Robert Reich in Locked in the Cabinet
On Principles & Values:
Harvard class’ enrollment predicted Clinton victory
There’s a waiting list to get into my courses at Harvard this term. I’d like to think it’s due to my dazzling brilliance as teacher and writer, but I suspect ulterior motives. One of the students on the list comes to my office
this morning to plead her case.
“I want a job in the Clinton administration,” she says without blinking.
“I don’t get the connection.”
“Look,” she explains, as if talking to a child. “If I take your course and do reasonably well,
you might help me. If I don’t do well, you’ll at least recognize my name, and that helps. And if I ace the class, maybe you’ll hire me.“ Should I be insulted or flattered? She seems as surprised by my surprise and I am by her candor.
She continues with a hint of exasperation in her voice, ”Why do you suppose everyone wants to take your class, anyway?“
Bill is going to be president. The polls show it. It’s in the air.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p. 7
Sep 28, 1992
On Budget & Economy:
Most precious asset is human capital
The country is growing apart. The wealthy have become richer than ever. That’s fine. But paychecks for the bottom half of the nation’s workforce have been shrinking since the late 1970s. The wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and we’ve
been splitting into the have-mores and the have-lesses.I’ve been writing about these trends for years, trying to explain them, suggesting ways to remedy them. I’ve burdened Bill Clinton with every one of my books and articles, and urged him to run.
And he did. And he used my ideas. “Putting People First” [the Clinton campaign’s economic plan] was all about investing in the nation’s most precious asset-its human capital-so that everyone has a chance to make it.
And then he
won. He called my bluff. Now, Reich, put up or shut up. You’re so concerned about all of this? You’ve talked a good game. Now you have a chance to do something about it. So DO it. It scares the hell out of me.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p. 9
Nov 12, 1992
On Technology:
Globalization and computerization widen the wage gap
For more than 15 years, people in the bottom half of the earnings distribution have lost ground. The middle class has been squeezed. The very poor have become even poorer. The wage gap is widening. Most of this is due to two great changes that started in
the late 1970s-the emergence of new technologies like computers, and the knitting together of all the world’s economies. Both have been boons to well-educated professionals, but have created disasters for poorly-educated workers, who can now easily be
replaced.The same transformation has undermined the implicit social contract that once existed between companies and their employees, such that when the company did better, its workers did too. Technology and global competition have allowed investors
to move capital quickly to wherever it earns the most.
The main answer is to improve education and job skills. The other part of the answer is to renew the compact between companies and their workers. Encourage profit-sharing. Strengthen unions.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p. 12-13
Nov 15, 1992
On Budget & Economy:
Focus on inflation & deficit means focus on needs of wealthy
The deficit has to be cut, surely. But the deficit isn’t the core problem. The problem is that the earnings of half our workforce have been stagnant or declining for years. And there’s no simple link between the deficit going up and wages going
down. Wall Street bankers and Federal Reserve members would have us believe there is, but their motives are far from pure. They want more than anything in the world to eliminate inflation. This is what the rich (who lend their money and bear the risk of
inflation) have always wanted. Borrowers rarely mind some inflation. The bankers argue with straight faces that a lower deficit leads to more private savings, which results in more capital investment, which means higher productivity, which translates
into higher wages. But every link in their chain is fragile. Private savings now travel [to wherever] labor costs are low or where skills are very high. Global investors may be indifferent to the choice, but our nation can’t be.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p. 29-30
Dec 7, 1992
On Homeland Security:
Shift spending from defense to social investment
Our future living standard depends on competing for global capital by building our skills. That should be a central issue: how to reallocate public spending away from today’s expenditures on defense and on wealthy beneficiaries of all sorts of
government largesse (Social Security, Medicare, farm price supports, etc.) and toward investments in our future productivity. And how to shift private spending that way too: how best to encourage companies to invest in the skills of their workers.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p. 30
Dec 7, 1992
On Principles & Values:
As Labor Secretary, implemented employees’ suggestions
[To the Labor Dept. staff,] “I need your help to do my job. You know what needs to be fixed. I want your ideas. Let’s start right now. Give me an idea that nobody’s listened to.”I wait. A minute. Thousands of people here, but no sound. I know they
have all sorts of opinions about what should be done. But have they ever shared them with the Secretary? Finally, one timid hand. “Yes! What’s your idea?”
Her voice is unsteady, but she’s determined. “I don’t see why we need to fill out time cards when
we come to work and when we leave. It’s silly & demeaning.“
I look over at my aide. He shrugs his shoulders: Why not? ”Okay, done. Starting tomorrow, no more time cards.“ For a moment, silence. The audience seems stunned. Then a loud roar of approval
that breaks into wild applause.
What have I done? I haven’t doubled their salaries. All I did was accept a suggestion that seemed reasonable. But for people who have grown accustomed to being ignored, I think I just delivered an important gift.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p. 87-89
Mar 14, 1993
On Principles & Values:
Policy is second to politics, and should be
Some of my Harvard students used to regard public policy-making as a matter of finding the “right” answer to a public problem. Politics was a set of obstacles which had to be circumvented so the “right” answer could be implemented. Policy was clean-it
could be done on a computer. Politics was dirty-unpredictable, passionate, sometimes corrupt. Policy was good; politics, a necessary evil. I’d spend entire courses trying to disabuse them. I’d ask them how they knew they had the “right” answer. They’d
dazzle me with techniques. But how did they know they had the right answer?
They never did. At most, policy wonks can help the public deliberate the likely consequences of various choices. But they can’t presume to make the choices. Democracy
is disorderly, but it is the only source of wisdom on this score. Politicians must lead; they must try to educate and persuade and then must listen carefully for the response. No one can discover the “best” policy though analytic prowess.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p.107-8
Apr 15, 1993
On Principles & Values:
The Pronoun Test: workers say “we” instead of “they”
[On one tour of workplaces] I administered my “Pronoun Test.” I ask front-line workers to tell me about the company, an I listen for the pronouns. If the answers I get back describe the company as “they” and “them,” I know it’s one kind of place; if the
answers feature “we” and “us,” I know I’m in a new world. It doesn’t matter much what’s said. Even a statement like “They aim for high quality here” gives the game away. The company still flunks. Workers don’t have a personal stake. Employees still
regard the company as they--perhaps benevolent, perhaps evil, but unambiguously on the other side of a psychological divide. Most places flunk.
[One steel mill passed]. Using first-person pronouns, and feeling responsible for the company’s
future, these workers are making the company work. Technically, they don’t own the company. But in a broader sense, they do, because they make the important day-to-day decisions and they do well when the company does well.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p.112-14
May 4, 1993
On Social Security:
Keep Trust Fund as federal “insurance pool”
[When departing as Labor Secretary], I knew Medicare and Social Security would be revisited. Republicans wanted to turn Medicare into private medical savings accounts, and Wall Street was salivating over the prospect of “privatizing” Social Security.
I wanted to be there to argue that the wealthier and healthier shouldn’t be allowed to opt out of these insurance pools, that we can’t have still more shredding of what’s left of the social compact.
Source: Locked in the Cabinet, p.345
Feb 16, 1997
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