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Your Most Precious Possession Is Not Your Financial Assets. Your Most Precious Possession Is The People You Have Working There, And What They Carry Around In Their Heads, And Their Ability To Work Together.

-Robert Reich

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Your Most Precious Possession

Robert Reich

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Your Most Precious Possession Is Not Your Financial Assets. Your Most Precious Possession Is The People You Have Working There, And What They Carry Around In Their Heads, And Their Ability To Work Together.

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Working Together

More From Robert Reich

The United States Is A Safe Harbor.

One Thing I've Learned From 35 Years In The Classroom Is That People Learn Best When They Are Laughing, When They Are Emotionally Hit, That It's Both The Brain And The Heart.

We Can't Know In Advance What History Is Going To Say, But I Would Be Utterly Amazed And Surprised If This Entire Adventure, This Entire Iraqi Invasion From The Beginning Of Its Inception, Were Not Judged To Be An Utter Failure And A Terrible, Terrible Thing For The World.

As To The Meaning Of "corporate Social Responsibility," Friedman And I Would Agree: If A Certain Action Improves The Corporation's Bottom Line, There's No Point In Labeling It "socially Responsible." It's Just Good Business.

More And More, Leadership, Whether It's Profit Or Nonprofit, Is About Recruiting And Keeping Talented People. That's The Biggest Challenge. Yes, You've Got To Create Systems That Will Enable People Easily To Innovate Continuously; You've Got To Be A System-builder. But Finding And Keeping Geeks And Shrinks Is The Biggest Challenge. That Means Leaders Have Got To Be Salespeople, They've Got To Be Recruiters, And They've Got To Be Actively Able To Understand And Keep The Talent They Have. Leadership Is Courtship. That's What It's Becoming.

Every Organization, No Matter Who It Is, Just Follow The Money.

And Now We're Suffering The Logical Culmination Of All This: The Largest Group Of Government-hati Ng, Racist, Homophobic, Misogynistic Know-nothing, Climate-change Denying, Evolution-denyi Ng, Science-denying , Anti-immigrant House Republicans In History, Bent On Taking America Back To The 19th Century.

It Is Impossible To Fight Bullies Merely By Saying They're Going Too Far.

America's Real Business Leaders Understand Unless Or Until The Middle Class Regains Its Footing And Its Faith, Capitalism Remains Vulnerable.

Being Critical Of The Nation Is A Far Cry From Being Unpatriotic Or Anti-american. In Fact, Most Social Criticism . . . Is Based On A Love Of America's Ideals And A Concern We're Not Living Up To Them.

Yale Law School Was The Kind Of Place You Went If You Felt You Needed To Go To Law School, Maybe, For Your Resume, But You Really Didn't Want To Practice Law. You Wanted To Do Public Policy, Or Maybe Go Into Politics.

The Fastest Growing Occupation In The Private Sector Is Security Guards. The Fastest Growing Occupation In The Public Sector Is Prison Guards. (1992)

Security Guards

Britain's Is Traditionally A Rigid Class Society.

Social Change Occurs When The Gap Between The Ideals That People Hold And The Reality That They See Every Day Gets Too Large.

Liberals Are Concerned About The Concentration Of Wealth Because It Almost Inevitably Leads To A Concentration Of Power That Undermines Democracy.

Concentration Of Wealth

Look, Any Cut In Greenhouse Gases Is Going To Be Expensive For American Consumers, Who Are In No Mood To Bear Additional Costs.

Planned Parenthood And Human Rights Campaign They`re Not Really The Establishment. I Can`t Obviously Speak For Senator Bernie Sanders Or About Planned Parenthood. But What We Do See, And We`ve Seen For Years In America, Is That The Establishment, That Is, The Big Banks And The Executives And The Wealthy Do Support A Lot Of Non-profits And Make The Non-profits Basically Walk To The Tune Of The Establishment.

If Consumers Don't Have The Wherewithal To Spend Because All The Money's Going To The Top, And The People At The Top Only Spend A Very Small Fraction Of What They Earn, Then The Economy Is Almost Inevitably Destined To Slow.

