Robert Reich Why The Rich Are Getting Richer

Superior Essays
In a capitalist economic system, like the economics in America, there will always be a person who has less than another. The government will try and close the gap by providing opportunities and resources for those in need, but there will always be a lower class in America’s current economic system. This is not a bad situation, nor is it a good one. During economic upturn the lower class and middle class will gain and the gap will become smaller. The opposite is true for when the economy takes a dive. Robert B. Reich is a Professor in the Heller Graduate School at Brandeis University, and while he does not have a doctorate in economics, he has written numerous books on the subject. He has also served as the secretary of labor under the first …show more content…
Reich is accurate in his essay on economics, Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer, because routine workers and in-person servers are getting poorer while symbolic analysts are getting …show more content…
Reich states in his essay, “The boat containing routine producers is sinking rapidly” (Reich). According to Reich, the cause of this is the connectedness and dependence on global economies. When the factory worker was the most populate job in the country, they rose and fell as the companies did. A large portion of a company’s earnings went to the production workers and the middle managers. This created an affluent middle class capable of buying the great things produced in high volume by their company. Today, however, most jobs in America are being lost to the working man of other countries. They are not accustom to the same conditions and rights as American workers, so they will work for much less. “Most Brazilian workers are hired on a contract basis, which means they can be laid off more easily in a downturn… ‘American farmers use Mexican workers to run their farms,’ says Mr. [Motosa Katayama]. ‘So we said, why couldn 't we Japanese farmers use foreigners too’” (Yuka). The use of foreign workers to cut cost in the labor is a device used by many companies now in an effort to save money. Consequently, the factories and routine working jobs that use to fill this nation are nonexistent

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Companies, for example AT&T, used industrial workers in the US, until they found that in Singapore industrial workers would provide the same work for a lesser wage compared to that of the American worker (Reich, 517). Reich 's use of proof is apparent in the example of AT&T. In the example just given, Reich is just stating the facts even though he sounds careless about who the worker is and what country they are from. The end goal is to lower wages and this shows that industrial workers are easily replaced and adds to Reich 's opinions of a figurative analogy given. Reich also states that Singaporeans replaced American AT&T workers for a fraction of the cost and will eventually be replaced by less costly and more productive means, human or otherwise.…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Effective Messaging The documentary Inequality for All focuses on what happens to an economy when income inequality rates begin to sore sky high. Narrated by Robert Reich, he talks about how America came to be a nation of massive income inequality, the consequences of it and how to solve it. One of the most impressive things the film does, is a take a topic people study for years and turn it into an easily understandable 90-minute film. The documentary Inequality for All effectively got its message across through, accurate statistics, memorable visual aids, and real-life stores and firsthand accounts.…

    • 1187 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Gilded Age Inequality

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and presenter of the documentary Inequality for All, once said “The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream. Unfortunately today we know that this is no longer the case in the United States. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase as the rich get richer and the poor can’t get out of poverty. Contrary to popular belief this is not due to lack of hard work but due to a lack of opportunity and this has become a huge problem for the United States. Although we can’t have every person in this country be wealthy due to the system of capitalism, it is possible to decrease…

    • 1011 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Leonhardt’s essay “Inequality Has Been Going On Forever… But That Doesn’t Mean It’s Inevitable” Leonhardt explains how the middle class is suffering in a prosperous nation. Leonhardt is the managing editor of The Upshot, a New York Times site, and published an e-book, Here’s the Dead: How Washington Can Solve the Deficit and Spur Growth” (2013) based on economic issues. Leonhardt’s concern is the rapid pace in rising inequality, as the wealthy are affluent in capital gains, taxes, and education. I agree that inequality is a concern because living in a society where everyone isn’t treated the same in terms of wealth causes conflict.…

    • 713 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This brings up the issue of education in America. David Leonhardt references Thomas Piketty in his essay when he concludes that the more individuals there are who seek out education the smaller the gap between the upper and lower classes worldwide (Leonhardt). In other words a governmental push to create a more educated population will result in a smaller gap between classes across the…

    • 722 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    America's Economy Dbq

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages

    America's Economy “We are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work;” (Document A), to countless Americans this sounds like a rigid caste society, the polar opposite of America. Yet, a considerable amount of Americans firmly assert this is the reality of America today. In reality, the economy works relatively the same as it did half a century ago, however, people today are not working as diligently nor as much. The economy, as well as the opportunity of social mobility, is still truly alive but the work ethic needed to achieve it is dead.…

