulate and has gotten the point across with great skill. But leave it to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich to explain how things have gotten so far out of kilter. That’s the task he’s taken up in his latest book, The System.
The System is, in a sense, an open letter to Jamie Dimon. If you’re not familiar with that name, you should be. Dimon is the billionaire Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., America’s biggest bank, and Chairman of the Business Roundtable, a nonprofit association of the chief executives of the country’s biggest companies that exerts powerful influence in Washington. If anyone can be regarded as a spokesman for American capitalism, it’s Jamie Dimon. And apparently Reich resolved to write this book following a phone call he received from him in the spring of 2018. Dimon had called to complain because Reich had criticized him publicly. Much of the text in The System, especially at the beginning and end of the book, is addressed directly to Dimon.
A lifelong Democrat who’s not just talk
What you may not know about Jamie Dimon is that he is a lifelong Democrat. At the Business Roundtable, through his bank, and in public statements, he consistently advocates for progressive policies. As Reich notes, “He speaks out about the injustices and inequalities of contemporary America. [And] he is not just talk. He has pushed his bank to invest in poor cities and to create better opportunities for the disadvantaged.”
But he is “awash in self-delusion”
“I believe he’s sincere,” Reich asserts. “But he is awash in self-delusion . . . Dimon doesn’t see how he has contributed to the mess we’re in.” He is, in fact, one of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals who are most directly responsible for rigging the system. In his latest book, Reich offers his analysis of the many ways that Dimon and the others who comprise what Reich terms the oligarchy have used their power to enrich themselves.
Over the past forty years, they have acquired “unprecedented wealth, which has bought them even more power,” leaving the rest of us far behind. In Reich’s view, Dimon is “emblematic of an abdication of public responsibility to maintain the health of our political-economic system at a time when a comparative few at the top have more power over it than at any other time in more than a century.” And “for all his liberal outspokenness, Dimon never mentions America’s growing concentration of wealth and power.”
Reich’s analysis in a nutshell
“Don’t assume we’re locked in a battle between capitalism and socialism,” Reich proclaims at the outset. “We already have socialism — for the very rich. . . Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.” Reich then proceeds to explain exactly how this sad reality has come about.
“Three big systemic changes over the last forty years have reallocated power upward in the system,” he writes. “They are (1) the shift in corporate governance from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, (2) the shift in bargaining power from large unions to giant corporations, and (3) the unleashing of the financial power of Wall Street.” As a direct result, the system is rigged to divert an ever-larger share of national wealth toward a tiny minority at the top of the pyramid. The upshot is that the overwhelming majority of us are forced to deal with this reality through three “coping mechanisms”: women steadily moving into the labor force, practically everyone working longer hours, with most of us being forced to “draw down savings and borrow to the hilt.”
The subtitle notwithstanding, The System is long on analysis and short on concrete proposals for change. However, Reich’s predilection for systemic change of the sort advocated by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is abundantly clear. He has long supported Senator Sanders.
About the author
Robert B. Reich (1946-) has taught government and politics for forty years between stretches in government service. He served as Secretary of Labor during Bill Clinton’s first term (1993-97). In the 1980s, Reich taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Since 2006, he has served as the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy of the University of California, Berkeley. There, in addition to graduate courses, he teaches a popular undergraduate class called “Wealth and Poverty,” where his strengths as a public speaker and his nonstop sense of humor stand out. The System is his nineteenth book.
The System is, in a sense, an open letter to Jamie Dimon. If you’re not familiar with that name, you should be. Dimon is the billionaire Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., America’s biggest bank, and Chairman of the Business Roundtable, a nonprofit association of the chief executives of the country’s biggest companies that exerts powerful influence in Washington. If anyone can be regarded as a spokesman for American capitalism, it’s Jamie Dimon. And apparently Reich resolved to write this book following a phone call he received from him in the spring of 2018. Dimon had called to complain because Reich had criticized him publicly. Much of the text in The System, especially at the beginning and end of the book, is addressed directly to Dimon.
A lifelong Democrat who’s not just talk
What you may not know about Jamie Dimon is that he is a lifelong Democrat. At the Business Roundtable, through his bank, and in public statements, he consistently advocates for progressive policies. As Reich notes, “He speaks out about the injustices and inequalities of contemporary America. [And] he is not just talk. He has pushed his bank to invest in poor cities and to create better opportunities for the disadvantaged.”
But he is “awash in self-delusion”
“I believe he’s sincere,” Reich asserts. “But he is awash in self-delusion . . . Dimon doesn’t see how he has contributed to the mess we’re in.” He is, in fact, one of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals who are most directly responsible for rigging the system. In his latest book, Reich offers his analysis of the many ways that Dimon and the others who comprise what Reich terms the oligarchy have used their power to enrich themselves.
Over the past forty years, they have acquired “unprecedented wealth, which has bought them even more power,” leaving the rest of us far behind. In Reich’s view, Dimon is “emblematic of an abdication of public responsibility to maintain the health of our political-economic system at a time when a comparative few at the top have more power over it than at any other time in more than a century.” And “for all his liberal outspokenness, Dimon never mentions America’s growing concentration of wealth and power.”
Reich’s analysis in a nutshell
“Don’t assume we’re locked in a battle between capitalism and socialism,” Reich proclaims at the outset. “We already have socialism — for the very rich. . . Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.” Reich then proceeds to explain exactly how this sad reality has come about.
“Three big systemic changes over the last forty years have reallocated power upward in the system,” he writes. “They are (1) the shift in corporate governance from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, (2) the shift in bargaining power from large unions to giant corporations, and (3) the unleashing of the financial power of Wall Street.” As a direct result, the system is rigged to divert an ever-larger share of national wealth toward a tiny minority at the top of the pyramid. The upshot is that the overwhelming majority of us are forced to deal with this reality through three “coping mechanisms”: women steadily moving into the labor force, practically everyone working longer hours, with most of us being forced to “draw down savings and borrow to the hilt.”
The subtitle notwithstanding, The System is long on analysis and short on concrete proposals for change. However, Reich’s predilection for systemic change of the sort advocated by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is abundantly clear. He has long supported Senator Sanders.
About the author
Robert B. Reich (1946-) has taught government and politics for forty years between stretches in government service. He served as Secretary of Labor during Bill Clinton’s first term (1993-97). In the 1980s, Reich taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Since 2006, he has served as the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy of the University of California, Berkeley. There, in addition to graduate courses, he teaches a popular undergraduate class called “Wealth and Poverty,” where his strengths as a public speaker and his nonstop sense of humor stand out. The System is his nineteenth book.
September 1, 2023
Who is in power?
I've always been a fan of Reich, his messaging always resonating with me. This is the first book I've read by him and it did not surprise me or disappoint. This is an excellent book for Americans that are struggling with national identity crisis, reeling from social upheaval and are trying to understand what exactly the hell is going on. In a very easy to understand way, Reich will tell why things are the way they are. And it's not a secret and it's also become increasing obvious what has happened and Reich will explain it to you in this book.
The narrative debates surrounding political parties, ideology, politicians, free market v socialism are an enormous distraction between the real dichotomy that is going on: the powerful vs the powerless. We need to stop focusing on politicians and start focusing on who has power, why they have that power, is their power justified and should that power be taken away and why. Our energies should be focused on understanding and regulating power not on what the news cycle, memes and social media want to constantly distract you with. Culture wars are a weapon of the powerful to distract, deflect, blame and hide beneath.
Like many, many books, Reich outlines the power shift that happened in the 1980s away from labor and more into capital. During this age of union busting, leveraged buy outs, junk bonds and predatory takeovers, the corporatocracy came roaring back from the pre-New Deal era of the robber barons. The public consented and so did the political elite which dragged the entire spectrum toward favoring the corporate class and valorizing greed. We shifted from stakeholder capitalism to shareholder capitalism where the fiduciary responsibility to shareholders became sacrosanct. In other words, a cultural shift, engineered by the Business Round Table and conservative thinkers and think tanks, occurred that fooled many many Americans into believing that if relinquish power to the corporate class that the benefits would naturally fall to the labor class as well.
The flaw in Trickle Down Economics is trusting the power of the corporate class while forgetting that once power is given, that power has one ultimate aim: preservation of that power. Money and wealth are different things. The labor class has money, the corporate class has wealth. Wealth is power. Let me repeat: wealth is power. And power is the right to exercise freedom. The neoliberal shift has resulted in some of the worst wealth concentration since the baron robber era and stagnation of American wages, incomes, health and purchasing power. Giving power to the corporate class has not resulted in gains to the rest of us and has only concentrated wealth at the top.
