On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019. Over those thirty years, the share of total national weaheld by families in the top 1% increased from 27 percent to 34 percent, while families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2 percent. Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American. H...
Sep 29, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast In a post here on September 8, I asked the billionaires who are bankrolling candidates who have tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election how they rationalize spending their fortunes financing insurrection. I specifically included Peter Thiel, Stephen Schwarzman, Steve Wynn, Patrick Byrne, and Ken Griffin in my question. Ken Griffin, the multi-billion-dollar CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, is the only one to respond so far — yesterday, in a tart letter to the Guardian (where I had subseq...
Sep 28, 2022•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last week, a panel of medical experts recommended for the first time that doctors screen all adult patients under 65 for anxiety disorders. The advisory group, called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, said the guidance was intended to help prevent mental health disorders from going undetected and untreated for years or even decades. It made a similar recommendation for children and teenagers earlier this year. Appointed by an arm of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, the...
Sep 27, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last Wednesday, Vladimir Putin announced that Russian civilians would be drafted to bolster forces in his unpopular war in Ukraine. Almost immediately, the Kremlin faced widespread opposition, including demonstrations. On Friday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that “citizens with higher education” would be exempt from the draft, especially those in telecommunications, information technology, banking and “systematically important” media companies. When I heard this news I flashed back ...
Sep 26, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch with my colleague Heather Lofthouse (Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action — and my former student), where we talk about the highs and lows of the week over morning coffee. Pull up a chair. Today we cover: — profit-price inflation rather than wage-price inflation — Tump rallies and his embrace of QAnon — Republican candidates who refuse to commit to be bound by election results — Nse Ufot and the power of hope through on-the-...
Sep 25, 2022•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, Today’s New York Times has a story about Russia’s powerful internet regulator, Roskmnadzor, whose collection of personal data about average Russians has, in the Times’s words, “catapulted Russia, along with authoritarian countries like China and Iran, to the forefront of nations that aggressively use technology as a tool of repression.” A few weeks ago, the Times ran a story about China’s collection of personal data on its citizens through phone-tracking devices, voice prints, one of th...
Sep 23, 2022•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast It makes my blood boil. Since March I’ve been screaming about the Fed’s total misreading of inflation — believing it’s being caused by workers getting wage hikes, when the real cause is powerful corporations raising prices higher than their costs. I’m not so grandiose as to think my screams would have any direct influence on the Fed. My hope was that my argument and data might be picked up by a few voices in the media, which would lead some Democrats in Congress to pick up on it, and that maybe ...
Sep 22, 2022•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast Friends, One of the most horrific legacies of Trump is the unwillingness of Republican candidates to commit to being bound by election results. Senate candidates who have refused to commit to accepting the results are Republicans Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, and J.D. Vance in Ohio, according to news reports . Two candidates for governor have also refused to be bound: Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for the governor of Michigan, and Geoff Die...
Sep 20, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast I’m against trafficking of migrants. But luring unsuspecting people onto planes with lies about jobs, housing, and education awaiting them, and then depositing them onto an island off the coast of Massachusetts that’s totally unprepared to receive them, is a form of human trafficking. The people you’re talking about aren’t American citizens. They have no rights. Even if they’re not Americans, U.S. law prohibits kidnapping people and moving them across state lines. I didn’t kidnap them. They’re h...
Sep 19, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello friends, Welcome back to my Saturday coffee klatch. Today I’m offline with family, so instead of our regular klatch, I’m bringing you a terrific conversation I just had with Nse Ufot , CEO of New Georgia Project (NGP). NGP is one of the most important grassroots voting-rights organizations — in one of the most important voting states. NGP is now registering over 600,000 young people and people of color to vote in all 159 of Georgia’s counties. Nse describes the organization as a “tech star...
Sep 17, 2022•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast Yesterday, Donald Trump threatened that if he is indicted on a charge of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House, there would be “problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” adding “I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.” These words followed on last month’s threat by Senator Lindsey Graham that if Trump is prosecuted, there would be “riots in the street.” Trump appeared to endorse Graham’s threat, sharing a vide...