Anyone Believing The Tpp Is Good For Americans Take Note: The Foreign Subsidiaries Of U.s.-based Corporations Could Just As Easily Challenge Any U.s. Government Regulation They Claim Unfairly Diminishes Their Profits - Say, A Regulation Protecting American Consumers From Unsafe Products Or Unhealthy Foods, Investors From Fraudulent Securities Or Predatory Lending, Workers From Unsafe Working Conditions, Taxpayers From Another Bailout Of Wall Street, Or The Environment From Toxic Emissions.

Those Who Analogize The Federal Budget To A Family's Budget Must Know Nothing About Either.

We Reform The System. We Save Capitalism From Its Own Excesses.

The Rich Would Do Better With A Smaller Share Of A Rapidly Growing Economy Then They're Doing Now With A Large Share Of An Economy That Is Barely Growing At All.

Corporations Are Not People, Despite What The Supreme Court Says, And They Don't Need Or Deserve Handouts.

Most Americans Stopped Looking At What Was Happening Through A Variety Of Coping Mechanisms - Starting With Women Entering Paid Work And Then Everyone Working Longer Hours And Using Their Homes For Raising Equity And Generating More Money Through Debt. The Typical Household Basically Staved Off The Day Of Reckoning.

Coping Mechanisms

I Think It's Hard To Have A Brand Portal And An Economy Of Trustworthiness In One Of Them That Sloshes Over Into Another. But Saying That There Will Be Only A Limited Number Of These Giant Brand Portals Doesn't Mean A Limited Number Of Companies; It Doesn't Mean That Everybody's Going To Be Working For These Companies. Quite The Opposite. Most Of Us Will Be Working Through Much Smaller Entities That Simply Use These Portals As Vehicles For Getting And Identifying Customers.

Technology Enables Consumers And Investors To Have Extraordinary Choice And Ease Of Switching, Which, In Turn, Stimulates Much Fiercer Competition Than Ever Before, Which, In Turn, Makes It Imperative For Every Institution To Innovate Like Mad. That Innovation Is Powering Our Economy These Days, And It Requires Companies To Find And Utilize Creative Workers. That's The Most Important Syllogism Going; Technology Is Embedded In That Syllogism, But It's Not As If We're Seeing These Productivity Gains Because Of The Technology.

If You Give Up On Democracy, You Might As Well Give Up On Everything.

I Think That It's Difficult To Talk About Large Questions Of Economics Or Social Policy Without Understanding The Building Blocks Of Society. And Those Building Blocks Are Organizations, The People Who Run Them, And The People Who Work In Them.

Averages Don't Always Reveal The Most Telling Realities. You Know, Shaquille O'neal And I Have An Average Height Of 6 Feet.

You And I And Almost All Americans Are Beneficiaries Of The New Economy. But We Are Also Losing Parts Of Our Lives To The New Economy - Aspects Of Our Family Lives, Our Friendships, Our Communities, Ourselves.

We Are Now Enjoying The Liberation That Comes With Not Having To Be Organization Men And Women, And That's Fabulous. But There Are New Social Consequences Here Of Which We Need To Be Aware, And The Sale Of The Self And What That Entails For The Rest Of Our Lives Is Quite Sobering.

The Intellectual Equipment Needed For The Job Of The Future Is An Ability To Define Problems, Quickly Assimilate Relevant Data, Conceptualize And Reorganize The Information, Make Deductive And Inductive Leaps With It, Ask Hard Questions About It, Discuss Findings With Colleagues, Work Collaboratively To Find Solutions And Then Convince Others.

There Is A Deep Desire To Change The Power Structure.

Desire To Change

It Is A Myth That Higher Taxes Lead To Less Demand And Slower Growth. In The First Three Decades After World War Ii, Us Top Tax Rates On The Wealthy Were Never Below 70 Percent.

The Largest Party In America, By The Way, Is Neither The Democrats Nor The Republicans. It's The Party Of Non-voters.

Given That Ever-broadening Array Of Options And Alternatives, As Consumers And Investors, We Are Often Bewildered. We Need Guidance. That's Where Today's Brands Come In. They Are Not So Much Signals About A Particular Product, They Are Signals About Good Judgment, Trustworthiness. A Big Brand, Whether It's Schwab Or Disney, Is Becoming Analogous To A Portal That Sells Us Advice About Where We Can Find Great Deals.

Inequality Is Bad For Everyone, Not Just The Middle Class And The Poor.

In Washington, It's Dog Eat Dog. In Academia, It's Exactly The Opposite.

