As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.
Robert ReichRead
To get back to the kind of shared prosperity and upward mobility we once considered normal will require another era of fundamental reform, of both our economy and our democracy.
Interpretation
Achieving shared prosperity and mobility requires significant reforms in our economy and democracy.
This quote by Robert Reich emphasizes the need for substantial changes in both economic systems and democratic practices to restore a sense of shared wealth and opportunity that was once seen as standard. It suggests that without these reforms, society may struggle to achieve the equitable growth and upward mobility that benefits everyone.
In practice
During a political rally focused on economic issues.
As we segregate by income into different communities, schools in lower-income areas have fewer resources than ever.
What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes.
What someone is paid has little or no relationship to what their work is worth to society.
Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.
The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant. ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress.
You can't inspire people if you are going to be uninspiring.
A winner-takes-all economy that offers only limited access to the middle class is a recipe for democratic malaise and dereliction.
If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences.
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
Obama had to save the banks, sure, but he didn't have to save the bankers and the shareholders and the bondholders. We broke the rules of capitalism in order to save those at the top - as we always do.
Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.
The most powerful forces in economics are not numbers or facts. They are prejudices and preferences. No amount of evidence will ever change the degree to which many of the rich and powerful prefer themselves to be richer and more powerful and others poorer and weaker.
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