This book is basically an open letter to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and self-described democrat. Dimon epitomizes someone who leverages PC culture power, or a perversion of Wokeism, into political and legislative power. CEOs and billionaires are not our friends. They are, in fact, a competing form of government. The state-corporate collusion that has occurred since the 1980s is the direct reason for the corrosion of trust in institutions, wage stagnation, worse health outcomes, poverty, hunger, disinformation and the rise of authoritarian populism. This is it. We know what the culprit is: corporate-state hegemony.
According to Reich, there are 4 ways to make a billion dollars: inherit it, monopolize a market, bribe a politician to create wealth through tax reduction or invest billions that you already have. None of these are legitimate "free market" ways to create a billion dollars. Accumulating that much wealth is inherently anti-competitive and corrupt. And this is why one of the solutions is to reduce the wealth of our masters because their excess wealth allows them to buy elections, politicians and legislation. This is why one of the greatest solutions is to tax capital. Why? Not to re-distribute wealth but to limit the power of the wealth. This is essential to understand. Increasing tax on capital is not a socialist move, it's a democratic move. Buy greatly taxing estates, inheritances, capital gains and wealth, the power can be reduced without harming a market economy. All it does is reduce the influence of rent seekers at the top, many of whom literally haven't work a day in their lives. At the same time, can we stop taxing labor? Let's greatly reduce federal income and state taxes, sales tax and payroll tax. We do not need these taxes to fund social programs. The money can be easily created by the Treasury and the Fed. The US government does NOT need tax money to spend.
The locus of power must be shifted back toward the public or we will continue to hurtle toward authoritarianism, corporate fascism, climate disaster and abject human rights violations. Reich has some optimism toward the end of this book endorsing a more diverse younger generation and also suggesting there may be fertile ground for a third political party that can implement these changes. For me, understanding power while not being distracted by culture wars is one of the most responsible things a citizen can do right now. Have hope. Hope is the most noble form of rebellion.
I've always been a fan of Reich, his messaging always resonating with me. This is the first book I've read by him and it did not surprise me or disappoint. This is an excellent book for Americans that are struggling with national identity crisis, reeling from social upheaval and are trying to understand what exactly the hell is going on. In a very easy to understand way, Reich will tell why things are the way they are. And it's not a secret and it's also become increasing obvious what has happened and Reich will explain it to you in this book.
The narrative debates surrounding political parties, ideology, politicians, free market v socialism are an enormous distraction between the real dichotomy that is going on: the powerful vs the powerless. We need to stop focusing on politicians and start focusing on who has power, why they have that power, is their power justified and should that power be taken away and why. Our energies should be focused on understanding and regulating power not on what the news cycle, memes and social media want to constantly distract you with. Culture wars are a weapon of the powerful to distract, deflect, blame and hide beneath.
Like many, many books, Reich outlines the power shift that happened in the 1980s away from labor and more into capital. During this age of union busting, leveraged buy outs, junk bonds and predatory takeovers, the corporatocracy came roaring back from the pre-New Deal era of the robber barons. The public consented and so did the political elite which dragged the entire spectrum toward favoring the corporate class and valorizing greed. We shifted from stakeholder capitalism to shareholder capitalism where the fiduciary responsibility to shareholders became sacrosanct. In other words, a cultural shift, engineered by the Business Round Table and conservative thinkers and think tanks, occurred that fooled many many Americans into believing that if relinquish power to the corporate class that the benefits would naturally fall to the labor class as well.
The flaw in Trickle Down Economics is trusting the power of the corporate class while forgetting that once power is given, that power has one ultimate aim: preservation of that power. Money and wealth are different things. The labor class has money, the corporate class has wealth. Wealth is power. Let me repeat: wealth is power. And power is the right to exercise freedom. The neoliberal shift has resulted in some of the worst wealth concentration since the baron robber era and stagnation of American wages, incomes, health and purchasing power. Giving power to the corporate class has not resulted in gains to the rest of us and has only concentrated wealth at the top.
This book is basically an open letter to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and self-described democrat. Dimon epitomizes someone who leverages PC culture power, or a perversion of Wokeism, into political and legislative power. CEOs and billionaires are not our friends. They are, in fact, a competing form of government. The state-corporate collusion that has occurred since the 1980s is the direct reason for the corrosion of trust in institutions, wage stagnation, worse health outcomes, poverty, hunger, disinformation and the rise of authoritarian populism. This is it. We know what the culprit is: corporate-state hegemony.
According to Reich, there are 4 ways to make a billion dollars: inherit it, monopolize a market, bribe a politician to create wealth through tax reduction or invest billions that you already have. None of these are legitimate "free market" ways to create a billion dollars. Accumulating that much wealth is inherently anti-competitive and corrupt. And this is why one of the solutions is to reduce the wealth of our masters because their excess wealth allows them to buy elections, politicians and legislation. This is why one of the greatest solutions is to tax capital. Why? Not to re-distribute wealth but to limit the power of the wealth. This is essential to understand. Increasing tax on capital is not a socialist move, it's a democratic move. Buy greatly taxing estates, inheritances, capital gains and wealth, the power can be reduced without harming a market economy. All it does is reduce the influence of rent seekers at the top, many of whom literally haven't work a day in their lives. At the same time, can we stop taxing labor? Let's greatly reduce federal income and state taxes, sales tax and payroll tax. We do not need these taxes to fund social programs. The money can be easily created by the Treasury and the Fed. The US government does NOT need tax money to spend.
The locus of power must be shifted back toward the public or we will continue to hurtle toward authoritarianism, corporate fascism, climate disaster and abject human rights violations. Reich has some optimism toward the end of this book endorsing a more diverse younger generation and also suggesting there may be fertile ground for a third political party that can implement these changes. For me, understanding power while not being distracted by culture wars is one of the most responsible things a citizen can do right now. Have hope. Hope is the most noble form of rebellion.
July 20, 2020
“Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.”
“The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back. This will require a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor, and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy and against concentrated power and privilege, determined to rid politics of big money, end corporate welfare and crony capitalism, bust up monopolies, stop voter suppression, and strengthen the countervailing power of labor unions, employee-owned corporations, worker cooperatives, state and local banks, and grassroots politics. This agenda is neither right nor left. It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.”
“The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back. This will require a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor, and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy and against concentrated power and privilege, determined to rid politics of big money, end corporate welfare and crony capitalism, bust up monopolies, stop voter suppression, and strengthen the countervailing power of labor unions, employee-owned corporations, worker cooperatives, state and local banks, and grassroots politics. This agenda is neither right nor left. It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.”
April 23, 2023
13/60 for Mama in 2020
Every American needs to read this book, no matter their political affiliations or leanings. I only wish Americans had had an opportunity to read it before the 2020 primaries began.
Every American needs to read this book, no matter their political affiliations or leanings. I only wish Americans had had an opportunity to read it before the 2020 primaries began.
July 11, 2021
An out-of-the-ballpark, hard-hitting, straight-talking, name-citing book that is "right on" on how we have become mired in the mess we are in today!
Reich pulls no punches in showing how our former democratic republic has been transformed into an oligarchy -- effectively, government by the wealthiest (who are far from the worthiest) -- aided and abetted by the politicians, "news" sources, and info-tanks that they have created and support through funding millions which affords them billions in annual return.
In addition, he not only demonstrates how BOTH parties contributed to this mess, but also how the Republican Party has become the agent of the super-rich, faithfully following their agenda of union-busting, wage and voter suppression, and suppression of all forms of programs and policies that would aid the majority of citizens in this country. And, because they seek to pass only those further tax cuts and other policies that favor the wealthiest and the largest of corporations, to keep the public from seeing how effectively they prevent any other assistance for the rest of us from being realized, the Republicans have become expert at pushing those cultural red-hot buttons that keep so many millions enraged and afraid. People who are being stampeded are unable to see or think clearly.
This relatively brief (just under 200 pages) and very readable book is chock-full of facts, dates and names that make it clear just who is responsible for this and how it all unfolded.
Over the past 50 years, he charges, the United States has undergone "three systemic changes...from stake-holder to shareholder capitalism, from unionized workers to corporate monopolies, and from regulation of Wall Street to letting the Street run wild" which, together, "profoundly altered the American system. It created a jaw-droppingly wealthy and powerful oligarchy. It shafted just about everyone else.”
“Look at the shifting tectonic plates under all this and you view the profound shifts in the allocation of power that brought us the system we have today. The first three decades after World War II featured a growing middle class, a steadily more inclusive democracy, and a nation beginning to grapple with problems like poverty, inequality of opportunity, and environmental decay. African Americans and women slowly gained footholds in the system. Mass production begat mass consumption, and mass consumption demanded steady jobs with good wages. This balance relied on strong unions, a government willing to regulate corporations, and large corporations rooted in their communities and responsible for the well-being of their employees and neighbors as well as shareholders.
