Zitat des Tages von Robert Reich:
The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters.
Median wages of production workers, who comprise 80 percent of the workforce, haven't risen in 30 years, adjusted for inflation.
There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.
As digital equipment replaces the jobs of routine workers and lower-level professionals, technicians are needed to install, monitor, repair, test, and upgrade all the equipment.
Technology is changing so fast that knowledge about specifics can quickly become obsolete. That's why so much of what technicians learn is on the job.
It's not government's business what people do in their private bedrooms.
True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.
Even if there's no way to stop U.S. corporations from shedding their U.S. identities and becoming foreign corporations, there's no reason they should retain the privileges of U.S. citizenship.
A lot of attention has been going to social values - abortion, gay rights, other divisive issues - but economic values are equally important.
During three decades from 1947 to 1977, the nation implemented what might be called a basic bargain with American workers. Employers paid them enough to buy what they produced.
Walmart isn't your average mom-and-pop operation. It's the largest employer in America. As such, it's the trendsetter for millions of other employers of low-wage workers.
I wish it were simply a nightmare, but I think that any reasonable person watching American politics would come to the conclusion that a second Bush administration would in fact incorporate a more radicalized version of what we've seen in the first administration.
Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms.
A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term.
You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
Those who take their money abroad in an effort to avoid paying American taxes should lose their American citizenship.
Too many young people graduate laden with debts that take years, if not decades, to pay off.
It is impossible to fight bullies merely by saying they're going too far.
It's true that redistributing income to the needy is politically easier in a growing economy than in a stagnant one.
Medical costs are soaring because our health-care system is totally screwed up. Doctors and hospitals have every incentive to spend on unnecessary tests, drugs, and procedures.
As long as the big banks are allowed to remain big, their political leverage over Washington will remain big. And as long as their political leverage remains big, the taxpayer and economic tab for the next mess they create will be big.
In 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis tried to form a union. The city resisted. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to support them. That was where he lost his life.
Those at the top would do better with a smaller share of a booming economy that elicits a positive politics than they will do with an ever-larger share of an anemic economy that fuels the politics of anger.
Increasingly, corporate nationality is whatever a corporation decides it is.
As income from work has become more concentrated in America, the super rich have invested in businesses, real estate, art, and other assets. The income from these assets is now concentrating even faster than income from work.
The curious thing is Americans don't mind individual mandates when they come in the form of payroll taxes to buy mandatory public insurance. In fact, that's the system we call Social Security and Medicare, and both are so popular politicians dare not touch them.
As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.
Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.
If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully enforced and through penalties higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.
Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.
Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads, and their ability to work together.
In reality, most of America's poor work hard, often in two or more jobs.
There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.
When I was a small boy, I was bullied more than most, mainly because I was a foot shorter than everyone else.
Walmart is so huge that a wage boost at Walmart would ripple through the entire economy, putting more money in the pockets of low-wage workers. This would help boost the entire economy - including Walmart's own sales.
We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.
