Download PDF The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It By Robert B. Reich
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Ebook About From the bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Common Good, comes an urgent analysis of how the "rigged" systems of American politics and power operate, how this status quo came to be, and how average citizens can enact change.There is a mounting sense that our political-economic system is no longer working, but what is the core problem and how do we remedy it? With the characteristic clarity and passion that have made him a central civil voice, bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Common Good Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have combined to install an oligarchy and undermine democracy. Reich exposes the myths of meritocracy, national competitiveness, corporate social responsibility, the “free market,” and the political “center,” all of which are used by those at the top to divert attention from their takeover of the system and to justify their accumulation of even more wealth and power. In demystifying the current system, Reich reveals where power actually lies and how it is wielded, and invites us to reclaim power and remake the system for all.Book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Review :
Everyone who follows politics in the United States, certainly every Democrat, is aware that the American system is rigged. In their presidential campaigns, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have made sure of that. Warren is especially articulate and has gotten the point across with great skill. But leave it to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich to explain how things have gotten so far out of kilter. That’s the task he’s taken up in his latest book, The System.The System is, in a sense, an open letter to Jamie Dimon. If you’re not familiar with that name, you should be. Dimon is the billionaire Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., America’s biggest bank, and Chairman of the Business Roundtable, a nonprofit association of the chief executives of the country’s biggest companies that exerts powerful influence in Washington. If anyone can be regarded as a spokesman for American capitalism, it’s Jamie Dimon. And apparently Reich resolved to write this book following a phone call he received from him in the spring of 2018. Dimon had called to complain because Reich had criticized him publicly. Much of the text in The System, especially at the beginning and end of the book, is addressed directly to Dimon.A lifelong Democrat who’s not just talkWhat you may not know about Jamie Dimon is that he is a lifelong Democrat. At the Business Roundtable, through his bank, and in public statements, he consistently advocates for progressive policies. As Reich notes, “He speaks out about the injustices and inequalities of contemporary America. [And] he is not just talk. He has pushed his bank to invest in poor cities and to create better opportunities for the disadvantaged.”But he is “awash in self-delusion”“I believe he’s sincere,” Reich asserts. “But he is awash in self-delusion . . . Dimon doesn’t see how he has contributed to the mess we’re in.” He is, in fact, one of a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals who are most directly responsible for rigging the system. In his latest book, Reich offers his analysis of the many ways that Dimon and the others who comprise what Reich terms the oligarchy have used their power to enrich themselves.Over the past forty years, they have acquired “unprecedented wealth, which has bought them even more power,” leaving the rest of us far behind. In Reich’s view, Dimon is “emblematic of an abdication of public responsibility to maintain the health of our political-economic system at a time when a comparative few at the top have more power over it than at any other time in more than a century.” And “for all his liberal outspokenness, Dimon never mentions America’s growing concentration of wealth and power.”Reich’s analysis in a nutshell“Don’t assume we’re locked in a battle between capitalism and socialism,” Reich proclaims at the outset. “We already have socialism — for the very rich. . . Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy.” Reich then proceeds to explain exactly how this sad reality has come about.“Three big systemic changes over the last forty years have reallocated power upward in the system,” he writes. “They are (1) the shift in corporate governance from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, (2) the shift in bargaining power from large unions to giant corporations, and (3) the unleashing of the financial power of Wall Street.” As a direct result, the system is rigged to divert an ever-larger share of national wealth toward a tiny minority at the top of the pyramid. The upshot is that the overwhelming majority of us are forced to deal with this reality through three “coping mechanisms”: women steadily moving into the labor force, practically everyone working longer hours, with most of us being forced to “draw down savings and borrow to the hilt.”The subtitle notwithstanding, The System is long on analysis and short on concrete proposals for change. However, Reich’s predilection for systemic change of the sort advocated by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is abundantly clear. He has long supported Senator Sanders.About the authorRobert B. Reich (1946-) has taught government and politics for forty years between stretches in government service. He served as Secretary of Labor during Bill Clinton’s first term (1993-97). In the 1980s, Reich taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Since 2006, he has served as the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy of the University of California, Berkeley. There, in addition to graduate courses, he teaches a popular undergraduate class called “Wealth and Poverty,” where his strengths as a public speaker and his nonstop sense of humor stand out. The System is his nineteenth book. Greedy, powerful billionaires have rigged the system for their own benefit at the expense of everyone else—this, in a nutshell, is Robert Reich’s thesis. Although I disagree with Reich on how the system works, that is not why I gave the book one star. I gave it one star because it is filled with inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and downright headscratchers. Below are just some (out of countless) examples.Reich claims he is “not advocating class warfare” (p. 17). But blaming billionaires and blaming CEOs like Jamie Dimon for all of our problems sure sounds like class warfare to me. In response to Dimon claiming that he “actually earned his money,” Reich says, “Not exactly” (pp. 18-19). He then gives a brief biography of Dimon, but none of the facts Reich recounts suggest that Dimon didn’t earn his money. Yes, his father’s friend offered him a job at American Express after he got his MBA. So what? Many people get jobs through connections like this, yet very few of them become CEOs. Are we really supposed to believe that without that first job, Dimon would not have become as successful as he is?Billionaires, Reich tells us, rig the system and get everything their own way. But Reich points out that in 2013, Dimon’s bank, JPMorgan “paid out more than $20 billion to settle the claims” (p. 51). If Dimon is so powerful, why did his bank have to pay out so much? Or pay anything at all? Is it perhaps because billionaires are not as powerful as Reich claims they are? This is not to suggest that billionaires don’t have any influence. Of course they do. But having influence does not necessarily mean they have “rigged” the system.Reich says, “Safety nets for the poor and middle class have begun to unravel” (p. 16). “Harsh capitalism for the many means most Americans . . . have no safety nets to catch them if they fall” (p. 53). This just isn’t true. There are a boatload of social safety net programs and there have not been any cuts to them—not to food stamps, TANF, Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security.Reich says, “Getting something for nothing also describes General Motors’ receipt of $600 million in federal contracts, plus $500 million in tax breaks” (p. 48). A federal contract means providing a product or service to the government for a fee. How is that “getting something for nothing”? Also, regardless of how much you think GM should pay in taxes, keeping more of its OWN money (in the form of a tax break) is certainly not “getting something for nothing.”According to Reich, “Eleven years after Wall Street’s near meltdown, not a single major financial executive had been convicted or even indicted for crimes that wiped out the savings of countless Americans” (p. 52). So Bernie Madoff doesn’t count? What about Allen Stanford? Or Kareem Serageldin of Credit Suisse? According to a CNN article (4/28/2016), “35 bankers were sent to prison for financial crisis crimes.”Reich says, “The problem is [Wall] Street’s excessive power. How else can you explain why the Street was bailed out with no strings attached?” (p. 58). Although I agree with Reich that the Wall Street bail out was wrong, it’s false to say that there were no strings. The bailouts were not blank checks. They were mainly loans, most of which were paid back.Reich says that the “high-tech behemoths” (Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google) have “stifled innovation” (p. 112). The mind boggles. To claim that the MOST innovative companies of the last couple decades have “stifled innovation” is just astoundingly ridiculous.Then Reich says, “There are basically only four ways to accumulate a billion dollars, and none of them is a product of so-called free market. . . . One way to make a billion is to exploit a monopoly. Jeff Bezos is worth $110 billion. . . . Amazon is a monopoly . . . Consumers have few alternatives.” (p. 142). No, Amazon is not a monopoly. It has countless competitors, both online and off. And consumers have countless choices. One really has to wonder what world Reich is living in.Reich says, “we don’t even require that American corporations disclose to their shareholders the campaign contributions they bestow on American politicians” (p. 65). This statement is highly misleading. Since the Tillman Act (1907), corporations have been banned from contributing money directly to politicians. Some corporations have PACs that contribute, but the money in corporate PACs is raised from outside sources; it does not come from the corporation itself. Reich doesn’t mention any of this.Furthermore, it’s curious that Reich is concerned about disclosure to shareholders. He also thinks we need “more protection” for “investors [shareholders] against looting and fraud by the financial sector” (p. 196). Despite this, he says, “The oligarchy’s allegiance is to corporate shareholders, and its major interest is enlarging their and its own wealth” (p. 77). So which is it, Mr. Reich? You can’t have it both ways. Are shareholders getting screwed? Or is "the oligarchy" screwing everyone else for the benefit of shareholders?Reich repeatedly peddles the myth that since 1980, the economy in general and Wall Street in particular have been deregulated (pp. 36, 73, 123, 127, 131). The reality is that the US Code of Federal Regulations has grown from about 100,000 pages in 1980 to more than 180,000 pages today. Reich then points to the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999, saying, “Critics (including yours truly) predicted it would release a monster. The critics were proven correct” (p. 128). No, they weren’t. Deregulation did not cause the financial crisis. See “Why The Glass-Steagall Myth Persists” (Nov 12, 2012) at forbes.com.Reich says, “Since the 1980s . . . the federal government all but abandoned antitrust enforcement” (p. 111). Hmm, I guess Reich must have been asleep during the six-year antitrust case against Microsoft. Reich says, “Monsanto now sets the prices for most of the nation’s seed corn” (p. 111). That’s interesting because there is no Monsanto anymore; it was acquired by Bayer in 2018, two years before Reich’s book was published. Then there’s this: “Richard Nixon’s ‘law and order’ campaign on behalf of ‘the silent majority’ was an appeal to racism. . . . Racism was also behind Bill Clinton’s promise to ‘end welfare as we know it’ and to ‘crack down on crime’” (p. 157). So being for “law and order” and wanting to “crack down on crime” is racist? Really?According to Reich, “Today, the Walmart family fortune grows by . . . $100 million per day” (p. 141). Reich doesn’t explain how he arrived at this figure, but it can’t possibly be correct. $100 million per day equals $36.5 billion per year. But Walmart’s net income in FY 2020 was only $14.88 billion. Furthermore, the Walmart family (the Waltons) are not the only shareholders (they own 51%), and not all of Walmart’s income was distributed to shareholders. Even if you take into account the average appreciation in Walmart’s stock price over time, it still doesn’t come close to what Reich claims.Regarding the recent scandal of rich celebrities illegally pulling strings to get their kids into good colleges, Reich says, “the real scandal is not bribery by a few wealthy parents but how commonplace it has become for almost all wealthy parents to shell out big bucks for essay tutors, testing tutors, admissions counselors, and ‘enrichment’ courses designed to get their kids into the college of their choice” (p. 169). Let me see if I understand this. Bribery is not the scandal; the scandal, Reich would have us believe, is that parents are resorting to LEGITIMATE methods to help their kids get into college. What?!I could go on and on, but you get the point. Reich’s arguments are sloppy, and he plays fast and loose with the facts.**UPDATE: For my view on how the system actually works, see my article “Corporations and Political Corruption: The Curse of Cronyism and How to End It” in the Winter 2020 issue of The Objective Standard (available online). Read Online The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Download The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It PDF The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Mobi Free Reading The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Download Free Pdf The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It PDF Online The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Mobi Online The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Reading Online The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It Read Online Robert B. 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