Robert Reich Quotes

Market systems all threaten the continued existence of those who are currently successful if they fail to adapt to changes they do not control. This tension is essential to markets serving human well-being better than other economic systems. But at the same time it means that organizations within them have interests at cross-purposes to the system itself. This is true for all spontaneous orders: markets, science, and democracies.

Political, social and economic realities are shaped by a historical process.

The distribution of wealth ... depends on the laws and customs of society ... what the opinions and feelings of the ruling class make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.

What Americans should by now be able to see is that neither the laissez-faire marketplace nor strong government has given them a satisfying or permanent resolution. The problem is not the marketplace and it is not government. The problem originates in the contest of clashing values between society and capitalism and, since this human society cannot surrender its deepest values, it must try to alter capitalism's.

Economic systems ... have never arranged themselves by themselves. It is men who do the ordering according to their attitudes, desires and understanding of things. Changes take place, not independent of man's will, but on account of man's will.

Democracy and markets are both fundamental building blocks for a decent society. But they clash at a fundamental level. We need to balance them.

The roots of war are in the way we live our daily lives -- the way we develop our industries, build up our society, and consume goods.

I think the idea of individualism has become more dominating in our society. You can even see it by our political system: how people vote, the job situation, the sociological evolution that's happening, what's happening in the Middle East and so forth.

Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups or between groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to be run. If you look back, you will see that warfare was an invention, just as ways of handling government or taxes are inventions. You will see, too, that once people use an invention they go on using it until they find another which they think is superior.

I think something very weird's going on now, 'cause the power that is permitted to youth is quite extraordinary. And they are sort of run by that kind of power.

I think people involved with institutions find it harder to know the time to go than the time to come.

I think it's important that we run that tension between the way things are, in terms of the way we're governed, and the way we sort of become complacent.

The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread.

I think that most of the candidates [for presidency] can't run the railroad, and I still worry that whoever gets elected will have policies designed for political rather than practical reasons.

Economics is a social science, not a physical science.

If I was in government and running government, I think I would use the government data, because I wouldn't know where else to look, quite frankly. And if I didn't like that data, I would work hard to make sure it got better and better and better, whether it was at the state or local or federal level.

Economics has been called the dismal science. Once you get to understand it, you may not find it so dismal, but you don't find it much of a science either.

Do people have a right to be angry about, not just the political class, but every institution in society? Absolutely. But neither anger nor fear will solve our problems. They can serve to motivate us, but it will not solve our problems.

. . I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world by Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

The appeal of the New Right is simply that it seems to promise that nothing will change in the domestic realm. People are terrified of change there, because it's the last humanizing force left in society, and they think, correctly, that it must be retained.

I think we've seen at least the beginnings of rather significant social and economic change in the Muslim world, which I think will in due course lead to more political change.

Obedience to the law of bread labour will bring about a silent revolution in the structure of society.

The question is really how do we think seriously about this mechanism called a market. It ought to be determining not values but prices.

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.