“In the last forty years, the opposite has occurred: The middle class has shrunk, democracy is too often malfunctioning, and the nation has turned its back on climate change, poverty, widening inequality, and the evils of racism and xenophobia. As I’ve said, the economy doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game in which winners do better only to the extent losers do worse. But power is necessarily a zero-sum game. Certain people possess it only to the extent other people don’t. Some people gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.”
How could this happen? Because, Reich forcefully argues, “no one paid attention to the system as a whole – to the consequences of the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from large unions to giant corporations, and from regulated to unfettered finance. The choices that the American public assumed were at stake – the so-called political right versus left, Republican versus Democratic, free market versus government, efficiency or inefficiency, national competitiveness or lack thereof, corporate responsibility or irresponsibility, socialism or capitalism – distracted us from the more fundamental questions about power: Who was gaining it? Who was losing it? Were we satisfied with the results? Through it all, Americans have clung to the meritocratic tautology that individuals are paid what they’re worth in the market, without examining changes in the legal and political institutions that define the market. This tautology is easily confused with a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid. Yet this claim is meaningful only if the system’s legal and political institutions are morally just. It has lured us into thinking nothing can or should be done to alter what people are paid because the market has decreed it. By this logic, the oligarchy is natural and inevitable.”
So, what then can be done? “The answer to this conundrum is not found in economics. It is found in politics, and it is rooted in power. The systemic changes have been reinforcing and cumulative. As more of the nation’s income flows to large corporations and Wall Street and to those who earnings and wealth derive directly from them, their political influence over the rules of the market increases, which in turn enlarges their share of total income. The more dependent politicians become on these financial favors, the greater their willingness to reorganize the system to the benefit of these moneyed interests. The weaker unions and other traditional sources of countervailing power become, the small their political influence over the system, which causes the playing field to tilt even further against average workers and the poor.
“Ultimately, these trends in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority, whose incomes have stagnated and whose wealthy has failed to increase, join together to demand fundamental change. The most important political competition over the next decades will not be between the right and left or between Republicans and Democrats. It will be between a majority of Americans who have been losing ground and an economic elite that refuses to recognize or respond to the majority’s growing distress.”
Reich is ultimately hopeful if enough citizens wake up in time to connect the dots. This will be difficult to do at a time when legions of Americans have chosen to follow the false spokesperson of the down-and-outs – Trump, who in reality is in cahoots with the richest among us – and when Republicans’ litmus test of faithfulness is unthinking loyalty to Trump and his Big Lie.
It is imperative that for those of us not yet caught up in that illusory trap to name the facts, connect the dots, and demand fundamental change that will restore this country to the rest of us. Time is not on our side!
Reich pulls no punches in showing how our former democratic republic has been transformed into an oligarchy -- effectively, government by the wealthiest (who are far from the worthiest) -- aided and abetted by the politicians, "news" sources, and info-tanks that they have created and support through funding millions which affords them billions in annual return.
In addition, he not only demonstrates how BOTH parties contributed to this mess, but also how the Republican Party has become the agent of the super-rich, faithfully following their agenda of union-busting, wage and voter suppression, and suppression of all forms of programs and policies that would aid the majority of citizens in this country. And, because they seek to pass only those further tax cuts and other policies that favor the wealthiest and the largest of corporations, to keep the public from seeing how effectively they prevent any other assistance for the rest of us from being realized, the Republicans have become expert at pushing those cultural red-hot buttons that keep so many millions enraged and afraid. People who are being stampeded are unable to see or think clearly.
This relatively brief (just under 200 pages) and very readable book is chock-full of facts, dates and names that make it clear just who is responsible for this and how it all unfolded.
Over the past 50 years, he charges, the United States has undergone "three systemic changes...from stake-holder to shareholder capitalism, from unionized workers to corporate monopolies, and from regulation of Wall Street to letting the Street run wild" which, together, "profoundly altered the American system. It created a jaw-droppingly wealthy and powerful oligarchy. It shafted just about everyone else.”
“Look at the shifting tectonic plates under all this and you view the profound shifts in the allocation of power that brought us the system we have today. The first three decades after World War II featured a growing middle class, a steadily more inclusive democracy, and a nation beginning to grapple with problems like poverty, inequality of opportunity, and environmental decay. African Americans and women slowly gained footholds in the system. Mass production begat mass consumption, and mass consumption demanded steady jobs with good wages. This balance relied on strong unions, a government willing to regulate corporations, and large corporations rooted in their communities and responsible for the well-being of their employees and neighbors as well as shareholders.
“In the last forty years, the opposite has occurred: The middle class has shrunk, democracy is too often malfunctioning, and the nation has turned its back on climate change, poverty, widening inequality, and the evils of racism and xenophobia. As I’ve said, the economy doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game in which winners do better only to the extent losers do worse. But power is necessarily a zero-sum game. Certain people possess it only to the extent other people don’t. Some people gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.”
How could this happen? Because, Reich forcefully argues, “no one paid attention to the system as a whole – to the consequences of the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from large unions to giant corporations, and from regulated to unfettered finance. The choices that the American public assumed were at stake – the so-called political right versus left, Republican versus Democratic, free market versus government, efficiency or inefficiency, national competitiveness or lack thereof, corporate responsibility or irresponsibility, socialism or capitalism – distracted us from the more fundamental questions about power: Who was gaining it? Who was losing it? Were we satisfied with the results? Through it all, Americans have clung to the meritocratic tautology that individuals are paid what they’re worth in the market, without examining changes in the legal and political institutions that define the market. This tautology is easily confused with a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid. Yet this claim is meaningful only if the system’s legal and political institutions are morally just. It has lured us into thinking nothing can or should be done to alter what people are paid because the market has decreed it. By this logic, the oligarchy is natural and inevitable.”
So, what then can be done? “The answer to this conundrum is not found in economics. It is found in politics, and it is rooted in power. The systemic changes have been reinforcing and cumulative. As more of the nation’s income flows to large corporations and Wall Street and to those who earnings and wealth derive directly from them, their political influence over the rules of the market increases, which in turn enlarges their share of total income. The more dependent politicians become on these financial favors, the greater their willingness to reorganize the system to the benefit of these moneyed interests. The weaker unions and other traditional sources of countervailing power become, the small their political influence over the system, which causes the playing field to tilt even further against average workers and the poor.
“Ultimately, these trends in America, as elsewhere, can be reversed only if the vast majority, whose incomes have stagnated and whose wealthy has failed to increase, join together to demand fundamental change. The most important political competition over the next decades will not be between the right and left or between Republicans and Democrats. It will be between a majority of Americans who have been losing ground and an economic elite that refuses to recognize or respond to the majority’s growing distress.”
Reich is ultimately hopeful if enough citizens wake up in time to connect the dots. This will be difficult to do at a time when legions of Americans have chosen to follow the false spokesperson of the down-and-outs – Trump, who in reality is in cahoots with the richest among us – and when Republicans’ litmus test of faithfulness is unthinking loyalty to Trump and his Big Lie.
It is imperative that for those of us not yet caught up in that illusory trap to name the facts, connect the dots, and demand fundamental change that will restore this country to the rest of us. Time is not on our side!
June 21, 2020
Despite the apparent polarization that currently bedevils our politics, there is actually much that both the Right and the Left could agree upon. For instance, eliminating special tax breaks for giant corporations, enforcing anti-trust laws and breaking up monopolies (including internet companies), and cracking down on political corruption. Now Reich seems to think that the problem here is corporations buying off the government, whereas I see it as more of a two-way street where politicians are also shaking down businesses for campaign dollars to maintain their positions of power, but either way it should be stamped out.
He refers to these and other examples of crony capitalism as socialism for the rich. Conservatives would agree that this is a problem, but what we need to do is eliminate it, not expand it and offer it to everyone.
And then there’s the entire financial services industry...
He refers to these and other examples of crony capitalism as socialism for the rich. Conservatives would agree that this is a problem, but what we need to do is eliminate it, not expand it and offer it to everyone.
And then there’s the entire financial services industry...
June 28, 2020
Countering a Have vs. Have Nots Society
Robert Reich has written a brilliant new book in The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. His premise is the United States system over the last 40 years has been highjacked by the ultra-wealthy who he calls the oligarchy (rule of the few). He convincingly asserts the oligarchs (the wealthiest 10% of the US population) have turned the wheels of government, finance, and economy totally to their full advantage. On the other hand the lower 90% of the population have seen almost no economic advantage in the last 40 years while the oligarchs wealth have exploded to astronomical proportions.
