Author: Robert Reich

An artificial intelligence boom is taking over Silicon Valley, with high-tech firms racing to develop everything from self-driving cars to chatbots capable of writing poetry. Yet AI could also spread conspiracy theories and lies even more quickly than the internet already does – fueling political polarization, hate, violence and mental illness in young people. It could undermine national security with deepfakes. In recent weeks, members of Congress have sounded the alarm over the dangers of AI but no bill has been proposed to protect individuals or stop the development of AI’s most threatening aspects. Most lawmakers don’t even know...

If 2022 presented any single lesson, it was the social costs of greed. Capitalism is premised on greed but also on guardrails — laws and norms — that prevent greed from becoming so excessive that it threatens the system as a whole. Yet the guardrails cannot hold when avarice becomes the defining trait of an era, as it is now. Laws and norms are no match for the possibility of raking in billions if you’re sufficiently ruthless and unprincipled. Donald Trump’s tax returns, just made public, reveal that he took bogus deductions to reduce his tax liability all the...

Sometimes I feel like screaming at the mainstream media for failing to alert people to crucial, although complicated, issues affecting our democracy coming from different parts of government simultaneously. Case in point: Moore v. Harper, argued on December 7 before the Supreme Court, and the Electoral Reform Act, which must be enacted before the end of this Congress because Republicans won’t touch it once they control the House. The two are intimately connected but you wouldn’t know that from the mainstream media, which is treating them as two separate stories. Let me make the connection. In Moore, North Carolina...

The Congressional Budget Office released a study of trends in the distribution of family wealth between 1989 and 2019 on September 27. Over those 30 years, the richest 1% of families increased their share of total national wealth from 27% to 34%. Families in the bottom half of the economy now hold a mere 2%. Meanwhile, a record share of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American. How do the ultra-wealthy justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths...