Robert Reich: Welcome back to our class.
And class if you could just welcome back our visitor, just hello.
Hello visitor.
Okay, there.
You see how welcoming we are.
We are delighted to have you here.
But here's what we are going to do.
We are going to begin an inquiry into why all of this is happening, why it is that income
and wealth, and, to some extent, political power are becoming more unequal.
What is it that's going on?
Who is to -- I hate to use the expression "blame," it's not a matter of blame -- but
what is the actually central cause.
Are you with me?
Are you interested?I hope so because if you're not.
They are.
And let's examine something.
Probably the best way to begin, because you remember last week we talked about your values
about really the kind inequality you thought was inappropriate or what you expected the
inequality was, and the gap between the reality and the ideal.
And you participated as well, you also voted about what you wanted, and we found out that
it turns out there is a huge gap between the degree of inequality of wealth actually in
the United States and what people thought it was, and also the ideal people had in their
heads.
And it wasn't just Berkeley, and it wasn't just all of you, but it really was a random
sample of people across the country.
So we are going to take another cut at all of this, but what we are going to do now is
-- we are just beginning our inquiry into why all this has happened.
And I would like you, we're just going to do a couple of clicker votes, and you don't
have clickers, but we're going to figure out, I think we've figured out a way for you to
be involved as well.
I've got two questions.
Now, before you vote on this, let me explain why.
This is a matter of mapping some of your values, and the first question that I'm asking you
is how is it to you to preserve neighborhoods with small shops and bookstores.
And this is just -- in terms of the kind of environment you want.
Is it very important?
And the two choices here: Quite important or not really important at all?
And what do you think?
Let's go.
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
And let's end it there.
Let's just see what you think in terms of importance.
Well, 82% of you, 82% of you, 605 of you say, it is quite important: preserving neighborhoods
with small shops and businesses.
And about 18% of you, 129 of you, say it's not really important at all.
Well, that's significant.
And you do it as well.
I don't know whether you feel the same way but we'll see, to tell the basis of what you
believe.
Now, let me ask you another question, and this is again mapping your preferences.
That's all we're doing now is mapping your preferences.
And the second question has to do with steady jobs and good wages.
How important is it to maintain steady jobs and good wages for American -- and I just
selected some workers -- retail workers, manufacturing workers, airline workers.
How important is it to you to maintain steady jobs and good wages for a bunch, a lot of
American workers.
Is it quite important, A, or not really important at all, B. And let's go.
1, 2, 3.
And you participate as well, I'm assuming you're going to be part of this poll.
And let's end the bidding there.
And let's see where you are.
So 94% of you saw that it's quite important, quite important, 94% of you, to maintain steady
jobs and good wages for these retail workers, manufacturing workers, and other workers.
And only 42 of you, 6%, don't care.
I don't know who you are, but you cold-hearted people, I don't.
Well, alright, that's interesting.
So we have a little bit of mapping.
I could have asked you a number of questions, but I have a little bit of a mapping going.
But now I want to ask you a different question.
[Laughter] Now wait, I want to explain this.
I just want to ask you, I'm not trying to make you feel bad about yourself, I just want
to ask you, do you shop online for a lot of things, alright.
Just a question.
Go.
And you, do you shop online?
I just want to know from you.
Are you shopping online on for a lot of things?
Okay, let's end the bidding there.
End the bidding there and let's just see.
So three-quarters of you do a lot of shopping online.
And about a quarter of you don't.
What I'm going to ask you, and I don't mean to make you feel bad about yourself, but do
you see slight inconsistency?
In other words, you really, most of you, really value small shops and you value bookstores,
and you value jobs and good jobs.
That's what you said, but you're also shopping a lot online.
And the inconsistency that I want to point out in case you are missing it is that buying
a lot of things on line, while I understand it completely, and I do it too, you are perhaps
having an effect on small shops and bookstores.
Are you not?
I say this, in part, because I have a personal interest.
I write books, and when I started writing books, you know, in the 20th century there
were a lot of bookstores.
Most of my books were sold in bookstores and now most of my books are sold I guess through
Amazon.