It's Almost As If We Have Two Lobes In Our Brain. There's The Consumer And Investor Mode, And We're Doing Better And Better At That Lobe. But At The Producer And Seller Mode, We Have To Work Harder And Harder. And The Better We Do As Consumers And Investors - The Easier It Is For Us To Choose Something Better, To Exit Every Commercial Relationship - The Harder We Have To Work As Sellers And Producers. One Follows From The Other.

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.

We Can't Have Extraordinary Dynamism, Innovation, And Change In The Economy And Expect To Have Predictability And Stability In Our Personal Lives. It's Not As If There Are These Big, Giant Institutions Existing Between Us And The Economy. In Fact, These Institutions Have Become Tissue-thin. There Is No Mediation Anymore. We Are The Economy; The Economy Is Us.

Radical Conservatives Want To Police Bedrooms.

We Need To Expand Social Security To Prevent The Looming Retirement Crisis, And We Can Do It Simply By Asking Billionaires To Pay Their Fair Share.

The Only Sure Way To Stop Excessive Risk Taking On Wall Street So You Don't Risk Losing Your Job, Or Your Savings Or Your Home, Is To Put An End To The Excessive Economic And Political Power Of Wall Street By Busting Up The Big Banks.

I Started In The Law; And The Study Of Law, When It Precedes The Study Of Economics, Gives You A Set Of Foundation Principles About How Human Beings Interact. Economics Is Very Useful, And I Studied Economics In Graduate School. But Without Understanding The Social And Organizational Context Of Economics, It Becomes A Theory Without Any Groundwork.

There Is A Crisis Of Public Morality. Instead Of Policing Bedrooms, We Ought To Be Doing A Better Job Policing Boardrooms.

The Industrial Leader Of The 20th Century Was A System-builder. He Was A Visionary In Terms Of What Could Be Built; Got The Capital Together; Certainly Convinced Investors That It Was Possible; And Then Ran A High-volume Production System That Would Spew Out A Vast Array Of Almost Identical Goods And Services. They Would Be Changed From Time To Time; There Was Research And Development, To Be Sure. But The System Was Built Around Production, Not Innovation.

Here's Why I Think The Public Service Jobs Are Almost Unavoidable: When We Have Downturns In The Economy - And We Will, For We Haven't Repealed The Business Cycle - Unemployment Will Build, Yet We No Longer Have Any Safety Net. What Are We Going To Do? Unless We Decide To Pull Out All The Stops And Lower Interest Rates Immediately And Risk Turning A Recession Into Wild Inflation, We're Going To Have To Figure Out Some Way Of Providing Some More, Not Job Security, But Employment Security.

Terrorism Itself Is Not The Greatest Danger We Face.

We're Now Moving Toward A Radically Different Economy. You Absolutely Can't Have A Distribution Oligopoly. The New Oligopolies - And I Think There Will Be New Oligopolies - Will Be Oligopolies Of Trustworthiness. Microsoft, Amazon, Schwab, And Other Brands Will Dominate Psychic Space, Not Shelf Space.

I, From The Luxury Of My Laptop Computer, Can Summon Extraordinary Bargains On Everything I Want, And I Can Also Move My Savings Anywhere. This Ability To Choose More Broadly And To Switch More Easily Is The Central Fact Of Modern Economic Life.

Cynicism Is The Last Refuge Of Those Who Don't Want To Do The Work Of Creating A Better Society.

There`s Sort Of A Chilling Effect On Non-profits And The Media And A Lot Of Other Places Because The Establishment Is So Powerful. That`s Where The Money Is.

I Don't Think That Our Problem, Our Jobs Problem, Is Fundamentally A Problem Of Trade. I Think It Has Much More To Do With The Fact That We Have Not Sufficiently Educated Our Population. We Have Not Got Out Of This Great Recession With Adequate Stimulus And Adequate Fiscal And Monetary Policies Over All.

Cutting Taxes Is Not Bad. But If You Cut Taxes On The Wealthy, Which Is What They Wanted To Do, You're Not Helping People Who Need Better Schools And Better Infrastructure And Healthcare. You're Basically Robbing The Middle Class And The Poor To Provide Tax Cuts To The Rich.

I Grew Up Poor. My Mother Raised A Family Of Four On Between $9,000 And $15,000 A Year.

