The Common Good by Reich Robert B

Author:Reich, Robert B.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mam
Published: 2018-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

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America’s political and economic leaders paid little heed when, in the years leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, highly paid bankers pocketed huge sums while exposing most Americans to extraordinary economic risks. The people who subsequently lost their jobs, savings, and homes, though, were understandably outraged—especially when these same bankers suffered no consequences. Within a few years of the financial crisis, most of the bankers returned to pocketing vast fortunes, but most other Americans were still living with the consequences. Their anger began to engulf American politics on both sides of the aisle. In the 2016 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders said, “This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about.” At the start of her campaign, Hillary Clinton conceded that the “deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.” Candidate Donald Trump proclaimed, “The system is rigged against the citizens,” and that he was the only candidate “who cannot be bought”—a refrain he repeated all the way to the White House.

The left has focused its ire on corporations and Wall Street; the right, on government. In fact the two were—are—inextricably related. Trump’s antiestablishment authoritarian populism overlapped with Sanders’s antiestablishment democratic populism in condemning elites that made off with almost all the gains. “The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land,” said Trump in his inaugural speech.

Some individuals, like Martin Shkreli and others I’ve mentioned, have directly abused the public’s trust. Most of America’s political and economic elites—in Washington’s corridors of power, within the executive suites of large corporations, and on Wall Street—have been guilty of simply playing along. They have averted their eyes from the disintegration of the common good. They have failed to insist on major reforms. They have denied, rationalized, and told themselves the disintegration was inevitable.

Yet the arbitrariness and unfairness is widely felt. In a 2001 Gallup poll, 76 percent of Americans were satisfied with opportunities to get ahead by working hard, and only 22 percent were dissatisfied. By 2014, only 54 percent were satisfied, with 45 percent dissatisfied. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who felt that most people who want to get ahead could do so through hard work dropped by 14 points between 2000 and 2014.

Aristotle warned that excessive inequality can bring political instability. You can see and feel the anger even in mundane situations. As first-class sections of airplanes have become more spacious, they seem to be triggering more incidents of air rage among passengers seated in the back. Researchers Katherine DeCelles of the University of Toronto and Michael Norton of Harvard Business School analyzed “disruptive passenger incidents” in an airline’s database of millions of domestic and international airline flights. They found that flights with a first-class section

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