Date: 2025-08-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00021721
US POLICY OPTIONS
ROBERT REICH
Are Both Sides Actually Getting More Extreme?
ROBERT REICH
Are Both Sides Actually Getting More Extreme?
Original article: https://www.laprogressive.com/getting-more-extreme/
Burgess COMMENTARY
I like Robert Reich. I have done so since he came to my attention as Secretary of Lobor with President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
I have considered myself a conservative all my life ... standing for politeness and most of the decent attributes of the English middle class ... and I am also in support of everyone having a decent quality of living no matter where they must start in life. I don't want anyone to have to rely on government hand-outs ... or any hand-outs nor do I want people to be able to game the system so that they are able to accumulate massive wealth at the expense of the broader economy and society ... and I don't want to see nature exploited so that our world is degraded in all sorts of dangerous ways including climate change and loss of biodiversity and resilience.
Robert Reich got his MA at Oxford. I got an MA at Cambridge. My academic training was in engineering and economics. My profession training was as a Chartered Accountant. My corporate experience was mainly to do with turnaround management working from the CFO position. Later I worked as a consultant in the field of international development and humanitarian assistance on World Bank and UN projects in different parts of the world.
Over time, in the USA, the political divide between Right and Left has grown wider and wider.
Over time, internationally the gap between the wealthy countries and the poor countries has also become wider and wider, and the gap betweem those with money and those lacking money has grown bigger and bigger as well. This is not because there is endemic shortage, but because the socio-enviro-economic system has been and continues to be gamed for the benefit of the relatively few who have wealth, power and influence.
The metrics support this dysfunction. The academic institutions study this and teach it. The people who are affected by it have litrle role in the converstion and social media and technology have been coopted into a nonsensical swirl of misinformation.
Better metrics can help. This is what I am trying to do with TrueValuemetrics.org !!!!!!!!!
With better metrics the nonsense that is used in right wing political messaging can be challenged. For example, the Congressional Budget Office needs to use methodology that has a lot more rigor and the media needs to talk less about the national GDP and similar measures. They need to report more about the real quality of life metrics that have been moving in the wrong direction for most of the people of America for 40 years while business profits and stock market valuations for companies have gone up and up and up.
This is a dangerous and unhealthy situation ...
Peter Burgess
BY ROBERT REICH
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 16, 2022
How did we get so politically divided? Well, it’s NOT because both sides have gotten more extreme.
I got my start in American politics 50 years ago. My political views then — to grossly simplify them — were that I was against the Vietnam War and the military-industrial complex, strongly supportive of civil and voting rights, and against the power of big corporations. That put me here: just left of the center.
The left hasn’t moved much at all. But the right has moved far, far rightward.
Back then, the political spectrum from left to right was short. The biggest political issue was the Vietnam War. The left was demonstrating against it, sometimes violently. Since I was committed to ending the war through peaceful political means, I volunteered for George McGovern, the anti-war presidential candidate. Even Richard Nixon on the right was starting to look for ways out of Vietnam.
Twenty-five years later, I was in Bill Clinton’s cabinet, and the left-to-right political spectrum stretched much longer. The biggest change was how much further right the right had moved. Ronald Reagan had opened the political floodgates to corporate and Wall Street money — bankrolling right-wing candidates and messages that decried “big government.”
Bill Clinton sought to lead from the “center,” but by then the “center” had moved so far right that Clinton gutted public assistance, enacted “tough on crime” policies that unjustly burdened the poor and people of color, and deregulated Wall Street. All of which put me further to the left of the center — although my political views had barely changed.
Today, the spectrum from left to right is the longest it’s been in my 50 years in and around politics. The left hasn’t moved much at all. We’re still against the war machine, still pushing for civil and voting rights, still fighting the power of big corporations. But the right has moved far, far rightward.
Donald Trump brought America about as close as we’ve ever come to fascism. He incited an attempted coup against the United States. He and most of the Republican Party continue to deny that he lost the 2020 election. And they’re getting ready to suppress votes and disregard election outcomes they disagree with. So don’t believe the fear-mongering that today’s left is “radical.” What’s really radical is the right’s move toward fascism.
Robert Reich ... Robert Reich’s Blog
BY ROBERT REICH POSTED ON FEBRUARY 16, 2022
DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the LA Progressive, its publisher, editor or any of its other contributors.
About Robert Reich
Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. .
Reich has been a member of the faculties of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and of Brandeis University. He received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, his M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and his J.D. from Yale Law School.
Nancy Ohanian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa3xmLI4dHg