If We're Concerned About Volatility Of Earnings Because We Want Some More Stability In Our Lives, Then Let's Create, Instead Of An Unemployment Insurance System, An Earnings Insurance System That Will Moderate The Volatility For A Certain Period Of Time Until We Get Back On Our Feet.

Now, Inventiveness And Empathy, Those Qualities, If They're Together In The Same Person, You've Got An Entrepreneurial Genius. But They Do Tend To Be Slightly Separate.

There Are Party Leaders, Big Corporation, Wall Street. There Are Very Wealthy Individuals Who Kind Of Represent Where The Democratic Party, The Official Democratic Party Was And To Some Extent Still Is.

I Want A Shot For People Like Me To Grow Up And Do Something With Themselves.

It's Not Government's Business What People Do In Their Private Bedrooms.

Now We're In A Very Different Economy. Throughout The Late 1980s And 1990s American Management Started To Do The Right Things. There Was Extraordinary Investment In Technology. The Dominant Questions Now Are Less How To Do It Better, How To Manage Better, How To Make The Economy Better, Than How To Have Fuller And More Meaningful Lives. Because The Irony Is, Now That We've Come Through This Great Transition, Even Though Our Organizations And Our People Are Extraordinarily Productive, Many Feel That The Nonwork Side Of Life Is Very Thin.

Bill Clinton Was A Great Politician. Bill Clinton Loved A Fight. He Was Willing To Fight. But He Also Wanted To Be Loved. He Wanted To Be Admired.

The Only Way To Grow The Economy In A Way That Benefits The Bottom 90 Percent Is To Change The Structure Of The Economy. At The Least, This Requires Stronger Unions And A Higher Minimum Wage.

Your Most Precious Possession Is Not Your Financial Assets. Your Most Precious Possession Is The People You Have Working There, And What They Carry Around In Their Heads, And Their Ability To Work Together.

Working Together

Median Wages Of Production Workers, Who Comprise 80 Percent Of The Workforce, Haven't Risen In 30 Years, Adjusted For Inflation.

A Leader Is Someone Who Steps Back From The Entire System And Tries To Build A More Collaborative, More Innovative System That Will Work Over The Long Term.

I Was There In Washington In The `90s. It Was Pretty Bad Then. It`s Much Worse Now [in 2015]. And That Vicious Cycle Is You`ve Got Again Big Corporations, Executives, Wall Street, Very Wealthy Individuals In Both Parties Who Are Calling The Shots.

Calling The Shots

We're The Richest Economy In The History Of The World. For The Majority Of Americans Not To Get The Benefits Of This Extraordinarily Prosperous Economy, There's Something Fundamentally Wrong.

The Core Principle Is That We Want An Economy That Works For Everyone, Not Just For A Small Elite. We Want Equal Opportunity, Not Equality Of Outcome. We Want To Make Sure That There's Upward Mobility Again, In Our Society And In Our Economy.

Upward Mobility

You Can't Inspire People If You Are Going To Be Uninspiring.

Bill Clinton Was A Very, Very Good Speaker. But Like Many People Who Are Great Speakers And Great Thinkers And Have A Lot Of Energy And Ambition, He Talked Too Much.

If You Ever Want To Get A Sense Of Your Own Personal Failure, Look At Yourself Trying To Get Across A Point That Nobody Is Listening To And The Situation Gets Worse And Worse.

When I Was A Kid, The Bigger Boys Would Pick On Me. So I Got An Idea That I Would Make Alliances With Older Boys, Like Just One Or Two, Who Would Be My Protectors.

I Think That In Politics, When People Want To Discredit A Particular Position, They Say, "oh, They Are Liberals," Or "they Are Conservatives; We Are Centrists." Everybody Wants To Be A Centrist.

Today, For Good Or Ill, People Are Thinking About Many Social Problems From The Standpoint Of Their Own Kitchen Tables. I Think The Way To Begin A Conversation With People About What's Going On Is To Address Their Daily Experiences, And What Their Fears And Frustrations, As Well As Their Exhilarations, Are.

We Do Not Want To Live In A Theocracy. We Should Maintain That Barrier And Government Has No Business Telling Someone What They Ought To Believe Or How They Should Conduct Their Private Lives.

I Wish It Were Simply A Nightmare, But I Think That Any Reasonable Person Watching American Politics Would Come To The Conclusion That A Second Bush Administration Would In Fact Incorporate A More Radicalized Version Of What We've Seen In The First Administration.

