10 Questions for Robert Reich

With your new movie, Inequality for All, are you trying for what Al Gore did with An Inconvenient Truth?
No, but the comparison has been made, that [income inequality] is the inconvenient truth for the economy and the middle class. I think I’m funnier than Al Gore.

Isn’t unequal wealth inherent to any capitalist system?
Some inequality is good in terms of giving people the incentives to work hard, invest, invent, innovate. But when so much income goes to the very top, and the middle class and poor don’t have enough purchasing power left to buy what the economy is capable of producing, it means we are subject to very anemic recoveries, booms and busts and very high unemployment.

Pick one: reform the tax code, reunionize the country or increase the minimum wage.
There’s no magic bullet. You’ve got to do a lot of things we used to do. You have to have a tax code that is more progressive. You need to raise the minimum wage so that nobody who’s working full time lives in poverty.

What should the minimum wage be?
I would say that a rule of thumb ought to be: Take the minimum wage of 1968, adjust for inflation and for productivity. You get to around $15 an hour.

And the highest tax rate?
Between 1946 and 1970, very prosperous years, the highest tax rate for the top earners was never below 70% — even under Dwight Eisenhower, whom no one called a socialist. We have so much deferred maintenance on roads and bridges and tunnels and ports. Money does have to be raised, and the rich have never been as rich.

Wouldn’t that take away the capital to create jobs?
The rich are not the job creators. The job creators are the vast middle class and everyone aspiring to join them, whose money businesses need in order to justify expanding and hiring.

What are the prospects for the labor movement now?
Fewer than 7% of private-sector workers are unionized in this country. So there’s almost no bargaining power left, and this is particularly a problem for your lowest-wage workers, in big-box retailers like Walmart or working for fast-food restaurants. That’s where unionization is most important, and they don’t have to worry about their jobs being taken away by globalization or automation.

So would you put yourself in the 1%?
I wouldn’t. I’m a university professor. I’m not complaining. But even in the universities, the most rapidly growing job is lecturers, who are essentially itinerant workers.

As an ex — Secretary of Labor, what courses do you advise students to take so they don’t end up outsourced?
If you’re talking about how to make a lot of money, I’d say major in economics, get your M.B.A. and then be dull for the rest of your life and have no impact. If you want a productive and meaningful life, do what you want to do and try to make enough to live on in the process.

You were a Rhodes scholar. They’re sporting leaders. What was your sport?
Can I confess something? I didn’t really have a sport. I told the committee I’m not the sporty type.

When did you last hear a good new short joke?
Not for years. I know every short joke. In fact, I created most of the ones currently in circulation.