Robert Reich
Based on Wikipedia: Robert Reich
In 1964, a young boy named Robert Reich learned that his childhood protector—an older kid who had shielded him from bullies—had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. Michael Schwerner was one of three civil rights workers killed for the crime of registering African-American voters. Reich, who had needed protection because a genetic condition made him unusually small, would spend the next six decades fighting bullies of a different kind: corporations that squeeze workers, economic policies that favor the wealthy, and political systems that silence the powerless.
That mission would take him from the halls of Yale Law School to the cabinet of President Bill Clinton, from Harvard lecture halls to viral internet videos watched by millions.
The Oxford Connection
Reich's path to power runs through an extraordinary coincidence. In 1968, as a Rhodes Scholar studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University, he met another young American with big ambitions: Bill Clinton. They would cross paths again at Yale Law School, where their classmates included Hillary Rodham, future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and future Senator Richard Blumenthal.
This wasn't just networking. It was the formation of a political generation.
Reich had arrived at Oxford after graduating summa cum laude—with highest honors—from Dartmouth College. He'd even gone on a date with Hillary Rodham when she was an undergraduate at Wellesley. The Vietnam War was raging, and like many young men of his generation, Reich was drafted. But his genetic condition, multiple epiphyseal dysplasia (also called Fairbank's disease), had left him standing four feet eleven inches tall—one inch shorter than the Army's minimum height requirement.
Instead of Vietnam, Reich went to law school. Instead of combat, he prepared for a different kind of fight.
Learning from an Unlikely Mentor
After Yale, Reich took a job that might seem surprising for a future champion of workers' rights: he became an assistant to Robert Bork, the U.S. Solicitor General. Bork, a conservative legal scholar, had taught Reich antitrust law at Yale. Antitrust law governs how the government prevents companies from becoming too powerful—from squashing competition and gouging consumers.
This experience shaped Reich's understanding of how concentrated economic power works, even if he would later reach very different conclusions than his mentor about what to do about it. Bork became infamous in 1987 when the Senate rejected his Supreme Court nomination, partly because of his narrow view of civil rights. Reich would go on to advocate for exactly the kind of expansive worker protections Bork opposed.
But first, Reich spent over a decade as a Harvard professor, writing books that would eventually catch the attention of his old friend from Oxford.
The Work of Nations
In 1991, Reich published "The Work of Nations," a book that became required reading for anyone trying to understand the new global economy. His central argument was that in an age of mobile capital and international supply chains, the old categories of "American companies" and "foreign companies" no longer made sense. What mattered was what kind of work Americans were doing—and whether they had the skills to thrive in a knowledge-based economy.
Bill Clinton was paying attention. When Clinton ran for president in 1992, Reich's ideas about investing in workers, job training, and adapting to technological change became central to the campaign platform. After Clinton won, he appointed Reich to lead economic policy for the presidential transition.
Then came the cabinet position: Secretary of Labor.
The Cabinet Years
Reich arrived at the Department of Labor in January 1993 with sweeping ambitions. He didn't just want to run one agency—he envisioned Labor as the nucleus of a constellation of departments, including Commerce and Education, all working together to prepare American workers for the twenty-first century economy.
He started calling himself "Secretary of the American Workforce" and "the central banker of the nation's greatest resource."
These weren't just rhetorical flourishes. Reich believed that human capital—the skills, knowledge, and adaptability of workers—was the key to American prosperity. In an economy where factories could move overseas and robots could replace assembly lines, investing in people was the only sustainable strategy.
He pushed for more federal spending on job training and infrastructure. He implemented the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gave workers the right to take unpaid leave to care for a new child or sick family member without losing their jobs. He successfully lobbied to raise the minimum wage.
But Reich quickly discovered that his vision collided with a more powerful force: deficit reduction.
The War with the Deficit Hawks
The early Clinton administration was split between two factions. On one side were people like Reich, who believed the government should invest heavily in workers and infrastructure to boost long-term economic growth. On the other side were the "deficit hawks"—including Budget Director Leon Panetta and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan—who believed that reducing the federal budget deficit was the top priority.
