Robert Reich rips fake GOP 'populists' — and reveals who’s really 'holding back' economic equality

11 June 2024

Veteran economist Robert Reich, now 77, has long been sounding the alarm about income inequality in the United States — a problem that, according to Reich, has only grown worse over the years.

Economic populism has also been a recurring theme among MAGA Republicans, many of whom often rail against "woke elites" on college campuses. But Reich, in a biting opinion column published on June 11, blasts Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and other Donald Trump supporters as examples of fake "populists" who don't really call out "inequality" as the major economic problem that it is.

"Trump and much of his Republican Party are deploying criticisms of the educated class to pose as populists on the side of the people," Reich observes. "Consider Elise Stefanik, Harvard class of '06 and chair of the House Republican Conference, who doesn't miss an opportunity to attack elite universities and their presidents. Or Sen. Josh Hawley, Stanford class of '02 and Yale Law '06, who calls the recent student demonstrations signs of 'moral rot.'"

Reich continues, "It's all a thinly veiled cover for their efforts to help the wealthy make even bigger bags while keeping everyone else — especially average workers — down. At this moment, Republicans are promising the moneyed class that in return for financial backing in the upcoming election, they'll get an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts — which disproportionately boosted the wealth of big corporations and the rich — plus additional tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks."

According to Reich, Republicans like Stefanik and Hawley failed to acknowledge that the "money class" rather than "the educated class" is "holding back the rest of America."

Reich, who served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, laments that "inequality" in the U.S. in 2024 is much worse than it was during the 1960s.

"When I graduated Dartmouth College in 1968," Reich recalls, "almost no one I knew went into finance or consulting. In those days, inequalities were minuscule compared with now. The bags at that time could have fit into a glove compartment."

Reich continues, "One of the least-discussed but most profound consequences of America's surging inequality is the number of talented young people now devoting themselves to making bags. Remarkably, though, most talented young people are not yet in the bag."

Robert Reich's full column for The Guardian is available at this link.

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