Throughout the book I was reminded of other fantastic books that have similar conclusions. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson stunningly insightful book, Why Nations Fail, comes to mind with their thesis that countries fail because of extractive leadership that exploits a nation’s economy to the advantage of a few oligarchs. A Warning by Anonymous shows how the current US presidency is incompetent, inept, and the definition of oligarchical. Janesville: Am American Story shows the plight of those regular Americans left behind in the economy meltdown of the Great Recession. Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty First Century shows how many Americans are one step away from homelessness searching for itinerant seasonal jobs while living in their vehicles. Even Democracy, Inc. by the Washington Post shows how Congress has created a plethora of laws to benefit the members of Congress through what is in essence legalized corruption. All these authors, Reich included as the most famous of them, all show how an oligarchic America has dramatically failed every day people in stubbornly blocking their opportunities to get ahead in a economy rigged at all levels for the nearly exclusive benefit of the wealthy few.
Reich believes that it’s an active and well-informed electorate can check the power and greed of the oligarch class. I agree. We have seen that power in the 2018 mid-term elections, but if that carries forward to the 2020 election remains to be seen. He also sees this struggle as not just being a Republican vs. Democratic struggle but instead being one of the haves vs. have nots. Reich’s last book, The Common Good, shows how important it is for us as a people to work toward improving society for the good of all, another example of being active in bettering society. Reich is one of the great political thinkers of our times, and this book clearly shows why. This is a provocative read well worth examining.
Robert Reich has written a brilliant new book in The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. His premise is the United States system over the last 40 years has been highjacked by the ultra-wealthy who he calls the oligarchy (rule of the few). He convincingly asserts the oligarchs (the wealthiest 10% of the US population) have turned the wheels of government, finance, and economy totally to their full advantage. On the other hand the lower 90% of the population have seen almost no economic advantage in the last 40 years while the oligarchs wealth have exploded to astronomical proportions.
Throughout the book I was reminded of other fantastic books that have similar conclusions. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson stunningly insightful book, Why Nations Fail, comes to mind with their thesis that countries fail because of extractive leadership that exploits a nation’s economy to the advantage of a few oligarchs. A Warning by Anonymous shows how the current US presidency is incompetent, inept, and the definition of oligarchical. Janesville: Am American Story shows the plight of those regular Americans left behind in the economy meltdown of the Great Recession. Jessica Bruder’s Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty First Century shows how many Americans are one step away from homelessness searching for itinerant seasonal jobs while living in their vehicles. Even Democracy, Inc. by the Washington Post shows how Congress has created a plethora of laws to benefit the members of Congress through what is in essence legalized corruption. All these authors, Reich included as the most famous of them, all show how an oligarchic America has dramatically failed every day people in stubbornly blocking their opportunities to get ahead in a economy rigged at all levels for the nearly exclusive benefit of the wealthy few.
Reich believes that it’s an active and well-informed electorate can check the power and greed of the oligarch class. I agree. We have seen that power in the 2018 mid-term elections, but if that carries forward to the 2020 election remains to be seen. He also sees this struggle as not just being a Republican vs. Democratic struggle but instead being one of the haves vs. have nots. Reich’s last book, The Common Good, shows how important it is for us as a people to work toward improving society for the good of all, another example of being active in bettering society. Reich is one of the great political thinkers of our times, and this book clearly shows why. This is a provocative read well worth examining.
June 9, 2020
Solid 4.7. I cannot write a comprehensive review because I am so inundated with information, but I will say that I liked the framework Reich lays out for understanding how power is allocated, maintained, and/or dismantled.
March 1, 2025
Robert Reich warned us in 2020 with The System. The oligarchs have descended on us and are turning the USA into a western version of Russia.
Reich takes us back in time to show some of the origins of the corrupted system. This is a great companion book for The Common Good, which gives a bit more of the history. Read this one second since it dives more into the immediate problems and perceptions.
Stand out passages:
"Eleven years after Wall Street's near meltdown, not a single major financial executive had been convicted or even indicted for crimes that wiped out the savings of countless Americans. Contrast this with a teenager who is imprisoned for years for selling an ounce of marijuana.
Socialism for the rich means the oligarchy is not held accountable." (p. 52).
"Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made." Harry Truman
"Every time over the last century Americans have sought to pool their resources for the common good, the wealthy and powerful have used the bogeyman of "socialism" to try to stop them." (p. 43).
I do think the "How we fix it" could be updated and expanded on. But Reich gives up hope. He believes the democratic foundation will prevail.
Reich is one smart human, a master of the logical argument, an amazing historian and public policy expert, as well as a brilliant economist. He's one of the best voices we have right now in 2025 as I write this.
Reich takes us back in time to show some of the origins of the corrupted system. This is a great companion book for The Common Good, which gives a bit more of the history. Read this one second since it dives more into the immediate problems and perceptions.
Stand out passages:
"Eleven years after Wall Street's near meltdown, not a single major financial executive had been convicted or even indicted for crimes that wiped out the savings of countless Americans. Contrast this with a teenager who is imprisoned for years for selling an ounce of marijuana.
Socialism for the rich means the oligarchy is not held accountable." (p. 52).
"Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made." Harry Truman
"Every time over the last century Americans have sought to pool their resources for the common good, the wealthy and powerful have used the bogeyman of "socialism" to try to stop them." (p. 43).
I do think the "How we fix it" could be updated and expanded on. But Reich gives up hope. He believes the democratic foundation will prevail.
Reich is one smart human, a master of the logical argument, an amazing historian and public policy expert, as well as a brilliant economist. He's one of the best voices we have right now in 2025 as I write this.
October 13, 2020
“One of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor.”-John Kenneth Galbraith
“Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made. It was what they called public power, bank deposit insurance, free and independent labor organizations, anything that helps all the people”--Harry Truman
It is an open secret that the wealthy control America. Most people are probably at this point familiar with the statistic that the top 10% of Americans control roughly 80% of the country’s wealth. Within that 10% the top 1% control a significant portion.
So what then is the need for a book to tell us this?
Early on in my reading I wondered exactly this. I quite like Robert Reich and find him to be a compassionate economist, if such a creature can exist, who genuinely seems to care about the working class and income inequality but do we need him to tell us that the rich run the country?
What made this book interesting however is that Reich does not focus on the outcome, but rather the how and why we have arrived here. America has always been a country where wealth equaled power but it has also up until the early 1980’s been a place where corporations by and large were part of communities and as such were invested in their workers as well as profits:
“Frank Abrams, chair of Standard Oil of New Jersey, in a 1951 address that was typical of the time
proclaimed ‘The job of management is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly affected interest groups, stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large.’ ”
The idea that management has a responsibility to both its shareholders and stakeholders in 1951 unfortunately by 1997 became in the words of the Business Roundtable, a prominent group of the country’s most influential corporations:
“The job of business is in fact only to maximize shareholder wealth.”
Or the stance of an executive at Apple that:
“We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”
So, how did we get here?
Reich argues that three fundamental shifts have occurred in the last 40 years that have bred the wealth inequality we see today.
The first is the aforementioned shift from stakeholders (workers) to shareholders. Once corporations began to shed themselves of moral obligations to their workers they began cutting salaries, eliminating pensions, and doing anything necessary to maximize profit.
The second was the evisceration of unions beginning with the decision of President Reagan to fire striking air traffic controllers. Once this was accomplished, it provided cover to private businesses to begin their own union busting right up to the present with the advent of “right to work” laws in multiple states that prohibit unions from forcing members to pay dues, essentially rendering them ineffective. This is in addition to the the ability of corporations such as Walmart to summarily fire anyone thought to be organizing. Such firings are prohibited by law, but the penalties for non compliance are so insignificant as to render them effectively worthless.
The third and perhaps most critical is deregulation.
After the Great Depression, Congress enacted a series of banking reforms to ensure that corporations would not be able to amass power at a scale that mismanagement would cause a nationwide collapse. Starting again in the 1980’s however, corporate donations and lobbyists began effectively buying members of Congress and whittling away the walls that prevented them from engaging in the most speculative and risky financial dealings, culminating in the crash of 2008.
Perhaps most importantly however is the idea that has taken hold in the American imagination that this obscene wealth disparity is just a logical and inevitable consequence of capitalism and that anyone who puts in the work can rise to the top of this system. As Reich writes:
“One of the most dangerously deceptive ideas is that we work and live in a free market that is neutral and natural, existing outside government, unaffected by how power is allocated in the system. We are repeatedly told that whatever inequalities and insecurities the market generates and whatever negative consequences it causes are beyond our control….Americans have clung to the meritocratic tautology that individuals are paid what they’re worth in the market, without examining changes in the legal and political institutions that define the market. This tautology is easily confused with a moral claim that people deserve what they are paid. Yet this claim is meaningful only if the system’s legal and political institutions are morally just. It has lured us into thinking nothing can or should be done to alter what people are paid because the market has decreed it. By this logic, the oligarchy is natural and inevitable.”
He argues however that there is nothing inevitable about any of this. We have a long history with capitalism pre-1980’s, that while at times in our history saw great inequality, also saw times of great middle class growth and improvement for all segments of society.
