Reason by Robert B. Reich

Author:Robert B. Reich
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781400043323
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2004-05-10T21:00:00+00:00

A society is different from an economy. People aren’t just buyers and sellers in a market. They’re also citizens engaged in a joint project of improving the well-being of current and future generations.

Radcons are imposing on America a crimped and narrow definition of prosperity. They’ve given us policies premised on the hypothetical power of human greed and fear. A society that simultaneously offers the possibility of princely private wealth and the threat of severe poverty will surely inspire great feats of personal daring and cutthroat ambition. But it just as surely will reduce the capacity of its members to work together toward common ends.

This Radcon promise of prosperity is an illusion. Perhaps it was well suited to a frontier economy, but it’s shamefully inappropriate to a post-industrial society that depends on what we achieve together. With the economy undergoing radical change and jobs and incomes so unsteady, social insurance is crucially important, and progressive taxes the only fair way of financing our needs. But Radcons, relying on social Darwinism, would rather reward the rich and penalize the poor. With financial capital moving around the world at electronic speed, the nation’s “human capital” is more important to our future prosperity. Hence, the need for more and better public investments in education and training. But Radcons think prosperity will “trickle down” from the wealthy—despite evidence to the contrary—rather than “bubble up” from millions of people who are better equipped to be productive. With the environment, public safety, and work stresses such widespread concerns, we need carefully crafted business regulations and high-quality public services. But Radcons reflexively condemn any regulations or spending that may retard the growth of the gross domestic product.

Our real prosperity depends on what we achieve together. This has been a central tenet of American liberalism for over a century, and it’s more relevant than ever. In America in the twenty-first century, real prosperity is shared prosperity. That’s what we are losing rapidly, and that’s why Radcons are wrong and their thinking is dangerously obsolete.

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