I mean the three dozen books I sell are sold through Amazon.
My books, by the way, I have to tell you a little bit of the story.
I went to a social event at somebody's house that I didn't know.
I didn't know this person.
About a year and a half ago.
And on this person's bookshelf was the first book that I had ever written.
And it was not even in paperback.
It was a hardback version.
I was so touched, and I was so honored, and I was so, well, I just thought wow.
I mean, I don't even know this person, and they have my first book on their bookshelf.
And I went to the host of this event and said, "I noticed that you have my first book on
your bookshelf."
And he looked a little abashed, a little embarrassed.
And he said I ought to pull it out and look at it.
And I opened it, and it had been hollowed out.
You see, he had bought it as a safekeeping device to put jewelry and other things in
it on the supposition that nobody would ever pull that book out.
[Laughter] Anyway, anyway.
The point is I have a very soft place in my heart for bookstores and you do to.
You like bookstores and also all of the other things in your neighborhood, but if you are
shopping online, there's a little bit of, there's a little bit of a contradiction in
your heads.
Let me ask you another question.
And again just an honest answer, alright.
Just a really honest answer.
This is -- Do you seek the lowest-priced goods and services, such as clothing, flights.
Are you, in other words, are you looking out for the best deal you can possibly get?
Is this important to you?
Yes, of course, or no?
Let's go.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
And let's end the bidding, end the bidding there.
So 87% of you are seeking the best deal you can, the lowest price you possibly can.
Of course you are.
And only 13% of you are not.
I don't know what planet you live on, but you are not.
I mean, and I don't mean to in anyway denigrate you, I think most of us though do look for
the best deals.
But, again, I want to suggest to you that in getting the best deal you might be encouraging
the companies that are selling you the best deal to outsource abroad or to reduce their
wages or to bust unions or to maybe cut wages or maybe lay people off and bring in machinery
to do.
In other words, there are a lot of things companies can do to give you great deals,
but a lot of what they do to give you great deals are inconsistent, or at least slightly,
with what you profess to be with your ideals about jobs and wages.
Do you see that tension?
I don't want to, I'm not suggesting that you are in any way hypocritical here.
I just am suggesting that there is an important tension between how you profess or what you
profess to believe in -- in terms of shops and bookstores and good wages and good jobs
and steady jobs -- and the way you actually behave as consumers.
Now you may also have a similar tension.
Again I'm not suggesting you're hypocritical, but I want you also to think about that tension
in terms of your behavior as a consumer versus your professed values.
Because in many ways, in many ways there is split brain in our heads.
If we can just, there we are.
There's your brain.
Because part of our brains, we are, for a shortcut way of saying it is we have a citizen
side of our brain -- that is the citizen side of our brain we are concerned about things
like the quality of life in our communities and bookstores and everything, and quality
of, you know, the other people's jobs.
We have sort of values as citizens in terms of the kind of place we'd like to live, but
then we also have another part of our brains that let's call the consumer part of brains.
And I want to suggest to you that there is some tension between the citizen part of our
brains and the consumer part of our brains.
Now, I'm not neurologist.
I don't know where these brain centers are, but they don't necessarily overlap.
And so when we get to the question of who is actually driving inequality, poor jobs,
insecure jobs, the closing of bookstores, neighborhoods that are actually becoming backwaters.
And we ask, what is happening?
And who is doing it all?
You, and you, are complicit.
Again, I’m not blaming you, I’m just, I wan- I’m just trying point out that you
are complicit.
When we’re inquiring into the sources of widening inequality, job insecurity, and everything
else, you are complicit.
We could have done this about the environment, too.
A lot of us, a lot of you, I imagine, want a healthy environment, clean air, good water
and everything else, but maybe you don’t want to pay for, or maybe, in seeking the
best deals, you are creating incentives for companies not to voluntarily be terrific citizens
with regard to the environment.
You get the drift of what I’m saying.
And you understand what I’m saying.
So, the question that I want to close on, or I want you to think about, is why is it
that the consumer side of our brains wins out so often over the citizen side of our
brains?