Put simply, the kind of wealth disparity we see today, much like with the idea that technology is also inevitable, is only as inevitable as we allow it to be. There have always been points in America’s history where people stopped being able to tolerate working themselves ragged for little money or security. It is at these critical junctures that social change has typically occurred. Are we in the midst of another upheaval now? Reich believes it is possible but also cautions us not to be complacent. Nothing can happen without people sharing a common interest in each other’s welfare and a desire to wrest power from those unwilling to cede even the slightest bit of it.
It is hard but necessary work, but it is something working class Americans have accomplished before and together can accomplish again.
August 22, 2025
What’s going on in my America?
For a long time now, I’ve felt like I’ve somehow woken up and found myself on the bad side of It’s a Wonderful Life, that I’ve lost my wonderful Bedford Falls and ended up trapped in Pottersville.
Call me naive. I grew up in the fifties and sixties. I lived in a small town. When an elderly person in our neighborhood took sick, the neighbors took in meals. My dad saw the end of the road at the sulfur company he worked for, and he was able to go back to school at night, get his degree, and get a great job that supported him all his life as an accountant. My grandfather was a union leader and he helped lead several strikes at Dow for more money and benefits for the workers. Adults in the neighborhood kept an eye on kids but didn’t helicopter-parent them. Our schools and workplaces and places of business were swiftly integrated with people of color and both men and women and we grew up with a diverse variety of friends and acquaintances...
Above all, there was a feeling of hopefulness, that even if things weren’t perfect, they were getting better, that people cared about each other and about the world. To paraphrase JFK, our motivation was to ask not for what the world could do for us, but for what we could do for the world.
Now let’s move forward forty years.
I look around now and what do I see? Bold out-and-out lying in public discourse. A huge sector of the population that feels it has no part in the conversation. Elected officials who head to warmer climates during an emergency in the state in which they serve. A president who asserts, against all evidence, that the election was stolen from him, and who riles up common people to the extent that they invade the buildings where people meet to form the laws, threatening to kill the leaders of our government. And then lawmaker after lawmaker turns her head from doing what is right, after letting this man say and do anything he wants for four years, and allows this president to walk away. People who ignore scientists and refuse to wear a mask to protect themselves and the vulnerable. Black people who are killed at an extraordinarily high rate by police officers. Immigrants who do most of the hard work in our country and yet are being shut out.The preacher in my town who buys a home in the next community instead of among the people of his congregation because it will have “better resale value.” I could go on and on…
I’ve sought out books to help me sort all of this out.
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam
Our Towns: A 100,000 Journey Into the Heart of America by James M. and Deborah Fallows
Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks
I shared my thoughts on these books here.
These books were extremely helpful in my understanding of the anger I sense in others as well as in helping me to have good conversations with others. But it’s more than just my conversations with others that need help, I think.
I look to these two books:
The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel
By page six, Robert B. Reich in The System has already shared this quote from New York magazine’s Frank Rich: “Everything in the country is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done little to protect us from the next, but also race relations, health care, education, institutional religion, law enforcement, the physical infrastructure, the news media, the bedrock virtues of civility and community.” Reich goes on to say, “He might have added the environment and our democracy.”
Wow.
Reich looks at the roots of all these problems and he finds the source of the problem in those who control money and, consequently, power, in our country. He quotes activist Greta Thunberg: “If everyone is guilty, then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people---some companies and some decision-makers in particular---have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”
Reich shares some horrifying wealth inequality statistics. “ Between 1980 and 2019, the share of the nation’s total household income going to the richest 1 percent more than doubled, while the earnings of the bottom 90 percent barely rose….the share of the total wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent...own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of households combined.” And, worse, “All this has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the political power of the super-wealthy and an equally dramatic decline in the political influence of everyone else.”
Whew. Can we go on? I feel we must.
“As long as they control the purse strings, the oligarchs know there will be no substantial tax increases for them. Instead, their taxes will fall. There will be no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of their giant corporations. Instead, their corporations will grow larger….Government will provide even more corporate subsidies, bailouts, and loan guarantees. It will continue to eliminate protections for consumers, workers, and the environment. It will become a government for, of, and by the oligarchy.”
Oh dear.
“If democracy were working as it should, government officials would make the rules roughly according to what most citizens want them to be. They would also take into account the interests of the poor and of minorities, and give them a fair chance to make it as well. The system would be working for all of us. In a vicious cycle, though, the rules are made mainly by those with the power and wealth to buy the politicians, regulatory heads, and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth concentrate at the top, so does political leverage.”
Reich asserts that America is not “suffering a breakdown in private morality. To the contrary, it’s burdened by a breakdown in public morality.”
How does Reich suggest that we get out of this mess? He dreams of a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of Americans in the bottom 90 percent of the population who come together based on “a common understanding of what it means to be a citizen with responsibilities for the greater good.” He goes on to say, “The reason to fight oligarchy is not just to obtain a larger share of the economic winnings; it is to make democracy function so that we can achieve all the goals we hold in common.” His call to action is, “Democracy will prevail, if we fight for it.”
Michael J. Sandel is also quite bleak in his assessment of America. He arrives at his conclusions about the state of the nation from his years of experience teaching at one of our nation’s most revered institutions. Sandel looks at the turbulence among our people, and he, like Reich, believes the problems stem from the divisions between those who control the money and power in our country and those who seem to have none. Sandel shows how our fundamental philosophy of belief in a meritocracy, in a system where those who are smart and powerful deserve to be smarter and more powerful, is flawed. He convincingly shows how closely SAT scores and IQ points are tied to income, how coming from wealth leads to more wealth, how few people in our society move from poor to affluence. It’s not enough, he tells us, to simply open the door a little wider, to let in a few more of the poor into opportunities to obtain wealth. It’s the underlying philosophy, he says, that must be changed, to strip away both the unwarranted hubris of the haves and the sense of inferiority and failure from the have-nots. Sandel and Reich agree that we need to recenter ourselves on the idea of a common good. Sandel hopes to promote the idea of people as producers rather than consumers, to restore the idea of the dignity of work, and to create policies that allow workers to find good jobs that support strong families and communities. Sandel strongly condemns the financial industry, noting that “much financial activity hinders rather than promotes economic growth.” He would act by “discouraging speculation and honoring productive labor.”
I’m no politician; I’m simply a regular citizen who would like to make things better. These books have helped me understand (a bit) the workings of our complex economy and government and have given me ideas about ways to act to promote our common good. My sense of hopefulness is growing.
At least that’s a start.
For a long time now, I’ve felt like I’ve somehow woken up and found myself on the bad side of It’s a Wonderful Life, that I’ve lost my wonderful Bedford Falls and ended up trapped in Pottersville.
Call me naive. I grew up in the fifties and sixties. I lived in a small town. When an elderly person in our neighborhood took sick, the neighbors took in meals. My dad saw the end of the road at the sulfur company he worked for, and he was able to go back to school at night, get his degree, and get a great job that supported him all his life as an accountant. My grandfather was a union leader and he helped lead several strikes at Dow for more money and benefits for the workers. Adults in the neighborhood kept an eye on kids but didn’t helicopter-parent them. Our schools and workplaces and places of business were swiftly integrated with people of color and both men and women and we grew up with a diverse variety of friends and acquaintances...
Above all, there was a feeling of hopefulness, that even if things weren’t perfect, they were getting better, that people cared about each other and about the world. To paraphrase JFK, our motivation was to ask not for what the world could do for us, but for what we could do for the world.
Now let’s move forward forty years.
I look around now and what do I see? Bold out-and-out lying in public discourse. A huge sector of the population that feels it has no part in the conversation. Elected officials who head to warmer climates during an emergency in the state in which they serve. A president who asserts, against all evidence, that the election was stolen from him, and who riles up common people to the extent that they invade the buildings where people meet to form the laws, threatening to kill the leaders of our government. And then lawmaker after lawmaker turns her head from doing what is right, after letting this man say and do anything he wants for four years, and allows this president to walk away. People who ignore scientists and refuse to wear a mask to protect themselves and the vulnerable. Black people who are killed at an extraordinarily high rate by police officers. Immigrants who do most of the hard work in our country and yet are being shut out.The preacher in my town who buys a home in the next community instead of among the people of his congregation because it will have “better resale value.” I could go on and on…
I’ve sought out books to help me sort all of this out.
Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Timothy P. Carney
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam
Our Towns: A 100,000 Journey Into the Heart of America by James M. and Deborah Fallows
Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt by Arthur C. Brooks
I shared my thoughts on these books here.
These books were extremely helpful in my understanding of the anger I sense in others as well as in helping me to have good conversations with others. But it’s more than just my conversations with others that need help, I think.