Greenspan was a particularly formidable opponent. Appointed to lead the Federal Reserve by Ronald Reagan, he had been reappointed by Clinton and wielded enormous influence over interest rates and monetary policy. Reich would later call him "the most powerful man in the world."
The deficit hawks won. Clinton's economic agenda prioritized balancing the budget over new spending programs. Reich's ambitious plans were put on hold.
Years later, Reich would credit Hillary Clinton with keeping him informed about what was happening inside the White House—a sign of how marginalized he had become from the administration's inner circle.
The NAFTA Paradox
One of the most complicated chapters in Reich's career involves the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as NAFTA. This agreement eliminated most tariffs—taxes on imported goods—between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It had been negotiated by President George H.W. Bush, and Clinton supported it after adding side agreements meant to address labor and environmental concerns.
Reich became NAFTA's leading public advocate within the Clinton administration, arguing directly against organized labor unions who feared the agreement would ship American jobs to Mexico.
In July 1993, he told the unions they were "just plain wrong." He predicted that the growing Mexican automobile market would actually create more American auto jobs than it would eliminate. He argued that trade liberalization after World War II had produced "the biggest increase in jobs and standard of living among the industrialized nations in history."
This was a remarkable position for someone who had built his career championing workers.
Reich's argument rested on a theory of adaptation: yes, trade would cause disruption, but with the right investments in education and job training, American workers could move to higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs. The key was managing the transition, not blocking change.
When he spoke at the AFL-CIO convention in San Francisco, an economist from the Economic Policy Institute mocked his optimism as a "field-of-dreams theory of job creation"—a reference to the movie where a farmer builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield because a voice tells him "if you build it, they will come."
NAFTA passed. Reich personally lobbied members of Congress. The House approved it 234 to 200, and the Senate followed 61 to 38.
More than twenty years later, Reich admitted he was wrong. When opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a much larger trade deal he called "NAFTA on steroids"—he repudiated his earlier position. He said he regretted "not doing more to strengthen NAFTA's labor and environmental side-agreements."
This kind of public reversal is rare in politics, where admitting error is often seen as weakness. For Reich, it reflected his broader intellectual honesty—and perhaps his distance from electoral politics, which freed him to change his mind.
The Anxious Class
By August 1994, Reich had been sidelined on most policy issues. But with White House approval, he began giving speeches about a phenomenon he called the "anxious class"—working Americans who felt increasingly insecure as global competition intensified and technology transformed their industries.
Then came the midterm elections of November 1994. Republicans swept into power, taking control of both the House and Senate for the first time in forty years. Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House. The Clinton presidency seemed in crisis.
Suddenly, Reich's ideas were relevant again.
Clinton reframed his agenda around Reich's proposals: middle-class tax cuts, a higher minimum wage, tax deductions for college tuition, federal grants for worker training, and a ban on companies permanently replacing striking workers.
Reich began giving weekly speeches attacking the Republican majority. His central message was that America was undergoing "a major social transformation" to an information-based economy. "We can't get the mass production economy back," he said. "The challenge now is of a different kind, and many have found it difficult to adapt."
During a radio call-in show in Chicago, he told listeners: "You are on a downward escalator. You have a lot of job insecurity because of the tidal wave of corporate downsizing and restructuring."
This was not the usual political happy talk. Reich was telling Americans that the economy was fundamentally changing and that many of them were getting left behind.
Corporate Welfare
Reich also went after a target that made him unpopular with much of the Democratic establishment: what he called "corporate welfare."
In a speech to the Democratic Leadership Council shortly after the 1994 election, Reich argued that cutting subsidies to corporations was the only viable way to fund job training programs. He was willing to concede to Republicans that many federal job training programs didn't work—but he insisted on consolidating the ones that did and eliminating the ones that didn't.
Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown tried to distance the administration from Reich's corporate welfare comments. But Bentsen soon resigned, and Reich kept attacking.
His willingness to criticize his own party's donors made him popular with reformers—and deeply unpopular with the party's fundraising apparatus.