Doesn’t always, but why does it so often win out?
Well, I wanna offer to you, and to you, three possible reasons.
One possible reason is that you have limited resources.
I mean, all of us have limited resources.
We would like to be better, we would like to be more conscientious, we would like to
be better people, but we would like to get the best deal we can, we feel, because we
don’t have endless amounts of money.
Maybe you do.
No you don’t!
And so we have limited resources.
But there is something else.
There’s something else going on.
And part of is, we don’t connect our pursuit of good deals with consequences that we may
dislike.
That is, what I said to you before, you are trying to get good deals, you are driving
competition between companies to get you the best deal, and that is driving companies to
slash wages, or outsource abroad, or bring in automated equipment and digital equipment
instead of jobs, or doing all kinds of things, or maybe doing stuff over the internet, selling
stuff over the internet instead of setting up a shop.
Whatever it is, you are driving companies to do this, but you may not see the link.
You and many other people may not see that causation.
Maybe if you did, you would behave differently.
And maybe some of you, even today, maybe some of you only buy a garment that is certified
as not being sewn in a sweatshop by children in a developing nation who are not going to
school because they are working seven days a week in a sweatshop.
Maybe you are looking for that certification and maybe you are willing to pay more for
that kind of a garment, that kind of a certification, than you would pay otherwise.
But surveys show that most people are not willing to pay more.
They like that certification, for example, but they’re really not willing to pay that
much more.
So, you may not know, but even if you did know, maybe you wouldn’t take dramatically
different action than you’re taking now.
But there’s something else, and that is that you’re not prepared to sacrifice good
deals for the sake of better consequences because you don’t believe anybody else will.
Now this is a collective action problem.
You know what — you understand what I’m talking about when I say “collective action
problem”?
I mean that people will behave differently if they think everybody else is doing the
same or making the same sacrifices, or behaving the same way, than they would if they don’t
really trust that other people are going to make the same sacrifices because they say
to themselves, “Why should I sacrifice?
Why should I be the one who is going to not get the garment, or not buy the book on the
internet when I think everybody else is going to do it.
I’m not going to affect any change.
I’m not going to really affect the economy or politics if it’s just, if it’s just
me!”
So there is this, number three, let’s call it a collective action problem.
You can be sure, you cannot be sure that other people are doing the same thing, sacrificing
the same way.
Now the point of all of this is to say, number one, that some of this can be overcome.
i mean if you really are worried about good jobs and steady jobs and small stores and
bookstores and all of the other things in your society, in your environment, that you
don’t want to sacrifice, you really are worried about it, well…maybe on number two
there could be more widespread understanding, more widespread education, more connectedness
between what people do in their private purchases, getting the best deals and these kinds of
consequences, maybe we could just have a lot of publicity.
But what do we do about three?
Well three, that is the collective action problem — where you’re not gonna do it
if you don’t know that everybody else will do it — maybe we could overcome that by
having laws.
In fact, that’s what laws do in many cases.
Like zoning laws.
They say, you can’t have a big box retailer here.
This area is reserved for family-owned businesses, for example.
And later on in the term we’re going to look at laws and regulations as ways of overcoming
number three.
This kind of collective action problem.
But maybe there’s also something else going on here, and it has to do with economic change.
Maybe, just maybe, one way of better synchronizing the consumer part of your brain with the citizen
part of your brain is to have policies that make it easier for people to move from job
to job.
Maybe we need policies that make it easier for people in industries that are getting
rapidly automated or digitized, to get other good jobs where there is none of that phenomenon.
Maybe we need policies that help people get the kind of opportunities they need so that
we are achieving both good deals and also other citizen objectives.
Maybe we need to subsidize small family-owned businesses to some extent if we want them.
Do you get my drift?
And one of the things we’re going to be talking about later in the semester and keep
an eye on now, is what kind of policies those might be.
For now, just waned to plant a flag for you, and for you, that there is a tension here.
And once we start addressing the issue of why widening inequality, what’s going on,
who’s responsible, you need to understand that part of the responsibility is yours,
and yours.
See you next week.