The Labor Department reported Friday that U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs in July , more than twice the number analysts had expected. And the rate of unemployment dipped to just 3.5 percent. Undeniably good news. But this good news also means the Federal Reserve will almost certainly keep raising interest rates, believing the job market is now too “tight.” This is not good news. The Fed is wrong: The job market is not too tight. In fact, the share of Americans working or actively looking for w...
Aug 09, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast The original justification for elite higher education in the United States was to train the future leaders of American democracy. As Charles W. Eliot, who became president of Harvard in 1869, noted, Harvard existed to inculcate the ideals of “service and stewardship.” Since then, Harvard has produced eight US presidents; Yale, five. (Stanford can boast Herbert Hoover, if it feels compelled to do so.) Elite universities have also produced a disproportionate number of senators and representatives ...
Aug 08, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Each Saturday I grab coffee with my colleague Heather Lofthouse, and we turn on my laptop mic so you can listen in and then provide your two cents in the comments. Heather is the Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student. She asks me questions about the economic and political happenings of the past week. We cover both the highlights and lowlights, and aim to provide a larger context around what we’re all being presented with (or not!) in the news. She’s Gen X and...
Aug 06, 2022•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Yesterday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addressed a crowd of thousands of American admirers in Dallas, Texas, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Orban described Hungary and America as “twin fronts” in a struggle against globalists, progressives, communists, and “fake news.” To fully comprehend Orban’s influence on the Trump Republican Party, you need to understand the Orban has stripped Hungary of its democratic institutions and demonized immigrants. But that’s not ...
Aug 05, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, I want to talk about Kansas. Not about its corn as high as an elephant’s eye, nor about Dorothy and Toto trying to find their way home, but about Kansas as the geographic and Republican center of America, Kansas as the vintage Norman Rockwell core of America, Kansas as what the Republican Party was before being hijacked by Newt Gingrich and then mugged by a New York real estate con artist. I’m moved to do so because on Tuesday the good people of Kansas voted against a ballot measure that ...
Aug 04, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Defamation law may turn out to be America’s most important weapon against rightwing media lies. On Friday, Infowars star Alex Jones’ parent media company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy in the midst of a defamation damages trial underway in Austin, Texas. Jones, you may recall, had portrayed the Sandy Hook school shooting massacre as a hoax involving actors, aimed at increasing gun control. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, was among the 20 children an...
Aug 02, 2022•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast TONIGHT I’m talking with Stephanie Ruhle, on MSNBC’s 11th Hour, about the biggest difference between Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — the so-called “carried interest loophole” that rewards big bucks to private equity managers. This week, the spotlight once again will be on Manchin and Sinema (dubbed “ Manchinema ” by the Washington press corps as the two blocked much of Biden’s agenda) because it’s the Democrats’ last chance for a large package — Manchin has agreed to $790 billion — on the clima...
Aug 01, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week: The Fed’s decision to raise interest rates yet again — wrong medicine? Recession — should we be worried? Joe Manchin’s change of heart — will it stick? Merrick Garland’s inevitable decision of whether to prosecute Trump — by when? Plus a special request from Heather — if you're willing to take a stab at composing a very short theme song for this ...
Jul 30, 2022•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Has Joe Manchin really, finally seen the light? Word is that President (sorry) Senator Manchin has agreed to roughly $433 billion in new spending, much of it focused on lowering energy costs, increasing clean energy production, and reducing carbon emissions. Part of the Manchin-approved deal would raise $739 billion in taxes over the next decade — including a new minimum tax on corporations and additional funding to help the Internal Revenue Service pursue tax cheats. 1. A few grounds for skepti...
Jul 28, 2022•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, Donald Trump returns to Washington — his first visit since leaving in disgrace after January 6 — to deliver the keynote address for the America First Policy Institute’s “America First Agenda Summit.” The purpose of this confab is to give Trump some policy creds as he prepares to announce a 2024 run for re-election. Brooke Rollins, one of the organizers of the Institute and the Summit (who was domestic policy adviser in Trump’s White House) says “having worked next to him for almost three ...
