Class 1: “What’s Happened to Income & Wealth” by UC Berkeley Professor Reich

I love when professors share their courses online. This is great stuff, thank you Mr. Reich.

Wait what?! I can watch a whole Berkley course bei a renowned Professor for free online?? God bless technology ❤ and the university and professor for providing the amazing content and being so generous to share their knowledge with literally everyone ! Amazing

I love having access to this. It's an amazing learning opportunity. Thank you, Professor.

There's a big oversight in the genie and $1000 experiment examples, and putting them back to back like that does a good job of highlighting that oversight. There is a very crucial difference between giving the top 1% a lot more wealth and jilting someone out of ~$1000 because you don't like why they're getting $1000. These are not measuring the same factors or the same public values. Students may express them similarly, and I think economists and those influenced by economists (to borrow a line) see this and see a solid conclusion. It's a conclusion that states that people only have an adversarial approach to the ultra rich because they also want to be ultra rich and they simply object to their current circumstances. Most people can't even conceive of how much money the top 1% have let alone be envious of it. When pressed, sure, people know they don't like it. But here's the oversight: Money is influence and power, it's not just legal tender for goods and services. For normal people it's the stuff we pay bills with and buy fun things with. For the ultra rich, it's power. When wealth becomes SO extreme and SO densely concentrated, it causes problems for the rest of society. Even if I get 10% more money off of my modest wealth, giving Bezos or Musk 20 PERCENT more wealth would be... frankly quite dangerous. They can invest oceans of capital into projects and campaigns and lobbying efforts and candidates, they would wash away any collective efforts for funding anything they don't want purely because THEY want to. Their ideologies become realities the rest of us have to deal with. They are the modern nobility who have more personhood than other people. My problem isn't that I'm not Jeff Bezos. My problem is Jeff Bezos.

I regret not taking this class at Cal five years ago and it truly makes me happy to watch the recording. Thank you Professor Reich.

Dear learners and the curious: I've come back to class #1 from the future - I'm on #6 - to encourage you. This Wealth and Poverty Class series has changed my thinking. I've been alarmed, challenged, angered, informed, set free from false beliefs and encouraged to make changes in my life for the betterment of my family and fellow man. Keep learning and God bless everyone here ❤

Just came across this video (& it's subsequent ones), and I don't have words to express my gratitude at sharing these classes with the world! I'm 42, and although am halfway towards an associates degree in business administration, financial concerns have laid to rest any future college dreams for me. That said, I've always had a love of learning, and these videos are an absolute gift. Thank you beyond words, Professor!

I follow you regularly and when I saw this class posted, I thought, "why not"? Then I saw it was 90 minutes...do I have that attention span? Haha...but it went by so fast. You are an engaging professor, and those students in class are very lucky! Happy to participate virtually. I immediately posted the class to my fb page...

I like his style of presentation. Not only is he lecturing about ecnomics, he is also doing standup and being a gameshow host!

Excellent, Robert. Thank you. We need you. I am Cuban-American and live in Miami. I feel terrified seeing the extreme right re-emerge. There is confusion in the minds of most Latinos regarding who they should vote for. The majority in my city, especially Cubans and Venezuelans, are being deceived by the media that speaks our language. They think that Biden supports the communism from which they escaped and that Trump will save them from this paycheck-to-paycheck life, with just a few hours to sleep that the majority get. Latinos in the United States urgently need to understand what the extreme right, the extreme left, and Democracy are. They have to know the dangers they expose us to if this new type of fascism, with Donald Trump as its leader, triumphs. Please, also try to reach out to Latinos. There is a lot of ignorance in our towns, which is why they are easy prey. Millions of Latino votes. We can save Democracy.

Robert Reich is a national treasure. These ideas would save America (and subsequently the world) if people understood and used them appropriately.

This makes me want to attend UC Berkeley even more than I already did! Very insightful, Professor Reich.

Was cool to see this being filmed in class. Props to Prof. Reich for publishing his courses on a free website

Everyone talking about how great Robert Reich is as a prof (he is, this is a phenomenal lecture), but not many writing about the implications of what the man just explained.

