As the 21st century takes shape, California looks like an exaggerated version of what is happening to the rest of the nation, so says Robert Reich, UC Berkeley professor and former Secretary of Labor for the Clinton administration.
“We’ve not seen this degree of difference, gap between the wealthy and everybody else since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century — since the a ge of the Robber Barons. The top one percent owns as much of America as the bottom ninety percent put together.”
According to Reich, that “great divide” is driven by both globalization and technological changes and shows up most glaringly in the differences in opportunities for those with a college education versus those without.
In the following interview, Reich discusses the state of the state, from our public schools to our public coffers.
- “Plenty of Knowledge Work to Go Around,” Harvard Business Review, in which Reich takes a closer look at outsourcing and argues that “[t]here’s far more knowledge work in the United States today than there was a decade ago.”
- Web Salon: Tomorrow’s Jobs, California Connected
- Interactive: Jobs of Tomorrow, California Connected