I look to these two books:
The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It by Robert B. Reich
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel
By page six, Robert B. Reich in The System has already shared this quote from New York magazine’s Frank Rich: “Everything in the country is broken. Not just Washington, which failed to prevent the financial catastrophe and has done little to protect us from the next, but also race relations, health care, education, institutional religion, law enforcement, the physical infrastructure, the news media, the bedrock virtues of civility and community.” Reich goes on to say, “He might have added the environment and our democracy.”
Wow.
Reich looks at the roots of all these problems and he finds the source of the problem in those who control money and, consequently, power, in our country. He quotes activist Greta Thunberg: “If everyone is guilty, then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people---some companies and some decision-makers in particular---have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”
Reich shares some horrifying wealth inequality statistics. “ Between 1980 and 2019, the share of the nation’s total household income going to the richest 1 percent more than doubled, while the earnings of the bottom 90 percent barely rose….the share of the total wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent...own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of households combined.” And, worse, “All this has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the political power of the super-wealthy and an equally dramatic decline in the political influence of everyone else.”
Whew. Can we go on? I feel we must.
“As long as they control the purse strings, the oligarchs know there will be no substantial tax increases for them. Instead, their taxes will fall. There will be no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of their giant corporations. Instead, their corporations will grow larger….Government will provide even more corporate subsidies, bailouts, and loan guarantees. It will continue to eliminate protections for consumers, workers, and the environment. It will become a government for, of, and by the oligarchy.”
Oh dear.
“If democracy were working as it should, government officials would make the rules roughly according to what most citizens want them to be. They would also take into account the interests of the poor and of minorities, and give them a fair chance to make it as well. The system would be working for all of us. In a vicious cycle, though, the rules are made mainly by those with the power and wealth to buy the politicians, regulatory heads, and even the courts (and the lawyers who appear before them). As income and wealth concentrate at the top, so does political leverage.”
Reich asserts that America is not “suffering a breakdown in private morality. To the contrary, it’s burdened by a breakdown in public morality.”
How does Reich suggest that we get out of this mess? He dreams of a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of Americans in the bottom 90 percent of the population who come together based on “a common understanding of what it means to be a citizen with responsibilities for the greater good.” He goes on to say, “The reason to fight oligarchy is not just to obtain a larger share of the economic winnings; it is to make democracy function so that we can achieve all the goals we hold in common.” His call to action is, “Democracy will prevail, if we fight for it.”
Michael J. Sandel is also quite bleak in his assessment of America. He arrives at his conclusions about the state of the nation from his years of experience teaching at one of our nation’s most revered institutions. Sandel looks at the turbulence among our people, and he, like Reich, believes the problems stem from the divisions between those who control the money and power in our country and those who seem to have none. Sandel shows how our fundamental philosophy of belief in a meritocracy, in a system where those who are smart and powerful deserve to be smarter and more powerful, is flawed. He convincingly shows how closely SAT scores and IQ points are tied to income, how coming from wealth leads to more wealth, how few people in our society move from poor to affluence. It’s not enough, he tells us, to simply open the door a little wider, to let in a few more of the poor into opportunities to obtain wealth. It’s the underlying philosophy, he says, that must be changed, to strip away both the unwarranted hubris of the haves and the sense of inferiority and failure from the have-nots. Sandel and Reich agree that we need to recenter ourselves on the idea of a common good. Sandel hopes to promote the idea of people as producers rather than consumers, to restore the idea of the dignity of work, and to create policies that allow workers to find good jobs that support strong families and communities. Sandel strongly condemns the financial industry, noting that “much financial activity hinders rather than promotes economic growth.” He would act by “discouraging speculation and honoring productive labor.”
I’m no politician; I’m simply a regular citizen who would like to make things better. These books have helped me understand (a bit) the workings of our complex economy and government and have given me ideas about ways to act to promote our common good. My sense of hopefulness is growing.
At least that’s a start.
August 29, 2020
The system is a brilliant book and a very unsettling one as well.
Robert Reich holds nothing back in this book pointing out all the players involved in America’s corrupt political system I loved the passion he put into this book you really feel the concern that Reich has for his country! This book really sets off the alarm.
The only thing I can say about the system is to read it you won’t be disappointed highly recommend!!
Robert Reich holds nothing back in this book pointing out all the players involved in America’s corrupt political system I loved the passion he put into this book you really feel the concern that Reich has for his country! This book really sets off the alarm.
The only thing I can say about the system is to read it you won’t be disappointed highly recommend!!
September 14, 2020
Whether you're Republican, Democrat, Bernie-Bro, Alt-Righter, you need to read this book. Since Reich here is correct. The reason why we Americans have so little compared to other developed nations isn't "globalization." Other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden face those too, but their people have universal healthcare. It isn't migrants. Thriving countries like France and New Zealand have similar levels of migrants in their nations, yet they have better public schools than we do.
The reason We, the People have so little is that big-money oligarchs have hijacked the system. They have rigged the playing field so they can reap the upside rewards of boom and bust cycles. Where they profit from making risky loans (like Wall Street in the lead-up to the 2007/ 2008 crash), or moving jobs from Ohio or Michigan overseas (like the automakers have since the 80s). They and their shareholders make big money screwing regular Americans.
And yet when the economy turns bad, they get bailed out, transferring the downside risk to you and I. Which is how Wall Street banks and GM got bialed out, while their CEOs and executives earned million dollar plus salaries for mismanaging the economy, while the laid off GM worker down the street cannot get debt relief as she looks for a job.
That's socialism... for the wealthy! While leaving the rest of us to face a cold, heartless market.
Reich has a gift. He's always been able to say these things in a way that is easy to understand. In fact, while I often read serious, more scholarly blogs form deep, cpore economic research, it's always worth while to come up for air and visit Reich for the "big-picture."
Four-stars.
The reason We, the People have so little is that big-money oligarchs have hijacked the system. They have rigged the playing field so they can reap the upside rewards of boom and bust cycles. Where they profit from making risky loans (like Wall Street in the lead-up to the 2007/ 2008 crash), or moving jobs from Ohio or Michigan overseas (like the automakers have since the 80s). They and their shareholders make big money screwing regular Americans.
And yet when the economy turns bad, they get bailed out, transferring the downside risk to you and I. Which is how Wall Street banks and GM got bialed out, while their CEOs and executives earned million dollar plus salaries for mismanaging the economy, while the laid off GM worker down the street cannot get debt relief as she looks for a job.
That's socialism... for the wealthy! While leaving the rest of us to face a cold, heartless market.
Reich has a gift. He's always been able to say these things in a way that is easy to understand. In fact, while I often read serious, more scholarly blogs form deep, cpore economic research, it's always worth while to come up for air and visit Reich for the "big-picture."
Four-stars.
February 12, 2022
This is an exceptional book. It really brought to light the oligarchy vs democracy system we have in the U.S. It made me feel less alone in the fact that the bottom 90% of people are struggling to get by.
It is a bit repetitive at times, and I do not agree with all of the advice at the end. The final chapter on how to solve the rigged system is too short, naturally. And some of the things Reich mentions are obviously from a place of power and influence in himself. He says we don't make time for coming together to fight against the oligarchy and instead we do puzzles or leisure things like cooking. Weird. Not sure what that is all about since as humans we have to do leisure things to stay sane.
But despite my critique of the ending, this book is WORTH THE READ. I am ready for the revolution. How do we get there? I can't wait until the majority of people in the US are non-white. It is going to shake things up, and I am willing to give up my privilege to support the cause. The question is...how?
It is a bit repetitive at times, and I do not agree with all of the advice at the end. The final chapter on how to solve the rigged system is too short, naturally. And some of the things Reich mentions are obviously from a place of power and influence in himself. He says we don't make time for coming together to fight against the oligarchy and instead we do puzzles or leisure things like cooking. Weird. Not sure what that is all about since as humans we have to do leisure things to stay sane.
But despite my critique of the ending, this book is WORTH THE READ. I am ready for the revolution. How do we get there? I can't wait until the majority of people in the US are non-white. It is going to shake things up, and I am willing to give up my privilege to support the cause. The question is...how?
September 9, 2020
This is a very disturbing book that explains in clear and concise terms what a lot of us (regardless of political affiliation) have been seeing for some time. In my opinion the statements and facts asserted by the author are undeniable if you are paying attention, and while I agree with most of Mr. Reichs' views I am afraid I do not share his positivity about our future, but then again maybe I'm just having a hard day.
December 21, 2025
Lots of good points in here, only slight concern is that a lot of it feels like systemic changes that require mass unity of the working class or a lot of elected officials to decide they no longer care about being rich and powerful....
Especially when so many people have been misled to believe that laws meant to protect and assist them (unions, estate tax, banking regulations) are somehow bad, I don't see a clear path back to restoring some semblance of control to the working class.
Especially when so many people have been misled to believe that laws meant to protect and assist them (unions, estate tax, banking regulations) are somehow bad, I don't see a clear path back to restoring some semblance of control to the working class.
