Robert Reich

So how did Greenspan do? In one respect, superbly. Before Greenspan, the conventional economic wisdom was that unemployment couldn’t go below 6 percent without igniting inflation. The labor market would be so tight that employers would have to hike wages in order to get and keep employees. They’d have to raise prices to cover the […]

Last week I moved from Massachusetts to my new home here in California. The day after I arrived I did what most people do when they move someplace. I opened a bank account. Now, you might think this would be easy. I’ve had an account in Massachusetts for twenty-five years, and there’s still money in […]

You want to understand what’s happening in China? Contrast how the American and Chinese economies have developed. A century and a half ago, most Americans still lived on farms and depended on agriculture for a living. Then, starting about a century ago, we began moving from farms into factories. By the mid-1950s, about a third […]

You may remember when the world was divided between communism and capitalism, and when the Chinese were communists. The Chinese still call themselves communists, but now they’re also capitalists. In fact, visit China today and you find the most dynamic capitalist nation in the world. In 2005, it had the distinction of being the world’s […]

Listen to most economic commentators and you’d think the biggest news of 2005 was that the American economy continued to grow at a healthy clip — notwithstanding hurricanes, oil shocks, trade imbalances, and a bloated federal budget deficit. Well, that’s true. The power and resilience of this economy are remarkable. But there’s another story about […]

American business should be deeply concerned about the claims by the President to authority for whatever action is necessary to secure the nation, even if that means stretching or ignoring the law. From its infancy, modern capitalism depended on liberty and predictability, and business leaders fought for the rule of law. The idea that a […]

The House of Representatives just passed a bill trimming $50 billion over five years from several federal programs serving the poor, including Medicaid, the giant health program. But the Medicaid cut is running into more political opposition than its backers had counted on, and it’s far from clear that the Senate will go along. It […]

Almost 15 years ago, in “The Work of Nations,” I described a three-tiered work force found in most advanced economies. At the bottom were workers who offer personal service, mainly in retail outlets, restaurants, hotels and hospitals. In the middle were production workers in factories or offices, performing simple, repetitive tasks. At the top were […]

Tax bills now wending their way through the House and Senate would cut about $60 billion in taxes next year. But there’s a huge difference between the two. The biggest item in a House bill is a two-year extension of the President’s tax cuts on stock dividends and capital gains. The House bill doesn’t touch […]

‘Tis the season for retailers to be jolly if American consumers empty their wallets over the next three weeks. But how can we empty our wallets if our wallets are already empty? Consumer confidence appears to have bounced back from the low brought on by the hurricanes and subsequently high gas prices. But it’s still […]