Sep 16, 2022•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast A few days ago, I received an email from an associate producer at the Dr. Phil Show. They recently came across my film “ Inequality for All” and wanted to know “if I’d be interested in joining Dr. Phil as an expert guest for an upcoming episode.” Hey, why not? The Dr. Phil Show is the number 1 rated daytime TV talk show in America. It has over 2 million viewers. I have lots to say to those viewers about the perils of widening inequality. Then I read the rest of the email. “For this conversation ...
Sep 12, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast In early August, the good people of Kansas voted against a ballot measure that would have stripped from their state constitution a woman’s right to choose — and they did it by a whopping 18-point margin . Since then, and largely in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women have been registering to vote across the country in astounding numbers. Many appear to be supporting Democratic candidates even in states such as Kansas, where Democrats have almost become a...
Sep 09, 2022•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast I have a serious question. It’s for people who have power in America and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s Big Lie: What are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind? I don’t mean to be snide or snarky. I’m genuinely curious. I’m not interested in Trump’s answer to this question. He is too far gone — lost in the depths of his own pathological ego. I’m also not asking the millions of Trump followers, Fox News viewer...
Sep 08, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today marks the start of the school year for many public schools. Which makes me think of Alice Camp. (I wrote about her some months ago. Many of you have asked me to repost what I wrote — and add a bit more about her and about our teachers. So here goes.) I arrived in Mrs. Camp’s third-grade classroom in Lewisboro Elementary School, in South Salem, New York, as an extremely short, shy, insecure 8-year-old who was often bullied and mocked on the bus and made to feel like a loser on the playgroun...
Sep 06, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast One week after a team of F.B.I. agents descended on his private club and residence in Florida, Trump warned that things could get out of hand if the Justice Department kept the heat on him. “People are so angry at what is taking place,” Trump told Fox News, predicting that if the “temperature” isn’t brought down, “terrible things are going to happen.” But Trump and his allies are doing all they can to increase the temperature. Last Sunday, one of Trump’s closest allies, Senator Lindsey Graham, w...
Sep 01, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Billionaire GOP mega-donor Steve Wynn has some free messaging advice for Republicans, which he proffered in a conference call last Wednesday with Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and Newt Gingrich (the audio was obtained by Politico ): He urged the GOP to run TV ads telling average working people that Democrats have funded the IRS to hammer them. Wynn even offered a script: “Tell them the IRS is ‘coming after you if you’re a waiter, if you’re a bartender, if you’re anybody with...
Aug 30, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast I like to tweet. Not as much as I like to write here on Substack where I get to share my thoughts at some length. On Twitter it’s a different kind of conversation, and pace — like speed chess. Last Tuesday I tweeted: I was surprised at the outrage my little tweet provoked. The Washington Examiner , for example: Ultra left-wing elitist and former secretary of labor during the Clinton administration Robert Reich tweeted earlier this week, “Just wondering if ‘DeSantis’ is now officially a synonym f...
Aug 29, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast When Robert Draper of the New York Times recently asked Rose Sperry, a state committeewoman for Arizona’s G.O.P., to name the first Republican leader she ever admired, she immediately mentioned former Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy. “I grew up during the time that Joe McCarthy was doing his talking,” Sperry said . “I was young, but I was listening. If he were here today, I would say, ‘Get him in there as president!’” I also grew up during the time Joe McCarthy was “doing his talking,” and I was ...
Aug 26, 2022•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast Among the many ironies and hypocrisies leading up to the 2022 midterms, one deserving special mention is Trump’s and the GOP’s unremitting claim that America has become more violent and dangerous under Biden and the Democrats. “Our country is now a cesspool of crime,” Trump said in a recent speech to the America First Policy Institute. “We have blood, death, and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party’s effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout Am...