Humor Itself Is A Great Disinfectant. It Enables People To Listen.

Disney Is No Longer Just Mickey Mouse; Disney Is Family Entertainment. And We're Seeing More And More Brands Change Into Something That Is Far Greater And Broader Than Individual Products And Services.

If You Want To Be A Change Agent, You Have To Ready To Fail.

The Poverty Line Understates The True Amount Of Poverty Because It Measures It As Three Times The Breadbasket That A Family Needs, But It Doesn't Consider All The Other Things That Are Inflating Far, Far Faster Than Food Prices.

No Economy Can Continue To Function When The Vast Middle Class And Everybody Else Don't Have Enough Purchasing Power To Buy What The Economy Is Capable Of Producing Without Going Deeper And Deeper Into Debt.

You Ask, "could We Have An Honest Discussion About Earnings Insurance?" I Think We Could, If People Understood That The Alternative Was To Build Up A Backlash Against Global Capital, Against Free Trade, Against Technological Change.

We Already Have An Annual Wealth Tax On Homes, The Major Asset Of The Middle Class. It's Called The Property Tax. Why Not A Small Annual Tax On The Value Of Stocks And Bonds, The Major Assets Of The Wealthy?

The Federal Budget Deficit Isn't The Nation's Major Economic Problem And Deficit Reduction Shouldn't Be Our Major Goal. Our Problem Is Lack Of Good Jobs And Sufficient Growth, And Our Goal Must Be To Revive Both.

In Journalism, There Are Only Two Stories - "oh, The Wonder Of It," And "oh, The Shame Of It."

When The President Decides To Go To War, He No Longer Needs A Declaration Of War From Congress.

In The '90s It Was Irrational Exuberance. Now It May Be Irrational Doom And Gloom.

The Presidency Is Probably The Loneliest Office In America. Regardless Of Your Friends, Regardless Of How Good Your Marriage Is, Regardless Of Anything, You Are Alone There At The Top.

I Think The Obama Administration Has Done A Lousy Job Marketing And Selling And Explaining This Entire Thing. And, As A Result, All Of These Right-wing Front Organizations Financed By The Koch Brothers, Are Blanketing The Airwaves With Lies About Obamacare. And People Are Scared.

We Are Born, We Grow Up, We Live Our Lives As Best We Can. If We Are Thoughtful We Are Good Parents And Good Partners. If We Are Wise We Strive For Integrity And Intimacy. If We Are Fortunate We Discover Love And Joy. If We Are Able, We Make The World A Little Better Than We Found It.

I Think The Big Problem Is You Have A Vicious Cycle Of Wealth And Power In America That`s Just Gotten Completely Out Of Control And You`ve Seen It In Politics.

Well-trained And Dedicated Employees Are The Only Sustainable Source Of Competitive Strength.

I'm 40 Years Old. What I Have Seen My Whole Life Is Widening Income Inequality.

In The Life Of A Nation, Few Ideas Are More Dangerous Than Good Solutions To The Wrong Problems.

The Only Way America Can Reduce The Long-term Budget Deficit, Maintain Vital Services, Protect Social Security And Medicare, Invest More In Education And Infrastructure, And Not Raise Taxes On The Working Middle Class Is By Raising Taxes On The Super Rich.

The Problem Right Now Is Jobs. The Problem Right Now Is The Economy And Economic Growth.

We Used To Be So Proud That Our Country Offered Far More Economic Opportunities Than The Feudal System In Great Britain, With Its Royal Family, Princesses And Dukes. But Social Mobility In The Uk Is Higher Than In The Us. Our Social Rift Is As Big As It Was In The 1920s.

The Key To Understanding The Rise In Inequality Isn't Technology Or Globalization. It's The Power Of The Moneyed Interests To Shape The Underlying Rules Of The Market.

Regardless Of How You Interpret The Facts, You Have To Come To The Conclusion That Inequality Is Widening In The Us And In Almost Every Other Country.

Education Is Not The Only Answer And It's Certainly Not The Immediate Solution. At Best, It's A Necessary, But Not Sufficient Response To Widening Inequality.

The Path To Success Used To Be Up And Through An Organization. Now The Path To Success Is Increasingly Through Self-promotion.