April 23, 2021
Was decent. I prefer his previous book a lot more. This has a good amount of information I already knew, some far fetched claims I don't agree with at all (a lot of which just lacks a broader picture), and some things that are misguided.
March 24, 2023
Reads a bit like a series of viral tweets with some chapters more compelling than others. Content-wise, it probably doesn’t have any new information to anyone well-informed. I still think it makes a solid case for reform and may be more informative to some.
August 13, 2020
I wonder if Jaime Dimon read this
August 15, 2020
The U.S. is run by oligarchs and we need to change the system.
April 17, 2020
The System: Who Rigged it and How We Fix It
By Robert Reich
- [ ] The system is rigged by the wealthy and power is in the hands of the wealthy and corporations, less the politicians
- [ ] This is more of Reich’s message and I am all in
- [ ] I always forget that when Trump accepted the nomination at the RNC he called Hillary our for being bought by the wealthy and representing them and not the people. Trump represents the wealthy and not the people but he and Bernie share the calling things the way they are populist message
- [ ] This books makes me feel better about constantly talking about money in politics, citizens united, lobbying reform, oligarchy, campaign funding, and government ethics. I am a single theme voter and those are my broad themes. It’s partly because much of what I have learned has come from Reich.
- [ ] Economics/political science/sociology courses never talk directly about power. Or so Reich claims, they do talk about power but not in the class warfare oligarchic way that Reich means.
- [ ] We are currently under the third American oligarchy, the first was the slow owning wealthy founding fathers and the second was the time of the robber barons, Carnaige/Rockefeller
- [ ] A major line of this book is following the president of JP Morgan, Jamie Diamond. He is a life long democrat but exemplifies the problem with the system. To understand him is to understand the flaws in the system. He may espouse and support liberal policies but he protects the wealthy/banks and has an army of lobbyists/campaign donations/hands in politics
- [ ] The bankers have rigged the system
- [ ] 2008 awful bailout
- [ ] Bankers influence on politics/citizens united/CEO pay raises/Jamie Diamond supports liberal social causes but not financial policies
- [ ] Socialism for the rich, harsh capitalism for the rest
- [ ] Don’t applaud corporate philanthropy it is a PR stunt, they don’t change their policies that could actually change the system
- [ ] The Republican and Democratic Party have different social policies but they have the same economic goals of appeasing the rich/bankers
- [ ] The rules that were put in place to prevent the financial crisis from happening again, have been rolled back. We are in a same place that we were in 2008. Jamie Diamond supported these roll backs and has viscously opposed any financial regulations.
- [ ] The revolving door between Wall Street and capital hill. Over 60% of members of congress in the past 10 years, leave DC and go to work as lobbyists or on Wall Street. Rahm Emmanual made $18 million on Wall Street in the two years between leaving the White House and running for Mayor
- [ ] This book is all about the issues that I feel very strongly about
- [ ] Points that he covered in ‘Common Good’: the CEO as the statesmen, business obligation to the people, profits over people, stake holders, business have left their historic homes (Detroit/Pittsburgh) and gone over seas, common good issues
- [ ] A multinational corporation does not have any allegiance to a country, they will go where they can make the most profit. They don’t care about creating jobs in America or taking care of their employees, they care about maximizing profits. There are few American companies, they are multinational corporations.
- [ ] The bottom line is: Profits and stake holders above all else, greed is good, maximize shareholders profits. That is how they operate.
- [ ] In Europe there are stronger safety nets and services. There are strong political parties that solely represent workers. There is universal health care, fours guaranteed paid vacation, paid sick days, lower cost higher education, companies can’t fire workers without cause, CEOs make substantial less
- [ ] In America 6% of public workers are union members, in Italy its 60% and in the European low end in the UK it is 23%
- [ ] Jamie Diamond wanted to be Trump’s Treasury Secretary
- [ ] How did we get to this place: union busting, slashing taxes of the rich, deregulation, corporate lobbying, eliminating anti trust laws, corporate raiding/take overs
- [ ] Anti trust is huge issue that is not addressed enough. Facebook should never have been able to buy What’s App and Instagram.
- [ ] Chinese companies are interested in the good of China and China’s success. They serve the interest of the state, because the state is their shareholders.
- [ ] Our system is fucked
- [ ] He does a great job of explaining what Bernie and Trump have in common. Why Trump won and Hillary lost.
- [ ] The Democratic Party represented the elite political out of touch status quo. They did not reach out to disenfranchised groups, those deeply effected by the financial crisis, White working class voters. These groups did not see Hillary as their champion.
- [ ] According the polls the vast majority of Americans from both parties supported election reform and getting money out of politics. Trump represented a person that could not be bought and was not the status quo. He was people’s champion.
- [ ] Reich claims issues are more about economics than they are about race. Race and xenophobia contributed to Trumps win but it was not the sole reason, the true reason is economic issues.
- [ ] Democrats and the administration that Reich was apart of did great things but they did nothing to change the system or prevent/stop the oligarchy.
- [ ] Obama and Clinton did not stand up to the oligarchy, they both had the chance but instead they bailed out the banks and passed free trade agreements. These are the reasons why I can’t stand the Democratic Party, they speak liberal social values but protect the rich. They don’t represent the people, they represent the rich.
- [ ] There is a great section on education and colleges. Stats about how the vast majority of Ivy League schools are filled by the wealthy and when they leave those schools they continue their wealth and entrench their wealth. There is a massive education divide. The rich buy their way into elite schools and fill the ranks of power with those elite graduates.
- [ ] There is hope, hope for citizens, for people to fight back, for there to be a diverse coalition of working class people and the 90% of the rest of the country. We do have power.
- [ ] The majority of Americans support a reform to the two party system. There is support for a third party and a change in the system. This does not have to happen but it should.
- [ ] It is democracy v oligarchy, the establishment v the people, the wealthy v everyone else, the two party system v electoral reform.
- [ ] Our democracy is on the brink, there cannot be massive wealth inequality/oligarchy and democracy at the same time. We are fighting for our democracy, we have lost our democracy but we can take it back. Oligarchy is an existential threat.
- [ ] This is the fourth book that I have read about government/the system/democracy/fascism/etc. They all say similar things, our system is teetering and we are taking steps in the wrong direction. Authoritarianism does not happen in one massive action, it happens in small pieces in front of our eyes. We still have time but it is running out.
- [ ] He ends with a directly addressing Jared Diamond and tells him this book is his answer to his phone call. Diamond is not a bad person but he is part of the problem.
- [ ] He doesn’t like bullies. He was bullied as a kid. Trump is a bully. Great stuff about bullies.
- [ ] He destroys this absurd myth of the hard working capitalist that works from the low level to become wealthy. The Ayn Rand/suck it up/Gary V/just work harder/crazy capitalism thing, it does not exist. It is a myth perpetuated by the wealthy to give the poor false hope.
- [ ] I love this book and has shot to the top of my must read lists. It reaffirms many of my beliefs in the system and what I am fight for. Many of my views have come from Reich and I am not ashamed of that. It’s about money in politics. This is a book that I will buy multiple copies of and give out. Thank you.
By Robert Reich
- [ ] The system is rigged by the wealthy and power is in the hands of the wealthy and corporations, less the politicians
- [ ] This is more of Reich’s message and I am all in
- [ ] I always forget that when Trump accepted the nomination at the RNC he called Hillary our for being bought by the wealthy and representing them and not the people. Trump represents the wealthy and not the people but he and Bernie share the calling things the way they are populist message
- [ ] This books makes me feel better about constantly talking about money in politics, citizens united, lobbying reform, oligarchy, campaign funding, and government ethics. I am a single theme voter and those are my broad themes. It’s partly because much of what I have learned has come from Reich.
- [ ] Economics/political science/sociology courses never talk directly about power. Or so Reich claims, they do talk about power but not in the class warfare oligarchic way that Reich means.
- [ ] We are currently under the third American oligarchy, the first was the slow owning wealthy founding fathers and the second was the time of the robber barons, Carnaige/Rockefeller
- [ ] A major line of this book is following the president of JP Morgan, Jamie Diamond. He is a life long democrat but exemplifies the problem with the system. To understand him is to understand the flaws in the system. He may espouse and support liberal policies but he protects the wealthy/banks and has an army of lobbyists/campaign donations/hands in politics
- [ ] The bankers have rigged the system
- [ ] 2008 awful bailout
- [ ] Bankers influence on politics/citizens united/CEO pay raises/Jamie Diamond supports liberal social causes but not financial policies
- [ ] Socialism for the rich, harsh capitalism for the rest
- [ ] Don’t applaud corporate philanthropy it is a PR stunt, they don’t change their policies that could actually change the system
- [ ] The Republican and Democratic Party have different social policies but they have the same economic goals of appeasing the rich/bankers
- [ ] The rules that were put in place to prevent the financial crisis from happening again, have been rolled back. We are in a same place that we were in 2008. Jamie Diamond supported these roll backs and has viscously opposed any financial regulations.