The Secession of the Successful
In December 1995, Reich delivered a commencement speech at the University of Maryland that crystallized one of his most important ideas. He described "the secession of the successful America"—the tendency of wealthy, educated Americans to physically and psychologically separate themselves from everyone else.
They lived in gated communities. They sent their children to private schools. They paid for private security instead of relying on police. They exercised in private gyms instead of public parks. They had essentially seceded from the public institutions that everyone else depended on.
This wasn't just about inequality in the abstract. It was about the erosion of shared citizenship—the dissolution of the common spaces and common institutions that held a democracy together.
Reich saw this secession as both a symptom and a cause of America's political dysfunction. When the successful stopped using public services, they stopped caring about funding them. When they stopped caring, those services deteriorated. When the services deteriorated, more people who could afford private alternatives opted out. It was a vicious cycle.
Leaving Washington
In 1996, after Clinton won re-election, Reich made a decision that surprised Washington: he resigned from the cabinet to spend more time with his sons, who were then teenagers.
This was not a euphemism for being fired. Reich genuinely stepped away from power to be a father.
He soon published "Locked in the Cabinet," a memoir of his time in the Clinton administration. The book was bracingly critical. He called Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan "the most powerful man in the world" and not in a complimentary way. He said the Democratic Party was "owned by" business. He described Washington as having two real political parties: the "Save the Jobs" party, which wanted to maintain the status quo, and the "Let 'Em Drown" party.
The book caused a minor scandal when journalists discovered that Reich had embellished some scenes. He described members of the National Association of Manufacturers confronting him with curses and shouts of "Go back to Harvard!" But C-SPAN footage of the event showed nothing so dramatic. In the paperback edition, Reich revised the scene—now he was merely hissed at—and added a foreword acknowledging that "memory is fallible."
One journalist later called it "a classic of the pissed-off-secretary genre."
The Professor Returns
Reich returned to academia, first at Brandeis University and then at the University of California, Berkeley. At Brandeis, his undergraduate students elected him Professor of the Year in 2003. At Berkeley, he taught a popular course called "Wealth and Poverty" until his retirement in 2023.
But he never really left politics. In 2002, he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, losing in the Democratic primary to Shannon O'Brien. His campaign was unusual in several ways. Most of his staff were his Brandeis students. He had little funding. And he became the first U.S. gubernatorial candidate to publicly support same-sex marriage—a position that was still politically toxic at the time.
He finished second out of six candidates with 25% of the vote. O'Brien went on to lose the general election to Mitt Romney, who would later become the Republican presidential nominee.
The Public Intellectual
In the years since leaving office, Reich has become something rare in American life: a genuine public intellectual. He has published over a dozen books, including bestsellers like "Supercapitalism," "Aftershock," and "Saving Capitalism." He blogs regularly, appears frequently on television, and has embraced social media with the enthusiasm of someone a quarter his age.
In 2013, a documentary film based on his work, "Inequality for All," won a Special Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival. A follow-up film, "Saving Capitalism," debuted on Netflix in 2017.
Time magazine named him one of the Ten Most Effective Cabinet Members of the twentieth century. The Wall Street Journal ranked him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers.
These accolades reflect Reich's unusual ability to translate complex economic ideas into accessible language. He explains globalization, financialization, and the decline of unions in terms ordinary people can understand. He draws charts on whiteboards. He uses humor. He makes economics feel like something that matters to your daily life—because it does.
The Consistent Thread
Looking back over Reich's career, from his childhood protector's murder to his battles with deficit hawks to his Netflix documentaries, one thread runs consistently through everything: the conviction that the economy should work for working people.
He has been willing to change his mind on specific policies, like NAFTA. He has been willing to criticize his own party. He has been willing to walk away from power to be with his family.
But on the fundamental question of whether ordinary workers deserve a fair share of the prosperity they help create, Reich has never wavered.
The boy who needed protection from bullies grew up to spend his life protecting the powerless from a different kind of bully—the concentrated economic power that can crush workers as surely as any fist.
At four feet eleven inches, Robert Reich has spent decades punching well above his weight.