Our Moral Authority Is As Important, If Not More Important, Than Our Troop Strength Or Our High-tech Weapons. We Are Rapidly Losing That Moral Authority, Not Only In The Arab World But All Over The World.

Socialism For Rich Bankers And Capitalism For Everyone Else.

One Of The Most Difficult Things Is To Get Truthful People. Nobody Can Manage Well If They Don't Have A Lot Of Mirrors Around Them That Are Honest, That Tell Them What They're Doing Is Wrong Or Wrongheaded Or Misconceived. And In Every Large Bureaucracy On Earth, Most People Are Afraid To Tell The Boss The Truth.

In A World Where Routine Production Is Footloose...competitive Advantage Lies Not In One-time Breakthroughs But In Continual Improvements. Stable Technologies Get Away.

To Be A Skilled Politician, You Have To Be Genuine. To Really Make It Work, You Have To Love People. You Have To Love The Contact, You Have To Love The Energy, You've Gotta Love Inspiring People And Getting Their Adulation In Return. You Can't Separate What's Genuine From What Is Necessary.

When Corporations Get Special Handouts From The Government, Subsidies And Tax Breaks, It Costs You. It Means You Have To Pay More In Taxes To Make Up For These Hidden Expenses, And Government Has Less Money For Good Schools And Roads, Medicare And National Defense And Everything Else You Need.

One Of The Things I Tell My Students Is That If You Want To Understand What's Been Going On And Also What Needs To Be Done, You've Got To Get Out Of The Blame Game. Some People On The Left Want To Blame The Rich And Corporations. Some People On The Right Want To Blame The Poor And Government. Either Of Those Frames Of Reference Gets You Nowhere And They Aren't Even Truthful. You've Got To Understand The Dynamic Itself.

You Have To Keep A Sense Of Humor About Yourself, More Than Anything Else. You've Got To Take The Issues Very Seriously, But You Can't Take Yourself Too Seriously. And Washington Is A City In Which Everybody Takes Themselves Extraordinarily Seriously.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (and Fast-track Authority To Whisk It Through Congress Without Debate) Is Fast Approaching. If You Haven't Seen Our Video About It, Please Watch. If You Have, Please Share. And Mobilize And Organize Friends And Colleagues To Call Their Senators And Representatives To Tell Them To Vote Against This Reprehensible Deal.

The Democratic Party Is Dead.

Democratic Party

What We Really Need To Understand Here Is That It`s All About Power. This Is Where The Surge Is Coming From For Bernie Sanders. In Some Ways, It`s A Very Different - It`s A Different Surge, But It`s Coming Out Of The Same Sort Of Sense Of Fundamental Powerlessness And Anger And Frustration For Donald Trump.

America Has Become The Most Unequal Society Among Advanced Countries, And Rich People Are Now Free To Spend As Much Money On Political Campaigns As They Wish.

In Entertainment, The Technology Began Giving Us Greater Choice And Easier Switching Before Almost Any Other Area. The Studios Became Much More Dependent On The Stars, Not Just Star Actors And Directors But Also Star Technicians, Star Cinematographers. It's A Very Important Evolution In Terms Of Understanding Why People Are Working The Way They're Working.

The Core Corporation Is ... Increasingly A Façade, Behind Which Teems An Array Of Decentralized Groups And Subgroups Continuously Contracting With Similarly Diffuse Working Units All Over The World.

I Have Found Over The Years That The Most Important Way Of Getting People To Relax Is Self-deprecating Humor.

True Patriotism Isn't Cheap. It's About Taking On A Fair Share Of The Burden Of Keeping America Going.

There's A Great Debate Going On, You Know, On Whether We're Moving Toward A System Of Giant Oligopolies Or A System Of Multiples Of Small Businesses. Which Is It? I Think It's Both. In Every Sector Of The Economy, We Have Giant Brands That Are Trustworthy Guides To What's Good, And Then A Vast Number Of Small Groups, Many Of Them Project-based, Sometimes Folding And Re-creating, That Are Offering Products And Services Through Those Giant Global Brands.

I'm Quite Optimistic When It Comes To The Capacity Of Our People To Have An Honest Discussion About What's Really Going On. What Do You Think John Mccain's Candidacy Was About? And The Early Days Of Bill Bradley's Candidacy? People Are Hungry For A Genuine, No-spin Set Of Ideas And Truths. They Want Their Leaders To Tell It Like It Is. There Is A Great Demand For This. Politicians Continually Underestimate The Ability Of The American Public To Understand What's Happening To Them And What The Real Choices Are.