I love when professors share their lectures with the general public. I love learning new things and would be a permanent college student if I could afford it lol. It’s awesome that UC Berkeley has someone with so much life experience on their staff.

My reasons for not accepting the Genie experiment: 1. Historically the way our system is set up, when the top group gets more they use that wealth to take the gains from the middle and lower income group, because it gives them disproportionate access to influence. 2. Money in too few hands lends itself to monopolies that also gobble up the gains from the middle and lower income group. So getting a 3%/1% gain in the middle/lower groups but then giving the top group 20% that wealth translates to power and that power can be used to wrest the gains from the other groups.

This is so amazing. I’ll never be able to get into (or afford) a school like Berkeley or Harvard. But I can “take courses” online for very little money or for free thanks to folks like Dr. Reich or EdX classes. 🥰

Thank you truly Professor Reich. Fixed poverty is a malignant act of violence. How is poverty fixed? By the faulty poverty line. The truth is the income of the working class, poor, working poor (& even the disappearing middle class) does not pair up with rent rates & the actual cost of living (decent, bare basic). The problem is the faulty poverty line. When Mollie Orshansky (1960), formulated the basis of the poverty line, it was fixed upon meal plans of peanut butter (or the cheapest no frill emergency diet possible),for 3 meals a day. This was an emergency diet, not a sustainable one. Thereby, the poverty line is fundamentally flawed. As said the poverty line is based on the cost of an emergency diet, and it does not apply to every day life, neither is it sustainable. Many Americans are struggling to pay rent, grocery, utilities & transportation expenses, at minimum. However, if the poverty threshold line is corrected to reflect the actual cost of living, wages & support would increase for many everyday Americans. Including more common sense supportive programs in place for small businesses, average households & college tuitions. One solution could be for support (well supervised, audited support) be federally provided to qualifying employers, (this would be especially useful to small business owners) so that they can pay their employees an actual living wage that is relevant & reflective of the cost of living in real time. People are scratching & struggling to survive, they’ve been robbed of hope & many are not going to go to work, at the risk of losing federal support, if they know that they cannot (on their own), meet the bare essentials to shelter, see a doctor when needed & feed themselves and their children. No one should be forced to choose between being housed (having their rent paid through governmental aid) or choosing employment. The work wages will not pay for rent & basic needs. Impoverished Americans are neither lazy nor crazy, it's called survival. The bottom line is the stronger the working & middle classes are, the bolder the lift of the entire economy bearing down on their backs and shoulders will be. Please make it a priority to address that the poverty line reflects actual, humane cost of living expenses (reflective of the respective city / state cost of living expenses). Don’t make wages minimum, make them relevant (relevant wages are wages that are reflective of actual rent & mortgage rates & a healthy-basic cost of living). We also need a proliferation of vocational training for youth and abled adults (of all ages). I personally would like to see as many buses for (quality) vocational-training-sign-up as I did for COVID-19 vaccines, especially in low income areas. The problem is that far too many Americans are ignorant to the poverty vacuum: https://youtu.be/D9N7QaIOkG8 https://youtu.be/-ptHavHrDuE Thank you again Professor Reich. Your work is extensive & dedicated.

I can't believe I get to sit in on Robert Reich's colleges classes. How cool is that? Too cool. Thanks Professor!

Man that drop for kids born in 1980 when comparing to their parents income at age 30 hit hard. I was born in 1981, and I was making $0 when I turned 30. I had been working for the USDA at the beginning of 2011, but when the GOP took over congress that year and forced a government shut down, I lost my job (not furloughed, I was laid off) additionally my role did not qualify for me to get unemployment pay, and it wasn't until November 2013 that I actually got a fulltime job again, and still had no job at all by the end of 2011. I'm definitely one of those 50% of people who made less than their parents at 30 who were born in the early 80s. And this honestly wasn't the first time my job and career got reset over my life, which made it impossible for me to accumulate wealth or even keep money in a retirement plan, because once you get laid off and don't have another job to pick up your 401K, all that money (unlike with a pension) just get taxed heavily and sent back to you. Means any retirement savings I had didn't really start to accumulate until my mid 30s and I still haven't gotten together enough money to purchase a home. Definitely worse off than my parents were at my age