Aug 25, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast For several years, Brian Stelter’s Sunday CNN show, “Reliable Sources,” has been a reliable source of intelligent criticism of Fox News, rightwing media in general, Trumpism, and the increasingly authoritarian lurch of the Republican Party. Last week, CNN abruptly canceled the show and effectively fired Stelter and his staff. Why? The show had good ratings and was commercially successful. (More people watched it than MSNBC.) The show was cancelled by Chris Licht, CNN’s new chairman and CEO, who ...
Aug 23, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the saying goes, in America everyone is entitled to a second chance — especially con artists. Herewith the 6 rules for getting a second (or third or fourth) chance to sell a giant con: 1. Market a mundane idea as “disruptive.” Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, hyped his office-sharing startup as the first “physical social network.” In reality it was nothing more than what you’d find in any coffee shop with customers at their laptops, but Neumann made it sound so revolutionary — “disruptive...
Aug 22, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hello friends, On Saturdays I have a cup of coffee with my colleague Heather Lofthouse and we invite you to join us and chime in with comments. She asks questions that many of you also want to discuss. Heather is the Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student. We cover both the highlights and lowlights, and aim to provide a larger context for the news. I’m somewhat on vacation this week but we did our best to record at a distance, cups of joe in hand. (Please forg...
Aug 20, 2022•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast I was born on June 24 in 1946 to Mildred Freshman Reich and Edwin Saul Reich at the Mercy Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania. That was ten days after Donald John Trump was born to Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump at the Jamaica hospital in the borough of Queens, New York. It was 12 days before George Walker Bush was born to Barbara Pierce Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush at Grace-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut. And 56 days before William Jefferson Blythe III, whose name wa...
Aug 19, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Clean Air Act of 1970 authorized the government to regulate air pollution. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Joe Biden just signed into law, allocates more than $300 billion to energy and climate reform, including $30 billion in subsidies for manufacturers of solar panels and components, wind turbines, inverters, and batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid. Notice the difference? The Inflation Reduction Act is a large and important step toward slowing or reversing climate change....
Aug 18, 2022•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tomorrow, Wyoming Republicans will determine the fate of Representative Liz Cheney — whom Trump has targeted for revenge ever since she criticized him for inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Six days after that attack — when no other Republican in the House or Senate was willing to rebuke Trump — she said on the House floor: “The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this wo...
Aug 15, 2022•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast On Saturdays I have a cup of coffee with my colleague Heather Lofthouse, and we press record on my laptop so you can listen and chime in with any comments. Heather is the Executive Director of Inequality Media Civic Action, and my former student. She asks me about the economic and political happenings of the past week (this past one was a doozy). 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. We oft...
Aug 13, 2022•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Notably, the Inflation Reduction Act didn’t attract a single Republican vote in the Senate. (And at least one Democratic senator — Kyrsten Sinema — made sure its tax provisions wouldn’t raise tax rates on rich individuals.) Why? We talk a lot about money in politics, but there’s a huge and growing difference between the big money (campaign donations of $1 million or more), most of it pouring into Republican coffers and small money (individual donations of $200 or less), mainly pouring into the D...
Aug 12, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Senator Joe Manchin has been Congress’s largest recipient of money from natural gas pipeline companies. He just reciprocated by gaining Senate support for the Mountain Valley pipeline in West Virginia and expedited approval for pipelines nationwide. Senator Krysten Sinema is among Congress’s largest recipients of money from the private-equity industry. She just reciprocated by preserving private-equity’s tax loophole in the Inflation Reduction Act. We almost take for granted big corporate money ...
Aug 11, 2022•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast Republican candidates for Senate, House and governorships in the upcoming midterms have been filling the airwaves today with baseless assertions that the FBI search of Mar-a-lago shows the politicization of the Justice Department and undermines the rule of law. Republicans ranging from third-ranking House Republican Elise Stefanik to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have issued statements brimming with outrage and accusation. Last night, the RNC sent out a fundraising text : “THIS IS NOT A D...
Aug 10, 2022•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