- [ ] The revolving door between Wall Street and capital hill. Over 60% of members of congress in the past 10 years, leave DC and go to work as lobbyists or on Wall Street. Rahm Emmanual made $18 million on Wall Street in the two years between leaving the White House and running for Mayor
- [ ] This book is all about the issues that I feel very strongly about
- [ ] Points that he covered in ‘Common Good’: the CEO as the statesmen, business obligation to the people, profits over people, stake holders, business have left their historic homes (Detroit/Pittsburgh) and gone over seas, common good issues
- [ ] A multinational corporation does not have any allegiance to a country, they will go where they can make the most profit. They don’t care about creating jobs in America or taking care of their employees, they care about maximizing profits. There are few American companies, they are multinational corporations.
- [ ] The bottom line is: Profits and stake holders above all else, greed is good, maximize shareholders profits. That is how they operate.
- [ ] In Europe there are stronger safety nets and services. There are strong political parties that solely represent workers. There is universal health care, fours guaranteed paid vacation, paid sick days, lower cost higher education, companies can’t fire workers without cause, CEOs make substantial less
- [ ] In America 6% of public workers are union members, in Italy its 60% and in the European low end in the UK it is 23%
- [ ] Jamie Diamond wanted to be Trump’s Treasury Secretary
- [ ] How did we get to this place: union busting, slashing taxes of the rich, deregulation, corporate lobbying, eliminating anti trust laws, corporate raiding/take overs
- [ ] Anti trust is huge issue that is not addressed enough. Facebook should never have been able to buy What’s App and Instagram.
- [ ] Chinese companies are interested in the good of China and China’s success. They serve the interest of the state, because the state is their shareholders.
- [ ] Our system is fucked
- [ ] He does a great job of explaining what Bernie and Trump have in common. Why Trump won and Hillary lost.
- [ ] The Democratic Party represented the elite political out of touch status quo. They did not reach out to disenfranchised groups, those deeply effected by the financial crisis, White working class voters. These groups did not see Hillary as their champion.
- [ ] According the polls the vast majority of Americans from both parties supported election reform and getting money out of politics. Trump represented a person that could not be bought and was not the status quo. He was people’s champion.
- [ ] Reich claims issues are more about economics than they are about race. Race and xenophobia contributed to Trumps win but it was not the sole reason, the true reason is economic issues.
- [ ] Democrats and the administration that Reich was apart of did great things but they did nothing to change the system or prevent/stop the oligarchy.
- [ ] Obama and Clinton did not stand up to the oligarchy, they both had the chance but instead they bailed out the banks and passed free trade agreements. These are the reasons why I can’t stand the Democratic Party, they speak liberal social values but protect the rich. They don’t represent the people, they represent the rich.
- [ ] There is a great section on education and colleges. Stats about how the vast majority of Ivy League schools are filled by the wealthy and when they leave those schools they continue their wealth and entrench their wealth. There is a massive education divide. The rich buy their way into elite schools and fill the ranks of power with those elite graduates.
- [ ] There is hope, hope for citizens, for people to fight back, for there to be a diverse coalition of working class people and the 90% of the rest of the country. We do have power.
- [ ] The majority of Americans support a reform to the two party system. There is support for a third party and a change in the system. This does not have to happen but it should.
- [ ] It is democracy v oligarchy, the establishment v the people, the wealthy v everyone else, the two party system v electoral reform.
- [ ] Our democracy is on the brink, there cannot be massive wealth inequality/oligarchy and democracy at the same time. We are fighting for our democracy, we have lost our democracy but we can take it back. Oligarchy is an existential threat.
- [ ] This is the fourth book that I have read about government/the system/democracy/fascism/etc. They all say similar things, our system is teetering and we are taking steps in the wrong direction. Authoritarianism does not happen in one massive action, it happens in small pieces in front of our eyes. We still have time but it is running out.
- [ ] He ends with a directly addressing Jared Diamond and tells him this book is his answer to his phone call. Diamond is not a bad person but he is part of the problem.
- [ ] He doesn’t like bullies. He was bullied as a kid. Trump is a bully. Great stuff about bullies.
- [ ] He destroys this absurd myth of the hard working capitalist that works from the low level to become wealthy. The Ayn Rand/suck it up/Gary V/just work harder/crazy capitalism thing, it does not exist. It is a myth perpetuated by the wealthy to give the poor false hope.
- [ ] I love this book and has shot to the top of my must read lists. It reaffirms many of my beliefs in the system and what I am fight for. Many of my views have come from Reich and I am not ashamed of that. It’s about money in politics. This is a book that I will buy multiple copies of and give out. Thank you.
June 14, 2020
Professor Reich is a wonderful speaker and writer. I have read a few of his books now, and follow his Inequality Media videos and posts.
“The System” we currently live with in America is no longer a democracy; it is an oligarchy —rule by a powerful few, in our case, corporations. The presidency of Donald Trump has been a godsend for the oligarchs.
Prof. Reich gives us a history of oligarchy waxing and waning in America. Throughout history, whenever it looked like there was no hope to rein in the “robber barons,” we have done so. Let’s hope we can do it again.
Only the last few pages of this book are devoted to this hope. I wish Prof. Reich had given us more concrete steps to take to end the oligarchy, instead of so many pages devoted to making me so despondent over our current system of government. For this reason, I’m rounding my rating down to 4 stars. I don’t fault his writing ability at all; I just need more info on WHAT to change when enough people rise up against the current system and our corporate overlords.
“The System” we currently live with in America is no longer a democracy; it is an oligarchy —rule by a powerful few, in our case, corporations. The presidency of Donald Trump has been a godsend for the oligarchs.
Prof. Reich gives us a history of oligarchy waxing and waning in America. Throughout history, whenever it looked like there was no hope to rein in the “robber barons,” we have done so. Let’s hope we can do it again.
Only the last few pages of this book are devoted to this hope. I wish Prof. Reich had given us more concrete steps to take to end the oligarchy, instead of so many pages devoted to making me so despondent over our current system of government. For this reason, I’m rounding my rating down to 4 stars. I don’t fault his writing ability at all; I just need more info on WHAT to change when enough people rise up against the current system and our corporate overlords.
February 16, 2021
I first stumbled into Robert Reich when I discovered the media project, “Inequality Media”, in which Reich himself was speaking about various problems in America’s current economic system. This book, “The System”, was a wonderful extension of his short videos. Broken into three parts, Reich outlines what oligarchy is, how it is prevailing today, and what we might do to mitigate it’s effects. The statistics are chilling. The anecdotes are frustrating yet relatable. His ability to dispel the “Democrat vs. Republican” argument was refreshing. Reich argues that if we all are aware of how oligarchy is prevailing today, we can put aside some of our divisions and work as a multiracial, multiethnic, and multigenerational coalition.
Well worth the read. I could hardly put it down. When you finish, please share it with a friend! Let us continue to fight for a more just America.
Well worth the read. I could hardly put it down. When you finish, please share it with a friend! Let us continue to fight for a more just America.
February 17, 2021
I have read a tonnn of articles and a few textbooks for grad school so far, but it has drastically cut into my reading time. This book was assigned for my Social Change and Community Analysis class. It was short, very readable, and Reich makes a very compelling and clear argument about what he considers is the true source of conflict in our country. He argues that the real conflict isn’t between the right and the left, but between the rich and powerful and the poor. I highly recommend if you’re at all interested in current events, politics, the role of government, and how we can reframe our discussions to be more productive.
December 18, 2021
Forthright and unflinching, Reich paints a vivid, depressing picture of the American system of entwined politics and government, horrid because of how clearly true it is. "The System" is a concise, well argued series of reflections, premises, and conclusions in the study of class, economic, and politics as they stand now, with considerations from the recent past to convince the reader of trends which have had devastating consequences for most Americans. In the end, he offers hope for change and a correction of all that money in politics has wrought, a hope necessarily derived from the American people themselves. Why should gaining democracy require anything less? Necessary reading for anyone at all concerned about the ways things are going for most folks in America, I recommend it in the strongest terms.
September 17, 2025
i think i would have enjoyed this a bit more if i read it instead of listening to it but wow this book was eye-opening. i did not know that coroproate tax cuts often mean that some huge companies pay literally $0 in taxes. it upsets me that i was ignorant to this until reading this book, but im glad i know now. the calls at the end of the book for a third party to defeat the oligarchical nature that plagues both sides of US politics seems far fetched to me. i try to remain optimistic but the tragedy of the commons is real, and the class consciousness discussed in this book seems like an ever smaller possibility.
would recommend. he really does not like jamie diamond lol
would recommend. he really does not like jamie diamond lol
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