Robert Reich: We Need Class Warriors - Not Class Worriers and Wimps 🎙 2nd Gilded Age
Last edited Tue Jun 23, 2026, 11:19 PM - Edit history (5)
- 'We Need Class Warriors— Not Class Worriers and Wimps' by Robert Reich Substack, Truthdig, June 23, 2026. Democrats must finally take on the class war that’s being waged by the nation’s oligarchy against most Americans. 💵
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The last time Americans faced such overwhelming evidence that the monied interests were screwing them over was the Great Crash of 1929 and ensuing Great Depression, resulting in the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, starting in 1933. The one silver lining of the current Trump-Musk-Bezos-Ellison-Murdoch-Koch horror show is that most Americans now know beyond any reasonable doubt that they’re on the losing side of a class war, and are justifiably pissed.
America’s first trillionaire is a vicious white supremacist who’s stirring up hate around the world and backing Republican candidates with big bucks. American billionaires, meanwhile, are openly sucking up to America’s first dictator, spending lavishly on whatever he wants, and gobbling up media outlets so most Americans won’t know what’s going on. Where has this gotten us?
Workers’ share of the nation’s income has now dropped to the lowest it’s been since records began in 1947, while profits’ share is the highest since 1950 (showing up in a rip-roaring stock market). 💸
“Income from capital risks replacing income from labor.”
This is morally wrong. “Income from capital risks replacing income from labor,” Pope Leo wrote in “Magnifica Humanitas,” his recent encyclical letter. It’s also undermining our democracy. "America has a choice,” the jurist Louis Brandeis is reputed to have said. “We can have great wealth in a few hands or we can have a democracy, but we cannot have both.” It’s time for Democrats to take on the class war that’s being waged by the nation’s oligarchy against most Americans by becoming class warriors themselves.
By class warrior I don’t mean resorting to violence or name-calling. I mean recognizing that a billionaire class is bad for America and calling for bold changes to reverse it: taxing great wealth, busting up monopolies, strengthening labor unions, raising the minimum wage, demanding profit-sharing and capital-sharing, ensuring Medicare for all and a universal basic income and getting big money out of politics.
🎩 FDR wasn’t afraid to be a class warrior:...
- Read More,
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/we-need-class-warriors-not-class-worriers-and-wimps/
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- ALSO:
- 'Are We In A Second Gilded Age? From Robber Barons to Bezos,' Robert Reich, 2023. (6 mins).
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Wiki. The Gilded Age is the period from about the late 1870s to the late 1890s, which occurred between the Reconstruction era and the Progressive Era. It was named by 1920s historians after Mark Twain's 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. It was a time of rapid economic and capital growth, especially in the North and West.. The Gilded Age was also an era of visible poverty. Though some earned more, the purchasing power advantage for many workers was somewhat smaller than raw wage comparisons suggest, especially accounting for comparatively high rents...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
- 'Are We Living in the Second Gilded Age,' Income Inequality, History, 2025.
Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0 ?
'The first Gilded Age saw massive wealth inequalities, hyperpartisanship, virulent anti-immigrant sentiment and growing concern about money in politics. Sound familiar?'...
https://www.history.com/articles/second-gilded-age-income-inequality
- Is America In A New Gilded Age? CBS Reports, Wealth Power & Democracy, 2025. (43 min). 👑
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- Time, 'Welcome to the 2nd Gilded Age,' 4.26,
https://time.com/article/2026/04/18/welcome-to-the-second-gilded-age/
🔎 'Americans are grappling with economic and political inequalities and a deep divide that threatens the core of the American Dream.
Millions of working people are making impossible choices: pay rent or buy groceries, fill the gas tank or keep the lights on.
Census data indicates that nearly half of all American renters now spend more than 30% of their income on housing alone—a record high. Meanwhile, after adjusting for inflation, the average American worker's hourly wage has roughly the same purchasing power it did in 1978. Meanwhile, technological innovation in areas such as AI threatens to transform the labor market'...
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