Jul 26, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, On June 30, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case called Moore v. Harper. With all the controversial decisions handed down by the Court this term, its decision to take up this case slid under most radar detectors. But it could be the most dangerous case on the Court’s upcoming docket. You need to know about it. Here’s the background: Last February, the North Carolina Supreme Court blocked the state’s Republican controlled general assembly from instituting a newly drawn congressional d...
Jul 25, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week: The just-finished series of January 6 hearings. Why more Republicans still want Trump to run in 2024 than Democrats want Biden to run in 2024. Why 195 House Republicans voted against a bill to protect contraception (and why every American male over the age of 40 now needs a vasectomy). Trump’s outtakes on January 7, 2021. The Hawley Trot. Please ...
Jul 23, 2022•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, One final point about the Select Committee on January 6 as it concludes this series of hearings. Its members and staff deserve our heartfelt thanks for a job (although not over) extraordinarily well done. So much has gone so wrong with so many aspects of our government and other institutions we rely on that I think it’s important to recognize and salute this sort of excellence. And courage. Liz Cheney alone deserves a medal. Bennie Thompson handled the committee with grace and thoughtfu...
Jul 22, 2022•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Tuesday, in a House Democratic primary contest to represent a predominantly Black middle-class district north and east of Washington, DC., Glenn Ivey, a former state’s attorney for Prince George’s County, defeated Donna Edwards, the first Black woman elected to the House from Maryland. (Edwards left the seat to run unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2016 and had hoped to return.) Progressive groups backed Edwards, but television and radio were saturated with ads questioning her willingness to p...
Jul 22, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tonight is the eighth and last of the scheduled public hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack (the committee is still gathering evidence and may schedule additional hearings). So this is a good time to press the pause button and examine what the committee is accomplishing. The committee is clearly building a criminal case against Trump and his closest enablers of seditious conspiracy , a crime defined as “conspiring to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force the governme...
Jul 21, 2022•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, Today I want to connect some dots. What do congressional Republicans, Joe Manchin, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban have in common? They all oppose the Biden administration’s proposed global minimum corporate tax — designed to stop corporations from playing one country against another in a worldwide race to the tax bottom. The reason for Manchin’s opposition? As he told a West Virginia radio host on Friday, other countries have yet to adopt the tax and he doesn’t want to put American companie...
Jul 19, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Friday, after putting a final spear through the heart of what remained of Biden’s and the Democrat’s domestic agenda, West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin also rejected any tax increases on big corporations or the wealthy — until inflation is no longer a problem. This is rich, in every sense of the word. Raising taxes on big American corporations and the wealthy would not fuel inflation. It would slow inflation by reducing demand — and do it in a way that wouldn’t hurt lower-income ...
Jul 18, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about Joe Manchin’s final destruction of Biden’s domestic agenda, Schumer’s and Biden’s inability to hold him accountable, this week’s terrifying inflation number and its potential effect on the midterms, appreciation for the House January 6 committee, Heather’s inability to tell a joke, and my aging irritability. This is a public e...
Jul 16, 2022•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, A while back, I shared with you my love of Frank Capra’s “ It’s a Wonderful Life ” — the essential American fable about the generosity and goodness of Americans toward one another, as opposed to the greedy oligarchs at the top (such as Mr. Potter) who care only about building their own wealth and power. In light of Putin’s war and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, including the United States, I’ve been thinking about another favorite of mine — Michael Kurtiz’s fabulous 1942...
Jul 15, 2022•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast At 79, Joe Biden is the oldest president in American history. Concerns about his age top the list for why Democratic voters want the party to find an alternative for 2024. I don’t think this reflects an “ageist” prejudice against those who have reached such withering heights so much as an understanding that people in their late 70s and 80s wither. I speak with some authority. I’m now a spritely 76 — lightyears younger than our president. I feel fit, I swing dance and salsa, and can do 20 pushups...