    • 747 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Progressive

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The progressive refers a specific group that was inspired by reformation ideas of the nation and so they went ahead to try and practically implement their ideas between the late 19th centuries and early 20th centuries. Looking at the development history of the United States, there is only a limited group of people who owned wealth, while the rest were facing hardships as they struggle to make it in life mainly characteristic of dangerous working places, low wages, and long working hours. Following this situation, the Progressive decided that their main goal was to change the state of the Americans, through helping the common man especially laborers and offering the growth in the American industry. The Progressives representatives tried the…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In “35 Soul-Crushing Facts about American Income Inequality”, the author, Larry Schwartz, makes it clear that the ever-increasing income and tax cuts the wealthiest Americans receive, as well as the decline in labor unions, results in the rest of the nation’s citizens to fare worse economically than those of previous generations. The writer shows that economic inequality, the difference between incomes across a population, has currently reached peak levels unprecedented since the Roaring Twenties, the period right before the Great Depression. Schwartz does an excellent job of supporting his claims by providing a vast amount of statistical evidence and historical background, which shows how dire the current situation of economic inequality is in the U.S.A. Despite the fact that the middle class has been taxed at an equal rate…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Emma Soffler Mr. Nolan 27 October 2017 U.S. History 11H-4 Document Based Question: What Caused the Great Depression? Isaac Newton once said, “What goes up must come down.” Although Newton uses this to explain the laws of gravity, the quote is fitting for many different events. The economy, for example, is a cycle which continues to rise and fall throughout history. In the year 1929, the United States’ economy prospered tremendously.…

    • 1013 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For example, data shows that the income of the top 1% increased by 148% while the income of the top 0.1% grew by 343%. Meanwhile, the income of the top 0.01% rose by an astonishing 599% (Krugman 388). These statistics show that while poor Americans are getting poorer, the rich are actually getting richer. The assertion that the wealth gap between poor and rich Americans is best conceptualized by Robert Reich in his article “Why the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer.” In this article, Reich writes that Americans were in the same economic boat at one point in time.…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Robert Reich proposed a decent and well thought out argument on how to sustain a strong middle class. At the same time, I do not think the way he thinks we should sustain a strong middle class is the best entirely. He is a little biased in his way of thinking which is strictly democratic policies, where I tend to disagree with. He understands global economics, but does his understanding cause financial success for american workers. Some of his propositions are worthwhile like “Overturn Citizens United so that corporations can’t spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns, and in return affect public policy and spending priorities” (Inequality for All video).…

    • 588 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    This inequality gap is widening every second. As Nicholas Fitz wrote. “It is far worse than we think” (Fitz 1). Most American still think it is not that worse and they still have a lot of opportunities to escape from the poor. In Nicholas’s article, the data and contents are perfectly shown how impossible is to reach the rich level.…

    • 1247 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In a capitalistic based economy such as the United States, it creates incomes that are small and large. Having an unequal amount of large or low incomes is called income inequality. Income inequality has become a major problem in the United States, increasing 24% from 1968 to 2012” (Cochran). The gap between the rich and the poor is growing at an ever increasing rate. In the United States the gap is measured by relative poverty, or “being below one-half the nations income” (Cochran).…

    • 1676 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    Ronald D. Lankford explains that, “In regard to attitudes toward the rich, Americans seem more willing to raise taxes since the recession began. In poll after poll, most Americans agree that the rich should be taxed at a higher rate.” (Lankford) Nearly all lower class and middle class citizens seem to believe that as long as the rich pay higher taxes, this economic gap is going to decrease drastically. Robert Bernard Reich was born in 1946 and became a political economist, professor, author, and political commentator.…

    • 1690 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Economic gaps under capitalism are not created because of the success or failure of those in the marketplace, but because of the fluctuations of pricing, obviously inflationary fluctuations being the most notable culprit. The U.S. had a far less % of poverty and underclass based upon population size before the inception of welfare than it has at any point since. The War on Poverty, begun in the 1970’s has seen the spending of trillions of wasted dollars to fix a problem it has only greatly exacerbated. Not because of the failure of capitalism but because of the failed machinations, if not outright misappropriations of…

    • 1215 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays