Robert Reich: Forget China - it's America's own economic system that's broken

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. It is interesting but he doesn't really offer any concrete

ways that we can reduce the dominance of big corporate interests in our economy? I would love to read ideas on how we could do that without central planning.

As US unemployment goes down, you would think that there would be more competition for workers and wages and benefits would rise?

If we could control all branches of government, we could pass worker's rights legislation?

I happen to think instant business news has really hurt our economy over time. A long time ago, a shareholder might check the newspaper periodically and if their stock went up they were happy. Now, you can see it's fluctuations 24/7. This puts enormous pressure on management, now in a fishbowl, to keeps earnings growing. No one wants to be a CEO who sees CNBC or Bloomberg announce to the world that their company missed its earnings.

Over time, to maintain consistent earnings growth, corporations went to the easiest place to cut expenses...salaries. they moved from pensions to IRAs. They cut profit sharing plans, and free health care.