Jul 14, 2022•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast Uber’s then-chief executive Travis Kalanick texted fellow executives that “violence guarantees success” when clashes with taxi drivers broke out in 2016 in Paris, a key market for the company. Uber leveraged the violence against its drivers to win sympathy from regulators and the public, as it also did in South Africa where Uber drivers were burned when their cars were set on fire. ( This look inside Uber’s internal deliberations came from records Uber lobbyist Mark MacGann turned over to the Gu...
Jul 12, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast This morning, I heard a commentator allude to “Mitch McConnell and other conservative senators.” Yesterday, a news report described the upcoming Alaska Republican primary as pitting Trump’s “conservative wing against Murkowski’s more moderate base.” I keep seeing references to the “conservative majority” on the Supreme Court. Can we get real? There is nothing conservative about these so-called “conservatives.” They don’t want to preserve or protect our governing institutions — the core idea of c...
Jul 11, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about the impending midterms, whether Biden should run again in 2024, Boris Johnson’s resignation, the failure of Democratic messaging, and the limits of hype in Silicon Valley. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit robertreich.substack.com/subscribe...
Jul 09, 2022•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, Much of today’s Republican Party is treacherous and treasonous. So why are Democrats facing midterm elections that, according to most political observers, they’re likely to lose? Having been a loyal Democrat for some seventy years (my father liked Ike but my mother and I were for Adlai), including a stint as a cabinet secretary, it pains me to say this, but the Democratic Party has lost its way. How? Some commentators think Democrats have moved too far to the left — too far from the so-...
Jul 08, 2022•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast The link is tightening between America’s move toward theocracy and its slide toward autocracy. It is important to understand these connections. The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe, its expanded reading of the Second Amendment, and its eagerness to elevate religious freedom over the Constitution’s guarantee against established religion come from the same cloth as Republican state legislative attacks on democracy, the GOP’s fealty to Trump’s Big Lie, and white supremacy. At the Faith & Freedom ...
Jul 07, 2022•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Saturday, President Biden demanded on Twitter that Big Oil “bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product.” This prompted Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the second richest man in the world, to call Biden’s statement either “straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics.” That’s rich. Bezos of all people should know that a major reason prices are rising is hugely profitable corporations like his Amazon have been usin...
Jul 05, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast I have no patience for all the handwringing by Democratic lawmakers in Washington over the Supreme Court’s regressive decisions on abortion and the climate. “This MAGA, regressive, extremist Supreme Court is intent on setting America back decades, if not centuries,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last Thursday after the Court dumped its final opinions for the term. Well, yes. So what are you going to do about it, Chuck? Last I looked Democrats were still in control of the Senate and H...
Jul 04, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast On this Fourth of July, it's worth pondering the true meaning of American patriotism. It is not the meaning propounded by the “America First” crowd, who define it as securing our borders. For most of its existence America has been open to people from the rest of the world fleeing tyranny and violence. Nor is the meaning of patriotism found in the ravings of those who want America to be a white Christian nation. America's moral mission has been to widen inclusion -- providing equal rights to wome...
Jul 04, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast My informal weekly coffee with Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action and my former student), discussing the past week. Today we talk about the rogue Supreme Court and what Democrats can — and must — do. In particular, Senate Dems still have the power to carve out filibuster exceptions for reproductive rights, voting rights, and the climate — and then enact national legislation protecting reproductive rights and voting rights, and authorizing the EPA to move forwa...
Jul 02, 2022•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, I recently gave a lecture to students who were considering careers in public service, either in the public sector or in nonprofits. My lecture was about why so many public problems have worsened over the last decades — climate change, economic inequality, gun violence, access to healthcare, public education, child poverty, homelessness, even democracy itself. When I finished, one of them asked, “given everything you’ve told us, why should any of us want to enter public service now?” The...
Jul 01, 2022•2 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