I Think Re-engineering Or Restructuring Or Downsizing Or Rightsizing Or Whatever You Want To Call It, It's Basically Firing, Has Gone Way Too Far. Employees, As I've Talked To Them Across The Country, Feel That They Are Not Respected, They Are Not Valued, They Are Worried About Their Jobs. They Simply Feel That The Company Is No Longer Loyal To Them. Why Should They Be Loyal To The Company, They Ask Me. Why Should I Go The Extra Mile? Why Should I Care?

Organizations Aren't Loyal; They Can't Be. They Have To Be Nimble, They Have To Change. That Means Everybody In Every Organization Will Have One Eye On His Or Her Own Brand, And The Other Eye On The Organization Of Which He Or She Is A Part. And The First Loyalty - Self-loyalty - Is Becoming More And More Dominant, Simply As A Survival Strategy. I'm In No Way Blaming Anyone Here; This Is Just Simply A Fact Of Life.

There Will Always Be A Business Cycle, And White-collar Workers Will Get Hit In The Next Recession Like They Always Do In Recessions.

Higher Education Isn't Just A Personal Investment. It's A Public Good That Pays Off In A More Competitive Workforce And Better-informed And Engaged Citizens. Every Year, We Spend Nearly $100 Billion On Corporate Welfare, And More Than $500 Billion On Defense Spending. Surely Ensuring The Next Generation Can Compete In The Global Economy Is At Least As Important As Subsidies For Big Business And Military Adventures Around The Globe. In Fact, I Think We Can And Must Go Further - Not Just Making Public Higher Education Tuition-free, But Reinventing Education In America As We Know It.

We Are Paying Teachers Who Are In Charge Of Our Human Capital, Arguably More Important Than Our Financial Capital, A Very Tiny Fraction Of What Wall Streeters Are Paid.

We Are Creating A One Size Fits All System That Needlessly Brands Many Young People As Failures, When They Might Thrive If Offered A Different Education Whose Progress Was Measured Differently. Paradoxically We're Embracing Standardized Tests Just When The Economy Is Eliminating Standardized Jobs.

It's Very Hard To Establish An Economy Of Trustworthiness. The Key Is Continuing To Innovate And To Keep Your Customers Through Innovation, Because The Customers Can Leave. But Once You Are A Dominant Player That Continues To Innovate And Provide A Good Deal, Customers Will Stay With You.

Trustworthiness

Corporations Don't Create Jobs, Customers Do. So When All The Economic Gains Go To The Top, As They're Doing Now, The Vast Majority Of Americans Don't Have Enough Purchasing Power To Buy The Things Corporations Want To Sell - Which Means Businesses Stop Creating Enough Jobs.

When Top Executives Get Huge Pay Hikes At The Same Time As Middle-level And Hourly Workers Lose Their Jobs And Retirement Savings, Or Have To Accept Negligible Pay Raises And Cuts In Health And Pension Benefits, Company Morale Plummets. I Hear It All The Time From Employees: This Company, They Say, Is Being Run Only For The Benefit Of The People At The Top. So Why Should We Put In Extra Effort, Commit Extra Hours, Take On Extra Responsibilities? We'll Do The Minimum, Even Cut Corners. This Is Often The Death Knell Of A Company.

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.

What Characteristics Are Most Important In Creative Workers? One Quality You Need Is Inventiveness. You Need To Be Able To Take Whatever Product Or Service You Are Providing And Figure Out Ways Of Making It Better, Faster, Cheaper. The Other Quality Is Empathy And Insight Into What People Might Want, Even Though They Don't Even Know Their Wants, Probably Because There's No Product Or Service To Test Their Wants.

I Knew Hillary Clinton From Undergraduate Days And Was Enormously Impressed With Her. She Was A Terrific Energy And Enthusiasm, And A Great Organizer. And I Knew That She Was Going To Have A Political Future.

The Silent Majority Really Is A Liberal Majority, Even Though The Word Liberal Has Taken A Real Beating Over The Last 20 Years By Radical Conservatives.

I Mean, You Hear The Word 'globalization' Over And Over And Over Again. Globalization, Globalization, Globalization. Rarely Has A Word Gone So Directly From Obscurity To Meaninglessness Without Any Intervening Period Of Coherence.

If You Give Up On Politics, You're Giving Up On Democracy. And If You Give Up On Democracy, You're Basically Saying To The Moneyed Interests, The Powerful People And Institutions Of Society, Take It All. That's A Self-fulfilling Prophecy. Then We Give Up. Then We Are 100 Percent Plutocracy.

A Funny Thing Happened To The First Amendment On Its Way To The Public Forum. According To The Supreme Court, Money Is Now Speech And Corporations Are Now People. But When Real People Without Money Assemble To Express Their Dissatisfaction With The Political Consequences Of This, They’re Treated As Public Nuisances And Evicted.

You Can't Create A Political Movement Out Of Pabulum.

Political Movements

As A Top Manager, You Have To Not Just Reward Truth-telling, You've Got To Beg For It, And You've Got To Demand That Everyone Around You Gives You Constructive Criticism, Constantly. You've Got To Get Out Of The Bubble, So That You Can Get Direct Feedback From Everybody Who's Being Affected.

Standing Up To Bullies Is The Hallmark Of A Civilized Society.

Civilized Society

The Liberal Ideal Is That Everyone Should Have Fair Access And Fair Opportunity. This Is Not Equality Fo Result. Its Equality Of Opportunity. There's A Fundamental Difference.

A Lot Of Attention Has Been Going To Social Values - Abortion, Gay Rights, Other Divisive Issues - But Economic Values Are Equally Important.

The Managers Of The Big Brands Have A Very Clear Responsibility. It's Attracting And Keeping Talented People In Order To Sustain And Build The Trustworthiness Of That Brand. There Is No Clearer Objective In The Economy. Your Economic Success Depends On Expanding And Building Your Economies Of Trustworthiness.

The World Of Politics Is Divided Between People Who Are Introverts - Who Lose A Little Bit Of Energy Out Of Each Interaction They Have So That By The Time The Day Ends, After 1,000 Interactions, They're Exhausted - And People Like Bill Clinton Who Are Extroverted - Who Get A Little Bit Of Energy From Each Interaction.

One Logical Consequence Of This New Economy Composed Of Big Brands And Entrepreneurial Groups Is That The Unit Of Production Is No Longer A Particular, Identical Product. The Unit Of Production Is The Creative Individual.

Globalization And Free Trade Do Spur Economic Growth, And They Lead To Lower Prices On Many Goods.

Any Bank That Is Too Big To Fail Is Too Big. Period.

You`ve Got To Just Follow The Money [in Washington]. You See It. There`s No Countervailing Power.

If Leadership Is About Anything, It's About Leading. Not Leading People Back To Where They Already Are, Because They Don't Need That. They're Already There.

On The Republican Playing Field, Republicans Always Win.

If You're Going To Be A Great Guide To What's Great For Consumers, And, Indirectly, For Investors, You've Got To Be Very Careful About Who You Contract With And What You're Offering.

A Smaller Government Reflecting The Needs Of The Middle Class And Poor Is Superior To A Big Government Reflecting The Needs Of The Privileged And Powerful.

In The Early 1970s, Milton Friedman Argued That Corporations Should Not Be Socially Responsible Because They Had No Mandate To Be; They Existed To Make Money, Not To Be Charitable Institutions. But In The Economy Of The 21st Century, Corporations Cannot Be Socially Responsible, If Social Responsibility Is Understood To Mean Sacrificing Profits For The Sake Of Some Perceived Social Good. That's Because Competition Has Become So Much More Intense.

Cynicism Is The Largest Obstacle To Social Change. Cynicism Is Dangerous Because People Throw Up Their Hands And Say, "well It's Not Possible. Why Should I Even Try?"

Most Americans Are On A Downward Escalator. Median Wage In The United States, Adjusted For Inflation, Keeps On Dropping.

I Am Not An Economic Determinist. If I Were, I Would Throw Up My Hands; I Just Would Not Bother. I Think It's Wrong To Be An Economic Determinist. I Think It's Wrong To Simply Say, "well, Inevitably, If You're Poor, You're Going To Get A Lousy Education; If You're Lower-middle Class, The Cards Are Going To Be Stacked Against You, And You'll Probably Never Get Anywhere".

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Caroline Kennedy

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